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What to Achieve:
Sweet Nirvana.
False Enlightenment.
Unadulated Mischief.
Clumsy Wisdom.
Corny Poetry.
Non-achievement.
"I am the Overqualified Underachiever."
I'm such a Funny Idiot !
DADAIST OF THE DAY!!! (Rather, most overlooked dadaist)
WHO AM I THANKFUL FOR?
Francis Picabia for the film Entr'acte, (with music by Eric Satie, and filmed by Rene Clair) and for "object portraits", and for this sentence: "The principle of the word BEAUTY is merely an automatic and visual convention."
Hans Richter for making Dreams that Money Can Buy , a dada-Surrealist 1944 film... and of course, for the book Dada Art and Anti-Art, and of course, for writing "Coincidences of sound or form were the occasion of wide leaps that revealed connections between the most apparently unconnected ideas."
Kurt Schwitters who I really don't like but I feel I have to put him here for Merz, his own apolitical branch of Dada, which is pretty cool for a Dadaist to not join any of the Cologne or Berlin groups... the bastard. But I like his collages with satirical intent (everyone knows him for his collages, well...) an for Anne Blume, hisnonsensical parody of conventional love poems... and for this poem:
Tuesday, 08.28.2001 : 10.15 p.m.
Otto Freundlich, 1878-1943.
Otto was first a student of art history under Wolfflin, then a figurative, then an abstract sculptor; he studied in Berlin, Munich, Florence, and Paris, where he was associated with the Cubists around 1909. From 1914 to 1924 he lived in Cologne and retained close ties wtih Berlin. A member of the Novembergruppe, he was only peripherally involved iwth the Dads, though he sympathized with their socialist and pacifist goals. Hannah Hoch recalls him as "much too serious and earnest to participate in any of our youthfully scandalous manifestations... Freundlich belonged already to a more established community of nonconformist writers and artists, all regular contributors to Franz Pfemfert's Die Aktion." He returned to Paris in 1939, fled to the Pyrenees, and in 1943 was deported to Poland, where he died in a concentration camp.
Man Ray for the rayograph (cameraless photography) and aerograph (spray-gun technique) and for this quote: "Who made Dada? Nobody and everybody. I made dada when I was a baby and I was roundly spanked by my mother. Now, everyone claims to be the author of Dada. For the past thirty years."
She must patiently suffer
Her dear betrothed,
The summer, to depart.
In gried and anguish still
She holds him in her arms.
You, my love, wept when I departed
could I now but rest on your heart!
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Oh, I'm such a Funny Idiot!
Yours Truly, Kala, who knows nothing, nothing, nothing. PS. I'm going to create pink-and-blue retro graphics that will blow your minds away !!! I'll be so good you'll say I am Queen of Pink and Blue. Nothing, nothing, nothing!!! |
Pink and blue is good enough to chew (I m yer Retro Girl...)
Tuesday, 08.28.2001 : 03:29 p.m.
A dream within a dream within a dream within.
This is, by far, the grandest, most detailed dream I've ever had in the past weeks, ever since my notorious intake of sleeping pills.
How could I know how the air smelled outside, when we were inside a bus, which was making its way up the winding mountain?
"Where are we going?" I asked. "To see the biggest Buddha," said he simply. He always says things as simple as this, in a simple voice, a simple expression. I adore simplicity: underneath complex veneers there is chaos like the roots of trees, just as the trees try to come across as simple with the greeness of their leaves. I took his hand. It was complex too, and the lines in his palms are like the colourful swirls trapped in the bottles made in Italy, by the glassblowers.
"Sometime soon," I whispered to nothing and noone in particular, clutching his hand tightly, as we made our way up the orange mountain. A thin veil of fog hugged us. I hugged the fog back, and he laughed and hugged the fog too. We laughed together, along with the wind, and I looked down at the winding trail leaving an orange cloud of dust behind us.
Buddha smiled at us. Each of us had a soliloquy. Three soliloquy of three people, melting into one. Did Buddha know mine, I asked myself, and from his golden smile, I knew he did.
I wanted to have a talk with him. With Buddha, I mean. Just us both. You know, one-on-one, shooting the breeze. "Okay, why not?" Buddha said, and on top of the steps, we smoked Marlboro Lights. "Do you know my soliloquy?" I asked Buddha, glancing occasionally at my shoe. I was wearing red shoes. In my awakening, I don't even own a pair of red shoes.
There was a slight smile on Buddha's lips. I didn't really like it, I decided as I inhaled smoke.
"Three soliloquys?" Buddha replied after flicking the cigarette butt carelessly into some bushes. "We all have more than that! The whole world does. Everyone has a thousand soliloquys, plus a new set of 37 as of this hour... wouldn't you agree?"
Armed with 37 soliloquys as of this hour? We reached an agreement and we shook hands.
The cold wind blew at my face, and in the hastily exiging sunlight Buddha was tinted an absolute gold. "Wanna see my soul?" asked Buddha engagingly. "Only 3 patracs for 3 seconds of viewing. If you're interested, only."
"What are the benefits?" I wanted to know.
"You can see my secrets." Buddha's eyes grew deeper than the Universe, more serious than the lake of knowledge.
As soon as I handed Buddha some patracs from my pocket, the skies became a soft pink, and there I was, standing inside Buddha's soul.
There was : a little white dog and a laptop computer.
For a moment I stood blinking in his soul. What was it I had wanted to find? The secrets, of course! Where are they hiding, I wondered, patting the white dog absentmindedly on the head. The dog looked on disinterestedly at me, then went to relieve itself on the laptop computer.
And just like that, I was back on the mountaintop. My watch read: 6.06pm:TIMEFORDINNER.
And Buddha ground his cigarette on the soles of his tennis sneakers, yawning. "Damn, it's back to work," said Buddha, assuming a Lotus position, an unmistakable whine in his voice.
"That's your secret?!" I asked as I bent down to pick up a seashell (of all things --- remember, I was in a mountain!) which was just beside my red shoe.
"Yup, that's it. I like to surf the web. I'm not as complex as I seem, aren't I?" There was laughter in Buddha's eyes, and the humour was infecting.
6.06pm:TIMEFORDINNER, my watch urged me (notice that time didn't move). Down the steps and into the bus I went. A few minutes later, he leaned his head on my shoulder and asked me, in his simple voice, "Was Buddha as magical as this mountin, did you find?"
The lull of the bus made me rest my head against his. I took his hand again, tracing the complicated lines in his palm. A simple gesture, for something so simple, without complications. Why had I complicated so much in my head?
"Buddha had a white dog and a laptop," I informed him. He gave me a smile and I knew he understood. He must have had the same conversation with Buddha, anyway. Maybe we all had this conversation wtih Buddha. This is a magical mountain. Here, anything is possible.
I rested my head on his shoulder as the fog hugged us one last time and watched us go.
Thursday, 08.23.2001 : 09.28 p.m.
Paper | Plastic | Airplane | Fantastic.
What is this? I don't really know. So it is important that you go to www.belishabeacon.domainvalet.com to know what I'm talking about. It's my old site. Now, it has been reincarnated. And it's not my site anymore. I'm just the one who'll be updating it, and I won't be contributing anything. So I'm off your backs for good. Hehehe.
Obviously, the site is still unfinished. But it's getting into shape. Slowly. Veeery slowly. I loathe technology, so forgive me ("I hate FTP").
But of course, work would be easier if I actually had some material to work with.
So you can submit anything you want. I won't even tell you
what you should submit. Full freedom. Just keep in mind that this will
focus mainly on art, non-thought, and that I am a lovestruck fool for the Surrealism/Dadaism movement.
But please, please, please, make sure that these submissions are original
and unpublished. I will not be held liable for any print damages or
what-have-you-legal-bull. If it is abslolutely unavoidable and what you want to send has already been published, please include
details of the publication date, where it was published, and the rights so it's
all legal and everyone's happy.
More rules as I stumble along.
And I'll be informing everyone about the themes and final details of the site.
The URL will change soon, too, so don't bookmark yet. I've got to get rid of banner ads. They are irritating. Am I the only one who thinks so?
For picture files, make sure you optimize them and compress them as much as
possible. I'm not going to be editing your pictures on Photoshop. They'll appear
as they're sent.
A few rules though: If you're submitting a drawing, the biggest size should be 500x500 pixels only. Please don't blow up my mailbox. And if it's photos, format them to 400x300 pixels only.
For submissions please send to
this address.
For questions/comments/lamentations and tragic reactions email me at
this address.
Here's to the green website where hopefully we will flourish ...
Here's to intoxicating Tzara and everything the moon spits on...
Lovely thoughts.
Tuesday, 08.21.2001 : 08:01 p.m.
Stolichnaya Vodka on my desk on a Monday morning.
A tiny bottle of Russian vodka. I like little bottles. Bottles look so nice and dignified. Especially coloured ones. It's beside my PC. It looks satisfied there.
Saturday night halfway through a nerve-racking game of Pictionary at Gari's annual CAM party, I heard a sophomore say, "Print is dead."
If print is dead, then why did she have a "How to Build Effective Websites" book in her hand?
Exactly my point.
People I don't personally know have been asking me questions. I'll answer some. What is :
Monday, 08.20.2001 : 05.09 p.m.