some landscapes...

landscape: 1

watching the moon
before sleeping

cherubic
frog
wanderer

sleeping

these
in
the
trees
watch
you

waking

dewy
water
pump

landscape: 6

lincoln's
birthday

eye
dance
to
stone

fourth of
july

then
a balloon
rises

christmas
day

a
child's name
for
silver

landscape: 8

passover

moon
over
this
april
road

buddha's
birthday
and
good friday

laying
dust
on these
sandals

easter
sunday

and the
sun,
stone,
each spring
trickling waters
moan

a few short poems by george dowden, from the journal some/thing, 1968

when propellers are like trees...

"and there, beyond all this vastness of furnaces and clanging machinery, you will find at last the quiet, simple thing that all this is about: namely, the smooth column of steel, lying in cool and comfortable bearings and turning round and round with no sound - the propeller shaft. a passage in which you cannot quite stand upright conveys its great length to the tail of the ship.

think of a tree. the roots of a tree spread in a most complicated manner through the ground, extracting all kinds of necessary things. this nourishment passes, unified up the plain column of its trunk, and bursts out in the air into a countless multitude of leaves. so all the varying forces, the stresses, the resistances, proceeding from that welter of machinery, are unified into the simple rotation of this horizontal column: are conducted calmly along its length into the sea: and there burgeon suddenly into the white and glass-green foliage of the swirls, the tumbling currents, the enormously powerful jostling of crowded water which is a ships wake"

text: richard hughes, in hazard
image: keith sonnier, 1968

addendum to what is seen and heard: (one more window)

i go indoors and shut the window
they bring the lamp and say good night.
and my voice, content, says goodnight.
oh, that my life were like this always:
the day full of sun, or gentle with rain,
or in fury raging, as if the World would end,
a soft afternoon with clusters of people going by,
looked at with interest from the window,
the last friendly gaze turned to the repose of the trees,
and then, the window closed, the lamp lit,
without reading a word, without thinking a thought or sleeping,
feeling life flow through me like a river in its bed,
and there, outside, a vast silence like a god asleep.

fernando pessoa, the keeper of sheep

sometimes...

sometimes, when looking for four leaf clovers, like a sloth along the grass looking only down, one enters a tunnel of wood and darkness, but searches, still, with eyes now closed, relying only on touch. one lies in the darkness as if asleep, beneath an arc of light-less-ness.

eventually one gives up on clovers and dreams of leaves in trees, in fact, of being a tree, standing silently amongst brother trees and sister trees, without saying a word, looking out from behind this new family, absolutely still, towards all other things. being both insider and outsider at once.

suddenly, a book is placed before eyes, and the gears inside begin to move. the tree disappears. a gaggle of three leaf clovers surround one's feet garnering little attention, while the mind continues to spin and hum as a kind of soundtrack towards being lost in words. eventually, the quiet sound of small gears slowly turning inside the mind begins to feel a bit like music.

to begin anew...

initiation:

Whoever you are, go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know each bit;
your house the last before the infinite,
whoever you are.
Then with your eyes that wearily
scarce lift themselves from the worn-out doorstone
slowly you raise a shadowy black tree
and fix it on the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world (and it shall grow
and ripen as a word, unspoken, still).
when you have grasped its meaning with your will,
then tenderly your eyes will let it go...

for some unknown reason i never realized that my single favorite work of art and my single favorite poem fit so nicely together. strange that someone who tends to so easily find connections between things that seldom make sense together, has taken so long to connect these two very connected trees that i mentally walk past every day.

the drawing is a pastel by odilon redon from 1906-07 called "la budha", the text is a poem by rilke called "eingang", here the translation by c.f. macintyre, and curiously rilke's poem is from nearly the same period as redon's drawing - the poem from a group written between 1900 and 1908. on rilke's poem macintyre says "it is with the eyes of the mind that the more real world of the seer is observed." a line that could easily serve both the poem and the drawing...

on this new years day, i would suggest everyone follow rilke and redon's cues, and go outside and ponder the form of a tree or two and begin to build a world inside yourself, "(and it shall grow and ripen as a word, unspoken, still)." begin the year with open eyes, open ears, and gentle hands... to accept all that 2009 will offer you.

of architecture, words, and trees...

this morning i woke up with max bill's name running through my head, for no apparent reason. i don't know if this ever happens to others, but there are days when a word or a name continuously bounces into consciousness in a kind of repetitive frenzy, sometimes for an entire day. so now i am in the midst of the words 'max bill' being constantly spoken to me by my brain. it's only 7 am, but i am already a bit tired of hearing it inside me. nonetheless, how could i not begin to notice how nice his name sounds being spoken with only two syllables (is there anyone with a real name that is only one?). it seems to me that along with the sound of his name, the look of the spelling, the short form of the words, it completely fits the austere lines of his architecture, and the clean precision of his graphics, paintings, and sculpture. say his name or look at it as a graphic form, and know the meaning and the relationship is almost perfect. it is as if all of the work that he made, came out of looking at his own name, and quietly repeating it to himself... max bill, max bill, max bill, max bill...

yesterday i emailed a friend to ask about the german word for tree, and i was surprised to find that it is the word 'baum'. unlike the wonderful relationship to the words max bill and every thing that came from the hands of max bill (actually even his hairstyle...); i can't find the word 'baum' feeling anything like a tree when i hear it or see it. in fact, it sends me everywhere but to the idea of tree. this is one of the first times that english actually trumps another language in terms of the relationship of a word spoken and seen, to the object it represents. for me the word tree in english sounds kind of like the form of a tree, with a heavy root system in the spoken beginning "tr" and then shooting up to the sky with the sound "ee". if you place it on its side, with the 'T' at the bottom you will see what i mean. it also seems connected to a tree visually, with the "t" seeming like a trunk and limbs, the 'r' being a curved branch coming off the stronger "t" frame, and the pair of "e"s feeling a lot like leaves.

if one wants to get deeper in all of this, one remembers that max bill was swiss, and i'm pretty sure he spoke german, so the word "baum" came out of his mouth many times. i'm wondering what 'baum' sounded like when max bill spoke it, or how it looked written in his hand. did either make the word any more tree-like... or perhaps less so?

the severity of bill's name and the seemingly small feeling of the word 'baum' suggest to me a kind of small tree skeleton, more like the skeleton of a tiny bird, but feeling like a fall tree without any leaves. now i can almost see this 'baum' looking hand drawn in ink against a relatively light sky. this kind of tree could be a tree, but it would still suggest architecture and graphic language. it would be a max bill tree, or i suppose der max bill baum...

above, you will understand the joy one feels when by some small bit of magic, one writes a bit, and then uncovers absolute perfection in the archives. i don't know who or what guided me to this photo of bill, looking very much like the words 'max bill', holding in his hands not only his architecture, but clearly a few tiny max bill baums... i can't help but feel that this photo is of the man contemplating the sounds of his own name in relation to his own architecture and to the word tree written and spoken in many languages...

when pianos fall into trees...

it was sometime during the early summer of 1906 that a piano fell from the sky. at first everyone in the surrounding areas could hear only the distant strums of an aeolian harp, as gravity pressed wind through its strings. it seemed a subtle, but heavenly voice, calling, droning, like a few drops of pear scented syrup coating a cloud.

as it kept falling, still not yet within view, the locals began to notice a hum less heavenly. the speed of the fall increasing, and the wooden case ripening, tumbling forth, as the hums were slowly overwhelmed by frenetic taps and bursts.

it was then that a black dot appeared to be born through the whiteness of clouds... the sounds rapidly rising, the dot rapidly growing, the piano rapidly falling. it began to seek a place of landing.

eventually, the piano noticed a perfect tree, connecting its own case of wood (with such beautifully vibrating voices within) to the tree's beautiful wooden trunk, and longing for the harmonic potential of the sounding of its strings with the rustling of the leaves.

the piano dreamed of wood upon wood, strings upon leaves, and the music that only pianos and trees make together (indeed, the music that only this piano and this tree would make together), and all seemed right and purposeful.

the people who were standing and watching understood the imminent severity of the crash, and they hid themselves in their houses. they wished not to become broken. they placed their ears to their walls knowing that the sound would be softened, and much more beautiful this way, particularly if it was heard without sight.

and then, very quickly, and without any thought, piano and tree (and in essence, sky and earth) came together. it was not so much a crash, as a great sounding - a deafening burst of the resonance of two forms coming together in an instant. its magnitude was overwhelming for a few seconds and then suddenly, as if by magic, near silence. then the whole became a gentle resonance, surrounded by floating dust. a continual sounding as the scene was occasionally stroked by the wind. the sound was quite beautiful.

as for the piano and the tree, they remain intertwined as if stone. they are caught in the stillness of sleeping, and either found or lost together. the photo seen above is from 1907, and is the only remaining document of the event. if you look deeply and close your eyes, you can still hear the resonance of strings and leaves, their stillness still caressed occasionally by the wind...

secret tones as in the pace of the stars...

"sea waves stream on the beach rocks.
again, every time, star and tree,
cloud and bird, my close kindred;
the stone greets me as a brother,
the unending sea calls me, friendly.
my road, that i do not understand, leads me
toward a blue, lost distance,
nowhere a meaning, nowhere a definite goal -
nevertheless, every forest brook speaks to me,
and every humming fly, of a deep law,
a right way that is holy,
whose firmament spreads out above me also,
whose secret tones,
as in the pace of the stars,
beats time in my heart as well."

hermann hesse, 1911, fragment from holiday music in the evening, from poems translated by james wright, 1970. (image: RPPC of charley trigg, april 18, 1910, sent to miss hazel...)

wassailing...

"in cider-producing areas of England, such as the West Country, wassailing also refers to singing to the health of trees in the hopes that they might better thrive...an old rhyme goes:

“wassaile the trees,
that they may beare
You many a Plum and many a Peare:
For more or lesse fruits they will bring,
As you do give them Wassailing.”

the purpose of wassailing is to awake the cider apple trees and to scare away evil spirits to ensure a good harvest of fruit in the autumn.

(image: 1910 RPPC from england)

things to do with trees...

small images from the bottom of an ad for a tree services company in a 1950's issue of fortune magazine.

"the sounding sea"...

"i know a pine tree bowed over close by the sea. noonday bestows on its tired trunk a shade measured out like our life and in the evening wind, passing through its needles, takes up a curious song, like the souls that have abolished death... once i spent a night beneath this tree. at dawn i was a new man, as if they had hewn me that very hour from the quarry."
george seferis

text, images and sound from a beautiful exhibition catalog titled music in the aegean, published in greece in 1987.

"compared with the oceans of the world the aegean is a mere deep blue, often turbulent, pond...but ranged beside the civilizations of the world, the aegean is a colussus. within its bounds lie traces of man's earliest gropings after culture..."
g.v. kavadias

fortunately that culture is preserved in the folk music of the region, and double fortunately it's further preserved on this nice little 7" tucked into the back of the catalog.

"the cicadas playing second fiddle till they become transparent at the moment when a rowing boat went by full of suffering, laden with songs and lights that flicker like mountain-tops."
odysseus elytis

...most of the recordings are from the early 80's, with one being from 1965. all are clearly excerpts, but the little fragments and shifts make it seem all the more like a little film or radio show... i've spliced side one and two together; and if you listen closely, near 8:40 or so you can hear a dog barking in the background...

click here to listen

she in the tree

circa 1910, this RPPC clearly inspired by a borges, calvino, or guimaraes rosa story...

natural selection part two...

the counterpoint to the colorful surrealist models below were the circa 1900 artifacts of nature also dwelling the plant life section of the bergen natural history museum, pictured above. unfortunately between the low light, wavy old glass cases, and the depth of the shelves i wasn't able to get great images; but these early photos, hand written or hand typed scraps of paper labels, and fragments of real nature forms mounted on wood or paper, were like little poem objects.

they weren't like seeing joseph cornell's work as much as they were like peeking into one or two of his boxes of stuff. all were fragile, many were broken, discolored, and/or simply odd in terms of their display forms.

i just kept thinking that between the stuffed animals, the giant sculpted life size whale heart, the birds, the room of skeletons, etc. these little twigs and seeds felt totally quiet and alone.

if you like looking at things like this you should also regularly check out the wonderful woolgathersome blog...

natural selection part one...

some images of models related to trees from the natural history museum in bergen norway. the museum still has many areas that feel like 1900, and the rooms filled with animals in display cases felt like a real sideshow spectacle - complete with a stuffed duck billed platypus! unlike the queasy punch of this great hall filled with a horde of dead animals, a small section on the ground floor related to plant life contained some quieter cabinets of curiosities.

in these slightly gloomy and haphazard displays, there were many things to grab the attention of a sensitive eye; but the objects that stood out as the oddest were a series of plaster and painted models of seeds, spores, stems, etc. related to the biology of trees.

these strange and wonderfuly surrealist and martian-like structures verged on abstraction and felt like visual companions to the paintings of artists like arthur dove and georgia o'keefe - where the spiritual in abstraction and science have collided. i have to say, they were a lot more inspiring than most of the contemporary art i saw on the journey... i will post some other things from the museum soon.

(p.s. for those of you who asked about ant sounds, they've now added my recording to the sleppet site, see link a few posts below).

the hight of a tree

another from ropp's... how to gage the "hight" of a tree.

considering most of the people i know with MFAs couldn't figure out much of the simple tasks in this book in terms of equations, i'm thinking folks understood math a lot better then than most of us do now.

the "hight" of a tree, is one of a number of little beautiful images and activities. you'll have to click on it to be able to read it; but i love the idea of someone laying down a pole next to a tree and then laying down oneself to get one's eye in line with the top of the pole and the tree, rather than getting a ladder and some trained birds and monkeys and a really long tape measure.