Lost and Found

As promised/threatened not too long ago, here are two of the found poems I created using the email between Andrea and myself. The first is created with her words, and the second with mine.

 #1

I think I understand
your joy distinction.

Joy is…the gift that we receive.
Longing comes
when the moment is fading
…back to everyday life.

That’s when you understand
[it's] what you were really created
to live in, always…
only…the world is broken.

And your spirit longs
for that memory of Heaven.

#2

The dead snake
was not photographed
though I was pretty close to it.

I declined on the serpentine
because
it wasn’t much of a snake.

Did the snake you grabbed
seem to mind?

Not so worried about insects,
it seems.

And since I’ve had only two visitors since my big day of 24, I’m going to mention Ameren (good job, guys!), and try to mess with the data again.

 

Whoa.

Twenty-four views in the last twenty-four hours? What gives? Who are you people?

And who followed a link to Amy Schwarz’s old blog? And how could they, since I don’t even have a link to it?

Oh, I guess you read an old post of Steve’s and followed it from there. Fair enough.

No real news right now. House sitting for dad. Home Sunday. Will try and remember to post my found poems then.

 

Just because you CAN use word play, doesn’t mean you SHOULD.

SO Jack-in-the-Box is doing a series of commercials promoting their new sirloin burgers. Fine. In said commercials, everyone is talking about how their stuff is so great, and so much better than the angus burgers being served by the “competitors,” which, I think, is probably Hardee’s in this point, which is interesting, because I’ve used this space to complain about their commercials before. So there you go.

Anywho, one of the commercials features some assistant-type guy asking if Jack could point out “the angus area of the cow,” and it’s FUNNY because it sort of sounds like anus! See? Of course, all the humor is lost when you realize that angus is a breed of cow, not a part.

But at least we get to make anus* jokes!

Point #2–I’ve seen the occasional bumper sticker saying that if I’m “fed up,” or if I’ve “had enough,” I should go vote Democrat, like there’s a magic button that Democrats can push and instantly fix everything wrong in the country. Who knew it was so easy? Now, I’m not saying that the Republicans are doing a bang-up job themselves. If they were, I wouldn’t be typing this, I imagine. But the mere presence of Democrats in D.C. doesn’t necessarily mean life will be peachy all of a sudden.

There. I got all political for minute. And as it’s not something I dabble in too often, I’m sure a well-educated reader could easily put me in my place. So you can if you want, I guess.

*Yeah, yeah. This from the guy who like to make Uranus jokes. So I’m no better than them. Fair enough.

 

Who’ll Stop the Rain?

Thanks to the built-in blog stats I have, I’ve been able to see that my post ‘Rain,’ from last week, has earned itself quite a reputation–7 or 8 hits by itself, which is quite a feat, really, considering the small readership I assume I have. Most of the traffic, I think, is because I mentioned Ameren by name, and it allowed my post to turn up on a search engine (I assume) of sorts, Technorati. So I got a little famous, thanks to Death Storm.

Thanks?

Alas, my overall flow of visitors isn’t much higher than usual (6 is a pretty good day), so anyone who followed that link was probably, and rightfully, sorely disappointed in the overall quality of this site’s overall content, i.e. none.

But no matter! I’ll press on, as always, posting whatever it is I post here.

And now your monthly post about how I never post about anything interesting is now complete.

In other news:

Andrea let me borrow a book by Annie Dillard called Mornings Like This: Found Poem. The whole idea of found poetry is pretty interesting– “words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages…are taken from other sources and reframed as poetry by changes in spacing and/or lines (and consequently meaning), or by altering the text by additions and/or deletions,” as Wikipedia puts it. I had actually thought of something along those lines a few months ago, when I noticed that a long chain of email replies I had with a friend was getting progressively skinnier and compressed further down the page, since we never deleted old text. I thought it would be interesting to scroll down and see if any interesting phrasing popped up to use for lyrics. The idea got put on hold until last week when Andrea noted that our email conversations were getting the same way. So I mentioned the idea, and she gave me the book. I perused it, and it’s pretty amusing/interesting to see what she was able to create from a bunch of old books. Anydangways, I went into one of our emails last night, and was able to create a few short ideas, but nothing complete. What I might end up doing is intentionally compressing the text a bit to see what I can find. We’ll see where it goes.

The reading continues. I’ve probably read more books in the past two months than I have in the past two years, and it’s kinda nice, even if a lot of what I’ve read has been teen fiction. But it’s enjoyable, so I can’t complain.

I had a period a couple weeks ago where a lot of new song fragments kept popping into my head whenever I sat down to strum. So I have about a dozen partial songs recorded, waiting to be fleshed out. I suspect they’re waiting for lyrics at the moment. I actually went back and tried to edit some of my lyrical fragments from the past 8 months or so, and I was happy to see that some of them are, while not necessarily great, not all that bad either. And I can look at them at not wonder “what on earth was I thinking?”, which is always a plus. So I might have around 6-7 songs to work with. I just seed to sit down and match them with some tunes, if possible.

I never did give any thoughts on Transformers, did I? Well, I’ll be brief, since it’s old news at this point. As a movie-movie, I thought it was alright; your typical summer movie with explosions, silly dialogue, and required plot holes (though I thought the opening scene with the attack on the troops in Qatar was very well done and managed to create a fair amount of dread and even some compassion for the characters). As a Transformers movie, though, I thought it was quite good. The characters looked right, sounded right, and they nailed the actual transforming. So the six-year old in me was pleased. And, as I thought, it more or less felt like a long version of the cartoon, which was fine by me.

Only one month until Rush, which will be my first concert since February. This is almost unprecedented, I think. Not often will I go so long without seeing a concert. Hopefully some better acts will be on tour this fall.

 

Savings and Loan

So, um, I just opened another bank account for reasons too silly to go into here. But I just realized–I didn’t get a toaster! Not even a lousy sucker. I mean, what gives?

 

Rain

For those of you who don’t know, today is the one-year anniversary of Death Storm, which, as you may recall, was a pretty hefty hunk of weather. I only wish I’d had a better camera that night, and had some real pictures to show of the total surrealness of the night. Watching the grounds crew struggle against the wind to keep the tarp down, not being able to see across the stadium because the rain was so heavy, and watching (and then trying to get closer), as a concession stand was blown 20-30 feet across the concourse–all images I doubt I’ll be forgetting anytime soon. Then there was the fun of not having power for 8 days–coming home from work very day to make sure the cats hadn’t wilted away was a hoot. Losing everything in the fridge/freezer was nice, though it did allow for a chance to get rid of some stuff that had been in there far too long. Checking the Ameren site 47 times a day to see if my power was back, and then that glorious morning when I called home and my answering machine picked up. Ah, that was nice. I’d never been so happy to hear “Please record message.”

It was suggested to me that I honor the day by sitting around and play guitar by candle light tonight, which I may not have done last year, but it seems like a fine idea to do tonight. I just hope I have a candle, or something similar to use tonight. Mom suggested I cut all my power and sit around in the dark and heat, but I think I’ll go with option one. Sorry.

 

Turn the Page

Slacking off a bit around here, I will admit. Consider it an unintentional summer vacation. But I have been keeping myself occupied.

-lots and lots of reading: currently in the midst of 2 books, with another to be added this weekend. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Harry something or other. I don’t know, the kids seem to enjoy it.

-shot a wedding in Paducah last weekend, which was lots of fun. Set a new personal best, I think, and shot 730 pictures. I’ve since edited it down a bit, but that still seems pretty good. What’s interesting is that I used the exact same gear as when I shot Kevin’s wedding back in November. I didn’t have to dump my memory cards at all, which is good. But using the exact same gear this time, I made six memory card dumps to my laptop. I guess knowing I could do that allowed me to shoot freely without worrying about running out of space. And the family was larger as well.

Had dinner with mum and Mike last night, which is always nice. Mom was even nice enough to bring me a really snazzy mortar/pestle combo, so now I can grind my spices all old-timey like. I also present this amusing anecdote: I had to go, so, you know, I went to the bathroom. And at one point, the door swings open a bit, but no one comes in. Weird. And while I’m washing my hands, the door pops open again, and a little guy, maybe 4 or so comes in, and is staring at me like  I’m the creepiest thing he’s ever seen. He then proceeds to move, back to the wall, towards the toilet, never taking his eyes off me, and waiting until I was safely out of the room before, I assume, going about his business. Pretty funny. I hope I didn’t scar him too bad.

I have that affect on people.

Back to work now. This update has been brought to you by the letter A and a grant from Viewers Like You.

 

Just a thought

I was flipping through channels this afternoon, and stopped for a moment on either HSN or QVC. It’s all the same, and I can’t expect myself to remember which is which. Anydangways–they were selling one of those contraptions that allows people to project various images on their garage doors (think the snowmen around Christmas). In the course of the demo most of the images were 4th of July related (fancy that), save for a few. One in particular stood out–a picture of a ring, with the words “Will You Marry Me?”.

I’m pretty sure that’s not the best way to go about doing such things. Or maybe it’s just me.

Enjoy your holiday, dear readers. Go blow something up (safely!).

Thoughts on the Transformers movie coming later, if I remember.

Dave

 

Point/shoot–rinse/repeat

I was asked last night why I take pictures. Something I’ve never really thought about before, but definitely worth pondering a bit. The easy answer would have something to do with having a job, getting paid, blah blah blah. But since we’re on a quest to have More Meaning to things around here these days, we’ll dig deeper and see what comes out.

And yes, the plural thing will be kept up so long as it fits.

Anyways.

We’ll allow for a little bit of egoism, and say for starters that it’s something I think I’m pretty good at. Not great, but if I was already great at it, half the fun would be gone. And since I enjoy it, might as well keep it up. So I guess the bigger thing here is why I enjoy it.

One thing–this is a pretty fat-moving world (keeping the typo because it amuses me). A lot is going on, and it’s easy to miss things, or to forget them pretty quick because there’s something new coming at you. So a picture is a good way to remember what was there, and to have a physical reminder of the way things were. Memories are good, to be sure, but they can fade over time, or get distorted for whatever reason. But a picture is something concrete, and can’t be changed (we’re excluding computer manipulation, of course).

And since things do move pretty fast, having a camera and stopping to take a picture is a good way to slow down, if only for a few minutes, and take a look at what’s around you. Stopping to smell the roses, if you will. There’s too much cool stuff to be seen to just rush through life and not see it.

And once you’ve learned to stop and look around, then you start looking at different ways to take it all in. So many people just walk straight, eyes focused on what’s directly in front of them. And that’s a shame, because if you just stop and look up, down, or whatever, there’s so much more to see.

So–picture taking is a good way for me to appreciate the world around me, and then to find new ways to look at it. And then to capture what I see for posterity. And beyond that, I hope the people who see my work can maybe learn to appreciate their surroundings a bit more.

But that’s more what I do for myself–the nature-y stuff that fills the spaces when I’m not shooting for work. And the work stuff is 98% of the time focused (ha!) on people and what they happen to be doing. So where’s the attraction there?

Despite the fact that people can be annoying, and a pain to deal with sometimes (not that often, but still), I like people, and how they interact with each other. And I don’t really consider myself exceptionally outgoing, so I don’t find myself just walking up to strangers and watching them. But a camera gives me license to get in there and observe people, but in a way that tends not to freak people out. Granted, some people tend to tense up a bit in front of the camera, but they usually ease up after a bit. Or it’s not too hard to find people who don’t mind. And, often enough, people will chat me up, so then I can work on my people skills along the way. And a lot of people seem genuinely happy and/or excited to have their picture taken. And when I can pass those pictures along to people and they enjoy them, or are able to use them for something, that makes me happy. And then they can remember that moment in their lives the same way I remember the things I see. That probably applies more to the weddings I shoot, but it works the same way for other events.

And I almost feel obligated to take pictures. I’ve been given this talent/gift/skillz, whatever you care to call it. It would be…well, rude of me, disrespectful even, if I didn’t. The fact I can make a living off it (more or less), is just a bonus.

So that seems a good run-down of why I do this. Maybe more reasons will come to me. We’ll go with this for now, though.

Dave

 

Lucky Number Six

It’s been a long-standing belief of mine that on any given CD, the best song, or at least one of the best songs, is usually the sixth song, or on longer CDs seventh. Right around there. It’s not uniform across the board, but I have enough examples for me to push it as a theory. Anywho, I never really figured out why, or (oddly enough) thought about it until last night. I checked out George Harrison’s Cloud Nine from work last night. Now, this was one of my all-time favorite albums when I was a wee one, but only side two. Every time I listened to it, I listened to the second side, because:

a.) Side one was too mellow for me, and

b.) Side two kicked off with the rockin’ “Devil’s Radio.”

So last night i was listening, and it dawned on me: the sixth song was “Devil’s Radio!” Ah-ha! So maybe it went like this: artists, back in the vinyl day, would put a more up-tempo song to start off the second side of the album, and when the switch to CDs was made, that slot usually fell to the sixth or seventh song. I’ll have to check that. Nowadays, it’s probably just a way to get listeners into the disc’s second half.

Or not. Could just be me.

Dave