Apologies for not checking in for so long. For the past eight months or so time to do things like blogging have been consumed by artmaking, I am pleased to say. Will try to be less of a stranger, and today I have a good one to get us started again.
Studying Thomas Hart Benton at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in August.
Over the summer I took a vacation road trip which included a visit to one of my new favorite museums, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery in our nation's capitol. As per normal for a prior sub-tropical swampland the weather was oppressively hot, humid, dense, and I was delighted. I'd come to enjoy sweating off the mass of winter bulk during the warm summer months. Plus all those miniskirts ...
But on that day had forgotten to bring a container of water to help keep me hydrated on what turned out to be about a three mile forced march with someone who is actually in shape to make closing times. Could have changed shirts twice. And at one point turned to what I now refer to as The Drinking Fountain of Doom for quick relief, just downstairs from the Obama portrait.
Lining up to get their own selfies with Mr. Obama. I like how he has his own lighting rig
and guard. The velvet ropes are a nice touch.
My theory is that someone suffering from a severe virus based cold simply HAD to go the f*cking museum anyway and needed a drink, touching the drinking fountain's knob with their wet, mucosy germ infected hands. Then I came along -- The minute I lit up a smoke later on I placed the nucleus of the virus on my lips and was doomed. I distinctly remember walking away from it and saying to myself "You know, you might have thought twice about that, Bra ..."
But on that day had forgotten to bring a container of water to help keep me hydrated on what turned out to be about a three mile forced march with someone who is actually in shape to make closing times. Could have changed shirts twice. And at one point turned to what I now refer to as The Drinking Fountain of Doom for quick relief, just downstairs from the Obama portrait.
and guard. The velvet ropes are a nice touch.
My theory is that someone suffering from a severe virus based cold simply HAD to go the f*cking museum anyway and needed a drink, touching the drinking fountain's knob with their wet, mucosy germ infected hands. Then I came along -- The minute I lit up a smoke later on I placed the nucleus of the virus on my lips and was doomed. I distinctly remember walking away from it and saying to myself "You know, you might have thought twice about that, Bra ..."
I was able to find the infecting drinking fountain model at a Google powered seller page with a few clicks
of their search function. And a steal at just $3k.
Approximately twenty four hours after that fateful mouthful of water I arrived to spend a couple three days with a friend from high school in the likewise oppressively hot, humid and dank atmosphere of Glenside PA, just outside of Philadelphia. It is a 150 year old house and in an ongoing attempt to try and cool the indoors enough for their family, a large air conditioner had been fixed into the window in what amounted to the guest room, with me on a roll-up air mattress for the duration of the visit.
Which I was just as enthralled by as I had been for the relief of a mouthful of water the day before, I am addicted fans and AC as sleep aids. And happily crashed out that night several glasses of Malbec into it under nigh but a single bedsheet. Awaking the next day shivering cold with my sinuses completely inflamed & swollen shut for reasons which I could not fathom. After a repeat of the same the following night with twice as much Malbec I awoke on day two of the visit shivering with cold, sneezing uncontrollably, and come lunchtime boasting a sore throat. Eventually realizing that to my horror I had encountered The Air Conditioner of Death.
I believe the second is the correct model, likewise found on the same online selling resource.
By early afternoon I knew I was f#cked & had a limited amount of time before I would be socked ill with a plague-like virus that would ultimately result in bronchitus, which I tend to contract every other year at the closing of summer. This year it was just coming a tad earlier (August 19th) and I hastily bid my farewell, threw my crap in the vehicle and hauled ass for Syracuse (usually 4.5 hours with minimal stops, not that bad) and something resembling an actual bed so that I could suffer in peace while the antibodies sorted themselves out.
The Driving Range From Hell
The drive became a nightmarish six hour search for bathroom stops broken up by explosive sneezing, a worsening sore throat, and at last, that deep rattling chest cough my old bonghit buddies know so well. I made it to Cortland NY before absolutely having to stop and obtain a cold remedy. Went to a pharmacy in Syracuse for nighttime cold relief immediately upon return and attempted to put myself to bed in what turned out to be 90+ degree heat during an abnormally warm CNY summer. Which persisted through the beginning of September, much of those first two two weeks of the worst spent on a fold out futon in my father's well maintained but otherwise dusty, moldy and cobwebby basement. Just attempting to goddamn breathe.
By August 24th I had thrown in the towel and gone to our physician who was very impressed with my ability to gurgle the bass part from the "Barney Miller" theme using the mucus accumulated in my lungs. She was on the bounce, doled out the antibiotics, ordered a chest X-ray. Then my Jeep's fuel pump called it quits on the way home to complete the humiliation -- It had gone 850 miles in eight days, waiting till I was back in Syracuse to conk out, which blew my mind. By the time I was waiting for AAA to tow me to a mechanic the malady had been diagnosed as full blown bacterial based bronchial pneumonia, and they gave me two options: Hospitalization or go it at home. I literally heard the news while broken down by the side of the road, unable to do anything about it at all in 94 degree heat. Wheezing and gurgling, covered with sweat and debating how much more of this I could take.
They should offer this stuff in a chilled six pack to go. Try it over crushed ice with a little
fruit juice for that maximum healing relief. Goes right down the hatch.
Rounds of additional antibiotics + a steroid inhaler (!!) were prescribed but no cough relief could be offered up out of concern I'd end up hooked on dope. At fifty-one? Where were you when I was in my 30s and got tanked three nights a week. I thusly discovered the wonder of DELSYM over the ensuing three weeks & cannot speak highly enough of whatever the hell that goop is. Try the 12 hour grape flavored variety! It actually worked, which was a Godsend as the mechanics bungled the job twice and I was essentially trapped in that basement for about twelve days of 90 degree heat, no AC, my dad eager to work on chores in his woodshop on the other side of the wall, and a condition from which there was no relief. Went claustrophobic on about day nine and it was bad, but am relieved to say my fit and vigorous 80 year old parents did not end up with it, somehow.
Not to go all gloomy but on two occasions I found myself literally unable to breathe and contemplated my mortality. Sitting up in bed, covered with sweat. Fifty one years old. I can see now how pneumonia can kill people now, with the constant reminder that lifelong hero Freddy Mercury of favorite rock band Queen was ultimately killed by bronchial pneumonia (complication of AIDS, lest we forget) hovering over the ordeal. Just lifting my head and turning aside to empty the phlegm from throat + lungs became exhausting and painful. You will eventually drown in your own fluids if unable to do so; I was afraid to sleep, nodding off in sitting positions from time to time so I'd hopefully just spew it all over myself. Fifty one. For additional fun a topical secondary infection related to an abscess whose poison got into my bloodstream eventually led to a visit to Urgent Care in Utica NY, who were excellent.
Doctor Who and Leela, shrunk down to microbe size and injected into the base of the Doctor's skull
to find the infecting nucleus in "The Invisible Enemy" (1977)
A week+ and another round of antibiotics later I am whole again, the pneumonia symptoms abated and the topical infection pretty much gone. I am able to work once more and we start preparing our next exhibit at The Tech Garden in Syracuse this weekend, featuring artworks by the students + instructors at Eye Studios in East Syracuse NY, led by Ilene Bernstein Layow, which will grace our walls through the New Year. Saturday a work of my art will be part of a benefit auction at Sculpture Space Inc. in Utica, and a Halloween oriented show at the new Wildflowers Armory in Syracuse awaits the week after our Tech Garden gig. I was able to paint for a few minutes last week as well, but while in the worst of the pneumonia's clutch I had an insight on what this post is meant to showcase.
"Guitar Giants Vol.1". There was never a Vol.2 and the 2LP set essentially a retail bootleg of Curtis Knight
cuts released by producer Ed Chaplin, who screwed Hendrix over for years. No royalties were ever
paid to Hendrix or his estate for dozens of such packagings. Lawsuits a-plenty since.
At some point during the ordeal I had been in the mood for the miraculous "Third Stone from the Sun" by Jimi Hendrix and followed it up on my iTunes list with a very strange beast which I now rate as my favorite recording to feature his playing. I know the track as "Second Time Around", an extended three chord instrumental jam featured on a 2 record LP set called "Guitar Giants Volume 1" which my older brother gave me as a Christmas present in 1983. A retail bootleg featuring mostly cuts by Curtis Knight & the Squires, the track has fascinated me from the first moment I heard it for all sorts of weedy reasons.
It is what sounds to be a "stripped down" low fidelity instrumental consisting entirely of a drum player, a rhythm guitarist who must have been on a very potent dose of speed, and Hendrix laying down a totally mean distorted cycle of acid guitar licks. But no vocals, no production, just these guys whaling away at it for nine minutes. The only suggestion I ever got from anyone was that "It's probably just early 60s music for people who were tripping on acid". Like, groovy, Man.
"Second Time Around", 1966, rhythm + guitar backing track for
Curtis Knight's "Get That Feeling".
Eventual research into Curtis Knight's work with Hendrix revealed it to be backing track(s) for a more complete Curtis Knight track called "Get That Feeling", linked below via another YouTube user's upload.
The completed "Get That Feeling" with vocals by Curtis Knight.
Which is great, but the instrumental version has this mysterious quality about it which I think gets lost with the vocals, bass and production techniques added. Jimbo was really saying something with his just guitar, and that the rhythm guitarist was able to keep his barrage of energy up for nine minutes is nothing shy of remarkable. Easily the creepiest track ever attributed to Jimi Hendrix, and I happened to hear it in a feverish afternoon of thick humid 90 degree heat, shut in a little room which I maybe had cooled down to the lower 80s via a trio of fans. Coughing viscous gunk out and absolutely whacked out of my skull on Nyquil, Delsym + over the counter sleep medication. And I had this vision ...
Anyone who has read my blog understands that not only is Ridley Scott's ALIEN (1979) my favorite movie ever, but I regard it as a pinnacle work of art in the history of mankind encountered at just the right age. I credit it with having ultimately inspired me to pursue a career as a visual artist, at one point considering a career in film production. Second on that list of "Steve Movies" has to be John Boorman's "Point Blank" from 1967, a neo-noir gangster epic starring tough guy actor Lee Marvin in the most artful film appearance of his career.
He plays "Walker", a dockworker in Los Angeles tangentially connected to organized crime who is approached by his best buddy from the Marines (played by character actor John Vernon, known for being Dean Wormer in "Animal House") to help him repay a massive debt to the mob by pulling off a heist. If Vernon's character doesn't pay them back they will kill him, and they mean it. And so the two join forces to intercept a shipment of payoff money from another crime syndicate on the abandoned Alcatraz Island. "We just knock them on the head and that's it."
The moment of betrayal: Actress Sharon Acker was reportedly injured by discharge from the blanks
during filming and the footage kept due to the convincing nature of her horrified reaction.
Instead Vernon's Mal Reese character murders the two handlers in cold blood, disaffecting Walker from the cause, and the payoff turns out to be less than half of what expected. Certainly not enough to cover his debt if Marvin's Walker gets his cut as agreed. And so Reese double crosses Walker, shooting him twice at point blank range during an opportune moment. Reese makes off with both the loot + Walker's young wife (Sharon Acker), who was already cheating on him with Reese and had come along to help count the bundle.
Walker is left for dead, and the film opens with him presumably regaining consciousness in a dimly lit Alcatraz cell and re-living the events which lead up to the betrayal. The film proper then begins with depicting Walker's ordeal in pulling his shattered carcass out of Alcatraz, escaping like a prisoner by crawling through the maze of rigging, dragging himself over the fence, and attempting the almost suicidal effort of swimming to the mainland.
One of my favorite images from the film: That's actually Lee Marvin and he's actually hanging there as seagulls
flutter by: Decorated United States Marine & WW2 vet Marvin did most of his own stunts in the film.
The rest of the story chronicles Walker's quest for both payback of his $93,000 (about $600,000 in 2018 money) and revenge for the betrayal: It is a Spaghetti Western story set in contemporary 1967 Los Angeles, depicted by director Boorman as a plasticized and dehumanizing wasteland of modernist architecture and bland, tacky, vividly colorful consumer oriented culture. Filmed by cinematographer Phillp A. Lathrop with a gelatin slide psychedelic "New Wave" style in widescreen Panavision, the story sticks to its noir based influences while avoiding the typical shootouts & hollow bravado that usually make period crime thrillers so routine.
Instead, director John Boorman -- famed for such later films as the survival epic "Deliverance", the incredible "The Emerald Forest", his Oscar winner "Hope & Glory", and the masterful Tolkein-influenced "Excalibur" -- pursues the look of the era in what can only be described as a series of set-piece sequences rooted squarely in what I was taught to regard as Pure Form Theory. The film drips with period atmosphere, bizarre camera angles, hallucinatory sequences which may or may not be dream visions. And a dilated perspective of time highlighted by flashbacks, flash forwards, alterations of film speed, with lots & lots of dosed up trippy 60s stuff oozing across the screen.
Another memorable image from the film with the "Pure Form" of the shot composition almost
resembling a monocolored Kandinsky painting. "Repo Man"would re-visit the location in 1984.
The most freaked-out scene easily being Walker's visit to a nightclub in search of his wife's sister, played by favorite Lee Marvin film leading lady Angie Dickinson. What he finds is singer Stu Gardner's psychedelic soul band the Stu Gardner Trio playing something called "Mighty Good Times". The group performs what looks to be an acid/amphetamine fueled stage act while bikini clad go-go girls gyrate under liquid slide light effects.
The nightclub scene from "Point Blank" deconstructed of it's dialog and much of the violence.
It is a most strange nightclub, complete with an in-stage bar, a slide projection screen with abstract images projected as the band plays, yet appears to be populated mostly by balding middle aged men in suits who watch in amusement rather than appreciation. Which I guess makes sense in the film's fictional universe as a corrupted mob-owned joint but we digress.
The scene with the band playing is hypnotic and the "peak-out" of the film's psychedelic aura. Gardner's bizarre vocalizings are limited to frenetic screeching and screaming. The camera lingers as he enlists certain members of the audience to duet with him while Walker queries a waitress friend about Dickinson's whereabouts. Then has to fight for his life against greasy-haired mob thugs dispatched by Reese to kill him, and Walker has to play dirty to make it out alive. But in an interesting idiomatic twist boldly held for the rest of the film's duration, Walker does not actually kill anyone, including his guilt-torn buddy Reese. They get themselves wiped out just by being the scumbags they are, Walker's mere presence serving as the recurring catalyst for their downfall.
"Most accidents happen within three miles of home."
Which leads to an interesting sidebar about the film, namely the nature of Walker's character. There is ample evidence to effectively argue that he is actually either visualizing the film's story as a dying fantasy of revenge as he bleeds to death back on Alcatraz. Or in fact may actually be a "ghost" or revenant: The physical spirit of a dead man come back to fulfill his dying wish for vengeance against those who had wronged him who then dissolves into the shadows at the end. Many of the actions Walker engages in during the film are other-worldly, beyond the ability of a living person to perform.
He melds in an out of darkness like a spirit in the night, laconic and singular in his purpose with an uncanny invulnerability which always ends up resulting in tragic outcomes for those who attempt to stop him with violence. Ironic justice prevails as the mob's efforts to wipe him out go bad. Luxury automobiles are destroyed, hit men target those who hired them, and the elusive quest for this $93,000 payoff ceases being about the money and becomes about the personal character of those whom he expects to pay up.
It is a throughly fascinating film and from the first viewing (in an Altered State, I will confess) I have been impressed by its artful storytelling, the tough guy on the prowl for divine retribution subtext, and the superb manner in which the visual components meld together as an artifice of reality which is completely convincing. There are no unnecessary scenes and all of the camerawork serves to move the story forward. Contemporary filmmakers can learn a lesson from "Point Blank", and anyone with a love for cinematic artfulness owe themselves at least a pay-per-view screening.
A revenant of vengeance from beyond the grave? Or dying fantasy of a mortally wounded man. Anything
other than just some guy who got double-crossed looking for his $93 grand.
I obtained the film on VHS within a month of first seeing it during the summer of 1984, initially from a crummy cable television broadcast and then as a retail pre-record VHS. In both forms the widescreen Panavision photography is cruelly pan/scanned for 4:3 television screens, so a Laserdisc upgrade to a widescreen ratio was a necessity during the 2000s. And in the last decade the film has seen release on first DVD and now Blu-Ray in it's original ultra-wide 2:20:1 Panavision ratio complete with every bone-crunching, acid flashback moment, and is the best movie ever made other than ALIEN. Period.
Reason why the long-winded description is that while hearing the "Second Time Around" track in my fever-dream state I was thinking of what else it's unique styling reminded me of and "Point Blank"'s nightclub scene with Stu Gardner Trio came to mind. It became a feverish vision of the sweat and steam boiling off my person as related to the optical frenzy of the scene's photography, the sequence of the singer and his audience screaming as metaphors for the pneumonia coughing. Walker's ability to walk away a metaphor for my own survival.
The mortal issue of whether or not Walker is a ghost mentally transposed onto my own person as I literally could have freaking died. Or did I really die? and the three week ordeal a descent into a furnace of hell replete with inept auto mechanics, unending heat and humidity. The constant discomfort of being so warm that even lying on pillows makes you sweat, the ongoing inability to get a decent lungful of air or stop perspiring.
"Mighty Good Times" at The Movie House, Los Angeles, the current location of a
club known as "The House of Walker", or so I am told.
And so during my recovery, or as something to do while recovering, I decided to mix the two together: Set "Second Time Around" to the visuals of the "Point Blank" nightclub scene, and specifically to try and make it sort of look like Stu Gardner Trio is making the music, or could be making the music, and construct a sort of digital lava lamp listeners could stare at that changes along with the pattern of the Hendrix music. The total project took about two weeks in all, using a DVD rip of the film and a digital recording of the song using a very basic USB turntable system.
What I did was to first trim the nightclub scene out of the film and import the clip to iMovie: Runs about 4 minutes in total. I then removed all of the dialog sequences from the scene leaving just what takes place on the stage & subsequent fight sequence, resulting in about three minutes of usable footage. I then imported the song file into iMovie and removed the audio content from the film clip, then looped the silent footage over the Hendrix song three times to account for it's nine minute length.
Next I deconstructed the scene into individual sequences or shots, chopping the 3 minutes of footage up into bits which were then manipulated further by speeding them up or slowing them down, reversing them and using iMovie's "Ken Burns" effect to zoom in / zoom out or even just crop down the 2:20:1 Panavision ratio to a 16x9 format which would fill a flatscreen monitor in places, then zoom back out to a letterboxed 2:20:1 ratio.
A zoom shot of the Stu Gardner Trio from the 16x9 version of the video, and in a bizarre twist
unless I be mistaken the keyboard player is a white guy in blackface. But I could be wrong.
While doing this I opted to remove almost all of the violence from the fight scene as I found it to be at odds with Hendrix's overall message of peace, love and good acid. And began to get a sense of how certain shots "went with" the music better than others -- the go-go dancing girls being a favorite, as they could be dancing to anything. And decided to use certain sections of the songs as "breaks" where a certain action which mimics what takes part onscreen: The back / forth of the singer and his audience and then the shots of Stu bouncing on & off the stage being particularly tough to syncopate.
I also decided to use the drum break towards the end as the credits sequence where I could attribute sources (Video Artists: ALWAYS attribute your clip sources!!! very important, as you did not shoot the clips used and those who did deserve mention if only to help ward off any potential legal action while having fun with the text). To give thanks and cite influences in a manner which becomes part of the video itself rather than just dead air at the end. The last touch was adding a few optical effect pre-set filters to change the way some of the repeated footage of Lee Marvin and the go-go dancer look, to try in a manner that is less tedious than just the same thing over and over again. The song isn't just the same thing over and over again so neither should the visual component. Only one or two shots from the final build are repeated without being altered in some manner.
I love editing video as much as painting, drawing, making music, or writing.
I also decided in the end to make two versions of the video, one using the 16x9 screen formatting for playback on 16x9 format flat screen monitors and a "Panavision ratio" version which maintains the 2:20:1 widescreen ratio through out for projection in a gallery setting using a screen or just shown right on a wall. The final compile is at 720p HD and I am very pleased with the results, though I wish I'd been able to work a few sound clips of the singer screaming in. Though since I'd sped the film up he sounded like a chipmunk and it interfered with the flow of shots juxtaposed to the guitar sounds. It wasn't convincing.
Total project took 10 "builds" or edited versions over a two week period and helped me to shut my mind off, sit in a chair and do nothing other than edit video for the duration of my recovery. Making art is always the best therapy and I love editing video as much as I love painting or drawing.
My video for the Hendrix cut:
I consider this to be one of my best efforts of working with Time Based Digital Media to date! and dedicated the results to my late friend Christopher Fondy of Syracuse, who tragically passed away at only age 54 just as the pneumonia was at it's height. We both played guitar as younger guys and would often discuss our favorite King Crimson or Genesis riffs when there was a chance while working shifts at the corner grocery store. And again recently via social media.
Chris had recently re-discovered his music and pushed himself to begin composing on piano and was very excited by how he had found himself again by doing so. He came to some of our shows at The Tech Garden and it was always a surprise to realize that was him. I shall miss our discussions, and know he would be grooving on this tape.
Save me a seat, Bro.
My favorite film by my favorite director.
Thanks for this wonderful post.
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