Monthly Archives: December 2006

It's All In Your Head (Thoughts on The Third Man: M. Tirstan)

by

eatleaf.jpgitsallinyourhead.jpg
trollboy.jpg
Now I picture M. Tristan as old, yes. But also, he may be suffering under the weight of disease, or the knoledge of a disease. I think he has a brain tumor and he is slowly loosing all the knowledge he fought so hard to gain. He is a trained man. Also he is loosing his mind…and the tracks.. His sanity and his knowlledge are starting to leave him and this is his motivation to grab onto young lovers… He may or may not be gay, but he defintitely has no heirs.
trolleye.jpg

He has no children.
He is brilliant.
He is sick
He is given to moments of lucidity.
He is given to mad hallucinations
He is rich
no one tells him which is which because he is rich.

He is Nietzche at the end in the alps.
He is Zarathustra also…
He is Chaplin
He is Keaton
He is Groucho
He is Robin Williams on a good day and Steve Martin too.
He is Mao
He is Pinochet
He is Pynchon
He is Joyce
He is Hitler
He is Luther
He is Martin luther
He is Martin Luther King Jr.
He is Max Von Sydow.
barbarianvariation.jpg
Collabs from the Library:
godalways hungry and Tony Van denBooman and Bella and Brian Raszka

The Dream Factory Puzzle Works (or Night and Day in L.A.)

by

This is Ground Control To Major Dave, You’ve really made the grade and the papers want to know who’s shirt’s you wear, now it’s time to leave the capsule if you dare.
For Here am I floating in my tin can, Far above the world. Los Angeles is Brown and I think I’m coming down….
MajorDave.jpg
waterpuzzle.jpg
bullockwatermarksmall.jpg
This page is a book collab and scanner collab with Bullock Waterman of Los Angeles California: Dream Land USA. Takes us in a nice circle back to the early days of the project if you go to see the original book here.

Imagine Image Engine

by

imagineimage.jpgHadrionsalps.jpg
Here am I standing in a tin can, far below the ground…planet earth is red – everyone is dead.
learcanb.jpg
Now originally, the Cafe Potemkin would have been in Brooklyn and they would meet M. Tristan there while sharing a bottle of Grand Cru Bordeaux… offering the old man in the corner a glass because he is old and alone and they are young and feeling the buzz of earlier beer and new love and lust and M. Tristan accepts their offer and asks them, “How long have you been married.”
“We just met,” says she.
“No,” says M. Tristan.
“Yes,” Says Pat.
“No,” Tristan repeats.
“Not but a few hours ago.”
“Well you must marry,” says M. Tristan. “I can see it is your fate.”
And with that, Tristan takes charge of their life, they being drunk and impressed by the Rolls Royce and the King Leer jet and Switzerland, let him. He lives in Chateau called Egg.
But wherever the cafe is in time and space, I like to think that a John Lennnon song is heard drifting by from a car radio, or boom box, or whatever and they drift into a conversation about the Tragedy of John.
“Does it strike anyone as odd,” asks M. Tristan, in a pedagogical mode. “That Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7th A Day That Shall Live In Infamy and Lennnon was Shot on December 8th? Now didn’t Mark David Chapman live in Hawaii? Didn’t Lennon live with the most famous Japanese in the history of the world? Are these things accidents do you suppose?”
“I don’t know,” Patty said. “I’m Korean.”
“Of course you are,” M. Tristan said. “Of course you are, but that’s not the question.”
“What is the question?” Pat says.
“It’s just something no one ever mentions and it seems significant.”
“Sean thinks his father was assasinated,” Patty says.
“He’s nuts,”Pat scoffs.
“Is he?” M. Tristan asked.
“Isn’t he?” Pat says.
“I don’t know.” M. Tristan answers. “You are the Americans. You have the Mr. Burning Bush. What is possible do you suppose?”
“It’s possible to raise a toast to John Lennon,” says Patty.
“To the crew of U.S.S. Arizona,” says Pat.
“To Yoko,” says M. Tristan.
They drink … let’s say a 1944 Chateau Margaux (I know it’s pushing it, but Imagine….)
cafepotemkinsmall.jpg
elephantsbrain.jpg
The Elephant’s Memory image above is a collab finished by Bellah from a Brian Raszka start. The rest are my starts – all for The Library Project.

Fire On The Mountain (Janus Front Matter)

by


firemountain.jpg
janus.gif

They watched him with an ever changing mood and played a sort of game, trying to guess who and what he was: Hero, or Villain? Mustache, or bow tie? He simply ate a light lunch of paté and then a tart and a new bottle of wine for each that he barely touched. By turns, Pat found him a charming gentleman and Patty saw him as a ruthless war profeteer, the type who sold ammo to the South Africans during Apartheid and he’d retort, “Well that’s simply business, dear. Repressing people takes a lot of ammo. Supply and demand.”
And she’d say, “I demand a level of morality.”
And He would concede her point and then she would say, “But he has such gentle eyes. Maybe he only makes chocolates?”
“Maybe he sells shoddy formula to Africans causing malnutrition when the mothers ought to just breast feed anyway? Maybe that’s what he does after the chocolates?”
“Maybe the mothers are too hungry to lactate,” she’d say. “The formula is the only chance those babies have…. But then why not feed the mothers with cheese or something?”
And he’d say, “But I do love his suit and look at those shoes and what’s that wine he’s drinking? Is it really Château d’Yquem? Oh but he’s having a plum tart… what a match. He has exquisite taste.”
“Taste for blood,” she’d say. “Like the Count of Dracula.”
And on and on it went. The old man was a neutral cypher but their lunch revolved around his inscrutability. They couldn’t read him at all, so all they did was try to read him and his very neutrality charged the atmosphere with conflict.
urbanringofire.jpg
Highway image is from Double You at The Library in a weird fluke it seems like the urban mirror to my mountain Ring of Fire.
Continue reading →

Cine Mania

by

Tmalex.jpg
They sat down in an overpriced cafe and she pulled out a box of Silk Cut cigarettes and she offered him one and he took it and lit it and inhaled it and the nicotine went right to his addled head and gave him a whirling head spin so that he could barely hold the weight of it on his neck and the world went several colors of the rainbow and he exhaled and then took another drag and then they ordered coffee and smoked some more while waiting.
cinemania.jpg
Thinking again of the Swiss Watch Vision, he asked her, “Did you ever see Coppla’s Apocalypse Now?”
“Sure,” She said. “I saw it when it came out in the theater.”
“You mean the Redux?” he said.
“No… The original, in the seventies.”
“But… How fucking old were you?”
“Hmmm… six?… I don’t know… My dad took me. He hardly ever got the day off back then and when he did, he liked to go to the movies and my mother always said, ‘take the children.’ So he did, but you know, she never told him what was an appropriate movie for a child and so he took us to the movies he wanted to see… war movies mostly. I think I slept through most of it… I saw The Deer Hunter and The Shining… all sorts of crazy shit for a toddler to see.”
“Jesus! I was a few years older than you and… well it was pretty fucking shocking movie.”
“Just a movie… no worse than Bambi at some level.”
“if you say so.”
“I wonder if you can get good Vietnamese food in this town?” she said. “I’ve got a craving for Pho.”
“True or Faux,” he joked.
“What?”
“Truffaut and the 400 Blows,” he was just rhyming now.
“Ever see A Clockwork Orange?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Now that was a fucking horror show. Nothing ever scared me like that… I can’t even watch Singing in the Rain without locking my front door just to be on the safe side.”
“Wise,” he said. “Just say no to Droogs.”
“Right,” she said sucking on the cigarette. “Droogs Kill.”

TMsmoke.jpg

Book Collab with yours truly and Think Mule and a digi collab from a start by Tony Van den Boomen for The Library Project.