on new years eve...

two real photo postcards taken by photographer charles howell, the "official photographer of pleasure beach, blackpool". the top one was taken in 1933, and was purchased from a guy in london two years ago. the second was taken in 1937, and purchased from a guy in india last week. since neither were ever postmarked, i am assuming at least one gent in each photo carried their respective photos home themselves... i'm also pretty sure the photo that eventually lived in india had a much longer journey...

as we move from one year into the next, we can be assured that life continues to move, although there will certainly be constants...

sure,
the hats might go from white to black
the banjos might get larger rims
and the suits might suit the day,
with a bit more black than gray.

but in the end, all 8 knees will continue to be bent
and the largest bottle of beer in the world
will always be between you and a friend -
even if its neck eventually gets straightened out
or its pedestal is transformed from a barrel to a bench.

yes, life will shift with the absence of three "little ones,"
but you can always change your landscape
from lush grotto to tree and distant mountains...

wishing you all a happy last day of this year, and a wonderful first day of next year... this year has certainly held for me at least a few days feeling somewhat like a place called pleasure beach, and i hope you all find your own way there in the year to come...

when hopscotch blends into hats...

"you see, the way the words are used in films mostly derives from the theatrical tradition in which what you see makes the sound you hear. and so, in that sense, they would be redundant in film if they were used as a further projection of the image. however if they were brought in on a different level, not issuing from the image which would be complete in itself, but as another dimension relating to it, then it is the two things together that make the poem. it's almost as if you were standing at a window and looking out into the street and there are children playing hopscotch. well, that's your visual experience. behind you in the room are women discussing hats or something, and that's your auditory experience. you stand at the place where these two come together by virtue of your presence. what relates these two moments is your position in relation to the two of them. they don't know about each other, and so you stand by the window and have a sense of afternoon, which is neither the children in the street, nor the women talking behind you, but a curious combination of both, and that is your resultant image, do you see? and this is possible in film because you can put a track on it."

maya deren to arthur miller during a poetry and film symposium, 1953. reprinted in film culture no. 29, 1963

sheet music wall paper

one of the stranger things about buying old photo postcards is that the writing on the backs is almost always uninteresting. i'm consistantly disappointed to discover that an incredibly strange image on the front usually co-exists with a seemingly disconnected and extremely dull greeting on the back.

this is one of my favorite recent RPPC finds. i remember an early art history class where we had a many houred discussion about a steiglitz photo of people on a ship, where every part of the the photo was discussed for symbolic content towards a greater narrative. well, this is certainly no steiglitz, but there's a lot of visual happenings here to mull over if you are so inclined...

what interested me most though, was the fact that for once the text on the back suggests a similar variety of paths to wander down as the image on the front. i have no idea which one of these folks did the writing; but this little gem of a text seems to be in secret code, or perhaps a quotation of a few lines from one of frank o'hara's early poems...

"i know what you're doing now. that's what they all do johnny my boy. look and listen but mum the word. take me back to swanee shore - sweetheart's still."