The drawing on the left... clearly a mistake. I should have not tried to draw another crown AND put some weird looking person underneath. Clearly a bad idea, but so bad that I felt like jotting down a little logo for a "bad idea". the word "bad" looks a bit like a little head with horns, doesn't it? So here we go..
The drawings on the right hand side are a bit what my room used to look like when I was 4. My computer desktop still looks like this... often. Can you find Stripey, the dog? Yes he is there, for the first time... After all, the drawing is from January... if you check the archives, you will find more Sockdog material.
Have a wonderful day... some of the silly drawings just need to be there...
; )
April 2003 Archives
And then there was another one of these denser images. They seem to sneak into every one of the books, even though I really like working on them in a very controlled, timed manner, on a single sheet of shikishi paper.
I think I will need to add some links to some previous postings of related drawings, as they can not be found in the catalogue section of the site.
So if you are here for the first time, (you one visitor you...), please come back, there will be more context for this one...
Today will be just a horribly packed day again... and now I have to run.
The N train pulled out of the tunnel and onto the elevated ramp. The subway somehow does not spend much time on the pedestrian level. It either travels under the streets of New York, or it moves from station to station on those metal ramps placed right in the middle of often important streets.
So there we were, above the roofs of Queens, heading for Astoria. We were now on water-tower level, the sun turning the ones south of the train into jolly furry hats on thin metal legs. On one of the roofs the tower itself was missing. There was just this shadow of the metal feet left, right next to the emergency exit on the roof of an abandoned factory. I had about 5 seconds to jot it down, and so I did.
Not quite sure what made me draw the strange crown on the right hand side, but when I looked on the drawings just now, they turned sly blurry and drew together to become one.
And there the feet of a water-tower were a stand for a crown, and a crown was suddenly filled with no glory but emergency water.
And maybe neither of that. Maybe they are still drawings that spend most of their time sticking to each other, in a tiny book, on the bookshelf somewhere in an apartment on 95th and Broadway. (Now here, suddenly everywhere, for all to see.)
Another dense page. The entire right hand side is glowing with little transitional objects. Some of the pieces look like flakes of a particle storm. rOund little objects, or maybe the petals of large trees with tiny white flowers. Somehow carried away by the wind for miles and miles.
Look, they even made it to your screen. : )
We did not rent the factory, we just bought it. Like that. It was not very difficult. The area was not "popular" with developers yet. Seven magnificent floors. All with large windows facing the river. The pater-noster elevator in the north side of the building was a bit scary at first, but once we replaced the dirty panels with toned glass in various colors, we would just spend hours and hours in one of the cabins, as if traveling in circles on an indoor ferris-wheel. The floors were now named after colors. I liked the orange floor most, perhaps. Only good thoughts would come to our minds as we would watch the sunsets over the man made mountain-range: Manhattan.
The green floor was maybe even more incredible, it was a bit of a half floor, actually. When the weather permitted, we would open the glass wall and then the inside and the outside became one large garden. Some were sceptical if such large trees could be planted on top of a building, but they could and they were and so it was a real glory to rest on the glass and to listen to the leaves in the wind and the birds, almost surprised to find such an amazing island in the sky.
The white floor was open in a very different way. It was a place where ideas would just walk in from the street (whatever the street would be) and just multiply, grow and turn more and more mature. Dreams would then dance with them and they would soon embrace the entire neighborhood (whatever that would happen to be).
Where there is , there is shadow, of course, but even the shadows were colorful projections of ever moving images and sounds and just sensations. The dark floor was a very windowless area deep underneath the factory, but it was still just drenched with good visions and kept promises.
It was the context, really, that made this project a new center of good-will. Soon there were massive daily gatherings as we were serving food for thought. And the currency was ideas. Even the tiniest ones would be accepted as a form of payment. Tips welcome.
I am not quite sure when it was that I woke up.
The tulips opened, just a tiny bit. All of them at the same time. Their white petals look like belly-feathers of a lost snow bird. The center of each one of the flowers seems to be illuminated by a soft and golden . Dusty antennae gather around a moist stem wearing a three pronged citron colored crown.
They all opened up towards the ceiling, as if it were the sky, as if butterflies could come and pay them a selfish visit.
I look through a mesh onto Broadway. The yellow cabs with their black decor would make such nice insects, if they were only much, much smaller.
Between the houses is a sliver of a freshly rejuvenated tree.
Across the Avenue, two bird families decided to build nests in the metal head-dress of a building. One of the decorative lions must have fallen off years ago, opening a hole that now makes the entrance to a most secure bird home. There are chirping sounds, louder than the 8 lane traffic.
The tulips are moving their heads, as if there were a soft breeze around them. I know that all that makes them move are these very words about them, pushed letter by letter into the warm keyboard of my PowerBook.
Two explosive little pages. Such a happy place, such a happy place. The headline in the upper right corner is part of the current campaign for workbookstock.com a really excellent and truly inspiring place for your professional image hunts. I will mention more about the campaign, once all of the drawings for it are out and published, okay?
Why are there so many mushrooms and monkeys on these pages? There are no mushrooms and monkeys here, you are just looking at a jpeg of a little drawing in one of my little black books. Do not make some quick assumptions, please. Have a great Saturday.
There could be wild things on the road soon. I am imagining soft body cars, cars that change shape and color according to the speed they are cruising at, or according to the environment they are in. I guess that there is a patent for this, or there will be soon... but can you imagine? You would drive in a black car. The sun would set and the entire car would begin to glow softly. Then the skin of the car would begin to change its glow according to its speed. The vehicle would turn from a mild greenish hue to a brighter and brighter orange, then red. Then, at a certain speed, the car would begin to pulsate. It would visually increase its heart rate. It would be ready for danger, or just simply afraid. On the sides of the vehicle, the speed would appear in large letters. Or the car would turn into a bright racing billboard?
And then there would be soft city cars. They would maybe still have a hard shell on the outside, but when parked they would just deflate and turn into a smaller and smaller object. Maybe the parked cars would turn into benches. Maybe the parked cars would turn into street s. Maybe the parked cars would turn their skin onto billboards, helping to find missing children.
Parked cars could also play sounds. They could turn into chirping birds, or a speeding brook. The parked cars could also open themselves and become shelters for those who do not have a home. No, the doors would not open and let anybody drive away, the car would just simply turn into a warm mini-cave.
And maybe the car itself could be a bit of an airbag. The skin would inflate on impact. (Though I can imagine a child going through a street in New York, turning a row of parked cars into giant pop-corn.)
I think it would be nice if cars displayed their speed to the outside. If a porsche behind me showed up as a giant 150, turning slowly into a giant pulsating 200, I would know that it is time for me to change lanes. What if the car in which you were cruising projected a red line onto the pavement in front of you, clearly indicating where you would stop if you tried to stop... about now. This red line could turn into a smiling skull, or advertisement for funeral homes if a your speed were beyond good and evil. And so on...
And I do not even have a car. Maybe this is why i get such silly unselfish thoughts.
Hello, I just saw you come in. The squeaky door gave you away. Feel free to look around, take a seat, read some of the entries, take a look at the pictures... write some comments, enjoy.
I really saw you come in. I was watching the door this morning. The traffic to this particular page is being monitored by re_invigorate, the nicest looking traffic monitoring tool I have encountered so far. And it now has this really neat feature that allows me to watch you come in and even to see where you might be coming from. No, I do not know who you are, no worries about your privacy. I know what computer system you use, I know your screen resolution, I know something about your browser. All of these pieces of information help me make this site a little better.
Oh, and can I offer you something to drink, what would you like?
It was cold in January, it was freezing. The cold had a face on it, a grim and angry face. Were my lips cracked? Were my teeth turning into those of a deep-sea-mammal? Were there attempts to fly away with not attached wings? One degree. One degree of separation? One degree Farenheit perhaps.
And then the thoughts of seriousness not being the right thing to do in serious times. The ability to look sideways can be a recipe for survival. It is about the fittest, you know, not really the strongest. It might be one of the main mistakes. It is not the strongest that will survive, it is the one that somehow adapts best to what is there. Until the next big thing comes, or the next tiny things. And then it is time to reshuffle the cards.
Look sideways. Imagine that the world is a completely different one. Make a difference. Do something dramatic. Dramatically good, of course. Not for yourself. Try doing something incredibly amazingly happy for someone you never met. Or maybe even will never meet.
You can do something these days. Something good. (Just do not take the pink stuff on donuts for fruit, and tomato-ketchup is not a vegetable, even tomatoes are not vegetables, you know...)
Let's forget the recession. Increase love spending.
Element overload. there is so much going on here, where did it all start? When did it end? It is a bit of an explosion of elements, isn't it? I think in the beginning there was a little truck, perhaps? Or was it the 72? It could have been the bag. Or maybe the hat? The number 9?
Hmm, not quite sure, not quite sure. Enjoy. In your very own sequence and at your very own pace...
This entry originally should have been filed unter "the incredibly detailed descriptions of somehow irrelevant pieces of New York City or not even that." (If you ever wondered why this blog does not have categories, you might have found an answer.)
On the underside of the brown bag containing a bagle and a coffee which I just purchased from the dream-team inside of a polished chrome cart just outside the building for $1.50. (It is a large coffee, that's why. And it is a large coffee, because I barely got any sleep *and* have a presentation this morning.)
On the underside of this brown paper bag, which is definitely made out of "PAPER" ("Reuse this package for its many alternative uses in the home"... it really says that.) ... (It also says:"DISCOVER THE PAPER ADVANTAGE" and "MADE IN U.S.A.")... on the underside of that bag is something that looks like a name. "Zully Fawcett" Interesting, isn't it? Who is Zully Fawcett? Google does not know. It must be one of the people who do not use the internet to blog. Zully might be a surfer though. Or maybe a friend of Zully is. And now they will find this entry to this blog and will be able to read that the "message on the bottom of the brown paper bag". Was noticed.
And this is where this entry was supposed to end. Yet as I was about to publish this little silly entry, with the coffee in my right hand, I noticed that the cup had the address of the place where it originated on it. Cups in these street carts usually come with advertising, so I was not surprised that this particular one advertised "Fine & Shapiro, Deli Express"... The address on the bottom rim of the cup seemed a bit odd: "WORLD TRADE CENTER CONCOURSE" and then the phone number "775-7600." You can call this number, it is +1-212-775-7600. A recording will tell you that "due to telephone facility trouble", the call can not be completed. This is the same recording that would come up when I tried to call my office, back in September 2001...
Two things, no three things. One: Things can get really shaky on the train. The subway is almost one hundred years old, the tracks are work out, it can be a bumpy ride at times. Two: Some drawings are just really weird and I do not really like them. (What made me draw this really strange bus?) Three: These postings are not a live event. Happy New yEar 2003 does not mean that I was left behind... it just means that this particular page in this particular book was drawn on January 1st 2003. And why yEar? Do you know?
"When will you start serving Hiyashi again?"
"Hiyashi?, no, no Hiyashi."
"I know, I know, only during the summer months. But when will you start? It seems nice and warm outside, perfect weather for a bowl of Hiyashi."
"Hmm. May, maybe June."
"Yey, great. One Menma ramen please. And gyoza and some tea, please..."
Looking forward to the Hiyashi time at Sapporo on 49th street. Their Hiyashi might not be as good as at the place down by the World Trade Center, before the planes hit, but at least they serve it.
There is a little place on 46th Street that also offers a whole cold noodle menue, but their creations are really out there and a bit too experimental to handle. The thing I ordered last time was just impossible to eat. (Tiny little mushrooms in cold slimy sauce on a flat plate, why, oh why?.)
I wondered today if it is okay of me to just lift the large bowl and drink the soup as if it were a little cup of miso-shiro. Can somebody please reassure me that what what Suzuki San taught me in Frankfurt is valid around the world? I do not really want to be "the slurping gaigin who lifts the big bowls and drinks the entire soup." I saw it being done in Tampopo, one of my favorite movies, but is it still okay, is it still groovy? Or is it not the way to go. I am willing to learn.
"Shukrye." I am not quite sure where the owners of the deli on 95th and Amsterdam are from, but I know that they speak Arabic to each other. So maybe because it was so late, or maybe because the man behind the counter was not sure how much to charge me and then opted for the friendlier amount, I wanted to test the waters and thus, I thanked, using the only word I know in Arabic, which happens to be "thank you".. "Shukrye." (I also think I might know "khat, khat", but that means "faster" to camels, so I do not think this would have been a good one to test.) The man behind the counter looked me as if I were a puppy that just performed a really cute trick for the very first time. "You speak with a Pakistani accent," he said with a big smile, his head on an angle. Who would have thought my one word Arabic would place me this quickly on the map. Great. He went on to explain that in Arabic the word I was looking for is "Shukran." (With a short "ran") Excellent. Now I will need to slowly find out where the man is from. But is was late and I had to go. "Khat, khat" I went back to my "Bayt." Just remembered that this means home in Arabic... hmm.)
Hmm, and even though these pages look much more empty than the ones before, I do not think I would want to add anything here. It is just fine. Let's leave this one alone. I think it works just the way it is. For now at least. ; )
Drawings on the train, standing, happen to be a little shaky at times, especially during rush hour. And this is also when there is a feeling of a rush, an urgency. The page here is just the beginning of something.
Do you want to complete the drawings? Go ahead. Drag the image to your harddrive, print it out. Use any tool, anything. Then email me the result or just upload it as a comment. Let's see what we can come up with... : )
There is a link on this page that asks you to show me where you are. (See, I am not linking to it now.) And this link opens to a map where you can leave a little comment and show your location. You can also point out your gender as well as leave a link of your site or your favorite site.
It is a really great idea, it is fun, it is a better looking guest book... it is unfortunately incredibly forgetful. The makers of this free service must have very few friends because the map only remembers about 50 entries or so. Thus... if you added yourself and now see that your little red or blue dot is gone... I didn't delete it, promise. The map did it. It forgot.
I should probably have a better guest book here on the site... but then I should probably also get an about me page, maybe a few more souvenirs would be nice too... or how about category archives for the blog?
Oh and the "commercial catalogue" has been out to lunch for a pretty long time... hmm...
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Hit the return button to return to the previous page.
The dangerous item I wanted to look at was a vintage World War 2 Graflex Airplane camera. Basically a regular 4x5 camera in a housing that allowed it to be used in American planes in the 40's...
Hmm. Very dangerous. Can you see it? Test how protected you are.
Walking to the back room of Fanelli's there was this smell again. At the end of the bar was an old man, maybe 70, looking right through me, at the wall with photographs of boxers, the pictures much older than him. In his right hand, stuck between the middle and the ring finger, a half burned, lit cigarette. How daring. Smoking in bars is not allowed in New York these days. There he was, breaking the law, the bar breaking it with him. What could have been worse, a prohibition, a ban of old photographs, people over 65 banned from bars older than 100 years.
For now, there he was, looking on a wall with heroes who sold their bodies to make a living long before he or me or the cigarette were born. He was smoking indoors. A rebel, harming himself faster than others? Peacefully.
Free. Lots of it. Plenty. With your $500 purchase. Buy one, get one free. Free, to do what I want. Especially with my free time. I am free to say anything here. It is free. You can read it for basically free. Imagine a free country. Leaders of the free world. Free of fear, fearless and free. One, too, free.
Use as advertised.
Why is it that I have a bad feeling about April 20th 2003? What is it that makes me somehow look for clues and help and cover? Why do I have a strange feeling about this day? Is it because the stars will turn towards the zodiak of the taurus, is it because it thus feels like such a violent merciless date? (Nothing personal, Tom, some Taurus born people are obviously good hearted.)
I tried to find an answer on google. The site I found scares me, maybe because it does not aknowledge that Hitler is dead? (Hitler IS dead!) Why would they fail to put this information in, when I am looking for some signs of peace and good will?
(I had not idea that Napoleon and Hitler were born on the same day, how very scary in itself.)
I tried to find comfort in a little book with daily quotes by the Dalai Lama. (Path to Tranquility.) It usually is a pretty good read and able just calm anybody down and to give a happy and mild and wise perspective on things. Would you like to know what the entry is for April 20th? Ahem...
It may surprise you, perhaps, but I am not strictly opposed to the spectacle of violence and crime. It all depends on the lessons you draw from it...
Dalai Lama. Oh, no.
So I am not feeling very well. This coming Easter Sunday will somehow not feel like a happy day for now. Do you have any happy plans? Any predictions? Happy ones?
Really, really did not want to be there. It was some sort of store, I think. I had walked in because I had to get something silly. There was excitement about the new nasa bed right next to me. There were these silly stinky leaves in a bag in front of me. There was a very annoying mother and daughter behind me, discussing the difference between eggshell, offwhite and ivory. Not the difference about the colors themselves, more about how they will go with the towels, which happen to be almond. Right. I could have just left, just gone to the game-store next door, listen to conversations about the power this one character gets when he is level 20 and drinks this one green potion. I wondered how long I can manage to stay and draw at the bed and towel store.
I managed to draw three exit signs and did not even make it to the right hand page. As I was leaving, the video of a woman jumping up and down on a tv-studio bed with her "husband" sitting next to the exercise, watching a not impressed wine glass placed just a few inches from them was looping for a fifth time. It had been clearly created for people with a shorter attention span than mine.
what are these small objects?, why are there lilies again? Why is there a televison set combined with a VCR? Why would I draw something like this in a subway packed with New Yorkers speeding under broadway and then 7th avenue and then further and further and further, just to come back and carry other people in the other direction? Hmm. What are these small objects. What are they really? And how small are they really? Are they the beginnings of something? Or are they the last stages of something? Maybe just a transitional state. A station in the lifecycle of something. They might be a short victory of what we think is something we understand. They will probably move on, soon, maybe they have moved on, already, to something that makes them look and feel very different. Maybe they are no longer even recognizable for us as what they were... but particles of them, as much as those of the flowers, remain. They are here to stay. And maybe some day again as something that we can give a name...
As for the VCR... maybe a similar train of thought.
I really thought I had finally killed it. I thought that this was it, the end, no more hope for the little guy. The birth was a bit of a miracle, the death seemed to be a month long process, really sad. I had put an Avocado pit into one of my plant pots by the window some time ago in September and what looked like a great surprise at first, (I had not followed instructions for planting the avocado tree at all) turned into a growth spurt and then slowly but surely into a picture of misery. When I wrote about the more than 12 inch tall stem of an avocado plant in September, it still had six leaves. For the last few months it barely managed to have two at a time. They were nice leaves, yes, they would be at the opposing ends of the tip of the stem, they were about 5 inches long, about an inch wide. The two leaves would die off after a week or so though and be replaced by new leaves, which would then again... die. A picture of misery. For months. I somehow assumed that the problem might be that the plant was sharing a pot with a Jade plant. About two weeks ago the Avocado plant got a new, private pot with a view. I was surprised how rich the network of roots was compared to the sad outside of the plant. The large avocado pit had basically exploded under ground. There was a large root going to the bottom of the plant pot (a tap root?) and a very dense network of more hair-like roots in large areas of the pot. What was supposed to be a rescue mission for the poor avocado plant suddenly felt like a very needed relocation of an underground choker. I am not an expert in plants, I really have no clue. I tried to injure the roots as little as possible by making sure that the soil was dry at the time of the replanting, for example. I placed the plant in its new home, prepared with some fertilizer and a fluffy airy bed of good soil and then added waaateeer. The two large leaves on top of the long strong green-blue stick seemed to wave happily (they did not, but can you imagine?). There was a little fresh green tip between them, giving me hope that maybe this time there would be more than two wings on this little beast.
About three days later, the left leaf died. It just curled up into a brownish ball and fell off. A few days later, the other leaf died half way and then just hung on by a ridiculous greenish stem for days, until i just took it out. What I had hoped could be the bud for new leaves, just turned into a silly, tiny, soft claw and then also died. Great. After 19 (I counted the "scars" on the stem) attempts to survive, the thing was finally dead. I now had a stick in a pot. A strong and almost straight stick, a tall and energetic stick, but, after all, nothing more than a stick. I obviously had no clue how to deal with avocado plants. I bought a new avocado (for the purpose of planting,) ate the green deliciousness with some lime juice, left the pit on the kitchen table for a day or two, and then pushed it ad deep as i possibly could next to my stick in a pot. There. The old plant would just completely wither away, providing nutrition for the new and hopefully happier avocado. Macabre, I know, I was risking a mad-avocado plant here, but at this point in time, with the stick in a pot, this is all I could come up with. I certainly did not want to throw out the old dead plant.
What I discovered this morning however, will have me digging into the pot very soon. The seemingly dead stick now appears to have been just a bit of a probe. I thought that all I was left with were these 19 or so scars on the stem, it turns out these scars, the places where two leaves had fallen off, are in fact areas where the tree can push some energy to. I now have a pot with a stick and the stick has 8 (eight!) new bright green buds, each one of them ready to turn into probably at least two leaves. This is fantastic news of course. The tree was obviously just setting the stage for a much larger entrance, was probing the space outside of the soil, was getting ready. I was obviously thinking in terms of house plants. The tree is "thinking" bigger. It is a big, real tree, not some tiny pot plant. We shall see. I am ready for some slow motion avocado tree action. Big time.
I might be too happy, too soon, of course. There is not a single leaf out yet. I do have my hopes though. As we are just about to enter spring time, as the greatest time for plants with leaves lays ahead, we might be about to have some fun here.
Oh, and the other pit needs to get out of the pot as quickly as possible. We would not want to confuse the avocado phoenix with a new roommate. The new pit will get its own soil filled pot. Let's see what might develop. The two pits are from two very different kinds of avocados and if I am lucky enough for both plants to develop, we might be able to see the difference in character some time soon.
Oh, the stick tree is one of these giant avocados, as far as I remember... ; ) Yeah! Giant-Ahuacatl-phoenix-survivor-tree.
One of the many lessons learned? Sometimes things are not quite as dead as they seem to be...
This little movie from Japan made me smile: Bounce. I am still smiling. Thank you, Kristen.
Thnsformation, elvation, invention, there is no old and there is no new. Maybe. How fascinating that each one of us is "programmed" to believe that we are the center of something unique. What happens to the billions of thoughts that are generated every second on this planet alone? How many of these thoughts trart with an "I"? How many of these thoughts start with a "we"? How many of these thoughts start with a "how" or "when" or "what if"? Hmm... "why"?
(a bit like... "Why did he write this here today?")
A familiar voice on the answering machine. Then a happy/sad/touching conversation over the phone. Then maybe a favorite record. Wait, actually, a favorite playlist of MP3s. Then the pictures, the reports, the movies, the war?. The world as a recording, the world as a "live" transmission, the world as a summary of dream like surrogates. We are at a point where we trust machines and the man made experience much more than we trust our direct impression. And even if there is a direct impression, it is rarely a first one...
The things we end up seeing in person often appear less dramatic than what was shown to us through the macro/tele/zoom lens, than what was edited and rehearsed and sung in hundreds of edits and to us in an unlimited/limited/special edition. And even if it somehow happens that we encounter the real thing, some actual touch point with reality, we better be ready and have that fast dissolving pill with us... because chances are, we are incredibly allergic to it.
A girl on the train today had such massive tattoos all over any visible part of her body that one might actually say that the tattoos had the girl, not the other way round. There was a violent blue wave going from the back of her head (and so I assume from an area somewhere on her back) all the way under her hair, through her forehead, the eye, the cheek, all the way to the jaw. It was a massive layer of blue and black ink. Maybe 2-3 inches wide. The other side of her face had a similar kind of decoration, but it incorporated the ear a bit more and went well into the lips. Each tiny piece of skin on both hands was also marked and drawn on and painted. There were brute lines, and round dots, there was a cascade of geometric shapes on the left hand. Not only had she chosen to color her skin, she had also decided to puncture and pierce it. There were at least five rings in her lower lip alone. A similar amount of rings was placed in an area that used to be her eyebrows, now shaved, one replaced by blue black markings, the other one just part of a violent design.
She was was one of the passengers on my side of the car. I only noticed her because she was the only one who almost ran out of the train to let some people on the platform know that their train would never come because of a change in schedule. Some of those waiting were listening to music or reading. Not one person was convinced by the calls of the tattooed girl.
I knew I should not have been stunned by her holding the largest of Starbucks cups. I wonder why I was. Maybe because the "designed" cup, in its cardboard protective sleeve looked so weak in the hands of this girl that somehow seemed to belong to a completely different tribe than mine.
Last spread for today. One good thing about the little black books is that they very portable. And so it is very easy for me to just walk from place to place or to sit in various places on the train and to sample little fragments of the world around me. It is not that I would like to create a representation of what I see, it is more of a layered visual recording process. Some things around me appear more important at different times, some objects or people trigger other drawings, some drawings turn into the beginning of other linear structures.
It is all a very fluid process. A page like this can appear on the page in the matter of minutes. I might come back to a page like this and ad an unexpected layer a few days later, on a different train, at a different time of the day, going into a completely different direction.
It usually takes a few pages for a book to warm up, for things to get going. The first few pages are usually a bit shy and not quite sure what is about to happen. The pen somehow needs to find the right grooves, the lines need to get a bit comfortable on the pages. It takes time. And because it takes time, I like to show three double pages in the first day, at least, to make things a little easier to understand, to somehow present a context that makes more sense for the first time viewer. Or are you not a first time viewer? Have you been here before?
It is time to upload another series of drawings from my Moleskine book library. The drawings which will be put here every day for the next month or so are from a book I used on the subway in December 2002- January 2003. Many of the drawings are very shaky, some are just really barely there. Most were drawn on the subway, standing, in a crowd of New Yorkers, going somewhere. Important places. Right on time.
If you would like to see the previos postings, from previous books, take a look at this entry, for example, or use the search function of the blog to look for "Subway". (You can also type in 111 or 111 pages... but this will be a different book.)
I should have started with categories early on here. Now, with far beyond a thousand entries here, it will take some time for me to add categories.
Some of the older drawings are of course available in the catalogue section of this site. And I still need to ad some of the books that are now only accessible through the blog there. Enjoy.
And this:"Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum of Its Treasure" is beyond... aargh...
and there is was again, the moment of weightlessness the short breather, the tiny glimpse of just quiet, not moving stand still. What would follow. The screaming fall?, the ride into a tight loop?, would there be a long time, upside down, the pressure high in the eye-balls? Or would there be more of the pushing toward the sky. Just a beginning of a longer journey upwards...
I really wonder, I wonder what will be. How it will happen, and how unpredictable the consequences will turn out to be. Right now, this second, here and now... there is just the soft sound of a spinning harddrive, there is just the dim glow of an LCD screen, there is a warm silicon animal on my lap.
Now what? Why now? How come? Where will it go? Or is this it? This was it? There will be no more? Or just very different?
I probably should not even ask.
Does anybody have any experience with this product?: Epson Perfection 2450...
Please let me know... : )
One of the pirates kept moving his hips in a strengely fluid way. The boar-like guard stuck his sniffing nose right into the barrel in which I was hiding, more than once. Grandma cried. Mother had absolutely no clue what was really going on. Managed to escape (several times) from a hoard of little guys with glowing eyes and pointy tridents. A friendly boat would like me to buy a sail. This and so much more happened in the first four hours or so of The Wind Walker, the 9th installment of The Legend of Zelda saga. An incredible game... really... seriously... (can't wait to meet Tingle.)
And there it was. The voice was out in the open. All of it was gone, mouth still ajar. The things were now said. There was no going back, the words have been spoken. The damage was done, the seed was planted, the journey had begun. The voice was out. It was out in the open.
Somewhere on 6th Avenue and probably 23rd street. But actually, all over town.
There was a nice breeze at the roof of the DIA center today. The weather was not bad at all. A couple took important pictures of a water-tower. The woman with the shorter hair had a 35mm camera. She also shot something in the direction of Madison Square, the Met Life Building. The other woman, the more filigrane one, the one with softer, longer hair, had a video camera. She shot sequences of the river, then the stairs. Yes, the greyish stairs.
Four older ladies had a conversation in the café on the roof.
One of the guards on the third floor was reading a disintegrating book. It was a very decaying paperback. She was alone on the floor, the one with some incredible minimalist paintings. A second guard, from a different floor came up to her in a very hesitant way. "Are you busy?" She had her hands full, obviously, there were barely any pages left in the book she was reading. She still followed him. I sat down on the only bench in the exhibition and just listened to the sounds of the building. An incredibly loud, mechanical noise arose out of nowhere. It was as if a mill stone were grinding microphones.
After a minute or so, a woman in red nylons pushed an empty plastic cart to one of the elevators. Even the extremely finely dressed older Korean couple were stunned. The cart lady disappeared in an elevator. After some time, the only sound one could possibly hear were the cars on the west-side highway. And from time to time there was a sound of a dry, yellow page in a paperback being turned. The guard was back on duty.
My parents were originally supposed to visit New York these days. I have not seen them for more than a year. Last time I saw them was through a veil created by the fever delirium of a pneumonia I had caught while traveling from Paris to their home near Frankfurt. We have spoken since, of course. We speak on weekends mostly. They are quite excellent conversations. It is a slow progression, a slow change of rolls. I am not there now, but I can see that in about twenty years or so their actions will become transparent to me just the way my actions were completely predictable to them when I was a boy twenty years ago. There is a shift and the shift will become stronger as we progress through our relationship. Right now our conversations are very invigorating and good.
They will probably not come to visit this year at all. My mother works for a bank and she was requested not to travel to the United States this year. Yes, I am not kidding. Also, when I began asking questions about the angle of reportage about the current situation presented on German Television, my mother just changed the topic to my and his new electric scooter. Yes, my got this really excellent electric scooter. It is just missing a little sticker that would show to a policeman that the thing is allowed on German streets. It is not. And so we were talking about a new fun thing.
I love my parents. And I somehow must assume that they love me. (I am one of these single children, you know.)
And my parents will not be coming to New York this year. They were supposed to come here in April. This month would be great to show them that New York is not as cold as all the times when they came here and there was snow. Oh, wait, there was some serious snow storm here just a few hours ago. Maybe it is good that they o not to come and visit this year. Hmm, and I am not going to Europe this year. My parents will go to Venice, see the Biennale... hmm...
Yes, the site was down all day today. My provider had this to say:
Hello,
Please do try to access your website again. Everything is working fine now. We had been doing urgent maintenance work on the servers to ensure maximum security to your account as well as the server where your account is hosted, due to the sudden surge in cyber terrorism. Please do open a new support request if you need any further assistance.
Thank you,
Regards,
Susy.
Can you imagine? What would the terrorists do to my site? Take it down for a day? Wipe it out? ...
I am actually glad that my provider cares and tries and makes sure I am in a secure spot here. The servers are in Texas, you know. You can see the location of the server (marked by a red circle) here. You think I am kidding. My servers really are in texas. Check it out.
Hmm... what else could I say here to look like a "person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept..."? Here it comes: Buy fantasy shares in this blog. it is FREE!!!. Yeah, that felt nice.
One of the favorite dishes of my childhood in Poland was Bread Soup. It was a very delicious kind of dish. Old bread and garlic and some butter, covered with boiling water created an irresistible combination. Some special spices could be added to this concoction, to round the taste, but otherwise... it was good old bread and water. It took me this long to realize that we simply had no food. We had nothing to eat, just dry bread. (The soup was best with old bread.) How delicious can life be even though one might be what others could perceive as poor... It is difficult to imagine, isn't it? (I never, ever missed such weird stuff as peeps...)
Carl Williamson was kind enough to point out a really excellent little site to me. It is the work of an incredibly brilliant Brazilian collective and I am not going to say any more. Taske a look at: quinta-feira.org. Thank you so much Carl!
Too early to show maybe. Too early to talk about it at all. Just grasping the idea, really. Ideas of images that focus on exposure rather than a composition of the image, really. There is now a series of seven 4x5 polaroid photogram images. I only scanned three of the seven so far, it takes time to scan them well enough. Here are the low resolution previews. These three are the darkest ones, they are the ones that barely saw any . They are the ones that I barely saw when I was making them.
I was in the darkest room. I did not attempt to make it even darker than it actually was. It felt as if there were no at all, as if the room were enveloped in darkness. It took several minutes to get used to the darkness. And this is when the little crack between the door and the frame turned into a major source, this is when things became more and more visible. This is when it was time to end the exposure on the images.
There is a fast way of taking photographs. There is a way to expose things for 1/6000 of a second, or less... Each photogram here is several minutes of perceived darkness... of sensing, waiting, thinking, wondering if the time was too much or too little. Photograms created in a very dark, not very interesting place. The images are particularly interesting when examined close up. Maybe I will zoom in on details...
There was no lens involved here, no camera. Not even a camera obscura...
Hmm... pure chemical photography.
And there it was. The snow just stole the show. It placed itself between me and New Jersey, and even Dunkin Donuts became invisible for a little while. Snow. The smarter, cooler water. The water that does not take the shortest path between H and A, but the scenic path. The one that allows to be guided by the wind, or gusts, or just streams of air. The elegant water. But after all water. The same water we are. Well, maybe 75% of us are. The other 25% are all dense and solid and the stuff that just sinks.
Confused little thoughts of mine swirl around like the snow I saw, like the snow that made things go away, like the snow that turned into water after all.
And I took pictures of darkness. I started taking them as a first test. And they were not pictures of darkness at all. They were just images taken without any tools. Just instant chemical messing around with . And the first realization was that the was too strong. The snow, the day, the glowing. It was all too much. So I began taking pictures of the darkness. It was a bit like preparing a meal. Very slowly, very slowly would I take the film into the darkest room. We would turn of the . I would expose the film to darkness. Or maybe "darkness" the room was not really dark, of course. They rarely are.
Then, when I was able to see the film, when my eyes became adjusted to the "darkness", that was my signal to end the exposure. And then some was added to the mix. Not as the main ingredient almost, almost as a spice. Then there were moments when I just hid the film, tried to protect it from what I was not even able to see.
I could not stop. I could not stop. The results were just becoming better and better. The less I used, the better things began to look. I had to stop myself. Had to leave some of the polaroid material for later. I scanned three of the seven images that will make a series so far. I find them quite beautiful. Maybe it is just me. Maybe they appear beautiful to me, because they were created in such a private, such a slow and personal and almost intimate way.
Photography is usually an art that includes many layers and tools and people. Photography is not what one person does, it is a team effort a team sport. Images are taken by machines, not people. The photographer never actually sees what the film sees...there is this moment when the human being steps aside, then the mirror flips, then the chamber opens, the exposure happens in solitude of motiv and machine. (I think this also holds true for digital images.)
So a photogram is a bit of a thing closer to a drawing. Closer to a drawing without a pen even...
I have seven that I will combine into one 13x19" image. I should probably not be reporting on work as it happens. Too quickly? Too soon? Too unfiltered?
There was the snow. And the snow turned into water. I had to jump and jump carefully. I hugged the walls of the buildings, trying to reduce my exposure to these snowflakes that were just packed with tiny needles and really wanted to touch my face, very urgently. I closed my eyes just for a moment and...
Must have thrown out five or maybe ten bags of things this weekend. Important documents, and papers and items and just stuff. I do not even remember what these things were, but this must be a good sign, it must be indeed a good sign. I completely forgot that I had two remote controlled Lego cars, for example. I did not remember that there was a collection of match boxes from the early 90's. Who would have thought that there was a whole little hidden grotta filled with Paul Smith packaging material. (Paul Smith is a super-hero.) I still have two remote controlled Lego cars. I still have an area in a drawer filled with Paul Smith packaging material. The dutch crackers tin box filled with obscure business cards also survived the bagging. So what is gone now? What was it that I packed into bags and carried into the room of no return? Some of my free post-card collection had to go. I can only handle so much of this stuff in my drawers and under the bed. I actually thew out the shell of an early 90's IBM thinkpad. I kept the spare parts for the PowerBook 100. (A wickedly fast little laptop friend.)
There were many unique and tailored special offers that needed to go. American Express really wanted to become my friend. And there are all these free fs I will probably need to take before Continental Airlines decides that my miles do not count. I threw out some things, but I do not know what... I guess it is really a good thing.
Witold: Why do you think anybody reads my blog?
Florian: I think you somehow manage to write in a way that allows the reader to enjoy your writing without any additional knowledge of your person.
Witold: what do you mean?
Florian: Writers of many other blogs are very obsessed with themselves. What they write is interesting, but it is a bit of a collection of fragments that are looking for a context. One needs to know more about the person to really enjoy their world.
Witold: You mean people can enjoy my little world without knowing anything but the last entry?
Florian: A bit like that, yes. You just write these little pieces that somehow contain your perspective, yet are not cluttered with things that would require too much knowledge about you.
Witold: Oh, good... i do not even have an about me page...
Florian: Yeah... your pieces are okay on their own.
Witold: Oh, good... thank you so much...
Florian is the man who created International Herald Tribune dot com. among other things....
So, what was it that I threw out and do not even remember I did?
This key lime stuff tastes so incredibly horrible. Yuck. It does not help mixing it with anything, be it other drinks, hopes, inventive movements. It is just bad tasting chemicals in a decent looking bottle. I would not be surprised to discover that the stuff is not a beverage at all. It might very well be some cleaning agent or just a movie prop?. Argh. Why am I writing this? Why is such a silly thing worth sharing?
I am trying to swim back to the surface of things. For the last two months or so, all this blog has seen were little posted drawings. I need a little buffer of just words, just simple, little words, arranged into somehow descriptive sentences... maybe a story? An almost real story? Something that touches real life in places where real life does not like to be touched?
I am still looking for a blog that has the courage to not just complain about things and people and sites... (and key-lime drink taste...) Eeksy-peeksy might be a very rare island... And this is where this post ends. Time to write a new, completely different one.
It is quiet here. There is a tingling and a very slow spin when i close my eyes. Very quiet focus. Very quiet. As if something is about to happen.
It was a very sunny outside today. Despite the bright , it was very cold. The temperature will drop even further. Tonight.
I placed the camera on the traffic island on one hundred and third street and broadway. We faced north. I attached the polaroid back, I added a slow film. I quietly opened the pinhole cover. Then there were the ninety seconds of awake observation. Some cars stopped for a longer time than others. Three New Yorkers on the bench across the street were staring at me quietly. I watched a kid fly by in slow motion, on his long-board skateboard. I remember the event. I can not remember the sounds.
After the time was over, I pulled out the polaroid material, sat down on the bench next to an old lady who had been watching me even though she did not move her head a bit. It took another thirty seconds for the picture to develop. I pulled the protective paper apart. I had forgotten that Polaroid 55 comes with a real negative... The negative was almost completely black. My picture was so overexposed that the only thing visible on it at all were tiny tips of buildings. Even these were on an angle I did not really like.
I took my entire setup apart again. I put everything into my bag. I went to my diner to have the same breakfast as every saturday. I did not even need to order anymore. The order was placed as I entered through the door.
It is very quiet here right now. THere is a tingling on my skin. When I close my eyes there is a very, very slow spin. Very quiet focus. Very quiet. As if the universe snowed tonight.
Tom Lindsay used a pinhole camera to document his fight with cancer, a second time fight, a fight obviously filled with very painful, long lasting procedures yet also quite incredibly serene and peaceful plateaus of time. He chose a camera obscura to document his ordeal because of the unique quality created by the long exposure times and the unique quality of focus of this age old image capturing device. What we are allowed to observe here are not the split seconds, not the "definitive moments" we are so used to from the pages of popular publications. These images were not shot in order to impress us or a magazine image editor, nor to maybe make it to the cover of a publication. What we get to see here are very slow, melancholic, intimate time periods in a very wide grey zone between life and something beyond. The distance to the situation observed is very much condensed, the observer is allowed to come closer and to stay longer than usual. These are more intimate observations, more private angles, closer encounters with reality than what we are used to seeing with our own so seemingly awake eyes.
The Exhibition, which consists of 29 black and white photographs and commentary by the artist, unfolds in four distinct acts. This extends the time observed and slows down the tempo even further, creating an even deeper feeling of intimacy to the photographer and patient. There is not even the thought of a destructive disease in any of the images at first, then cancer takes over more and more till it suddenly becomes the center of the stage and the director of the project. Only in the very last frames does this unwelcome intruder somehow loosen it's destructive grip and we are allowed to see images that not only show harmony but also speak about it. Many of the images seem to be filled with thoughts of the beyond of what we know as life. And maybe it is the quality of the images, maybe it is the very honest commentary by Tom Lindsay, that somehow turns death into this "thing called death", into just another character in a play, somehow personified and disarmed and eventually just barely there...
Take your time to slowly stroll through an extraordinary online exhibition of autobiographical documentary pinhole photographs by Tom Lindsay, entitled: Diagnosis: Cancer.
Yes, I own a Pinhole camera and I think I might even almost know how to use it. I really hope I will be able to participate in the Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, which will take place on April 27, 2003... Hmm...
It would be nice to upgrade my equipment to a Zero Image camera, perhaps... and definitely find out more about the genre on the Pinhole Visions site...
But I have the feeling that I already have what I need. Now I can only hope that the time will be right, that I will not forget, and that I will not be alone. Will you take a picture too?
How silly is it to link to an eBay auction from a blog? How much sillier to point to an eBay auction where I would like to bid but will not. And yet this item is really so exciting and beautiful and really pretty big as well? Take a look at this eleven by fourteen camera, custom modified to be even better. Oh, how exciting. Would anybody like to buy this one for me? I can offer half of my blogshares... Deal? Take a look: Customized 11x14 Korona View - Beautiful!!...
Suddenly there was some traffic from a site called:"blogshares" hitting this page. It seems that this blog is now listed on a "fantasy stock market" for Blog-shares? I claimed the blog, of course and will now need to se how to invest my fantasy $500 in some really exciting not yet discovered blogs. You can also buy shares in this blog here. WitoldRiedel.com shares are currently just $8.11! Wow...
I do not quite understand the concept and what will happen next, but maybe this is exactly the reason why my real life dollars are not exactly performing well on the real stock market? Hmm. I added a little banner to the page, I will probably buy shares in "Blogsharing". You should probably buy shares in this blog. (I mean, it is easy, and actually free...) Also, can anybody please explain to me why the blogsharing system claims that this blog has only *two* outgoing links? Hmm... definitely not true... Ok, here is another link:BlogShares - Witold Riedel :: NYC
it used to be possible. I used to be able to do this. Filling an entire book with drawings on one afternoon was possible. It was exhausting, but it was really possible. After about page 20 or so, the ideas would run dry, there would not be enough things in the room to fill the pages and then... then there would be a bit of a breakthrough, a revelation, a rush... and the remaining pages would just fly by, filled with very silly and bizarre drawings and things. I somehow do not seem to be able to do this anymore. Maybe it is a fear of failure that is holding me back, maybe it is some other noose of unimportant thoughts. I am working on it. I hope to get back there soon. It is the place where drawing because more of a channeling of energy, a pure tunnel, the ultimate focus. Remember when you played with toys for hours and hours at time, and then there was absolutely nothing, nothing that could draw you away from the play? Like that. I am trying to use the same innocence of play, the same pure channeling. Working on it, working on it. The interesting part is of course that the harder I try, the more I am afraid to fail, the less I am able to get to the place I want to reach. Hmm... it takes focus and good relaxation. Just needed to write this down... here seems to be a good place.
Two "plain" glazed donuts and a large coffee please. One spoon of pure white sugar for the sweetness, two spoons of sugar for the memory that I always used to take two spoons in my tea when a little boy in Poland, three spoons of sugar just because the number three is more than magical, four spoons of sugar because of the four seasons, the four corners of the world, the four elements, five spoons of sugar because of the thumbs on my hands being in a place that allows me to just grab stuff, six spoons of sugar clearly point to indulgence... the seventh spoon of sugar was just for good luck. I looked at the large styrofoam cup filled with a very saturated brown liquid and thought how very sweet it is to eat and drink something so wrong.
It should be international law to spend a certain time of our lives in a completely different country, with no option of return, with no security net, no soft blanket (and be it the size of a credit card.) It would be such an incredibly healthy thing if we could go to places, not as blood sucking tourists, or business tourists or "liberation tourists", but actual, real, naked under the clothes... people. One should be limited to the famous two suitcases (at best), have no place to stay and ideally no friends in the foreign country.
Just imagine what the world would be like if each one of us HAD to make friends in other countries, just to survive. If learning a language would be rewarded with food rather than a grade in class... Hmm... And then the experiences? I promise they would be incredible. And then one could write home about them. About the differences, and the similarities. The new things, the better things, the other special things. Just like the great explorers wrote about things, except (again...) no bringing of weapons, no business, no trying to "liberate". Go all by yourself and listen, rather than going in as an army and tell...
Well, and then, among other things, you could find yourself in transit... and add to a new international group blog called... Lost in transit. As of today (the blog is officially launched today) there are ten authors. You know some of them (at least one!): There is Mig, an American now in Austria, Kim an American in France, Eeksy-Peeksy also American in Poland, Francis (American in Sweden), Deb, an American in New Zealand, miss anthropy is also originally from the States and now in the wonderful Canada, Waspish New Zealender in Japan, the amazing Miss Shauny, who you thought was still in Australia but is now in Scotland, Sue, yet another American in the Netherlands and... me, described as a Polish guy in New York.
I like being the Polish guy in New York, as I actually have a German passport and New York is indeed like its own little country. : )
So if you have not clicked on any of the eleven links above, you should do so now. I haven not contributed to lost in transit yet, but I think I will run out in a few minutes and grab a new york coffee and then come back to write. (Or maybe I should do my taxes... hmm... yeah... maybe I should... do my taxes...)
I would like to really, really, really thank Mig for adding me to this quite incredible project. I think we are onto something here, people. This is going to be really good!
great, I can barely see the screen. Well, I am actually typing this blindly, almost. There is a pulsating round aura right in my field of view. I thought that it might be something with my eyes at first, but then the aura does not change no matter how I close the eyes. So it is something manufactured by my brain? It is a round, circular, pulsating "lens", it distorts whatever I see in this area, sly left of me. It is a pulsating transparent object, very distracting. It feels as if this thing were suspended about 5 inches to the left of my face. I really need some real sleep now. Wow...
Have you ever had such an experience?
The last three pages of the series are just quiet and maybe a bit melancholic. It is always a very interesting moment to get to the end of a book. There is this opportunity to try one last thing, to somehow invent something new, to dare. One could say that this is not what is happening here. The first drawing is very much in the lines of the more than hundred pages that preceded it. The second drawing is maybe more daring, as it is a little collection of strange animals that somehow do not care if they might be taken seriously or not. The third drawing looks just sad. What happens in the third drawing, the last drawing of the book, though, are these additional lines, crossing out the long and familiar edges of the figure. It was a bit as if the drawings before could need some breaking factor, some disturbance, some complication. All of the drawings are just straight ink to paper, one could maybe think that the lines are too clear, that the intentions go through and become drawing with too little resistance. I guess I just somehow wanted to mark the lines... they could go away, the lines do not need to be these particular ones. There is an almost unlimited amount of possible drawings that are just boiled down to one, every single time... and even though this particular drawing is here on this page now... it could have been a completely different one... hmm...
Thank you for surviving the 111 Pages from this one black book... If you would like to see all of the pages again, just type in 111 pages into the search field to the right of this blog.
I will eventually add all of the drawings shown here to the catalogue section of this site... but maybe not today.... ; )
Eike König is an old friend, an extremely talented man, a guy with more experience than most of us will ever have. And he has this really incredibly talented group of people around him thus creating "Eike's design nursery"... They mainly specialize in the creation of graphics for the music-industry and so their stuff is really paving the way for what design might look like in the years to come... right? I met Eike back in the 80's when he was already working for a local agency, developing the new look for a completely new product... cherry coke. (yeah.) Many of us really wanted to be like Eike, seriously, for various reasons, of course. I can admit now that the 15 year old me was really impressed with this guy's really strong force of gravity towards the smartest and most beautiful girls in our school. (Seriously.)
Eike still attracts some of the most incredible talent these days. (Creative talent, what were you thinking?)
Take a look at the site... take another look, see some striking content. See more. There is a lot to see on Eike's Grafischer Hort dot com enjoy. Viel Spass.
There is sometimes this really strong feeling of having a glowing center. At least I have this feeling sometimes. I know, this could be the first sign that I will leave this world through the same door as one of my grands, or it could be the sign that I spent too much time thinking about my own center, and not about the center of a much larger idea... or maybe not?
If I could find the drawings I made in the very early 90's a very large percentage of this work would probably focus on figures trying to deal with this very strange container they suddenly seem to find in their chests. Is it the soul, the spiritual center, the center of spiritual gravity? I do not understand enough about the theories that include such symbolism to really write about them here. I have the feeling however that many of the readers know more than I do... so please feel free to add.
As for the first drawing in today's series. Hmm, does it make sense to draw an angel that is missing feet? Do angels ever really touch the ground? (Ouch, a sudden, striking pain in my left hand index finger might cause me to restate this question...) Hmm... One could imagine that a little angel would not ever need to actually touch the ground... so why feet? One can be so much er without feet...
The last drawing today might have something to do with hair loss?, idea loss?, energy loss? hope loss?...
All figures today do not really touch enything. They seem to be observers of the tiny events around and inside of them. Hmm...
Or are they the ones who cause these events to happen?, somehow? maybe?
In some oddly indirect way?
The third drawing today looks like a flow chart, doesn't it? It is like some sort of information architecture for a website, maybe? It looks however as if the very first symbol on the chart were a skull, which makes me think that the chart could have something to do with this one Damien Hirst book I have here on my shelf (he leaves the desk and walks over to the bookshelf.) ... (He returns with a red book wrapped in a while protective sleeve... on the white sleeve are the words: "Theories, Models, Methods, Approaches, Assumptions, Results and Findings. In the lower left corner: Damien Hirst. He Pulls the red book out of the protective sleeve.) Okay, here is the book. The cover of the book has this golden chart on it. The chart is entitled "Fig.a - Changes after death." hmm... The golden boxes look like a flow chart and it explains what can happen to a body after, well, death... The first box is... Death... There is a large arrow going down to the next box which contains: Initial Process (Hours) Cooling, lividity, chemical changes and rigor mortis. The box is connected to several other boxes, one major one of them is: Body lies undisturbed. (Post mortem process dependent on ambient surroundings). ... There are 16 boxes in the chart, the last two options for a body being: Total destruction of remains (and this is where we know that there is no such thing, no?) and the last box being Fossilisation (the wet, ahem, dry dream of anybody with a narcissistic mind.)
It is quite possible that the drawing was based on the chart, making it more of an interpretation of it, of course, hmm... but maybe it was something completely different. The purchase date on the catalogue is 12/12/00... which would place the drawing into about the right time-context. But can I be sure? Of course not. ; )
