Hello, Oakland

Views of Oakland and San Francisco from the east. You can see the Port of Oakland, Sutro Tower, and the Bay Bridge in the second picture.

Year-end listmaking (again)

I'm back in California for New Year's this year. Pictures at left are from Point Lobos on a foggy day, at the southern end of Monterey Bay. Doesn't look that much like California, which is why I like it.

Here's the real 2011 year-end list, which is of course not limited to music, since in my opinion 2011 was a terrible music year. Exceptions to that would include City of Ships' Minor World and the new Decapitated and Blindead records, but I wouldn't even attempt to put together a top ten list for the year, since I can't think of ten records I liked that came out this year.


Best of 2011:
-Populist uprising in general (don't care what you think of Occupy, this was important and needed)
-China (this has nothing to do with "tourism")
-Europe/Russia tour (finally did Europe right)
-Building
-Kitty Hawk
-(Re)discovering Thomas Köner's entire catalog, all of which is fantastic
-Rosetta's friends and fans (the Kickstarter, FB-bombing Air Canada, feeding us, housing us, playing with us, etc.)
-Marisa in Madrid-Barajas Airport
-Battlestar Galactica
-Having a home and enough to eat


Worst of 2011:
-Vansetta
-The music industry
-The airline industry
-Being away from home for 122 days, apart from wife for ~135 days
-American politics
-A world ruled by incompetent plutocrats

Kitty Hawk

This is Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It's on the Outer Banks. My grandparents lived here in the 70s and 80s, and my parents lived here on and off before I was born. From 1985-1990, my family vacationed in a small cottage on the ocean at the site where most of these pictures were taken. It was condemned in the early 90s and washed away sometime between 1999 and 2003 (along with most of the other houses on the ocean in Kitty Hawk).

My grandmother lived near here from 1992 until she died in 1995, and we kept her house until 1999. I returned in 2001, 2003, and 2004. My family spent a Thanksgiving here once.

This is the longest I've been away from it -- the last seven years. I felt that I had to bring my wife here to see the place, since I am rooted here in strange ways that can't be explained verbally. It lurks in my mind. Some of my earliest, clearest, and most beautiful memories are here. It hurts to see so many of the old buildings gone, washed into the ocean. Despite some over-development in the intervening years, I still think it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been (and I've been to a few).

China

I might have something to say about all this later, but I doubt it. It's too much... the whole visit was more like a marathon, touring levels of intensity but with an even higher emotional investment. I was in Shanghai, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Putian, Quanzhou, Huangshan, Hangzhou, and a number of small villages. I'll be over the jetlag before the smog is purged from my lungs.

White middle-age male wildlife refuge

If you recognize this place, then you might see some irony in my being there. Great pains are taken to preserve the "environmentally fragile areas" off of the tourist path. When you peer into these areas to see what is so fragile, you will see white men in polo shirts playing their favorite game. The real wildlife isn't so wild anyway, it's just looking for a handout.

With a nod to Fluxus

An "event score" for alleviation of grumpiness:

1. Set up a camera on a timer

2. Let your face make the most sincere expression of your state, encompassing all frustration and antagonism

3. Hold until the picture takes (stay in the focal plane)

4. Observe the picture's absurdity

5. Feel better

More pictures

WWII gun installations north of San Francisco (having a good time with an old discipline).

Holiday meandering

Mission San Juan Bautista & Half Moon Bay
[Some scenes in Vertigo were shot at San Juan Bautista --- although the belltower in the film was artificially added and doesn't exist]

Top ten of 2008 in no particular order:
-Getting married
-Backpacking Patagonia
-Cormac McCarthy
-Australian tour
-Barack Obama
-Phillies breaking the curse
-The Dark Knight
-Building bikes and amps
-Stars of the Lid live
-Hanging out with my smarty-pants wife

Collage 2006

Silver prints, collage, pencil / 48"x20"

Posting some old non-digital work, more to come. I am hereby re-titling this piece "Life Gainstage Visual" in honor of Gabriel Sim-Laramee, whose name I have spelled correctly and who will undoubtedly comment upon this post.

Two surfaces

1. Long Island
2. Philadelphia

Australia 2

I'm in Adelaide now. I don't know what to say.

No April fool

Science can explain these things, but it can't interpret them. You have to step outside of time (chronos) and into Time (kairos) to be present to something this powerful. Land and text both want to be read and understood. I felt afraid when I realized this, especially since the realization only came while unprotected, at the mercy of the environment.

Wedding countdown & usual curmudgeonly ramblings

I am getting married in 12 days. Surreality reigns! If you would like to come, the info is here.

Believe it or not, I am done with my planning work for the wedding, and not particularly stressed about it. Instead, I'm thinking about a string of recent interactions/observations wherein I'm increasingly finding --- in my fundamental disillusionment with both the trappings of corporate globalism and the silly contemporary remnants of the "countercultural idea" of 40 years ago --- that I am not alone. Not by a long shot. I am looking forward to seeing what happens in the next couple of years, and whether the hopeful grouches of our generation begin to stand up and insist that "thinking different" has nothing to do with purchasing another Apple iProduct.