Day: October 9, 2016

The inherent violence of photography

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Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato’s cave, still reveling, its age-old habit, in mere images of the truth. But being educated by photographs is not like being educated by older, more artisanal images. For one thing, there are a great many more images around, claiming our attention. The inventory started in 1839 and since then just about everything has been photographed, or so it seems. This very insatiability of the photographing eye changes the terms of confinement in the cave, our world. In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing. Finally, the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads — as an anthology of images.

 

Aesthetic Consumerism and the Violence of Photography: What Susan Sontag Teaches Us about Visual Culture and the Social Web

Images odious or pure

This odious slander pains my heart
Commodious, strangled ,sore  we part.
Invented words and meanings seen
Where my heart has never been.

When evil is conceived to spite
In the darkness with no light
I’d like to tell you,save your breath
The vision ‘s created by your wrath.

Children fear those faces seen
In flowered  wallpaper and in dreams
Some see monsters,some see elves
All conceived by their own  self.

If imagined demons writhe
In the corners of the mind
Hard indeed to be secure,
To wrest from fantasy its power.

And to feel that others lie
When  your image they defy.
Yet to  a mountain, lions are nought
A gazelle in fear is caught.

Images  odious  or  pure
Must be  shared by  human viewers
Like awakening from a dream
We realise   we need not scream.

Though sometimes Pollyana’s ways
Must to anxious fear give way.
Life is good and life is bad
Double vision is not sad

 

 

Odious, the meaning.

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odious

Origin
late Middle English: from Old French odieus, from Latin odiosus, from odium ‘hatred’.

Together we can play the music

You play on the clarinet;

I play my old cello.

Your music is poignant;

My music is mellow.

I can’t play from your music;

You can’t play from mine.

I have longer fingers.

You have bigger hands.

You play some from memories

which I don’t understand.

I play from my own history,

You compose your own.

You have tortured feelings,

which I have rarely known.

Would you play my music?

Then it must be transposed;

but we can’t transpose our feelings,

Unless we are s first hown

By some blessed vision

From the dark unknown.

I love the music that you play.

I know well you love mine.

But can we play together

In some meaningful design?

Transposing keys and feelings

Is an arduous lifetime task;

Much easier to play pretend

and never,never ask.

I cannot share your lifetime hurts

and you cannot share mine.

Is it easier to share happiness

and supremely holy wine?

Oh,play your poignant music for me

with your meditative art.

I shall listen with my ears.

I shall listen with my heart.

Then I shall respond to you;

My instrument is here.

I am playing quite new music,

I feel you drawing near.

Together we are moved to play

A completely new design.

I seem to know your feelings

And I can hear that you feel mine.

Together we now make a work

For torment’s sweet relief;

Though this music is so tragic,

Its design has brought me peace.

Play on,play on,for now I know

I begin to understand,

without more words or gestures,

but those from your curved hands.

I cannot find your face

When you are far,
so
far
away,
The longest night,
The shortest winter day,
will be places where
I
might die.
The heart’s interior
no-one else
Can view.
When you are lost,
I cannot find
your face…
Its outline on the pillows,
My fingers shaped to trace…
The new design,
the stellar rhyme,
Where have you gone?
You slipped from out my arms.
You slipped away.
Was night or day
Ever cut by such a narrow line?
In your embrace I lay.
You seemed so strong.
Yet,sighing, took the path away.
I can ‘t see where
Is
it
night?
Or is it
day..?
I tried to write
to bring white light,
It’s dark, and still.
I long for you to come.
Oh,will we ever quite
Find out our way?
Or is that pure illusion?
As we stagger through
the wandering furrows
in the fields
They shoot us down.
What is this confusion?
The war goes on
The world goes round
The mirror gapes at each new clown.
But in a crack, a seed may grow..
I can’t see you,
Thus is it so.

I kissed his algebraic form

my-feet

 

He gave me a last parting tickle..
I kissed his algebraic form.
He’s only a number to me.I am numb all over.
He says he’ll give me peace of mind.But did he mean a piece of his mind?
What tense are your muscles?
Is the past infinite?
Can we split the indifferent?
Was the past subjective?
Subjunctive is Latin for may be.
How about past, perfect?
What is the future when not dense?
Grimmer than grammar: the autolieography of a woman of many alarms.
Can a noun be irrational?
What about an infinite sequence of jumbles?
What is a transcendental word?
I hate logs but like rhymes.Log-o-rhymes is my next book.
Why do letters need indices?So we can locate them?

But answer came there none

Cats

Stan was standing on a small step ladder washing his windows yet again with a clean blue microfibre and elastane cloth and some windolene he had bought in Tesco’sI don’t know why I bother,he whispered to Emile, who as usual was watching from the back of the sofa,which he was “milking” gently with his paws.With all the rain,the outside of the windows was besmirched by leaves and bits of mud.A wiser man might have left it alone but Stan had O.C.D which made him very nervous if he failed to carry out certain tasks… so he made use of it in house chores and baking perfect cakes and buns..and in taking photos of frogs,birds and flowers.Neurosis can be useful sometimes.

All of a sudden he heard clattering footsteps…
Up the garden path walked two women dressed in the latest style of 3/4 length silk cargo trousers with matching blouses, all in a subtle shade of violet.Except for their faces,of course,which were both a light shade of beige and they had Revlon peach blusher on their cheeks and Chanel scarlet lipstick…on their lips.They also wore dark blue nail varnish from Rimmel
“Good morning,Stan!” called one of them.”We are Anne’s cousins from Pittsburgh.She told us to call on you today.”
“Well,I never knew wearing expensive makeup ran in the genes… can there be any other explanation?”Stan cried.
“Anne told us we must wear it all the time in the UK.”
she responded,”even in bed.”
“You seem a bit fast,” he answered,
“I’m not sure I want to go to bed and as you seem like identical twins,which of you should I bed?”
They burst out laughing….oh,what a noise!
“I was just saying what she told us,not meaning that you need to go to bed with us.In fact, we sleep together at night.”
“As children that would be normal,but don’t you think you should separate now?People might think you are gay!”
“We never worry about stuff like that… and by the way,this is Ruby and I am Rosie.”
“I’ll put on the kettle and make you some coffee,” the dear man said in a kind tone of voice before he went into the kitchen and swallowed a handful of red and green striped valium tablets.
“I wish the psychiatrist would give me some therapy.I don’t like taking valium but I seem to be having visions again… and I don’t want to get worse.. never heard Anne mention cousins in the USA. I wonder if CBT would help me?”he said to Emile.
“I see visions all the time,” the cat replied in a matter of fact and calm way.
“Do they not make you feel anxious?”Stan called.
“No,I just watch them drift by,” purred Emile.”I enjoy them.”
“I wish these two women would drift off.”responded the weary yet charming old man.Ruby and Rosie came inside and admired the kitchen where colanders in many colours hung from the wall into which someone had knocked a few dozen nails.
“”Why do you have sixteen colanders?”asked Rosie.
“Why do you think everything has a reason?”Stan replied.
“I can see you studied philosophy,” Ruby cried disconsolately.
“No,I have just read Ray Monk’s Life of Wittgenstein eight times,” he quipped merrily.
“Wow,is it not boring?”
“No.it’s so good it put me off reading lesser books.And I love to understand things,”
Just then Stan tripped on the rug and fell over unconsciously
.Emile picked up his mobile with its full Qwerty key pad and texted 999.
“Why are you texting?”asked Ruby.
“Well,it difficult to mioaw down a phone and now I have this Blackberry it’s so easy…. why even a mouse could do it.”
“Do you know many mice,Emile?” enquired Ruby wistfully
Rosie slowly made some instant coffee, walking around poor Stan ,unconscious on the floor…and she and her twin sat down on some white Swedish chairs at the old oak table and drank it,gazing shyly at the huge weigelia blooming outside in the shed.
The front door opened and in ran Dave,the bisexual paramedic.
“Is it you,Emile.Have you lost your hankie again.Are you sad?” he moaned nervously.
“No,it’s Stan… but at least he’s not broken the chair”
Stan came too and looked up…
“Oh, lovely,I feel much better for that nap” he said brightly.
“Don’t you have a bed to sleep in?” said Ruby querulously.”I like your mean expression,my dear man.”
“Now,look here said Stan,”I’m too old for any monkey business.
Besides,I don’t know if you are real.”
“We just wondered why you slept on the floor.”
“A man has to do what a man has to do,” came the mystifying response.
“Now that Dave is here,he can take one of you and I’ll take the other.”
“Where will you take us”the twins asked delightfully….
“Do you fancy the cinema… they are showing Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday”
“Don’t tell me he’s still on his summer holiday!” riposted Ruby
“Let’s go in the ambulance.I’ll lie on the stretcher” offered Rosie generously.
“I’ll lie by you,”said Dave.” and Emile can drive.Stan and Ruby can lie on the floor.”
Sometimes life seems so simple,it’s rather like a dream controlled.
Controlled by what,asked Emile,clutching his Blackberry.
But answer came there none…
And that was very odd because.. they’d vanished every one…
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