David Bowie - Teenage Wildlife

Teenage Wildlife
David Bowie
Well, how come you only want tomorrow
With its promise of something hard to do
A real life adventure woth more than pieces of gold
Blue skies above and sun on your arms strength your stride
And hope in those squeky clean eyes
You'll get chilly receptions everywhere you go
Blinded with desire I guess the season is on
So you train by shadow boxing, search for the truth
But it's all, but it's all used up
Break open your million dollar weapon
And push your luck, still you push, still you push your luck
A broken nosed mogul are you one of the new wave boys?
Same old thing in brand new drag comes sweeping into view
As ugly as a teenage millionaire pretending it's a whizz kid world
You'll take me aside and say
"Well, David, what shall i do? They wait for me in the hallway"
I'll say "don't ask me, I don't know any hallways"
But they move in numbers and the've got me in a corner
I feel like a group of one, no no they can't do this to me
I'm not some piece of teenage wildlife
Those midwives to history put on their bloody robes
The word is that hunted one is uot there on his own
And you're alone for maybe the last time
And your breathe for a long time
Then you howl like a wolf in a trap
And you daren't look behind
You fall to the ground like a leaf from the tree
And look up one time at that vast blue sky
Scream out aloud as they shoot you down
No no, I'm not a piece of teenage wildlife
I'm not a piece of teenage wildlife
And no one will have seen and no one will confess
The fingerprints will prove that you couldn't pass the test
There'll be others on the line filing past, who'll whisper low
I miss you he really had to go well each to his own, he was
Another piece of teenage wildlife
Another piece of teenage wildlife, another piece of teenage wild

The real color wheel

This is the *actual* color wheel for determining complementary colors. Most other wheels are false, for example green and red are not opposite, green and magenta are, and red and cyan. Normal color wheels are thus over-simplified to criminal distortion.

I consider this very important for anybody working with colors in any creative field. You can't understand color harmonies if you have false data about it.

Complentary colors of course are two colors which when mixed gives a neutral white/grey/black. That's simple but strong harmony.

===

I spoke to the maker of the wheel at RealColorWheel, he said he had developed it through years of work. Which explains why it was so hard to find.

As regular readers will be aware, I have been a van Gogh fan since my yoof, and I have consumed a lot of text and documentaries and lectures about him in the last couple years. 

And I'm not alone, studying his life and work is a whole industry, and every year *millions* of fans travel physically and internationally to visit his solo museum in Amsterdam, from every continent. I mean, it's just crazy. 

So I've been trying to figure out what it is. I mean, his work is generally quick and rough compared to other masters, and that's not normally what people like. 

It's clear that his story is a big part of it. His letters are unique, no other artist have revealed that much of themselves. And the letters are beautiful and thoughtful and intelligent. 

And in him people find inspiration. He suffered much, as many of us feel we do, and he loved life and art and spirit with a passion which burned bright like the sun he often included in his paintings. He was an outsider which many of feel like sometimes. And he never gave up despite enormous obstacles socially, financially, and health-wise, which is inspiring. 

But none of that would have been of *that* much consequence if his art had not also been unique. 

For one thing it burns with the same joi-de-vivre that we feel in his life and himself. It's just obvious. Elan. Spirit. Joy. Love. Passion. 

And here it is: there is just something about his compositions which no other artist that I'm aware of has. It's an energy, a power, a TENSION. The whole picture plane and its elements is held together with an invisible forcefield. There is a great pressure to expand and a great pressure to compress at the same time, with all the elements held in stasis. 

Does that make sense? Well, I had to try. 

Tiffany Aching, witch

"Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving." 

 - Tiffany Aching, Hat full of Sky, Terry Pratchett

Daria Stories

I don't read fan fiction, except this. Great Daria stories by Richard Lobinske. 

Sanity

 Saying that there is a fine line between genius and insanity is like saying that there is a fine line between a powerful engine and a broken steering wheel. It's just nonsense. There is no connection or correlation.

What he said

 

... From Good Omens, the TV series (on Prime). Both that and the book by Pratchett and Gaiman are *warmly* recommended. 

Infinity?

The fact that you can't currently see the end of something does not mean that it is infinite. 

DPreview channel (Digital Photography Review)

If you are interested in cameras and lenses, I recommend this channel, these guys know their stuff, they talk clearly, and on top they are often very funny. 

Defining evil

Evil: 

Any person or influence which inhibits life or communication more than it helps it. 

Architechture Of Art

[From a book yet unfinished]

Architecture of Art, definitions

by Eolake Stobblehouse 

A central part of this book is the chart I call the "Architecture of Art" (AoA for short). I considered "Anatomy of Art", but I liked better the implication of a structure, or something built, or even the building of something, than that of the practice of taking something apart, which is a quite different activity from what we are talking about here.

In the AoA I have divided art into three different parts or aspects. These three parts are again each divided into three parts. The AoA could be viewed as a structure or machine providing a process reaching from the physical universe into spiritual spheres. Or vice versa.

You could say that it is a blueprint of art as an machine. The lower the level the easier it is taught, observed, evaluated, and corrected. The higher the part, the more slippery it is to pinpoint or evaluate and to handle all in all.

The top of the scale is the reason why art has mystical connotations to many people. It simply cannot be explained easily if it is not perceived directly, since language derives from the physical universe, and the top of the scale is spiritual (and yet still real).

From a spiritual viewpoint the parts are more important the higher you go, and from a materialistic viewpoint the lower parts are more important.

 

Art consists of: (From the top) Static, Process, and Object.

"Static" consists of: Naturalness, Creatingness, and Wholeness.

"Process" consists of: Motion, Attraction, and Substance.

"Object" consists of: Representation, Association, and Materials.

 

Here are the basic definitions (from the bottom up).

Object: The part of the work that enters into the physical universe. It is the anchor that connects the creation to reality.

Process: Expanding the spirit, creating awareness of new things.

Static: The idea. The permanent part of the work. Not physical. This part endures as long as there is time. It also reaches far beyond the physical universe.

Materials: Are simply what the word says, the physical tools and things the artist uses in order to get his idea to appear in physical form.

Association: Is what the receiver thinks of, consciously or not, when viewing the work of art. Some associations are sane, like thinking of the smell of roses when seeing a picture of a rose, and some associations are not sane, like feeling a pain in the elbow when seeing a picture of a rose. There are many, many associations for any subject, and some are very personal (and so unpredictable), and some are more universal (belonging to a people or a species), and can be used by the artist.

Representation: The work of art represents an idea in the artist's universe. The more the Object is like the idea the stronger the art.

Substance: The created mass plus related masses (those masses made relevant by association.) A larger work needs great skill and integrity to keep these masses together seamlessly.

Attraction: That which keeps the work of art and those viewing it from blowing apart. (The process would tend to cause that otherwise, since it makes the viewer's universe expand and so push things away.) This is synonymous with "prettiness", and it is an important part of the popularity of a work, but only a smaller part of its overall importance.

Motion: The motion in the work/idea. It is the actual motion of the particles making up the idea, just like the motion of electrons etc. make up matter. Something which is not moving will not be perceived and if there is no motion at all, nothing exists. Motion creates space and time, making communication possible. (The Object does not, of course, have to be in motion for the work or the idea to be.) Both the quality and the quantity of the motion is considered.

Wholeness: The togetherness or the integrity of the work. How well the parts of the work play together in their action. Also the relative lack of superfluous or missing parts.

Creatingness: The amount of creation in the work. How much of it not taken from somewhere else. The power of creation put into it.

Naturalness: To which degree the work and its parts are the artist's own decision and is made from his own necessity. This is the naturalness (for the artist) of the viewpoint from which the artist creates his work.

 

The Architecture of Art chart is a tool.

It can be used to simply understand art better, but also has a variety of uses beyond that. It can be used as a tool during the whole process of creating a work of art from before the first idea to the last polishing.

It is not a tool of criticism. Criticism is in general a destructive (or at least deconstructive) process, and even though destruction can be good and necessary, the AoA is far too powerful a tool for such use. It is for the use of the artist when evaluating or creating his own work.

Witches Departing

Witches going to their Sabbath (The departure of the witches) 

c. 1878 Luis Ricardo Falero (Spanish, 1851–1896) 

It's interesting how witches have always been, and still are, the chosen arc enemies of the xian (Christian) church. It can't be because of what little power they have/had, it must be just because the church needed an enemy, like all political parties. (Harry Potter books have been labelled evil and satanic many times.) I'm wondering though, if making witches seem as attractive as this was not self-defeating!