Sunday Scribbles

You are an object of endless fascination and speculation. This stranger in their midst. This creature alive and well singing a song about the disorientation, the unfolding process, dynamics. You are a ghost and people here have seen plenty of them. Before, now and later. 

It's theoretically possible to say the local people have an EI or Emotional Intelligence of -7. This simple truth is revealed through behavior, attitudes and verbal communication. It has nothing to do with family, values, education or social skills. I witnessed the same reality while teaching and living in China. Or should living and learning come before teaching? Everyone is a student, especially on the street.

There are book smarts and street smarts. "Theatre of the Street," is opening on Broadway and coming to a theatre near you.

In Asia, it's always a theatre on the street. Hustler heaven on earth. Of course it's all a fake. I am a fake. I am pretending to be exactly who I am. My story is filled with contradictions and paradoxes.

Here's what a small sign said about Buddhist statues in Asia.                                

Gentility - China

Perfection - Japan

Refinement - Thailand

Meditation - Cambodia

Affection - Vietnam

If you sit still long enough someone will pass by ringing a bell.

Metta.

iPhone art

Greetings,

I read about David Hockney's new exhibit in London. He mentioned using a painting application on his iPhone. 

"It's all part of the urge toward figuration. You look out at the world and you're called to make gestures in response. And that's a primordial calling: goes all the way back to the cave painters. May even have preceded language. People are always asking me about my ancestors, and I say, Well there must have been a cave painter back there somewhere. Him scratching away on his cave wall, me dragging my thumb over this iPhone's screen. All part of the same passion."

The application he favors is Brushes. I also found another app called Sketchbook by Autodesk. 

I began learning, playing and experimenting with both. Fun. As Hockney said, it's a great little portable tool. In your pocket. No mess. No rags filled with pigment, oils and the usual artistic beauty. When you're finished you turn off the machine. 

Easy to upload, email, and share your art. Here are two examples of playful visual storytelling. A new iPhone gallery is in process.

Metta.

Hockney article in The New York Review of Books...read more.

Yesterday's face.

Autumn has no boundaries.

New Front Page

Greetings,

So, as usual I'm experimenting with the site design and decided to make the "Living on the edge," blog the "Front Page," that opens when you visit.

'It's like this,' said the seer during discussions discussing this eclectic option. 'Why start with Myths and Innuendos when people can immediately access the blog slog?'

'Excellent point,' I said. 'Everyone already knows about myths because they are alive. Most subscribers, visitors and friends have already seen the Myth page, read the book blurb and assorted philosophical insights.

'They are probably bored to tears wondering, why don't those two genius types get their electronic act together and streamline this baby so we don't have to click through to explore new stuff?'

'Clearly,' said the seer. 'Take the ideas and forget the words.'

Enjoy your travels through the Ha Noi neighborhood of reality and dreams. Feel free to drop us a line.

Metta.

On the sidewalk is a feather and a q-tip. Existential awareness.

A broken building at a temple in Ha Noi. Loving lines.

A man hauls out his heavy trash. His destination is the cart. A distant speck, horizon.

Andy Warhol

This is from Volume 56, Number 16 - October 22, 2009 issue of The New York Review of Books by Richard Dorment. He reviews three new books about the artist Andy Warhol.

...Warhol asked different questions about art. How does it differ from any other commodity? What value do we place on originality, invention, rarity, and the uniqueness of the art object? To do this he revisited long-neglected artistic genres such as history painting in his disaster series, still life in his soup cans and Brillo boxes, and the society portrait in Ethel Scull Thirty-Six Times. Though Warhol isn't always seen as a conceptual artist, his most perceptive critic, Arthur C. Danto, calls him "the nearest thing to a philosophical genius the history of art has produced."

...Warhol's friend Henry Geldzahler, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, recognized that the artist's two great innovations were "to bring commercial art into fine art" and "to take printing techniques into painting. Andy's prints and paintings are exactly the same thing. No one had ever done that before. It was an amazing thing to do."

...As Danto explains in his brilliant short study of Warhol, the question Warhol asked is not "What is art?" but "What is the difference between two things, exactly alike, one of which is art and one of which is not?"

New York Review of Books. Read more...

Andy Warhol Museum...

"I don't know where the artificial stops and real starts." - Andy Warhol

Metta.

Synecdoche

Greetings,

A prospective home owner walks into a house with a real estate agent. There are numerous small fires burning.

"I really like this house," she says. "But I'm really concerned about dying in a fire."

"Yes," says the agent, "It's a big decision, how one chooses to die."

Synecdoche, a film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman concerns life, choices, dreams, art, relationships and death.

Always making choices.

Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Hope Davis, Tom Noonan, Emily Watson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dianne Weist, Deirdre O'Connell.

Give a man a match and he's warm for a minute. Set him on fire and he's alive for the rest of his life.

Read more...

Metta.