idea: drive to gibbsville wisconsin

idea: be inspired at the old photo of a beloved structure and rebuild it in its former spot with birch branches

                                                          we called it "the bunkhouse"

              the wind may knock this down, or a neighbor, or a deer, but it stood for a day

idea: see what is going on

idea: new jacket from over top fantastic 1970's era coat sleeves + modern cotton twill flap front

Los Angeles 1

soy sauce on a banana

one, then another, dead mallard on the glendale bridge
cassette tape spilling out from closed truck door
somehow

we keep at it

idea: look for magic in a paris museum that is open until midnight. palais de tokyo+ darth vader installation + no crowd.

                                                                  (moving image by c.b.)

know your heroes: Dorothea Lange

            

                                                

             Susan Sontag states in her book On Photography, “Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we’re shown a photograph of it." Lange confidently said that, "No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually. I know what we could make of it if people only thought we could dare look at ourselves."

 

                                              

                       

know your Heroes: Patrick Leigh Fermor

 

Fermor 

walked

from Holland to Hungary in 1933

at age

18. 

        Later, as a British soldier, he fights in the war and the book interweaves the later knowledge that much of what he witnessed and explored was forever destroyed. His description of how snow affects a landscape (between pages 102-106 of the 1977 edition of "A Time of Gifts") is a perfect reflection on being in the woods in winter. He continuously shows a magical grasp on what is powerful about time spent in nature. 

A passage starts with "All was frozen" and ends with his sitting "clenched and shivering in this prehistoric burial posture and listen[ing] to my teeth rattling" before realizing that he is a few hundred meters from another German village. He finds a bar with "lamplit and steaming rustics round the table, veiled in the smoke of their lidded pipes, [who] were maundering away with slurred vowels over their mugs."

"It was no good trying to explain." 

know your Heroes: martha graham

According to Agnes de Mille: "I was bewildered and worried that my entire scale of values was untrustworthy. ... I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that I could be." Martha said to me, very quietly:

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others. [from The Life and Work of Martha Graham]

idea: be obvious

know your Heroes: Diana Vreeland

"I loathe narcissism but I approve of vanity."

"I always wear my sweater back-to-front; it is so much more flattering"

"What do I think about the way most people dress? Most people are not something one thinks about." 
 

idea: look in antique botany books. delicious victorian-era pressed flower stain. i hope it was the ragged fringed orchid but a common elder is pretty good too.

Los Angeles 0

there was a man in a rumpled grey suit in the bookstore last week.

he asked me if i was the proprietor and i told him “no...but i act like it” and he loved that. "heh heh, yeaaah, that is the way it should beee!" so he tells me that he is a writer from Detroit and that he will do anything to make it in hollywood.

including "eating garbage."

he was holding a little notebook/folder and he fools around, looking down,  shifting his weight between his feet and finally hands me his prospectus for a screenplay. i was busily shelving books so my first thought what the hell, man? do i look connected to you?

i take it and mention that i lived in and loved Detroit…Hamtramck, in particular. he says nothing which is a bad sign. the expected response: “oh yeah? what part?” and outwardly happy for a connection. so i said, where are you from in the city? and he says....”uuuh, downtown”…and he all of a sudden wants his piece of paper back too.

 his story is about alien werewolves that embed hollywood with madness. or something like that. i don’t know since he took his stuff, turned his back, and left in a hurry.

idea: know your Heroes...Bill Cunningham

“Money’s the cheapest thing. Liberty, freedom is the most expensive.”

Idea: Build a Film Set in Your Garage. Outcome: Success.

Some of the Finished Product....

And the Pursuit of Happiness by Maira Kalman: My Favorite Book of 2010.