Meshes of the Afternoon

Meshes Of The Afternoon   

1943

Maya Deren

I've been waking up before the sun these days. Today I woke up with this.

Eleanora Derenkowsky (Maya Deren) was born in 1917 in the Ukraine, but in 1922, with threats of anti-semitism, her family fled to New York State. Her younger years were spent at The League of Nations International School in Geneva. Deren attended both Syracuse and New York University, where she studied political science and journalism. Much of this educational background really comes out in her later documentary film Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. In her early adulthood, she was primarily a dancer, traveling the United States with the Katherine Dunham Dance Company. It was during a tour with the company that brought Deren in contact with Alexander Hammid, her would-be husband. Together, they produced the film above. Her first, and some would say, most successful work. Her work is often very critical of social rituals, and she uses physical landscapes to represent the complexity and/or spaciousness within our communities, ourselves, and our intimidations. Deren was one of the most influential and distinguished avant garde filmmakers and film theorists. At Land and The Very Eye of Night are two other examples of her incredible work, which involve and make use of Deren's professional knowledge and experience with dance. In 1943, Deren began a collaboration with Marchel Duchamp on a film entitled The Witches' Cradle -the film was never completed. 

'In an anagram all the elements exist in a simultaneous relationship. Consequently, within it, nothing is first and nothing is last; nothing is future and nothing is past; nothing is old and nothing is new… Each element of an anagram is so related to the whole that no one of them may be changed without affecting its series and so affecting the whole. And conversely the whole is so related to every part that whether one reads horizontally, vertically, diagonally or even in reverse, the logic of the whole is not disrupted, but remains intact.'
-Maya Deren

A Letter, A Memo

free write september twenty-eight



sometimes it says it in a medium
drift with words of the best stock,
'small black lines between more of them,
and the grays, the so many of the shade.'
whispers turn into screams even if
you don't hear it.
it's southern gothic to me.

it's endless Bach with organs
and Chopin minors, stinging clarity
and the sore neck of the lady
in the elevator; the contrast
makes it the same.
evacuate your orthogonal plans,
no right angle saves a soul.
no right angle ever saved one.

the effect is what you are becoming:
a rabid thing of sorts,
spewing from the whistles
and grinding through maniac buildings.

I'd rather spin the wheel
and bet against odds.
it wasn't what everyone saw,
nor what everyone painted out.
this was a ruin at exactly the moment
that it became the ruin.

it thrills me to no end,
this freedom of a splintered soul
tends to itself like a nurse.
she feeds me sweets
and I forgive her for the bandages
wrapped too tight, and the sedative
she meant to,
but was actually speed.

I'd watch it for one moment
of sincere movement.
the casting of the cameo fitting.
[applause here.]
only, make it count and make them cry.
tears are their inspiration;
salt it with them and
make them wet with violent consideration.
they'll weep in gratitude,
they'll gift in retrospect.

and into the darkness I'll trend,

gladly and with eager banquet.

8½

' But then is there anything so clear and right that it deserves to live in this world? In the end what we need is some hygiene, some cleanliness, disinfection. We're smothered by images, words and sounds that have no right to exist, coming from, and bound for, nothingness. Of any artist truly worth the name we should ask nothing except this act of faith: to learn silence.


Our true mission is sweeping away the thousands of miscarriages that every day obscenely try to come to the light. And how do you benefit from stringing together the tattered pieces of your life? Your vague memories, the faces of people you were never able to love...

---

What is this sudden happiness that makes me tremble, giving me strength, life? Forgive me, sweet creatures. I hadn't understood. I didn't know. It's so natural accepting you, loving you. And so simple. I feel I've been freed. Everything seems so good, so meaningful. Everything is true. I wish I could explain. But I don't know how to. So. Everything is confused again, as it was before.


This confusion is me. Not as I'd like to be, but as I am. I'm not afraid anymore of telling the truth, of the things I don't know, what I'm looking for and haven't found. This is the only way I can feel alive and I can look into your faithful eyes without shame. Life is a celebration. Accept me for what I am, if you want me. '


-An excerpt from 8½
   By Federico Fellini



One of the most incredible films I have seen yet.
Fellini constructed an autobiopic (not literal per se, but beyond stage names a biopic most definitely,) that acknowledges the vanity and shallowness that results from the denial of human weakness; the confusion of our essence and failures; our delusions of wealth and greatness. He does not claim purity or genius here, but provides us a narrative of the human condition when confronted with temptation. He is easy to hate, and in spite of that, (or because of that,) easy to identify with. If we analyze beyond the aesthetics, this is about us.

Temptations, though, cannot stop our momentary realizations of our purpose and its simplicity. We feel it in waves; grazing the shores, but are drawn back into a sea of abstraction until one day, when we become tide pools and cannot be pulled back into the depth and draw of darkness. It is my sentiment that the greatest art comes from this transitional place: what we bring back with us when our waves break is what allows us flourishing intellect.

Also recommended, La Dolce Vida.

How To Fly Solo

Do it a lot.

'How To Fly Solo' Written by Nathan Palombo
Filmed by Nathan Palombo, Hannah Pitkin, and introduction by Anna Bromley
Produced and Edited by Hannah Pitkin

Audio:

How To Fly Solo by hannahcarpenterpitkin

La Jetée

An incredible short by Chris Marker. Brilliant example of the power of photomontage, with an exceptional score by Trevor Duncan. Released in 1962 - one of the most influential science fiction films to be made. [Marker wins bonus points for referencing Hitchcock's Vertigo. Find it.]





'They are without memories, without plans. Time builds itself painlessly around them. Their only landmarks are the flavour of the moment they are living and the markings on the walls.'

In Heaven

 In Heaven by hannahcarpenterpitkin
(Written by Peter Ivers for David Lynch's Eraserhead)

an autumnal equinox of sincere and exhaustive rumination.

forthcoming maneuvers will be exceptional.

Cy Twombly

Cy Twombly

See more:: https://www.artsy.net/artist/cy-twombly

Quattro Stagioni: Autunno  1993-5
Cy Twombly

I sat to consider the silent news.

a formidable coast ahead,

the wrenching wails,

and there, by the bluff;

the last sediment.

a horrible toss which unsettled me that day.

frightful in its casting of old puck and sad.

poor little dream thing caught by the blow

of a tormenting landscape.

hollow, but only for a moment more.

Fur

Chapter (Towards The End, But Followed By A Sequel): The Alliance

It was something tangible, I know that. But what it felt through my fingers was more of a beam, yes - a beam. Or, was it tangible at all? That may be irrelevant, hinging between the creative and the scientific. Of course now you've got me all wrong! Science is quite a creative thing! It's more of a matter of perspective - right or left brain, you see. Let me begin again: it was (or was not) a tangible element that somehow came to be in union with me. I feel sorry for it, in a way, (I hope) / hoping there was no mind meld. Of course, mind melding would entrust all parties involved with experiential comprehension, so that couldn't be it. No, but it could have been a parasite: a virus. One which penetrates you for a fraction of time which, seeming to a Human might feel less than a tenth of a second, but - oh! but this parasite must feel it for hours, days, years! What a world my insides must be - an ocean of red, violent arches! Swaying and thrusting and thirsting. Yes, I imagine I gave the little bugger quite a fright! But - having been inside me for so long (in its outrageous time warped existence), building its contemplative timeline and developing relations with my muscles...relations! What the devil would that entail, I wonder? I suppose, regardless now, it has gone. Or - I feel an emptiness rather. Perhaps it replaced some hidden ethereal part of me, some beautiful score within - and now it is just the Parasite and I. All beauty expired; an empire of parasitic-muscular alliance, preparing to sacrifice its own sentience in order to destroy the Monarch: the sad, graying inventor confined to the dome. Perhaps though, if it really is tangible...


It can be removed.

The Smartest Heron / Medjool Dates

 The Smartest Heron by hannahcarpenterpitkin
Written by Nathan Palombo

 Medjool Dates by hannahcarpenterpitkin
Beat: Nathan Palombo
Lyrics: Hannah Pitkin

Where Have You Been My Pretty One

[ for more go to here: http://flic.kr/ps/21uHWZ ]

While we were digging up Hemingway's bones, you told me you loved me.
Now I don't know what to believe.

postcards from home

Get well soon!

May we always live to serve you and your crown,

Us

Someone In Meatland Loves You

FOR SALE : SOLD

Get at me if interested - hpitkin@gmail.com

Chapter Death: Bones

To exhume ones own bone collection is quite a thrill, isn't it Gracie?

Quite... the thrill... Gracie.

Chapter 136: The Confrontation

Annabelle:     Now is not the time, George! Stop thinking of the perfect murder!

the lilt

I would love to hear you write
a poem about the lilt,
the splendid way it tilts.
If tongues knew the ride,
(if they saw the pause)
the way you lilt sincere:
it is the cause, and the rise:
the momentous surprise without.

In the evenings he would wash his hands in the basin, amen.

Boris Mikhailov

Props to Boris -

Boris Mikhailov: Case Studies

Boris Mikhailov (Ukrainian, born 1938)
Untitled, from the series Case History
1997-98

It was years before they knew she was gone.

Untitled End/The Well

you forgot what it was about and now there's only the flickering television set and the last frozen meal.

Chapter 96: The Rude Brainpan

Jimmy was found dead wearing his alligator shoes. His brain was missing.

The Last Anatomical Chart

It had been 8 years since Mrs. Havershaw had seen Charles. He had been a man of many words, not too many of which had sent Havershaw into great flushes, but many words nonetheless, nonetheless. Charles had spent the last 17 years of his life designing office chairs. "Comfort," he always declared with great pride, "is the absolute key to success. Indirectly I am responsible for the likes of the toaster, Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge, and the nuclear bomb." (All of which were lies; the toaster was invented in 1872, long before his work in chairs had begun; the nuclear bomb was invented by scientists who sat only on stacked milk crates, as everybody knows; and Flannery O'Connor was said to have written her stories while standing below a small pear tree her father had planted in her honor when she was born.) Regardless of his flawed imagination, Mrs. Havershaw had loved Charles with a deep sincerity, and it had taken her several years to work up the strength to end their love affair. She had later married a poor farmer by the name of Adolph (a somewhat unfortunate name,) and opened a goat cheese business out of their home. It was a on a late harsh winter's evening that she received a call about Charles. Two days later she was on a train to the city morgue where his body was being held. His wife had died not too long after Mrs. Havershaw had left him and, with no progenies of his own, Mrs. Havershaw was one of the few living people who could surely identify his body. The morgue was a dim place, as one might expect, and she was brought to the table where Charles was blanketed. The attendant looked to Mrs. Havershaw, and she nodded to unveil him. As the blanket was pulled back, Mrs. Havershaw's hands shook with great force as she lifted them to her mouth. A piercing scream tore through the morgue as she fell to the ground. She would not be taking the train home that night. She would never be taking the train again.

i travel centuries across each hatching bloom of your eye, catching drifts of its threaded fragments. the idea that you set forth whispers in some distant echo, while i beckon on foot in this alien world that beams now within the cusp of your grin.

Three coyotes outside come and go by the house and I can hear my mother listening and breathing in the next room as they sing in sticky rounds to where the moon might be and I wonder if she hears me hum and breathe to myself as the fan blows through my curls while two fingers strum the other hand waiting for the rounds to end and waiting for the rounds to begin again. The photograph of a painting by a window is closer to my bed since last I was home and every so often there is the shadow of a man beyond the window and I wonder if he hears the howls too or if it’s only me and mother in the next room breathing slowly in and out with the fans and the screens open and the coyotes breathing and humming too.

under the belly, scoping the magnitude
my brother pushes me awake.
there weren’t ides like these yet,
before the ides of this one.