sunlight

 

An installation of ideas.

 

Dear Like Minds,

These are images of an installation of ideas on slips of paper.  The ideas were thought of and recorded in a class I teach each Spring.  I never knew, when I first looked at Joseph Kosuth's One and Three Chairs, that I would arrive at digging conceptual art; promoting it and assigning it even.  It grew on me, I guess, like moss and Absurdist literature. 

The way that ideas, and manifestations of ideas, circulate and fold out and in and recombine is really a beautiful thing.  I have mentioned it here before, and what is the word for it?  Happenstance?  Coincidence doesn't seem quite right.  The thesaurus offers 'concomitance,' 'concordance,' and 'lumping together.'  The first two are a little officious, and the last implies a lack of elegance.  Happenstance will have to do.

One thing that lumped together to manifest as this project are the Paul Thek Teaching Notes.  Here is a place you can read a little about them, and you can look at the notes, here.  Then you can answer them, make your own list of questions, or manifest some other happenstance entirely. 

Another list.

 

Dear To Do,

1.  Listen to this.

2.  Consider carefully these words.

3.  Assemble a group of photographs.

4.  Make a cake.

PS

Yes, I am sorry, you will have to register for a free account to read those words, but it won't take you that long.  If you end up extra time leftover, you can send your own condolence to insecurity!

Clarity: As easy as falling off a log.

Dear Seeking,

Today I begin my letter to you with a few lines of introduction, or maybe it's a list.  Or maybe it is subject headings.  Or maybe it's the condensed version of the paragraphs that follow.


Give a little bit of your time to me.  Give a little bit.  

I don't mind you coming here, and wasting all my time.


The last place I lived was called Clarity Acres.  It got me to thinking, recently, about whether I had been clear with you here.  These pages suggest a lot of ideas and projects, and places to go to, but I think what I am really hoping you will want to do is jump on in with me.  The water is fine! 

Let's go over it, then, in detail.  This thing is a blog, which is short for Web Log.  What is a log?  Well, if you watch Star Trek, you'll find that the Captain's Log is a nice place for some exposition in the narrative.  A log can be a journal, but the best logs aren't merely lists of what you did and when you did it.

The blog can be a kind of a bulletin board, where you might find a scrap of paper selling a used bike that you are interested in, or a notice of an upcoming Barn dance you'd like to attend, or an idea you'd like to mull on further.

I was dismissive of blogs for many years, because they seemed very dull to me to read (no, the irony is not lost on me!).  And, I also felt very awkward at the confessional position many of them take.  But, like so many things, what is fun to do is not as much fun to watch.  So, you know what I am saying, right?  I am saying that you must be the blog you wish to read.  You must beautify the world of the virtual, collective mind by making your contribution to it.

Well, go on then.

atom-it

Dear All,

Here is your tiny short, on atoms, for the day!


 

Your Chant of the Day.

Dear Mothers,


Your song for today is a chant from Nina Hagen.  

Feel like more chanting?  

A favorite.

 

Dear Radio Dodo Listener,

This song, this song!  It is your song of the day- sing along with these beautiful voices!  I have loved this song since 1979, I think, but I lost my notebook: the one that I penciled the songs I loved into as I encountered them.  No, I never had such a notebook to lose, but if I did, what would I do with that list now?

autre temps, autre moeurs

 

Dear Others,

I went hogwild this year on Zoom book clubs: three!  It was a bit manic, yes.  In one of The Groups (which I will call the English Professors & Librarians Group) we talk about 'othering,' meaning the process of talking, writing, and defining different (as in not your) groups as The Other.  Which has been specially verbed for this particular use.  Here is the rub:  Othering is bad, yep, no denying it.  But it is so pretty a word, so useful, so broad in what it can mean, which is anything.  Go get the other one.  Bring another one.  I like the other one better.  It's like the words 'stuff' and 'things.'  I can't live, if living is without them.  So now a sort of kind of (more words I must have!) short poem like (there's another one!) elegy to the word other:   

Other times

other manners

other ways.

Other other other.

And now on to another thing, that I know you will like: The The Guatelli Museum, which comes to these pages via a friend and colleague.