Present: Mary Burns (M), Ruth Parson (R), Jim "Jimmy The Peach" Aaron (P), Steve Harlow (S), David King (D).

- Abstract by p0ps, Peach, and Mary from a Dragon Dictate transcript.

00:00

computer sounds then silence

00:11

"brrdddd, brrddd"

"brrdddd, brrddd"

"brrdddd, brrddd"

00:19

S: Hi David.

D: Hi.

S: Hey hi, welcome.

D: Hey Steve.

S: You're the first one I've got so far. I've got a, had a little delay this morning.

D: I noticed it.

S: Yea, nothing ever works the way you want it to.

D: And Emory's not going to be joining us today?

S: I guess not. He asked me to try him and I just did, but, but uh, he's not online, so. If I see him come online I'll try him again. But, yeah, he's kind of buried under a big avalanche of professional and personal stuff. I feel really bad. And then, Jimmy's calling in. Jim I don't want you to call in, I want to call you.

J: Hey.

S: There you are. OK good.

David and Steve laugh a bit.

J: So I'm the last to the party? I see David, hi David.

D: Hi Jimmy.

J: And I see a question mark where Mary's head should be.

S: I'm going to hang up on her and try to choose her again.

D: There's no answer, it says. Well she's right upstairs, I know that for a fact.

S: I know. She has two accounts and we never can get it straight which one she's on. It's my fault, I'm sure. We have Ruth here.

J: Oh good, there she is. Hey Ruth.

S: She hasn't picked up yet. There you are, Ruth.

R: I am.

D: Hi Ruth.

R; Hello,hello, hey David

J: Hey Ruth.

R: Jimmy, that you over there.

J: I'm the one under the cowboy hat.

R: I don't see no cowboy hat.

J: Well I see you. I have actual action video of you.

R: Hmm.

J: That's good,

D: Live action.

some laughs

D: Live action

J: Live action, Ya. Get online, for $4.95 a month live action.

M: Hi Ruth. Hi everybody.

R: Hi Mary.

S: Are you there?

M: I am here, but, I told you about the problems with my computer and I was wondering if it would happen.

S: Did it?

M: It's working right now, but I have my other one open just in case, so. Sometimes it's good to have two addresses.

S: Yea, that's true. I have three Gmail accounts and it's not a great idea, but, I have, 'em.

This draws some general laughter from the group.

J: More spam.

03:20

S: I don't get spam through Gmail, do you guys?

D: Do the different accounts have a purpose, different personalities, or something?

S: It was basically a mistake to create three of them, I couldn't get my normal name...

04:44

S: Here we are, four minutes into it and we've digressed.

P: We started nowhere and went further?

Steve gives the show number and we begin introductions, but digress into discussing the previous day's solar eclipse.

05:55

P: Did you see it or were there clouds?

R: We had a nice clear sky. We went on a walk for it. I poked a hole in a piece of cardboard folded up and put in my pocket, thinking I would be able to see the whole thing happen. But, it didn't work that well, the hole made an awkward circle, but, the light changed. Gorgeous.

D: It was completely overcast here in Vancouver.

R: I'm so sorry. We did see it much better on our phones.

Introductions continue

David explains he and Mary are located in Granthams Landing, near Gibsons, B.C.

M: These are small coastal communities established by fisherman who paddled up the coast and claimed a piece of land for himself and built a dock.

M: Peach, it was a blast from the past when you brought up Richard Brautigan. I looked him up after reading the poem you sent, "All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace", I saw that he had many girlfriends or wives. I can't remember which one I met or under what circumstances, but, I was charmed to remember those years, when his work was new.

08:25

P: Well, his daughter lives in Sonoma County, where I used to live, but our paths did not cross. I've been a Brautigan fan. Steve mentioned the (...Machines of Loving Grace) title.

S: It was the techno utopia statement I remembered from the '60s and thinking that was kind of a cool concept.

M: Yes, but, if only Richard Brautigan could visit us now and see. "When we are free of our labors", he says. Are you kidding?

General laughter

09:30

M: It is interesting, that people are actually creating artworks that use electronics in the forest, using computers to make looping sound. We did that in a production at the "Art Farm", here. Loops were made of sound from an incredible machine, a sculpture, made by Geoffrey Smedley, sounds were put in a stump. That's what came to mind when I read the poem.

10:50

P: "Cybernetic ecology... return to our animal brothers and sisters... and all watched over by machines of loving grace". That sounds like a Star Trek episode back in the original Star Trek

S: There was a lot of thought like that back then.

P: They would land on a planet that was altruistic and the machines were a were... I guess the term "garbage in, garbage out" refers to the computer and so depends on the altruistism of the programmer and the user about how loving and gracefully that would be.

11:33

S: Right and in Star Trek, the machines were always malicious.

P: Yeah, some soul sucker or...

S: Most depictions of machine intelligence have been malicious.

D: It began with began with A Space Odyssey, I think. The computer cold, calculating.

S: The danger of HAL, the garbage in garbage out stuff, is a little modified today with network intelligence and crowd sourced information. Garbage in garbage out still applies in as far as a computer can't anything that it isn't programmed to do. But the social software of networked computers it is not programmed by any one person. And the programming is continually being updated. There is less chance that a networked intelligence would only serve one function or represent one point of view or that the body of knowledge would be so limited that it could overlook the needs of individual nodes in the network.

13:06

M: So now it's a matter of choosing your garbage.

S: If you don't like the garbage make some of your own.

P: Watch your garbage and your garbage alone... What about the free aspect of it? When this particular poem was one of six or seven that Richard Brautigan wrote around that time and we're talking '66 or '67, they weren't published in a book until '68 or '69, the poems were given out on the street by The Diggers... There's so many parallels to today - the idea was to have the news of the moment handed to you by someone like you, rather than corporate, worldwide broadcasters that tell the same thing to everybody. They gave out poems, essays and posters about get-togethers. The diggers got the Haight-Ashbury free health clinic going.Peter Coyote was a Digger. They were revolutionaries and real grassroots, hands-on workers, not just intellectuals.

15:37

S: Primarily, they fed people and found places for them to sleep.

P: What about the free aspect? Some of what we're doing right this minute is free. Anybody who listens later can use any idea brought up...

M: David, aren't you giving your songs away on Soundcloud?

D: (Soundcloud) provides a platform for that, as well as posting it on Facebook and by the way, thank you, Steve, for sharing Lake Louise. I'm a bit shy about putting out there. I'm sometimes barraged by other people's posts and I wish I could respond more positively, I have a basic reluctance to put it out there, I don't want to clutter up my homepage.

17:34

M: That is more about your feelings regarding social behavior more than about whether or not you're getting paid for it. Jimmy, you don't mind giving it away, money has never meant much to you.

17:57

P: If you're talking to me, yes, that's true.

M: Oh, sorry, no I was talking to David. The Diggers were giving away poems, David is giving away songs... D: There is also a link to buy them. It's the commercial aspect of it. I don't want to be flogging stuff all the time.

18:31

S: You can't download the song without buying it. You can listen to it. And if you know how, you can get it out of your browser cache. With digital media, everything you listen to, your computer makes a clone of it and so you have it in your cache. But most people don't know how to get out of their cache. So, effectively, you're allowing it listen to it, but if they want to take it with them, they have to pay. It's a honor system. That system has worked well for a lot of people.

D: Actually, of the 11 songs that I have posted on Soundcloud only six of them have a link to purchase. I like it being half and half. Half is just generosity.

P: That's great! A conscious choice, I like that.

20:10

S: The media is free on the Internet, I always think of it as advertising something. Advertising the creator's abilities, if nothing else. This is not the first free media that's come along. Television is the biggest example of free media. Nobody had to pay money to watch I Love Lucy, but you paid with your attention to Dr. Ross Dog Food commercials Then they figured out how to make you pay, didn't they?

20:42

D: There was a scam in the early days of television. People going door to door asking people if they had their TV license. They'd sell them one, if they didn't have one.

(laughter)

P: I wonder what those people's children or their children's children are selling today.

S: That model of licensing exists in the UK, that's how the BBC is funded.

21:40

M: Yeah, it's great. Great for the people in the UK because there's a steady supply of money for programming, whereas, in the US or Canada, public broadcasting is subject to government cuts. Voters in Canada wouldn't go for that license, people in US wouldn't even want the idea to be brought up. At our level, the question is, does anyone not like free? I think we're all happy to have our stuff available for people to look at.

22:25

P: I'm not surprised that we all are.

S: And the Digger thing as far as the media goes handing out one sheets on Haight Street. That's very similar web publishing. We shouldn't be negating any of the publishing models that have worked in the past and are still working. It's just that we can now put the media out without waiting for publishing. We put it out now so that it can have it's effect and deal with the publishing later. It's kind of what Brautigan and the Diggers were doing by handing out a sheet of paper with the printed poem. They just weren't waiting for it to be collected and published into a book.

23:28

Steve goes on to point out viral media isn't new, that the one sheets are an example of that. Also, in the American Revolution, for example, Thomas Paine pamphlets are another example. as is, Martin Luther posting on the church door.

24:12

M: Okay, we finished with that, everybody's been giving stuff away, free. We're just continuing the proud tradition.

Speaking of computers and mammals in the woods, Mary wants to talk about the weekend at Roberts Creek, BC about 15 minutes north of Gibsons, an open studio event. Most people who live outside the two towns on the Sunshine Coast peninsula live down wooded roads, and you don't know what's down those roads in most cases. On Saturday, she and David discovered a formal gallery, called Gold Moss Gallery, which is beautifully constructed and even has a little bar, as well as a very welcoming atmosphere. On the grounds, a local farmer was selling homemade goat cheese of various kinds. David pointed out that the building's deck there is like a pier. It extends outward instead of being attached to the building so that there is space between the deck and the side of building.

M: Our friend Diego Samper, was drawing that day, at an easel behind the window. A musician was playing on the "Pier".

Referring to a place most of the artchatters have in common, she mentioned that her area is a lot like Sonoma County or Mendocino County, where the big trees come down to the ocean. Her longstanding image of the place she wanted to live. She next describes another venue, a huge building made of receycled materials. Like an airplane hangar, says David. It is a workshop/studio called "This Is It" and was created by Robert Studer, a sculptor doing the most amazing glass work. One of the other things happening in the forest around here. One of Mary and David's neighbours has a company called Radical Films, and he was at This Is It displaying his new invention, an electric mountain bike. Our street is a fairly steep hill, David explains. We see him riding past and think of how hard it must be. Now they know he has a battery in his backpack.

Steve asks, couldn't the bike be charged by wind, or by pedalling. Peach adds that it could also be powered by slowing down.

P: It sounds cooler than these things I see people riding around Washington DC.

S: The Segue? P: Everyone who rides them is an instant nerd. The minute they get on the segue they look like nerds. I like the idea of hiding some of the nerdish equipment in the backpack.

S: I think nerds are cool.

M: Bjorn Enga is a creative guy, comes up with ideas, other people build them. He did a film with the sculptor, Robert Studer, who had huge metal balls hanging from the airplane hangar. At one point he hung the balls in the woods and that's what the film was made. There's a lot happening in the woods for one reasons because right now we have a lot of woods and we hope it stays that way.

S: Why is that.

M: Because we like them. Then she goes on to describe the knitting in the woods effort to save a certain forest under immediate threat of being logged.

M: People do things in the woods and Richard Brautigan would be happy to know that. I think some people with really good cell phones can sometimes communicate from the woods. From deep in the woods here, right David? You have a cell phone.

D: Yeas, I do indeed. He says he is very vigilant about orange flags and removes them when he sees them. He says he buries them. David worries the authrities will hear about the flags.

P: Your name is David Letterman, is that correct?

M: Mary asks Ruth to weigh in.

33:52

R: Well, uh, this poem. First off, I couldn't read it. The first three times I started to, because I just didn't like the way it looked. I don't know what that says about who. But then I did read it and it made me think two things The last time I was in a forest it was up Joy Road around Occidental, California, just taking a little stroll through the redwood forest and I couldn't help but pull out my cell phone with the camera on it, and look a slow look up to the top of the trees and then it was a listening machine - all the sounds the way the wind was hitting the needles and the sound of the footsteps on the really deep, floor. I used a tool to able to bring some of that back home and listen to it. And then it made me think of another thing that happened in a forest - machines watching over me. When we came back from our camping trip we came on the train and I left my bag on the train that had all my valuables my money and my wallet my iPad and, and it found me. I had a strong feeling that the bag would find me. Of course, the condutor had found the bag and took it to that station. With all the analog things going on in that bag - my business cards and my wallet. The way they found me was to turn on the iPad and they found my phone number. Wow the machine watched over me and made sure I got my stuff back.

36:07

M: Great story. You left us to consider the poem and then some of the ideas in it.

Mary said she had a problem with the phrase "mutually programming harmony." Steve said the ideas were funny. Like looking at "retro-futurism" . And I thought that language was really poor. Peach thought that was part of the Brautigan style but Peach thought it a gimmick. Mary said it wasn't the ideas, it was the clunkiness of the words, three consecutive three syllable words. She felt that interrupted the clarity of the verse there. David said depending on the words it could be a musical. Peach suggested some simple changes in the layout could be more clear and powerful. Peach is reminded of the blessing said before dinner when he was young. It was one long sentence delivered with one breath, "BlessusoLordforthesethygiftswhichweareabouttoreceivefromthybountythroughChristOurLordAmen".

38:57

Peach said how much he likes to read and discuss haiku.

39:20

R: This poem made me admire haiku even more.

S: I like the idea that this poem got to me in San Luis Obispo. I was sure it was 1965 but maybe it was 1966. But I had it recited to me. I never saw this piece of paper. This poet friend of mine who had his own poems and would often recite them from memory, recited this one without claiming it to be his. I forget his name unfortunately. Maybe he's the poet laureate now I don't know. His poems were kind of surrealist and futurist like this. He had one about being in a "food forest" which was about a supermarket.

40:31

P: What I like about the poem is the idyll setting of it. I-d-y-l-l. The electronics and computers. This is like past the future.

40:31

Peach launches into some thoughts about the Kardashev Scale, which he found fascinating when he heard theoretical physicist Michio Kaku speak about on two or three seperate occassions. The Kardashev Scale is a measure of a civilizations technological advancement based on the amount of usable energy available. A Type I civilization has all the available energy on their own planet. Type II, their sun and Type III, their galaxy. Kaku has extende the scale. A Type IV civilization utilizes the energy of an entire universe and the Type V, a collection of universes. Peach sees the setting of the poem in a more advanced civilization.

42:13

P: When I see that electronics so much a part of nature in this poem I see that as a place way past where our present is. So far into the future that machines coexist with us.

S: Isn't that where we are now?

P: No, no. They don't coexist with us. Today, they're tools, they're not sentient beings. To me this poem is giving sentience to them, animals and computers on the same plane. Sentience.

S: I think he was seeing that. However, there are computer programs now that challenge our definitions of life. They are aware, they are sentient, in the sense that they take independent actions, reproduce themselves, and manipulate their environment.

43:36

M: You say they reproduce themselves, but they're like those animals that are hermaphrodites, two sexes in one. Is that how they reproduce themselves?

S: They make new versions of themselves, evolve.

M: You can put your imagination into a lot of parallels. Poets, take note! There's a lot there, not for people like me, but machines that are alive, I didn't get that out of the poem.

44:25

S: Yeah, he probably didn't have that really clear because he was probably too far away in the '60s to think about living machines. It is somewhat beyond us now, although in a rudimentary way there are some things that have all the characteristics of a lifeforms. If they're not alive then they at least forces us to redefine life. The major life-form on this planet is bacteria. What you have to do to be alive isn't that much.

45:16

nervous laughter

P: How about intelligent life?

S: Well, bacteria can be said that have intelligence.

P: Is a sense of humor required for intelligence?

S: Okay, there we go, now we're on to something.

M: When we get self-mocking bacteria

laughter

D: And that can be used to settle the argument about when life begins...

P: ...when the chicken crosses the road...

S: ...when you make someone laugh.

D: That's pretty good, I like that.

S: The Turing test for deciding whether a computer is as intelligent as a human is just when a human accepts the responses of a computer as coming from a person. So, that's better, right? If you make someone laugh.

D: When you think of babies developing a personality, that's how it is usually expressed, through humorous stimuli.

M: An interesting answer to the anti-abortionists.

P: There's many pregnant women who, when listening to music, felt that their babies dance.

48:10

S: Another aspect of that poem fits it's time, the idea that we would all soon be passed our labors. Like we would create a society were we no longer had to do chores. I'd like to connect that to our talk last week when Mary was asking who was going to promote the idea that commercial real estate developers should be subsidizing artists for all the wealth they create when they move into a neglected neighborhood. Back at that time in my sociology class, '65, I was promoting the idea of a national wage, every person in the in the country be given a minimum wage. Only those people who wanted more than the minimum would take jobs or create businesses to add to that minimum. One of many advantages I saw was for artists and other people who need to devote a long time to developing their craft before they can hope to be marketable, could be supported during their development. Now I see that something like that happened in the UK, before Thatcher. That during the '60s and '70s, with The Dole so many artists and musicians that took advantage of the benefit to develop their art that the UK created became a leader in many of the arts, disproportional to the size of their population. This must have brought in tremendous wealth to the countries. I'd really like to see a calculation of that phenomenon. I bet they made money, as well as prestige which indirectly brought more benefits.

50:45

S: Even U.S. President Richard Nixon proposed a Guaranteed Minimum Income, a a reverse income tax... it seems to me that's a very cost-effective way to create wealth of the country by supporting people in their pursuit of learning, in developing specialized skills, or starting businesses which could return to the society high level earnings. Those who only want to waste their time, could do so without bothering anybody.

52:04

M: People just don't look at it that way. There is a bit of a change starting to happen. By the way, our Pierre Trudeau and his cabinet where seriously considering that type of income support and I think we have some elements of it now. But we have such a conservative government, now, that most of that is being cut back. With the new Prime Minister of France, there seems to be some support for the idea that austerity is not working. So, maybe there's hope for some change and governments may find that directed public funding could have a better effect than cutting back and taxing less. S: Yes, the New York art scene of the '50s was primarily founded by people who had received the W.P.A. money in the '30s. A government investment that brought a lot of wealth and prestige to New York and to the country. I think, now, with the powerful networked computers, we might be able to calculate what kinds of investments bring one what sort of rewards.

53:46

P: Whenever this topic comes up for me, I always wonder about myself being such a minority in the world, because of my education, experience and access, I wonder if a program of supporting artists is really only for a small, elite group of people... I'm wondering what benefit is it to the third world to have me supported to make my art?

55:15

S: You would create wealth through your art.

P: And how would that benefit Africa?

S: Having more wealth in the world is a benefit to all the world.

55:38

M: Well, this discussion could continue next week and I may have some time to do a bit of research on how much wealth has been created by artists in communities... for instance, if you have an art gallery and people use it, the artists and you make money and pay taxes, when it comes time to distribute foreign aid, there is more to work with. It does happen. D: A lot of theater artists can't afford to go to theater, if they could, theater would be much more vibrant. Theater has a tradition of supporting itself, but now the cost of tickets average $40.

S: Peach, what I was talking about was guaranteed annual income for everybody in the country, nothing elitist about that.

P: But, how's that help Bangladesh?

S: A more vibrant culture here would create more wealth which would benefit all the world. More people who could send money to their relatives in poor countries or through travel and business investment help other societies develop.

P: I'm just playing Devil's Advocate because...

S: ... because Bill O'Reilly isn't here?

P: Ha, ha. No, because I fear that the money won't get to the right people. It could be just sour-grapes...

S: ... or lack of imagination, come on, man!

(chuckle)

P: That's good. Could be.

R: It could be that by creating a replicable model, other counties could see that it is worth replicating.

M: If we're talking about Bangladesh, if they are to benefit from anything, we have to stop global warming, because they could drown with higher ocean levels. I think it's time to go.

59:28

S: Hold on, I want to say one thing before you go and that's the we decided a new way of posting this. That is the audio will be posted as normal, today and Peach will run the recording through Dragon Dictate and we'll post that raw transcript with all it's surrealist errors, the first day, then rewrite it all week. Any of you can work on it by copying out a section of it off the website and rewrite it and either emailing it to me or get the login and paste it in the webpage yourself. So, by the end of the week, we'll have really good show notes. Then we'll release it complete by promoting it through our individual social medias.

1:01:16

P: We want to make sure that we work on the written material in plain text.

M: Not formatted Word text or Rich Text, but plain, unformatted text. Anything text posted on the web, should be plain text.

M: Once again, good week everyone.

S: One more thing, if anyone has ideas for the title of this episode.

R: Well, we certainly talked about loving machines...

P: We talked about The Diggers, being in the woods, the eclipse ...

1:03:30

S: There's a title in there someplace.

P: There is, just like last week.

S: Yea.

P: OK. Let me start this thing up here.

S: OK. Cool.

P: Alright bye.

S: Ciao.

P: Haha.

Then the sound of a viscous bubble burst...

1:03:44

END

 

Other Resources

• Peter Coyote: Emmett Grogan and the Diggers [video]
• Norbert Wiener, regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a formalization of the notion of feedback, with many implications for engineering, systems control, computer science, biology, philosophy, and the organization of society.
• God and Golem, Inc. (1964) A comment on certain points where Cybernetics impinges on Religion by Norbert Wiener

Participant Contacts:

Mary Burns

• Mary Burns
• Mary Burns on Playwrights Guild of Canada
• Mary Burns on Amazon

Steve "p0ps" Harlow

• p0ps on Twitter
• Steve Harlow on Facebook
• Stephen Harlow on Google Plus
• The Real Steve Harlow
• p0ps Harlow on Flickr

Jim "Jimmy The Peach" Aaron

• HaikuToday
• HaikuToday on Facebook
• @Haiku_Today on Twitter
• @JimmythePeach on Twitter
• Jimmy the Peach on Facebook
• Jimmy the Peach on Google Plus
• Jimmy the Peach on Soundcloud
• email: jimmythepeach@gmail.com
• Skype: Jimmy.the.Peach

David King

• David King on Facebook
• David King "popwisdom" on Soundcloud
• David King on Playwrights Guild of Canada

Ruth Parson

• https://twitter.com/#!/cucaskirt
• http://www.p0ps.com/originalArt/ruthParson/ruthParsonArt.html

Listeners and readers, please add your comments, questions, concerns, corrections, additional information.

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Present: Mary Burns, Emory Holmes II, Jim "Jimmy The Peach" Aaron, Steve Harlow, David King.

- Abstract by p0ps and Peach from a Dragon Dictate transcript.

S: How"s the day going for you?

P: It's going good. We have a visitor who's here to see her daughter at George Washington University. So I'm happy for her.

S: We're with family here, nice to spend time with family.

P: Yes, and yes it really is. Whose family?

S: it's my sister-in-law and her wife. They belong to some organization that gives them access to different resorts around the world and they picked one that was near us and we joined them here, in Escondido California, inland from Oceanside.

P: Right.

S: We're at the Welk Resort, as in Lawrence Welk.

P: I get a kick out of that.

S: For us, it's little bit like moving from one boring suburb to another.

Emory joins.

S: How's Pacoima, Emory?

E: Peachy.

Trying to add Mary.

S: This is the exciting part of our podcasts, seeing who gets hooked up.

P: I see David.

D: Yes, I'm right here.

More adjustments and Mary joins, completing this week's group.

Steve starts the introductions saying he's on vacation.

D: I'm David King and I'm on permanent vacation.

M: I'm Mary Burns, who looks after business.

E: I'm Emory Holmes, in Pacoima, California

P: Peach in Arlington, Virginia.

M: David and I are both in Gibson's, B.C., just north of Vancouver.

E: Love your music, David, absolutely thrilling absolutely.

D: Thank you, Emory, that's very nice of you. I'm working on two new tunes now, Also I was going to record something to Soundcloud, direct. I mean has anybody ever done that?

None of us has.

[5:55]
D: It's just a monologue actually,with some guitar in the background but I've never done that before. So I was just wondering if anybody has any experience with that on Soundcloud.

S: No, not yet.

P: I won't speculate.

S: A very convenient service.

D: Yeah, beats having to go into you a studio.

S: For a single track, it should be great. I've recorded video in YouTube, direct.

D: And the sound quality was good?

S: Yes, similar to the what you get on YouTube.

E: Is your monologue going to be different from the talking blues you did on "No Good Charlie Pile"?

D: Yeah, it's called, "Another Tight Spot". It's a monologue and it's kind of a cowboy thing. It was originally called, "Roy and Dale". Anyway I'll I'll I'll I'll put it on this week and I and you can you can listen to it. It's kind of fun.

Emory reports the confusion he experienced when attempting to purchase David's songs. No one could help. The "Buy This Track" button goes to CD Baby.

[8:34]
D: That particular track you're talking about is Benny Moten's Kansas City Orchestra. The tune is in public domain, recorded in 1932. Count Basie took over that orchestra after Benny Moten died.

S: That was some of the best swing, wasn't it? Out of Kansas City.

P: That was a real great place where a lot things came together for combinations of creative people who went out from there to other places.

D: Altman made a movie of it.

S: Really great music in that one. But horrible lack of story didn't you think?

D: Fabulous music.

P: What was the name?

S: Kansas City

D: I couldn't even tell you the story.

S: Jennifer Jason Leigh had more screen time than either she or Robert Altman knew what to do with.

D: He works with improvisation. I don't think there was ever a script for it.

S: Jennifer did a whole lot of grimaces in closeup.

D: For jazz movies, I can't recall... There's an interesting one that John Cassevetes did with Bobby Darin, called "Too Late Blues". Very interesting to watch, Cassevetes is such a terrific filmmaker.

S: The best and the worst in filmmaking.

Emory chuckles.

P: Did you see "Round Midnight", with Dexter Gordon?

D: Oh yeah, that's probably one of the best jazz movies.

P: Terrific sound track. Chet Baker? Wow!

E: What's our topic today?

[11:34]
P: We were going to talk about Dingos, but the dog eat my script.

Laughter

P: I saw an article about Skype, the history of Skype which is really not that long. And Steve you have the article there, right? You were going to read it.

S: Yeah, I read it, but don't have it on any screen just now.

M: I read it, but, I don't ...

P: Steve, I thought you were going to read it out loud.

S: Oh, no, I don't do that well.

D: I wanted to know, can you Skype overseas?

Dragon Dictation does such a lovely non sequitur here: overseas yes I have a global and you are conference countries make unveilings are cleaner nastiness and and it was good was no technical violence or school days are entirely consistent match...

[12:34]
M: I Skyped with my daughter when she was in London doing her Masters. I don't think that article is worth reading aloud.

[13:11]
S: What was important to me was the description of the Skype online community showed the basic building blocks of any online project. The project website, with a Facebook page, a Google Plus page, a Twitter account all with public, open commenting and discussion. We should all be thinking about developing these basic community platforms for any of our art projects. Every novel or gallery exhibit or music album should have these ways of creating community built around it as it is in progress. So that, at the time of completion, release or exhibition, there is already contact with interested audience/readers/participants online.

[14:28]
M: How would you do that in the case of our project (referring to the project Mary has with Steve to ePublish as a trilogy two formerly published books plus one new one)?

S: Right now, register a domain name of the title you want to give to the trilogy. Establish a website at that domain. Create the appropriate social media profiles for it. Post, on the website, updates on the progress of achieving the project's goals, share those posts out to the social media outlets. Invite interaction. Like, now you are scanning the published book pages into Google Docs, using their Optical Character Recognition to convert the scans to editable text. Some people may want to know how it's working for you - we could start there.

[17:38]
P: Some of these social media may be popular now, other's may become popular months from now.

S: That's why the project has it's own site, all posts are published there and shared from there to social media. We could add or subtract social media services as appropriate, the project's narrative is always complete on the it's own website.

[20:16]
D: Tell me about Litopia, I've never heard of that?

S: I found them by searching for podcasts about writers.

S: They describe themselves as "The Net's Oldest Community for Writers". Based in the U.K. Their podcasts are BBC-style radio-type shows with pro-sounding voices in discussion with successful-sounding writers and publishers. A little hipper than BBC, they seem to know more and care more about modern forms of publishing. I've heard some very interesting and informative discussion from them.

D: I see.

21:07

S: Then I just actually just this morning went to their website for the first time and saw that they have all kinds of things, it is like a whole multi-service thing, A lot of forums, advice for writers about publishing, contracts, self-publishing.

21:25

P: They call themselves a Writer's Colony.

S: Now, I'm not quite sure if they should be claiming the world's oldest, since, I don't think they're older than The Well. Anybody know about The Well? A while back before there was a Graphical Interface for the Internet, before Netscape, we're talking late '80s and early '90s. There was The Well, started by Stewart Brand, the guy who created the The Whole Earth Catalog. He saw the emergency communication system of interconnected computers, built by the US Defence Departent, The Internet, as a resource for social communication and built up The Well, populated primarily by writers. This became the first online community, pointing the way towards the social uses of the World Wide Web we know today.

E: Hey, my video has clicked off and I have a prompt here that says....

D: My video is off, too.

M: My video is ...

P: It looks like it just dropped Stephen.

Mary wonders what changed everything, Peach doesn't think it was the lawnmower.

22:47

Peach asks if David is still there and he speaks up. So everybody but Steve is on. David says he has a prompt that he needs Skype Premium to do the video call. but, Peach explains, he got  a Premium account yesterday. 

Peach thinks to himself, "I've been ripped off. Skype took the money and hung me out to fry.

(then DEVO and the Beatles collide)

Twist and shout

Skype hung me out

to fry

 

(then he mangles the title of a George Jones song)

Fry baby fry

 

(then frys up a weather report)

fry tonight and

dough tomorrow,

cinnamon dusky is expected.

 

(then taps his foot to the tune of Hank Williams' "Why Don't You Love Me")

Why don't you fry me like you used to do

You shouldn't treat me like a can of stew

My eyes are squirelly and my hair is still blue

Spry don't you fry me like you used to do"

 

Then Peach remembers "Archie Annual Number 19." When we were kids, when we were kids and we read comic books. While I liked to read The Fantastic Four, Superman, Batman and ... geez, Ursala Andress played Catwoman on TV. Hot doggies! (5 seconds of silence while I imagined I remembered the Catwoman's skin-tight outfit. Ha-Howww szzt sizzle!)

21:52

Anyway, my little brother John read Richie Rich and Little Lotta, but he was a huge Archies fan. He could not get enough of that ol' Betty and Veronica. So, John sent cash with his order to buy the big volume, put out once a year, Archie Annual #19. Of course, it never came and John didn't think it was funny. So we thought it was funny and we laughed, which bugged him. What a waste of money, yea, a bit of a sucker. I always thought my little brother should have bought a pair of X-Ray Specs, always advertised on the inside back page of comic books.

22:54

The four of us are talking at once

23:45

Steve is back, but Mary doesn't hear him. She goes on to suggest we talk about the week past and if we read or saw anything worth sharing. She is interrupted by Steve saying

24:16

S: I'm back, but I'd like to listen.

24:31

M: ... I've been doing a lot of research on 1919 and when you're writing about a period as Emory may know or some of the rest of you, and you're able to predict details of everyday life. So, I just typed in ragtime music and 1919 and what came up on YouTube was Igor Stravinsky's ragtime piano. Mary says it was fabulous and she didn't realize Igor did ragtime or used ragtime as a composer. She was reminded of Bartok who used folk music. And she was excited about where the few minutes of searching had taken her.

25:32

Steve says Stravinsky was influenced by jazz and ragtime was like pre-jazz, so he was interested but S didn't know he was Rag Timin' It back in the day.

25:45

Mary promises to email some links for this week.

26:13

Emory says one of his very good friends died a week ago and he has been asked by friends and family to compose the obituary and he has been preoccupied with that.

Steve asks if Emory is talking about Willie Middlebrook and Emory says yes, he was a remarkable photographer,artist, painter with superb technique and the way he presented his work.

E: And the piece has taken over my all my days and that so much i've been lamenting that I i've gotten off the flow of my novel which I was enjoying so much then I realized just yesterday that all of these interruptions i'll call him interruptions, temporarily to what I think is the work at hand are not interruptions but kind of enhancements or opportunities to adjust your perception in such a way that you will if you do it correctly and that's the essence of it is they kind of intensify or or or make more clear thing that you're trying to make and so i've the tried to relax in this endeavor and to understand that my novel will be waiting for me on the other end of this and that is as long as my intent remains clear as I intend then it's okay if I have to go get a bottle of Know-Clear and work on some other project

28:17

S: Isn't this the social context in which our art is made?

E: Exactly, exactly and the interruptions, we have to consider the interruptions as necessary and...

D: Yea, they can be valuable you can always come back to something with fresh eyes.

28:35

P: Well, it's easy to to think when i'm writing a song or writing a poem or story that that's what i'm doing, and it really is everyday, i'm doing something bigger than that, and the song or the poem is more like something in a frame in the room.

E: Now, explain that Peach, what do you mean?

P: Well just take an artist, Salvador Dali.

S: Why him?

P: Well because he said his life was his art. The reason I choose him is because he made such a clear statement. And he said it over and over and over again. Now in the East, there's a fellow, Basho, and I paraphrase, he said that, "Each day is a journey, and the journey itself, home." So, that puts in perspective everything we are all working on and when we see the interruptions as part of the process, a part of the finished product. That's why I think the idea is attractive to us, perhaps, certainly why it was attractive to me, the role of a distraction or an interruption.

D: Mary has a great Salvador Dali quote on her office wall.It says, "Some days I could just die from an overdose of satisfaction".

Now everybody laughs, and instead of laughing I blurt out

P: He was an incredibly pompous... They say it's not bragging if you can do it.

Well, crap on a crutch. I don't know what I mean and I'm the one who said it. Pompous? Magnificent is a much better word. And then to underline my lack of imagination, I pull the "It's not bragging..." bromide from the worn pocket of cliches in my jeans and toss it in the ring... where it lays... like a dud cherry bomb made out of an empty can of catfood, imitation non-dairy Cheez Whiz and the first promise I never kept.

[20:19]
E: I i I i am recalling a Salvador story, a Dali story, and I don't know if it's apocryphal or not but it's of his wife, Gala who I think was then married to Max Ernst. And so someone had invited her to meet this rising artist and so she decided to go and she walks in and Dali is standing at the easel, doing a painting and he's got these high heeled shoes on and she says it was love at first sight.

So cue the chuckles, and somebody says, It might have been Emory, he says, "How could she not fall in love?"

[30:56]
So I tell my Dali story, the one I had just read about the night before. I had paired a haiku (remembering yesterday / I am here / there) with a photo entitled, "Dali Atomicus." a portrait taken by Philippe Halsman.

[31:56]
The story goes that Dali would go to parties. When people would start to get a cigarette, he would pull out a silver cigarette case, and he would open it and offer people a moustache. You see, It looked like a cigarette case, but it was full of mustaches. He said later that no one ever took a mustache no matter how well meaning and sincerely he made the offer.

[32:58]
P: You've got to admire a guy like that.

S: I admire him being brave enough to go so consciously into hand-painted photographs. Painters using photographs was always sort of a dark secret and in the 30s he kind of came out as using photographs to make paintings, like all painters always have. And I admire him for that but god I hate his paintings. So ugly...

P: So that's like surrealism.

S: Yea, I hate that shit.

P: Do you like Cubism?

S: Yea, in a way, it's limited and I think it was over intellectualized. Think it was the fault of Picasso hanging out with Gertrude Stein talking about art too much. But, I like...

P: Wait a minute, that's what we're doing.

S: I know, hopefully not too much.

M: Well we can always get back to technology.

 

Now I'm not quite sure how to take this next thing I say.

33:40

P: How about it, anybody, does somebody else have anything that happened this week that they can say one sentence and the rest of us will talk for three or four minutes? Laughter. That's the perfect morsel. David?

D: Yeah I was racking my brain trying to recall anything that happened to me this week. I can't... for the life of me.

M: Well you can talk about Hillary and your experience.

A bit of confusion on David's part. It takes a few seconds for him to understanding Mary is suggesting he talk about a new song he had written. David says when he finished the song it was just too pretty for him to sing. He got Hillary Grist to sing on it. She is the singer on another of his songs, "My Valley Road". So they rehearsed with her singing and it was everything, David says,

[35:04]
D: that I had hoped it would be, to hear her sing it,. This fellow I work with, a guitarist and co-producer, he was just rapturous.

E: How did the song come together? How did you develop the song?

D: Well that particular song is interesting. It's called, "How The Lions Look Today." The lions meaning two mountain peaks in Vancouver you can see from any point in the city. Depending on how much snow there's been it looks different every day. Sometimes they really stand out. But it just occurred to me and it was a discussion I had with a friend about a woman who encountered another woman on the street a friend from the neighborhood and she was kind of down and everything. And my friend said just look at the mountains today and maybe change your perspective.There was a fresh dump of snow on the mountains and it was quite beautiful.

Mary chimes in to tell us how close the mountains are to Vancouver, and this time of year a person can ski in the morning and then kayak in the afternoon.

David pitches in and says sometimes the mountains are hidden for days at a time. So when the clouds lift, they become "unsnagged from the mountains", it's like seeing the mountains for the first time.

[36:48]
As Emory begins to talk about taking a train from Montreal that went coast-to-coast for $67, Peach takes a moment to walk around the phrase, "unsnagged from the mountains." Those four simple words surprised him, caught his attention. Unsnagging from a mountain, means it was snagged to begin with. The clouds caught like wet silk parachutes come down through stone trees and hang up on bare limbs of mica laden plagioclase feldspar. But, wind-tugging silk would be ripped to shreds, streamers, I suppose. Clouds caught like wet silk are still clouds. Whatever holds them to the mountain, when let go, they are gone. This brings Peach back to where he started so he unsnags his attention from the clouds and hears Emory say...

[37:39]
E: I had been living in Montreal and had gotten so indoctrinated, let me say, with the culture there and that was when there was a great enmity between the Brits and the French Canadians and and so when I traveled across the country and as you got farther and farther west the Canadians started getting off and the Brits started getting on and it seem like such a change in the in the temperature of the atmosphere of the train and it got like, hooo, colder I guess it is my snobbishness, my prejudice that perceived that. And when I finally got to Vancouver and they had directed me to go to downtown to what was called Gaslight

D: Gastown.

E: Gastown. So I went there and I just could not, just couldn't connect. So I decided that I would leave and I was hoping to hop a freight train which I had done years earlier to get to New York but I couldn't find a train I couldn't find the line I couldn't figure it out and so I started to get hitchhike from Vancouver to the US Border. And in those days the moment I stuck out my thumb someone would screech to the side of the road and pick me up. Nobody picked me up. All these friendly Canadians. Nobody picked me up. After a while I thought I refuse to take a ride from these Vancouverans. And I walked from Vancouver city to the US border. And that's when I was finally able to catch a train hop a car right on the coast there and then I got back to california by train.

[39:48]
M: You had a bad experience, what year was that?

E: That was, uh, about nineteen seventyyyyyyyyy-four.

P: Maybe they thought you were French.

E: Ahh hah haaaaaaaah.

P: You know, from the east side of Canada.

E: (to Mary and David) But I love the comments that you've made about Vancouve and earlier david was sitting outside and I could see the wonderful beautiful blue sky and what your talking about in terms of the two mountain peaks. I'm racking my mind to see if I recall that, I don't. But I have since met people from Vancouver and people who visited Vancouver quite a bit and they began to turn my appreciation to a good place, regarding Vancouver I'm just grateful to have this opportunity to meet people who are actually living there who can give me a better

D: Well, we actually live outside of Vancouver. It's about a two hour commute, but we get in fairly frequently. At least once a week.

[42:10]
D: We actually live outside vancouver, about a two hour commute. We get in very frequently, at least once a week. A lot of artists are moving out of Vancouver, because it is less unaffordable. Artists are moving away in droves.

E: Where are they going?

D: A lot to the interior of BC. But to other provinces as well. Vancouver's too expensive, like San Francisco or New York. S: Yeah, like New York, especially Manhattan - no artists left there, except the famous ones. D: They were the pioneers, most of those neighborhoods were developed by artists.

[41:50]
M: Talk about earning money from your art, artists should be subsidized by developers, because if a neighborhood has artists, it will soon become hip and popular and people will want to move in. Who's going to propose that, do we have a business type in the group?

Steve interrupts to say he's leaving in five minutes. Emory wants to him to tell about what he's doing. Steve does.

E: How about you, Peach?

P: My week has been taking by householder chores, we've had a visitor, it looks like now, I'll be able to get back to the business at hand. I did jot down some ideas, tho.

[45:26]
E: I've had to learn how to embrace these apparent distractions.

D: Mary's had a lot of experience with writing obits.

Steve interrupts with more of his good-byes, thanking Emory for doing the Willie Middlebrook's obit.

[46:08]
M: Emory, is it for the newspaper?

E: It's a general remembrance. I want it to have a utility in a couple of different ways. It will be read at a memorial. I'd like it to be a one-sheet with hyper-linked areas that will popup illustrations to specific passages, like when he's quoted as being inspired by Michelangelo, the viewer may click to bring up specific works he references. When he speaks of his own philosophy, I'd like to bring up a wonderful interview film of him that Steve brought to my attention, as a matter of fact. I want this to be a stand-alone piece that can also be interactive on the web. It's complicated to get it clear so the reader is not intimidated by the density of the text and can feel the gravity of this wonderful artist.

[48:20]
M: That sounds like the perfect project for whatever Steve is building. It won't be too long. And if he can do those linking things you want to do, it will be a good way for people to learn of Willie. Like I did not know until you introduced him to us.

E: There is quite a number of wonderful artists around that I want to draw upon, but I have not been able to call them back. One of the lines from one of your songs, David, kept coming to me, "Sometimes the right words come easier when you are working to a deadline." D: Yeah.

E: I had a deadline I was working to, then the date got moved. A great complication to me. I don't want more time!

D: You would've gotten it done in the time you had. That changes everything.

[50:11]
E: Yes, that changes everything.I want to want to talk about one other thing. We were talking about communities and how they evolve and change. With artists coming in and blessing the community and then they get priced out by the developers. That train did go through the Banff area of Canada yeah and I don't know if you are aware that Cheech, Marin, Rich Marin, Richard and I went to high school together.

[tweet this]

Other Resources

• Richard "Cheech" Marin

Participant Contacts:

Emory Holmes II

• Emory Holmes II on Facebook
• Emory Holmes on Google Plus

Mary Burns

• Mary Burns
• Mary Burns on Playwrights Guild of Canada
• Mary Burns on Amazon

Steve "p0ps" Harlow

• p0ps on Twitter
• Steve Harlow on Facebook
• Stephen Harlow on Google Plus
• The Real Steve Harlow
• p0ps Harlow on Flickr

Jim "Jimmy The Peach" Aaron

• HaikuToday
• HaikuToday on Facebook
• @Haiku_Today on Twitter
• @JimmythePeach on Twitter
• Jimmy the Peach on Facebook
• Jimmy the Peach on Google Plus
• Jimmy the Peach on Soundcloud
• email: jimmythepeach@gmail.com
• Skype: Jimmy.the.Peach

David King

• David King on Facebook
• David King "popwisdom" on Soundcloud
• David King on Playwrights Guild of Canada

Listeners and readers, please add your comments, questions, concerns, corrections, additional information.

Subscribe to this site
Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes

 

Present: Emory Holmes II, Jim "Jimmy The Peach" Aaron, Stephen Harlow, and Mary Burns.

[1:00]

Emory joins Peach and Steve with a looping, echoing hum. Nice.

[1:21]

Mary joins.

[1:49]

Some discussion about Skype video.

[2:25]

Mary says she sees David as a creative stream finding his way around any obstacle. [tweet this]
Disappointed that David King was unable to participate this week, Emory expresses thrill over David's music on Soundcloud (as "popwisdom"), saying David's songs are an absorbing narrative, delivered by a great voice.

[3:25]

Mary says she sees David as a creative stream finding his way around any obstacle. She reminds us of how David answered the question posed in a previous episode of how does he find time to make art, he said then, "by shirking my responsibilities". "That was not a joke," she says. She adds that she speaks with affection and that David's good with his kids, she means that he just doesn't stop creating. Song writing is new for him, just over the past couple of years, teaching himself guitar and singing for the first time.

[3:32]

Emory calls for introductions. This done, Peach asks if we, in the morning, on the West Coast, are aware that it's afternoon where he is on the East Coast. We are.

[7:30]

Web spaces are available for any participant who wants some and for group projects. [tweet this]
Peach ends a discussion of his metaphoric scoreboard by asking Steve about the promised new website and network for the Art Chats. Steve credits Sal Mendoza for helping him over a final conceptual hurdle and that now, or at least, this week, web spaces are available for any participant who wants some and for group projects. Emory asks if they will be monetized, Steve interprets that as meaning will it cost money to use the space and says "everything is free, now, and he'd like to keep it that way as long as possible."

[8:09]

Mary asks Steve about the fullmoon painting allnighter Steve and Ruth had planned, adding that it was a very beautiful fullmoon in her area. Steve said it was also beautiful in his area, he and Ruth went "out on the hill" and saw it, but they didn't get much painting done, they drew. They planned a two hour nap, but slept for four hours and so were only up in the very late night - early morning. Mary suggested that it may have been a response to Steve and Ruth just having finished a painting. Her reference was to "jxsnzd0g"
their collaborative "cover" of a 1943 Jackson Pollock painting, "The Guardians of the Secret"

[9:13]

Steve and Ruth's collaborative painting of the Downtown Manhattan skyline is "Rabbithill". [tweet this]
Emory asked what the title of the cityscape Steve and Ruth have just finished. "Rabbithill", Steve answers, adding it is of the Downtown Manhattan skyline as seen from East Houston Street in the Lower East Side. It looked to us like a rabbit warren.
Emory declares the painting "wonderful", he loves the invention within each of the individual squares.

[11:24]

According to plan, we share our current work and the influences we draw from. [tweet this]
According to a pre-show plan, we begin to share our current work and the influences we draw from. Mary asks Emory to start. He says he's writing a "crime piece" that he wants to be true to the format of a crime story, with the violence and shadows. He's after an authentic voice for telling such stories. He's been reading writers who've walked this ground before, Raymond Chandler, "a little" Ernest Hemingway for the declarative voice, and, the "intervention" of Jack London (referring to an earlier episodes where London's character and work were discussed). Emory says, "when you filter a passage you're working on through the lens of someone like Mr. London and his very clean and clear voice, scrubbing those lines, it's a very good aid for me." Emory reports he's using Nelson Algren, who wrote the "Man With The Golden Arm". Woody Haut recommended this writer and Emory has found in his writing of the grimy, gritty Chicago settings a helpful clarity of vision.
Emory is influenced by the clarity of Chandler, Hemingway, London, and Nelson Algren. [tweet this]

[14:52]

Mary's current influences are Howard Norman, Peter Carey, and Colum McCann. [tweet this]
Mary asks what era in Chicago does Algren write of. The '50s, Emory answers, adding that Algren's writing of shadow and various tones of darkness wows him. Mary says she's been reading about Chicago from an earlier period because that's the setting of her current work. She has tired of the style of writing from the period she's writing about. Although Theodore Dreiser had a influence on her as a teenager and she appreciates his social conscience and themes of class, she has moved away from reading writers of that era. She is now being informed by contemporary writers who are great and by those who are writing historical novels, like Howard Norman. She calls Norman's The Bird Artist a "fabulous book" that she didn't want to read too much because she thought it would influence her. He gives a rich feel to the period he writes about, Mary says, without the accumulation of detail the writers of historical fiction usually rely on. Peter Carey is another, True History Of The Kelly Gang is one of books she admires for being precise and funny. She's now reading about the period of French Revolution (Parrot And Olivier In America) and Carey is able to get a succinct voice of the period. Colum McCann, who had a big hit with "Let The Great World Spin", a book Tom Junod, in Esquire Magazine called in the "first great 9/11 novel" but, Mary says is not directly about 9/11. She likes it for the "fantastic" descriptions of New York and that he "just doesn't let anything go." She just finished "Dancer" about Nureyev, which she says was, "a total surprise." Mary remarks that both she and Emory had excitement in their voices when talking of these writers who are influencing them.

[19:40]

Peach says he's not read for escape lately, he's reading non-fiction and poetry. [tweet this]
Peach said he stayed up on the fullmoon night, the supermoon writing the chords of a song structured for lyrics, which he will add later. He found inspiration from listening to a podcast of Nick Lowe, who he feels is a great pop song writer, in the tradition of Burt Bacharach, Rodgers and Hart and so many others. Peach enjoyed Lowes new work, the simple chord changes, the vigor of his vocal delivery and the skill of the lyric writing. Peach continues by saying he's been reading Pablo Neruda who he admires for having a full life, being involved in public service in his home country of Chile, as well as writing poetry. Peach also reads haiku from Matsuo Basho, Masaoka Shiki, and Chiyo-Ni, the first female Haiku poet to be published in English. Peach says he's not read for escape lately, he's reading non-fiction and poetry.

[24:36]

Mary asks for Peach's definition of escape reading. "Does fiction fall into that category?" she asks. Peach says that was a lazy word use, fiction is to him for re-charging the "organisms".

[26:42]

"3D movies are really worth going to the theater for," Steve submits. [tweet this]
Mary thought Steve was trying to say something. Steve says speaking of escape, he admits that Ruth and he saw "The Avengers" in 3D at the end of their fullmoon allnighter weekend and he liked it. "3D movies are really worth going to the theater for," he submits. As a visually interested person, he enjoys the big 3D movie productions. The beautifully produced movie, Avatar, which told such a "crappy story" by Steve's Brea homeboy, James Cameron showed Steve that he liked 3D movies. Joss Whedon made a good story for The Avengers, the movie is "solid, for what it's meant to be" Steve thinks, adding, "it's meant to be awesome." Mary says she knows it's popular, but she doesn't know what it's about, but she'll look it up.

[29:38]

Steve says he was going to the Art Museum in L.A. when he was supposed to be reading comics. [tweet this]
It's comic book, Steve tells her, it's filled with thousands of great comic book panels. He quickly adds that he never liked comic books because he never understood what he's suppose to pay attention to, the pictures or the words and he doesn't like black outlines around everything. Emory asks if Steve felt the same about comics as a boy, Steve said he did. He said he was going to the Art Museum in L.A. when he was supposed to be reading comics and that he was "doing Jackson Pollock" with colored chalk on the sidewalk. He rants against coloring books, how he got in trouble for drawing juxtaposing pictures and patterns against the black lines.

[31:16]

Dwight D. Eisenhower, who observed that, "in painting, you must be decisive." [tweet this]
Mary wants to know about influences on Steve's current work. He answers that he's in a retro period now, with the cover paintings and two "open" paintings he calls "pretend Plein Air paintings". He explains they're pretend because he photographs outside in the landscape then brings it indoors to make drawings and paint the canvas. In that, he isn't specifically referencing anyone, but all the landscape painters of the past who drew from various forms of camera obscura projections. Steve says his basic influence in painting is Dwight D. Eisenhower, who observed that, "in painting, you must be decisive." That is the main guidance he gives himself while painting. He thinks the best you can do is to be confident.

[33:37]

The next cover painting that Steve and Ruth are going to do is a late Monet Water Lily, he's now drawing the study for it. Emory asks about the scale, Steve says their cover will be about twice the size of Monet's, Emory disbelieves based on a show of Monet water lily paintings he saw in New York where the paintings were mural sized, "overhead and as wide as a train". Emory asks, "you say yours will be bigger than that?" No, Steve says, he's never seen those panoramic, mural-sized paintings other than in photographs, he is drawing from an easel sized painting. He expects their painting to be approximately six feet wide, four feet high.
[editor note: Steve was mistaken about the source image he and Ruth are using for their "Monet Lilies" cover painting; their source is "Water Lilies (Evening)", 1920, approximately 10 feet long. - Kunsthaus Zürich collection. their painting will be smaller than the original.]

[35:38]

Marcel Duchamp said,"some people only paint because they're in love with the smell of the oil". [tweet this]
Peach asks about the planned painting's material, Steve reports it will be oil paint on canvas. Peach asks if it will be thick and heavy. Steve explains that the canvas is stretched on a wood panel for painting, when complete, it is removed from the panel, so the weight is only of the painted canvas. Eventually, he says, it should be stretched on a wood frame, it will be cumbersome at that point, but relatively light for it's size, weighing less than 50 lbs. Emory would like to know about the texture, mentioning "impasto" and Picasso's thickly painted works. Mary hears it as "encaustic", both Emory and Steve explain that encaustic is wax. Steve opines that encaustic is a "very cool" way to paint (tho it uses hot wax) and that he loves Jasper John's encaustic paintings. Emory explains impasto as like smearing mud on the surface so there is a rough texture and that oil paint allows for various thickness from impasto to very thin, like a watercolor wash. Emory then quotes Marcel Duchamp as saying,"some people only paint because they're in love with the smell of the oil" (‘olfactory’ art of painters who were in love with the smell of paint). Steve says Duchamp has many great quotes and his favorite quote about art is Marcel Duchamp's, "The only thing that is not art is inattention". Mary wants to know if Steve collects all those quotes and was the Eisenhower Steve mentioned the same that was a U.S. President? Yes, he is, all assure Mary. Steve adds that he remembers it from an interview he read in Reader's Digest. "You have a good memory," Mary says. Steve says he remembers it because he uses it everyday.

[33:37]

To the Ancient Greeks "character" is that which impresses so deeply that it permanently imprints. [tweet this]
Emory says, that's the point of a memorable line, so true, so "searingly honest" you can't be rid of it. Like the (Ancient) Greeks would call "character", coming from incising into clay, things that impress so deeply that they permanently imprint.

[41:36]

Mary repeats a meaningful quote she suggest applies to all, "Nothing can permanently please that does not contain in itself the reason why it is so and not otherwise." Emory says he'd like to always wear that quote and it reminds him of a line from Lu Chi, The Art Of Writing, "When cutting an axe handle with an axe, surely the model is at hand".

[43:38]

When cutting axe handles with an axe, surely the model is at hand. - Lu Chi [tweet this]
Emory reads a passage from Lu Chi, "Perhaps one day it will be said that I have written something of substance, something useful, that I have entered the mystery. When cutting axe handles with an axe, surely the model is at hand."

[44:08]

Peach has a quote he says he cut out of a newspaper twenty years ago and has taped to his computer, "Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent." - Victor Hugo

[44:88]

Mary says, "All those quotes have a lot of room in them to drop in to think for a while". [tweet this]
Mary says, "All those (quotes) have a lot of room in them to drop in to think for a while". Emory repeats, "what a wonderful way to say that!" three times, each time with an additional exclamation mark. Mary enjoys his enthusiasm.

[45:35]

Emory is handed a package, he excitedly says he may have gotten his books from France. Los Angeles Noir, which contains one of his short stories, "Dangerous Days" was translated and published in France and he has been wanting to see it. Mary declares it a Book Launch Party on Art Chat Podcast. Some discussion of international monetary exchange ensues while Emory unboxes. Excitement turns to confusion when the unboxed book turns out to mistakenly "London Noir". Emory relates that the French translator of his story contacted him on Facebook. He also recounts how when the first publication (in English) was planned he and the other writers were contacted to suggest a recorded song appropriate to their story for a CD which would accompany the book. He submitted an Eartha Kitt song in Spanish, "Angelitos Negros"

[51:40]

Steve reports that one of the collections, perhaps only in the Amazon description, has Emory listed as Emily Holmes. Emory says perhaps that will fulfill his ambition of writing like a girl. He experiences his maleness as hobbling him when trying to write with authenticity and beauty in the voice of one of his fabulous woman characters. Emily's fine with him.

[53:11]

Since he is an old man in a boring suburb, Steve is strives to bring online social into his studio. [tweet this]
Steve reports that he saw a clip from a documentary movie on Basquiat. Steve finds two things about Basquiat inspiring and currently instructive: one is a very confident brush stroke he did in the film, when Steve makes a brush stroke, keeping in mind Ike's dictum of "being decisive", he makes one stroke, no re-tracing, and viewing Basquiat painting, Steve was surprised and thrilled by another level of confidence Basquiat displays by painting the line and then reinforcing it with another stroke, a move Steve thinks as super confident; his other inspiration from Basquiat is from observing his best period, when he was doing well and was relatively healthy, and maintained a SoHo studio in which he painted continuously surrounded by a crowded 24/7 party. While Steve is not following Basquiat's self-destructive drug-taking example, he does want his studio to be full of social life. And since he is an old man in a boring suburb, he is striving to fill his studio with continuous social contact online.

[57:19]

Emory commends Steve on an "elegant development of an insight" and says he's been thrilled by everything he's heard on today's podcast.

[57:36]

Peach says he enjoys going out to a public space and write. It is an exercise he's practiced for several years. Sometimes writing descriptions of whatever he sees, at other times, starting with description and "going off from there", and producing inspired writing in live music clubs. He jokes about not wanting to be asked to dance. Mary enjoys the idea of being him turning down dance invitations, because he's composing a haiku.

[59:32]

Mary says, "Bonne semaine" and logs out.

[59:44]

Steve proposes that they talk behind her back. Emory reports a problem he had with purchasing David King's (aka "popwisdom) music on Soundcloud, Peach and Steve don't have the answer, everyone signs off.

Additional References:

• Algren's Last Night

Participant contacts:

Emory Holmes II

• Emory Holmes II on Facebook
• Emory Holmes on Google Plus

Mary Burns

• Mary Burns Official Website
• Mary Burns on Playwrights Guild of Canada
• Mary Burns on Amazon

Steve "p0ps" Harlow

• p0ps on Twitter
• Steve Harlow on Facebook
• Stephen Harlow on Google Plus
• The Real Steve Harlow
• p0ps Harlow on Flickr

Jim "Jimmy The Peach" Aaron

• HaikuToday
• HaikuToday on Facebook
• @Haiku_Today on Twitter
• @JimmythePeach on Twitter
• Jimmy the Peach on Facebook
• Jimmy the Peach on Google Plus
• Jimmy the Peach on Soundcloud
• email: jimmythepeach@gmail.com
• Skype: Jimmy.the.Peach

Listeners and readers, please add your comments, questions, concerns, corrections, additional information.

Subscribe to this site
Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes

Present: Emory Holmes II, Jim "Jimmy The Peach" Aaron, Steve Harlow, David King, and Ruth Parson.

Modern Literacy, Pivoting And How Playing Bongos With Knute Rockne Helped Us Find Our Niche - Abstract by Peach.

Voila. Steve, David and Emory are interrupted by the not quite simultaneous arrival of Peach and Ruth.

0:14

We begin Art Chat #30 by introducing the voices. I need to comment here how extraordinary, how absolutely extraordinary, is the beginning of today's Art Chat #30. It took only 14 seconds of pre-podcast palaver to get to the introduction of voices. Now, somebody could do the math on this. If I added up all of the time it took to assemble, sign in, dial up, convince, cajole and introduce each of the artists on the previous 29 podcasts, well, I don't have time to squander on such a calculation. The point is, it always takes much more time to get Art Chat started. I have a good feeling about today's show. I just know it will be smoove.

We begin Art Chat #30 by introducing the voices.

0:49

As Steve is giving the date of the podcast, the sound of bongos starts in the background. Steve finishes the introductions. No one says anything, although I do hear a small chuckle or two. I am not the only one who hears bongos. Steve and Emory remark that they, "Hear some drummers." After a moment of silence I tell everyone the bongos are a loop I accidentally triggered here in the Bamboo Room. Actually, the bongos are a text alert from my phone. Redbox is offering a rental discount. I didn't want to sound silly so I blurted out the loop explanation. Hmm. Oh, how I wish I could take back this blurt.

1:10

Emory has a wonderful deep voice and a smooth steady delivery. [tweet this]
Emory and I mention that we enjoyed an essay Steve wrote earlier today and ask him to read it out loud. Steve is a little hesitant so I jokingly say either he reads it or Emory will. Emory has a wonderful deep voice and a smooth steady delivery. He could read the Surgeon General's warning on the side of a pack of smokes and everyone within listening distance would immediately make a doctor's appointment to have their lungs checked for fluid, phlegm, fungus and cancer.

1:45

Social Media is like baseball infield chatter.[tweet this]
Steve begins to read his essay. First, he equates social media, Twitter, with the baseball chatter he learned in Little League. The purpose was to let people know you have your head in the game, you are present.

2:12

Before I can ask Steve to give us a sample of his Little League baseball chatter, he stops. Suddenly there is what sounds like an echo. David jumps in to say his mic is picking up someone on the phone near him.

2:24

Steve continues with the observation that in a tweet or baseball chatter, what is said is not as important as saying it. Tweets can also be important; they can link to new work, the work of others. They can give insight into our state of mind, ask questions, and ask for help. He actually goes into more detail here, but, if I provided the reader with all of the details, there would be no reason to actually listen to Art Chat Podcast #30. So pay attention. He goes into a quick history of blogging. I find this particularly interesting so I will listen to this section over and over in lieu of writing more of it down.

3:56

Steve mentions the father of modern blogging, Dave Winer. Then who was the mother, I think, and does the baby take after mom or dad.

4:42

Three Cs for Social Media: Comment, Curate, Create.[tweet this]
Steve talks about how to split up the time spent between reading, viewing and responding to others posts and, posting our original media.

5:09

Talks about dividing our online actions into three equal parts; 1/3 recognizing posts we appreciate (a FB like, a Google+ +1), 1/3 passing on other people's posts, and 1/3 posting our original media.

5:46

Suggests we follow, friend, or circle new peeps as we discover them and 86 people that no longer interest us, i.e. slackers, droolers, should-have-finished schoolers / hot dogs, ghosts / Neolithic posters, say your Pater Nosters / none of this anonymous... Sorry, I digress.

6:10

Think of it as a well-tended social media garden. A news, information and entertainment medium.

6:36

Steve has trouble saying the word, "niche." He tries "nish" then "neach" then takes a run at it again, "nitch" then "neech" again. He does not sound convinced that he is saying the word correctly. Neither are we. Let's continue. Here Steve talks about three levels of participation. 1. General Services the way we once used newspapers, radio and, "God forbid... TV news." Substitute Twitter, Facebook and Google+. 2. Niche / Nitch / Nish / Neach / Neech / Sheesh Services the way we used periodicals, magazines. With social media, we now use the feeds from blogs, podcasts, Soundcloud and YouTube according to our media specialty. He calls these Deep Specialized Services, the way we once used research libraries.

7:05

"This is modern literacy."

7:20

Here he comes with more fractions.

7:21

Steve suggests using 1/3 of our awake time for community/social duties, then make our art about 1/3 of the time and take care of family and householder responsibilities about 1/3 of the time. And use the "twenty percent rule." "All rules work better when they are broken about twenty percent of the time." Steve is convinced the twenty percent rule will keep us from becoming obsessive and turning into tweaked out assholes. I'm all for that, but, expect I will bend the rules way above twenty percent.

7:53

Steve finishes reading the essay. Perhaps it is the surprise of the phrase, "tweaked out assholes," but we all laugh and Steve receives huzzahs from Emory, et al. Then there is a period of silence...

8:00

Upon review, what felt like two or three minutes of dead air, is only four seconds. Suddenly, Emory startles me by saying something like, "It seems... "But, too late, I can't stop myself from stepping all over him with what turns into a very long sentence. Something to the effect of, "... mumble mumble, systematic and methodical about, uh... where we're out now, mmmhehmm jibjab...breakout of uhhhh general services and um - niche zzt, uh standing in a real deep, hee-bee-bee, you called it deep specialized researching. Sounds like the kind of stuff we talk about every week on Art Chat." I ask if he is talking about the terms consume, create and curate.

8:38

Steve says yes is and mentions Steve Rosenbaum. Wait a minute. What happened?

8:47

I haven't heard the last few seconds because my headphones came unplugged. I plug them back in and say something to the effect of, my headphones came unplugged. Let's continue.

8:55

Emory interjects that it sounds like Steve is describing the model we have been following. Then he mentions a three legged stool which only has two legs. He points out we provide content every week and then links to source materials. Steve compares what we are doing to a weekly magazine.

9:51

While the discussion heats up, an irritating distorted echo begins. It somewhat follows each spoken word, like a cross between an old time, not quite on the right frequency radio and an electric whoopee cushion. If there were such a thing. The discussion continues as if it is business as usual on a Monday morning in Brea, California around 10:45am PST.

10:12

I ask Steve to speak some more about the social obligation he mentioned. But the distorted echo interrupts Steve. This has happened before. We take turns muting our microphones while one person talks. We are trying to isolate the problem. For some reason, I am reminded of the old Twilight Zone episode, "The Thing On The Wing." Twilight Zone - Nightmare At 20,000 Feet William Shatner. Brilliant. Except this isn't like that at all.

10:38

While this is going on, Ruth has a question. She wants to know if we have done much of the content side of the social media. Curiously, her voice has no echo. Emory says, with an echo, that he has tried using Twitter. His voice becomes more garbled until I can't understand him.

11:17

Steve asks if everyone's voice has a stinking echo. Only Ruth answers no. We finally determine that the problem is on Emory's end. The echo has stopped but now we can't hear Emory. Emory may have been distracted by a crossword puzzle or some fuzz caught on a fingernail. I can only speculate. Then, he's back.

13:09

I ask Steve about social obligations again. But the echo is back. So we do the Teaberry Shuffle until...

13:41

The echo disappears and Steve elaborates on social obligations. He must have thought about this at great length because he very clearly and precisely addresses the subject. If you only have five minutes to listen to Art Chat, I strongly urge you to start here.

14:50

Steve points out we grew up in an analog culture and now we are making a bridge to the digital culture. Let's hear some chatter, let people know we have our heads in the game, press like, retweet, get off the bench.

15:31

I ask David if he is immersed in social media. He mentions Facebook and Soundcloud. He is very excited about Soundcloud and has a number of songs posted there. He mentions The Economist magazine is on Soundcloud. He asks Ruth if she has checked out any of the spoken word pieces on Soundcloud. She says not yet but it is on her to-do list, right between chutney and harmonicas.

16:36

David asks about the spoken word piece I put up on Soundcloud, There are children in the forest. He asks me how it was recorded. So I talk a bit about the ambient sounds I used and the effects on the voice.

18:14

David mentions wanting to get a portable recording unit to capture sounds for himself. He and I discuss the utility of such devices. This brief exchange is followed by silence, dead air, which causes some laughter.

19:21

Emory talks about his use of social media, which has been minimal up to now. He tells us that he needs to school himself about it since he is writing a novel with characters that are fluent in the medium. He mentions he is starting a new schedule for writing as he has a self-imposed deadline of the end of June. He talks in greater detail about the on screen tools he is using to keep moving with his writing.

20:47

Emory's new schedule has him getting up quite early and he says his body is in revolt. I suppose that is preferable to saying one's body is revolting. He is looking forward to the next sixty days.

21:11

Steve mentions Emory's history of pushing deadlines in the past. Emory has to chuckle and says he hopes he will do better than when he wrote for the LA Times. I heard the Times is still trying to get the article Emory was supposed to write about the lack of diversity on Baywatch.

21:25

I really enjoy hearing Emory laugh, which he does right here.

21:46

Emory talks about a recent visit with his friend, artist Mary Fuller McChesney. She is in her 90s and a tiny little woman. He talks about her marvelous cement sculptures and mentions she has about three hundred of them spread out on a little plain on her property.

22:23

While Emory is talking there is a new sound. A high pitched whistling which reminds me of Slim Pickens as the character Major TJ "King" Kong in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). I picture him astraddle the nuclear bomb as it drops from the B-52. He rides that baby like a cowboy on a bronco at the rodeo whipping his cowboy hat on the nuclear flank of the cold metal steed that is gonna take him home to Jesus! Can I get an amen?

22:37

The high pitched sound Doppler's down and away until it can't be heard at all. Emory continues. He talks about McChesney's attack against the Greeks. She considers the ancient Greeks assholes because of the way they depicted women in their iconography. She takes a creature like the minotaur, and makes it transforms it. It is like she smashes the old way of seeing as an ancient Greek. Emory says she has a seven foot tall concrete sculpture of a minotaur with breasts and a pussy (my word, Emory called it a muff).

23:34

I am quite confused and having trouble getting past the idea of a transgender minotaur. WTH, I think, why not. As I come back into my body, Emory is talking about some other sculptures of invented deities, such as a serpent god.

24:11

McChesney is known for her lion sculptures and the Petaluma Library has two of them inside the library. Steve asks if they are like the lions in front of the New York City Library. Emory says that yes, they are similar because they are both concrete sculptures, but her lions are much more personalized. They possess a quality of whimsy. He mentions Mary was also a novelist who wrote a series of detective novels under a pseudonym. She had the same agent as Norman Mailer. She abandoned writing when she married Robert McChesney, an American Abstract Expressionist who attained critical success in San Francisco during the period after World War II.

25:35

Mary called Emory to encourage him on his novel and to give him some guidelines. Since talking with her Emory has a whole new structure for working on his novel. Emory shared that every day she does sculpture, writes short stories and works on a biography of Bay Area art and artists. He calls Mary Fuller McChesney a dynamo.

26:48

Emory then talks about his difficulty juggling the different segments of his life; social, familial and creative. He says he does feel like he is getting a better handle on all of this and can feel himself on the upswing emotionally.

27:22

Steve would like to hear from Emory, more of what has been successful. He wants him to pass on his successes. Emory deflects the question and deftly asks David how he coordinates these different aspects.

28:12

David says jokingly, he does this by avoiding his responsibilities. He shares that he is working on a project that requires him to write a five minute script each day and he is able to keep current and not fall behind. Emory asks if the project is a commercial venture and David characterizes it as purely mercenary, something he is doing for a public relations company. David shares he know's hired to play a role so, he plays it that way.

29:31

"They're not really interested in my input," David says, "Just in my output." He refers to the people at the PR firm as straight, which in this context means they are not hip to the whole broadcast scene. David does like the actors he works with.

30:15

Steve asks David how he does his own projects while working with the PR people. David says he manages to find time. He is primarily writing songs right now. He considers playing the guitar his time out where he can relax and drive Mary Burns crazy.

30:59

Emory remarks that he finds working at a drudgy job stimulates his creativity. Also, he finds it difficult to work on a project that is not already placed in some permanent published form. He says that when he worked in radio and had a weekly assignment, such as a script, the assignment was easy to complete and this seemed to make it easier to do his own creative projects.

31:59

Emory says now he is the CEO of Emory Holmes, Inc. and it is tougher but he, "... absolutely loves it."

32:19

Emory asks me how I coordinate my life to keep the creative juices flowing and complete projects. I share I have a difficult time finishing things unless I have some type of collaborative goal, such as a music gig or a poetry reading or an oil change. In any solo performance the audience is the collaborator. I mention the poetry reading in a library in Fairfax, Virginia a few days ago.

33:22

I talk about early collaborations with my sister which seems to have created a template to use for any of my creative endeavors. I am a great collaborator and good idea person but not very good at other situations. I talk about my journey from large pieces to the very smallest, one haiku a day no matter what. I have been working myself back to larger and larger pieces, songs, poetry and stories. Also, I was advised years ago that I was better off having someone else book gigs. I play the role of cool musician; the agent can be more aggressive. This podcast is collaborative and I like that.

35:52

Emory asks Ruth to talk about her process. Her first response is, "Poorly, very poorly." She says that she has had a lifelong history of service and her art is put last and she is finding it is very difficult to turn that around. Emory calls that turning around a "pivot." She is slowly becoming versed in social media.

36:56

Emory asks Ruth to talk about painting on the night of every full moon. Once a month Ruth and Steve paint from around midnight to 7am. She says Steve is very disciplined doing two or three things every day. Whereas, she is doing a lot of physical things right now that make it hard to plan her time accurately.

38:29

Ruth says her vision is very clear about making an art life, but she doesn't know what it means when it comes to all of the householder chores.

38:46

Steve finds the whole thing very difficult and he tries to do a little bit of everything. He finds he is constantly behind on everything. He, too talks about the household and family obligations. He does find it easy to work on the computer, crediting his 15 years spent working on a company web site. He feels like he benefitted from that job more than they did.

40:13

Emory asks Steve why did he think he benefitted more that his employer. Steve explained that social media is a voice, it is personal. His personality was a large part of the company's social media and when he left he took it with him, people followed him because of his social media personality.

40:51

Emory compares Steve to Knute Rockne. As far as I know, Steve was not born in Norway, like Knute Rockne. Unusual name, Knute, it sounds like something a college football witch would add to her Saturday night gumbo, "eye of Knute," rhymes with newt. Emory says that both Steve and Knute rhymes-with - Newt, share the same passion for life. Steve tries to disagree with Emory but Emory will not be denied. Steve shares that a year after he left the company they asked to hire him back to help with Social Media for the Christmas retail buying season, but, Steve demurred.

42:19

Steve says out of the blue that he is sending mixed messages. Aren't we all, I remember thinking? Steve stresses that social media is very personal and if you hire someone to do it, the employee will be the one who benefits.

43:08

Responding to me about being one's own agent, Steve believes that social media requires it. Steve talks about the fact he has certain things he tries, but he can't do it all and is learning to be satisfied he is doing the best he can.

44:28

Steve says he and Ruth finished a painting they have been working on for months. A Jackson Pollock cover. He goes into detail about painting someone else's work.

45:01

David mentions Bob Dylan's paintings where he is covering famous photographs. Steve says he wants to paint his own versions of paintings that have been important to him in his life. Steve goes on to talk more about the particular painting of Pollock's that he and Ruth worked on. Steve had always wanted to see some of Pollock's "action" paintings.

46:29

Steve moved to New York and saw a large Jackson Pollock show at MOMA. He saw their San Francisco painting and came to the conclusion that their painting was the best of the show. He talks about the bugaboo among artists. If you paint something in the style of someone else you may be accused of ripping that artist off.

48:03

Steve's intention was to honor Pollock's painting so he and Ruth worked on it for many months. They finished their painting last night, signed it and had a big celebration.

48:39

Ruth says they are getting close to finishing another collaborative painting. At Ruth's "Childhood Museum", she liked John Singer Sargent and didn't like Pollock. Pollock reminded her of her worst sculpture. She was a sculpture technician and saw a shitload of bad sculptures.

49:49

Painting like this has helped her use her brush in a different way. Ruth is happy to finish one and wonders what the next painting will be. "Monet," Steve says with no hesitation. Ruth however wants to do a David Park painting of a kitchen sink. Ruth describes the painting as gorgeous then says she has an affinity for housescapes. Ruth knows the owner of the painting and think's she can get a photo from her. In the meantime Ruth agrees to work on the Monet.

50:57

Emory remarks that Steve and Ruth's monthly, full moon session is like what I talked about, doing the practice no matter what. I agree. Consistency, the collaboration... Even if they did it separately but at the same time, that feels like a collaboration to me. I point out that the Art Chat Podcasts seem like collaboration. I consider these types of things a powerful process.

52:36

I ask David when is his creative time. He says in the afternoon, usually, but most of his ideas come to him when he is asleep. He wakes up and often writes them down. He adds them to a list and eventually gets to them.

53:00

Emory asks if David plans to play some of these songs for an audience. He says yes. He tells us he is putting together a show right now he calls, Foolish Man. He says it will be a mixture of music with spoken word and story songs.

53:45

I complement David on the production values of the songs he has on Soundcloud and ask him if they were all recorded at the same studio. He says he records at an old friends studio which was built in his garage. He then goes into more detail about the good chemistry he has with the other musicians and talks about his experiences there. He points out that in a studio he is able to achieve a level of perfection that he can't in other mediums.

54:30

The reason he got out of plays is there is never enough time to rehearse. The economics in theater only allow two or three weeks of rehearsal which means everything doesn't come together until closing night. Unfortunately David's voice is cutting in and out and he is getting harder to understand.

55:07

Emory tells us he muted his mic while David was talking and the sound quality improved.

55:25

Steve asks David what happens when he performs the songs live after reaching a level of perfection in the studio, how does he get that to the stage? David says he takes it as a challenge. He shares that he is working on another piece based on Beethoven that is fifteen minutes long.

56:59

We all want to know when David will be performing nearby. I am thinking if he comes to the Washington DC area we can jam. David says he is doing six songs soon at a place called the Prop House. Sometime this summer, he hopes to do the whole thing in a theater.

57:29

Emory asks if the shows will be recorded and posted to social media. David would like to perform it at least a dozen times before an actual broadcast.

58:10

David asks if his voice is still cutting out. Actually what he says is, "Izzt schjk zzyzx waga-waga a zaveevaz schtick tick neesh nash gnu gnu Knute." But we get the gist of it and answer, "Yezz."

58:16

Emory says he is muting his mic.

58:19

Steve says he doesn't think it is Emory.

58:24

Steve thinks he could hang up on David and then call him back.

58:30

"Sawlrighhavtasplinow o zikingedownin Montreal," David says.

58:41

Ruth tells David to think about supervising. She says he should supervise the move, but don't pick up the stuff.

58:57

It seems David is moving his daughter.

59:43

I tell Steve I will email this abstract of the show sometime this evening then hang up. That was Monday at 2:30pm ET. Now it is Friday, about 1:48pm ET. This took much longer to write than I planned. I'm sitting here in the Bamboo Room wondering if this is an accurate record of Art Chat Podcast #30. May Day has come and gone, the barbarians are at the gate and I hear there is a wolf knocking at the front door. If nothing else, consider this a record of what I think happened. Let's continue...

[tweet this]

References:

Staff contacts:

Emory Holmes II

• Emory Holmes II on Facebook
• Emory Holmes on Google Plus

Mary Burns

• Mary Burns
• Mary Burns on Playwrights Guild of Canada
• Mary Burns on Amazon

Steve "p0ps" Harlow

• p0ps on Twitter
• Steve Harlow on Facebook
• Stephen Harlow on Google Plus
• The Real Steve Harlow
• p0ps Harlow on Flickr

Jim "Jimmy The Peach" Aaron

• HaikuToday
• HaikuToday on Facebook
• @Haiku_Today on Twitter
• @JimmythePeach on Twitter
• Jimmy the Peach on Facebook
• Jimmy the Peach on Google Plus
• Jimmy the Peach on Soundcloud
• email: jimmythepeach@gmail.com
• Skype: Jimmy.the.Peach

David King

• David King on Facebook
• David King "popwisdom" on Soundcloud
• David King on Playwrights Guild of Canada

Listeners and readers, please add your comments, questions, concerns, corrections, additional information.

Subscribe to this site
Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes

Present: Emory Holmes II, Jim Aaron (AKA Jimmy The Peach), Steve Harlow, and Mary Burns.

Peach jokes about wearing a bandana, vato style for "Dress Like Geronimo Day" as we gather together on Skype.

[tweet this]

2:00
Not getting Mary or David.

4:15

Peach tells Emory that he gave a his copy of The Art of Writing: Lu Chi's Wen Fu to a writer he met at his recent retreat. The similarity in names, leads Emory and Peach talk about To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. Steve doesn't understand.

5:05

Steve wonders if there has been an international incident that may explain why the Canadians, Mary and David, aren't reachable.

6:02

Peach asks if we have heard that we'll be losing the Internet because the FBI is going to shut down servers offering virus fixes. Steve floats the idea of a Bit-Torrent based, mesh network internet that can't be stopped by governments and is not owned by corporations.

[tweet this]

12:26
After numerous unsuccessful calls to Canada, Peach begins to sing, "Oh Canada..." and Mary picks up. "Have you been trying to reach me?" she asks.

13:12

Peach informs Mary that "her" National Anthem is not cheerful. This begins some hockey and country music talk.

16:00

We begin art chat 29 by introducing the voices.

17:20

Mary begins discussing No sympathy for the creative class By Scott Timberg, an article recommended by Peach. She relates the struggle her non-artist brother has had with recognizing the difficulty the artists' life through empathizing with his two artistic children. She agrees with the author, that the public, generally, are not aware of how hard it is for artists, how unpampered artists are.

[tweet this]

20:00
Mary relates how she informed her creative writing students that writing is not a career, that you do this instead of working for money.

[tweet this]

Peach points out the term "cultural elite" was recently coined here in the States and asks if the rest of the group thinks creatives are considered part of that.

[tweet this]

21:00
Rather than answer that question, Steve says he understands why general public thinks that artists are different, he sees himself as an "art snob", at a young age began to look down on those who were not artists. Saying that of course people would think of him as an elitist because he didn't consider non-artists as human, not understanding why they would "bother to breathe".

[tweet this]

21:35
Emory reports he had the "same defect" when he was growing up, that he couldn't relate to those who looked down on him for being an artist. He knew the joy and fulfillment available to him by pursuing his creative interests. He saw "their" choices as vacuous and didn't understand why they valued what they did.

22:17

Mary asks if Steve and Emory have changed their attitudes as they grew older. Steve answers that he has "mellowed", but still doesn't understand how people who don't make art get through life.

22:40
Peach says he was attracted to creative people, conceiving of them as sitting in cafes snapping their finger to Bird and driving across country like Kerouac, nothing elite, but as insiders, belonging to a community of "my people". He couldn't understand those who were not his people. Steve suggests the word, "tribe" and Peach accepts it.

[tweet this]

23:50
Steve understands his is a "horrible atitude" - seeing those outside his artist tribe as inferior. Peach agree that it is not the "long view" and he doesn't think that way now.

23:10
Steve says members of "financial tribes" could more effectively exploit creatives for their economic value. Mary agrees that would be an "enlightened" thing for them to do, recalling asking her brother to ponder that the valuables left behind by societies are artworks, not stock market reports.

[tweet this]

25:05
Mary said her appreciation of other people was expanded by her work as a journalist, which opened larger worlds for her.

25:30

Peach points out that the financials do see value in creatives as tax write offs. Steve suggest they could gain reward beyond that by investing in ten years of a young artist's production for a large stake in the earnings of the artist's career.

[tweet this]

Mary thinks it would be better if the investor appreciated the cultural value of the artist's production, since not every artist makes money. She asks, "Would we deny that what we do is useful?"

27:30

Emory says we know they will not be supportive it remains our obligation to continue making quality art without support. Though it is difficult, it is something we all do everyday.

[tweet this]

Steve asks if any of us could stop (producing art). "Not me," Mary quickly states, then adds that maybe a time will come when she'll want to stop, but not now. Emory thinks there are times in life when events cause you to take a hiatus. When that has occurred to him it is demoralizing, but if he has the strength to embrace the fact that he can't create, it is a renewal. He feels he needs to embrace all the consequences of his decision to become a creative person, including the fallow periods. Emory brings the example of Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, who stopped writing during WWII, embracing that he couldn't see any point in writing. He developed new insights in this fallow period and some of his greatest work came after believing he could not ever write again. Emory says that is a model he's followed and he has just recently come back from a fallow period and he's grateful to be back.

[tweet this]

31:28
Peach reports he stopped creating for periods, more than once, each time feeling he would never create again. "It's like waking up in a morning and seeing no color anymore," he says. Steve is surprised by these reports, saying he didn't think that was possible. Emory recounts a item about Bob Dylan recently in the news that describes him passing through a fallow period in 1965. In 1970 Dylan said to Emory that he thought he would never write again. Emory states that these when these moments occur, you can't find the map back to your creative self. Peach agrees saying that during such times he can't hear the beauty or structure of music. "I never wish my life on to someone else because of moments like that," Peach adds.

[tweet this]

34:00
Emory asks Steve if he has ever had those moments, Steve says no. Mary says she has not, either. Steve recalls that he never chose to be an artist. As a little kid, he liked to draw and saw the world in terms of lines and colors, as he sees it now, and that drawing was always the most "fun thing" he knew to do. He says it took several years before he knew that "artist" was a position in society. Until then, he didn't know that what he was doing was special, but he was always doing it and has continued drawing and painting throughout his life.

[tweet this]

35:30
Mary points out that this aspect is not covered in the article, that creative endeavors are not a career choice. The article was making another point she understood through her teaching experience, that College English Departments need to justify themselves in the same terms as Economic Departments, that Creative writing programs are now made to seem like career training, viewed the same as Athletic Departments or Business Departments. She says is critical of this change. She agrees with Steve that it becoming a creative is not necessarily a choice.

[tweet this]

37:35
Steve asks if people are really taking a Creative Writing class to become a writer. Mary cautions against generalizing, but knows some who seemed to genuinely disappointed when they were not successful writers at the end of their graduate studies. She explains that although students receive practical benefits, such as intellectual growth, networking, and practice from a graduate program, some students are mislead into thinking a MA in Creative Writing is career training. Some think that if they get their MA, they'll be a successful writer like, Jonathan Franzen.

[tweet this]

40:00
Emory thinks he has approached his life somewhat differently. He has valued all aspects of life as equal to creative work. For example, he approached being on the road as a creative endeavor and although he drew and wrote during that time, he thought of the traveling as the most important achievement. When he came to a stable period, he thought of expressing his life through creativity. Whatever he was doing was the preeminent means of expression.

[tweet this]

42:10
Steve says he has always been focused on visual art. When he worked second jobs, he would be thinking of his on-going art projects. This is why he preferred jobs which didn't distract from his art thought. Emory says that sometimes he would not think about art, not in the way he thinks about it today. When he was on a labor job, his focus would be on that. However, when he took an opportunity to make art, he felt that was the most important focus.

43:15

Steve says the article brought to his mind the tragic short-term thinking that he thinks has taken over society. Nothing is important unless it returns immediate financial value.

[tweet this]

44:50
Mary explains that society does revere some art creation, perhaps we'd want more value place on art beyond financial reward, but she finds generally favorable responses when she first meets people when she says she is a writer. It seems to have valuable associations and connotations for them. It is the storyteller who carries society's knowledge and values forward, people have a innate respect for artists, it seems to her to be in our genes.

[tweet this]

46:33
Mary asks, "what happens when you tell people you're an artists?" Peach answers that it is always a conversation killer. (laugh) He explains that most of the people he associates with are engineers. When they ask what he's been doing lately, he answers that he's writing and making music. They react like they think he's loafing. He thinks people value celebrity more. If he can say he's played music with a musician they've heard of, they appreciate his musical activity more. They want you to be famous so they can say they've met someone famous.

[tweet this]

49:45
Emory thinks the principal comment in the article was the separation between America's perception of what a creative person does and the Protestant work ethic of the 17th and 18th Century European occupiers of North America. The virtues of being a creative is influenced by the Puritan's anti-intellectual influence on American thought, to the point that people are more acclaimed for political or financial achievement than their artistic ones. He reports that he experienced more appreciation for being a poet in French Montreal and wonders if the arts are more appreciated in Canada than in the United States. Mary says that English Canada be a bit better than the U.S., in this way, it's definitely better in French Canada. She thinks that, in Quebec, they recognize that societies are continued through the arts and since they are a fragile society, as a French language island in an English language sea, they honor their artists.

[tweet this]

52:40
Here, in the States, Emory the response he gets when meeting people and reporting that he is a writer is similar to what Peach gets - blank stares. Mary asks if they ever get a response like she gets where the person she meets will say that they think they "have a book" in them. She thinks they would love to be able to write, they envy the ability to tell a story, to express a lasting truth. Of these people, Emory thinks they expect writing to be stenography (Mary giggles with recognition) and they expect to reap benefits simply by telling their story to him, who they seem to consider an unimaginative, idle person. Steve says, when telling people he's an artist, they will often say that they used to do art, but gave it up.

[tweet this]

55:40
Mary tells of a depressing conversation she had... (the connection is lost)

57:00

Returning, Mary continues... she knew a wonderful man, in the Yukon, who invested in the arts, bought paintings and commissioned her to write a book, and tried to convince a businessman friend of his to do something similar. She had a lunch meeting with the two of them, the businessman asked her many questions about how money would be made from the art project, she didn't have the answers he wanted. She and he couldn't bridge the differences in their points of view, even though his friend, the experience art patron was present. She walked away from that meeting with a very heavy feeling of isolation.

58:25

Mary asked if Peach had positive examples of helpful people. Peach says yes, his band was given money to record with and in other instances was supported in his artistic endeavors by peers.

60:55

We decide to sign off, Peach reads the last paragraph of the article: "Serious art - novels, what you have in the galleries - brings you back to reality and makes you look at your life. Serious art makes people uncomfortable - and during these times, we don't need more discomfort."

[tweet this]

References:

• No sympathy for the creative class Taxpayers bail out Wall Street and Detroit. But there's no help, or Springsteen anthem, for struggling creatives. by Scott Timberg | Salon
• The Writing Of "Like A Rolling Stone" Dylan
• Dylan Abandons Writing, Then Writes "...Rolling Stone"
• Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer (excerpt on Dylan)
• Czeslaw Milosz, Poet
  Note: Couldn't find a reference by Mr. Milosz of his "fallow" period during the War period of the late 30s and early 40s, as he was prolific throughout. I still can't shake the belief that I heard him in a live interview, expressing this critical moment in his life, when he walked away from poetry because of it's inadequacy in expressing the arch cruelties and profundities of the lives people had to come to terms with during wartime. Nevertheless, here are some reflections by and on the artist that may be useful to our discussions about artistic relevancy and identity... EHII [Emory Homes II]
  • Interview with Czeslaw Milosz
  • Milosz Obit, The Economist
• Lu Chi's Biographical Notes
• Lu Chi's Wen Fu, "The Art of Writing" [excerpt]

Staff contacts:

Emory Holmes II

• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=600713051
• http://emoryblog.posterous.com/

Mary Burns

• http://maryburns.ca
• http://www.playwrightsguild.ca/playwright/mary-burns
• http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Burns/e/B0027MGZCQ/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=13346...

Steve Harlow

• https://twitter.com/#!/
• https://www.facebook.com/steve.harlow
• http://gplus.to/p0ps
• http://therealsteveharlow.com/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/p0ps

Jimmy The Peach (AKA: Jim Aaron)

• http://haikutoday.net
• https://twitter.com/#!/JimmythePeach
• https://www.facebook.com/jimmythepeach
• http://soundcloud.com/jimmy-thepeach

Listeners and readers, please add your comments, questions, concerns, corrections, additional information.

Subscribe to this site
Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes

Present: Emory Holmes II, Ruth Parson, Jim Aaron (AKA Jimmy The Peach), Steve Harlow, and Mary Burns, and David King.

Voila

Difficulty at the beginning, as the I Ching says, but the process of connecting is getting better and was much smoother for Artchat Podcast 28. In on the conversation, Jimmythe Peach from Arlington, Virginia, Ruth Parson, Steve Harlow, and Emory Holmes in Los Angeles, and David King and Mary Burns just north of Vancouver, B.C.

Peach is back home after a memorable cross-country drive, for which he thanked his wife Patti. He begins the discussion about content by saying that, to him, content is not an abstract notion; a writer writes; a musician plays. Steve relates an epiphany he experienced as a young artist in Northern California, when he saw a Clyfford Still exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. There/then Steve learned that content is different than subject, that subject is not the point.

David refers to his play Contents Under Pressure, in which various characters in various situations are put under various pressures. Even actors are under pressure because of the demands of performance. Steve comments that the content then includes everything, the audience, the set. David says that pressure is like the stakes characters and people face; stakes draw an audience. Peach suggests that the pressures amount to situations that will reach some kind of resolution. David says that stakes, a word dramatists use, get audiences invested in a piece.Stakes also draw him into music, the stakes the composers/musician set for themselves. Honesty is the swing. It "don't" mean a thing if it doesn't have honesty.

Peach believes you have to have a dynamic, but it can't be too abstract or too mundane. He talks about jazz, about how sometimes audiences drift away when the music leaves their comfort zone, as in improvisation. Steve describes the heartbreak he experienced when trying to share Coltrane with a friend who just didn't get it. Peach says that experimentation like that requires a certain amount of literacy in the listener. Emory agrees that the audience has to accept some measure of truth, and, referring to Steve's experience, said that Steve heard truth while his friend heard gibberish. Emory talks about his own efforts to move beyond quotidian recitation towards truth in his own work, which is, at present, a crime novel. Steve likes the phrase quotidian recitation, it reminds him of cotillion, a dance, to which Peach says, quotidian is a million dances and Mary adds, quotidian is dancing everyday.

Mary's take on content is more prosaic, she says. She is working on a novel in which she is trying to reconcile what she imagined about her fictional character with what she is finding out about that character's times.

Ruth says that to her, content is what captures her interest, and what interests her creates a bridge to her observer. But she can't control what the observer sees in her work. As for subjects, she is excited about painting family.

Steve observes that everyone is talking about communication and the chat veers into content that appears to be contentless. Emory refers to the famous white paintings, which Steve identifies as Robert Rauschenberg's. The canvases were painted white and content was created by the shadows thrown onto them by viewers. At that time, in his early career, Rauschenberg was working at Black Mountain College with John Cage and Merce Cunnigham, and all were exploring the concept of apparently contentless content.

Extreme exaggeration of reality, says Peach, adding that people hear what they want to hear, that communication is like a game of telephone. Steve asks about a Beckett play, Happy Days. David refers to another Beckett play, Breath, which was largely the sound of people inhaling and exhaling, and lasted less than five minutes (although it was actually less than a minute).

Emory then describes an image of a bullfighter sitting on the sidelines of the ring, with his head in his hands, the bull standing by, a moment of truth. Steve asks if the image encapsulates the bullfighters feelings, and Emory explains that there are two stories behind the picture, and he loves them both, the poetic version, and the factual version, which Emory recounts. It comes back to audience, David says, who saw the same image on FB

Emory contributes what he describes as a non-sequitur about Nieztchse and a character who looks at the cow standing outside the window, and deciding that the cow is continually forgetting what he wants to say.

Steve asks, what about communication? He worked with a left wing radio station, KBBF, where he thought the message was so dense, no one listened. He thought communication the main thing, not lists of atrocities. Emory believes that it's the writer's job to add interest to those ideas.

Steve prompts Ruth to talk about how she perceives men writers as opposed to women writers, and she says Emory writes like a girl, which to her means, getting down to the story, instead of just talking a lot.

References:

• Clyfford Still Museum
• Albert Ayler
• John Coltrane
• Beckett Happy Days
• Peach - There Are Children in the Woods

Staff contacts:

Emory Holmes II

• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=600713051
• http://emoryblog.posterous.com/

Mary Burns

• http://maryburns.ca
• http://www.playwrightsguild.ca/playwright/mary-burns
• http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Burns/e/B0027MGZCQ/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=13346...

Ruth Parson

• https://twitter.com/#!/cucaskirt
• http://www.p0ps.com/originalArt/ruthParson/ruthParsonArt.html

Steve Harlow

• https://twitter.com/#!/
• https://www.facebook.com/steve.harlow
• http://gplus.to/p0ps
• http://therealsteveharlow.com/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/p0ps

Jimmy The Peach (AKA: Jim Aaron)

• http://haikutoday.net
• https://twitter.com/#!/JimmythePeach
• https://www.facebook.com/jimmythepeach
• http://soundcloud.com/jimmy-thepeach

David King

• http://soundcloud.com/popwisdom
• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1212186662&ref=ts
• http://www.playwrightsguild.ca/playwright/david-king

Listeners and readers, please add your comments, questions, concerns, corrections, additional information.

Subscribe to this site
Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes

Present: Emory Holmes II, Ruth Parson, Jim Aaron (AKA Jimmy The Peach), Steve Harlow, and Mary Burns, and David King.

After we get connected and introduced. Mary, noting that Peach is calling in from Twin Falls, Idaho, asks if he has seen the movie "Twin Falls Idaho". Peach has not, but remembers he's seen "Twin Peaks". Mary recommends the movie, "It actually features twins".

David asks Steve if he has ever posted the podcast to Soundcloud, Steve answers that he has not, he has been hosting them on Posterous and planning to move them to Internet Archive, under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. Mary agrees that, in the unlikely event of someone reusing the podcast recordings, it would be fine with her.

[9:00]

Mary asks if songs could be uploaded to the "new platform" Steve talked about developing in the last episode (#26) for the podcast. Steve assure her that they could, with the smartest way being to embed the Soundcloud player on a page made for the song(s). David asks Jimmy if he has any of his songs on Soundcloud, Jim says he does not. David says it is extraordinary the kind of stuff you find on Soundcloud and that the clincher for him was when he discovered that Paul McCartney was on it. "If it's good enough for Paul, it's good enough for me", David concludes.

[10:29]

Motel maid at Peach's room interrupts for a moment. Mary says she likes hearing motel maids across America recalling another had interrupted Peach while he was on the podcast from New Mexico. Peach explains that this maid was bringing towels he had asked for last night.

[11:27]

Steve says his thought is that this podcast and any media any of us make should be hosted on as many platforms as possible. David agrees. Ruth asks if Soundcloud accepts poetry read aloud, David says it does, there are "a number of poets on Soundcloud". Steve [erroneously] says that Soundcloud's uses Flash to playback the tracks, therefore cannot be played on iPhone or iPad [factcheck: Soundcloud does not use Flash for record or playback and is available for iOS devices]. Steve correctly points out that Posterous makes this podcast available for free subscription in iTunes.

[13:00]

Mary asks Peach if he is still doing one Haiku per day for his site, Haiku Today Peach reports that it is his minimum to do one per day, lately he's been doing more, inspired by his stay in Imnaha, Oregon. Emory asks if that's where Peach reached the end of the road. Peach says yes and then he had to carry all his gear across a footbridge over the high water of the Imnaha River. "It was fantastic," Peach says. He was at a writers' retreat. Emory said we were remiss in not inviting Peach to visit as he passed through Southern California. Peach affirmed that Steve had put out the welcome mat to him, but he had taken more time than planned to get out West and needed to speed up the state to see his father in Sonoma County and so didn't have the time to stop.

[14:44]

Mary points out that David is the only one of us on the call who hasn't lived in Sonoma County. She asks him to say a little about his background. Agreeing, David says he's primarily a playwright, although recently he has taken to writing songs and he has become a "guitar bore". "I've also become addicted to recording," David adds, "I've recently enjoyed being in the (recording) studio and working with really fine musicians". David says his music in on CD Baby. Emory asks if David has stopped writing plays. David says no, he has a couple of plays he's recently finished and "put out there", one is slated to have a reading this summer at the Arts Club Theatre (Vancouver, B.C.) that he is hoping that will "go". David explains that play is written for specific actors, one lives in Vancouver, one in Winnipeg and he's having difficulty getting them in the same place. David is not satisfied having other actors fill in. He hopes to see it staged season after next. Emory asks what it is about. After a chuckle, David says it is based on an event involving a socialite in Vancouver, who hired two guys to cut down trees on public land blocking her view of the ocean. They got caught and by prior arrangement with the socialite, didn't report her, did time, and got paid. Ruth asked David how he gets his plays "out there". David explains that with some theatres he has a relationship with the dramaturge and may send plays direct to them. Often theatres change and new artistic directors may change dramaturges. The plays may be accessed through the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Mary a play there, as well. Mary quips that as the Canadian arts connection, she and David are adding a Northern flavor to the mix.

[21:00]

For Southern flavor, Steve asks Emory to talk about Willie Middlebrook who he honors as one of Los Angeles's most distinguished and capable artists, who just a few days ago suffered a stroke and is now recovering in hospital. An exhibition of his work, scheduled previously, will open as planned this coming Saturday Opening April 14, 2012 from 7-10 pm at Avenue 50 Studio, 131 North Avenue 50 Highland Park, CA 90042. Emory says, this exhibit will now generate some support for him and his family. He's such a brilliant photographer and multi-media artist. So sad, the struggles we must go thru to do the work. Steve opines that Willie is a magician with photography, like Abstract Expressionist photography. [example: Portraits Of My People] Steve says he's looking forward to seeing the work up close to figure out what he's doing. Emory adds that Willie Middlebrook's work has a realistic and poetic bite, as well. He employs devices that painters, he'll have photographic works that are twelve feet tall, it's stunning to see photography presented in that way, plus the imagery itself has a painterly aura about it, Emory adds. Willie's work is thrilling and disconcerting at the same time. He is someone give support to, Emory concludes, and he's sorry he's having this trouble. Steve agrees saying it is horrible.

[22:51]

The howling noise which plagued the conversation last week returns and Steve states his suspicion that the noise comes from one of the participant's hard drive or computer fan and a period of experimenting with muting the microphones one by one which was inconclusive, but, the sound dies anyway.

[25:15]

Emory asks, "what do you want to discuss?" Steve says, "Twitter." Then asks, "what do you want to discuss?" Emory says it fine with him to discuss Twitter, everything's a learning experience for him, adding that he's never visited Twitter and only knows that it is some kind of haiku. Steve reports several things make it current for him. One was that morning's National Public Radio report Simple Tweets Of Fate: Teju Cole's Condensed News which celebrated the Nigerian writer's tweets, which are distillations of news reports, as poetry, in observance of National (US) Poetry Month. Steve reports that Teju Cole started dedicating himself to tweeting when he lived in Lagos, Nigeria and has continued now from Brooklyn where he is tweeting on the local New York City events from one hundred year-old newspapers which he reads online thru the Library of Congress Newspaper Archive.

[27:57]

Steve reads two, Teju Cole tweets from today:

1. "Prosper, of Houston Street, didn't. His wife is dead, and he cannot afford to bury her." 7:49 AM - 9 Apr
2. "Alma Howard, a lunatic, wrote letters to the president and governor predicting war with Germany. She is under observation at Bellevue." 7:09 AM - 9 Apr

David quips that the guy could be eligible for a McArthur Grant.

 

[28:43]

Steve continues with saying his favorite tweeter has been Andy Carvin who he says has been doing a spectacular job of being in the middle of the Arab Spring doing real journalism on Twitter. Steve reads two current tweets from @acarvin:

1. "A Syrian woman kisses a soldier from the Free Syrian Army in front a destroyed Syrian army tank" 9:46 AM - 9 Apr
2. "Suleiman knows where the bodies are buried. (This is not a metaphor: he actually knows where the bodies are buried.)" 9:36 AM - 9 Apr

Steve reports on discussion about Twitter, including historic precedents for short form writing on a recent New Yorker Outloud podcast, Is Twitter Good For Us?.

 

[32:27]

Peach says he was published in a Twitter journal called Seven by Twenty. Twice, he was featured, the first time in 2010 and he also was included in a book they made published by Upper Rubber Boot, titled, 140 And Counting.

[33:24]

Jimmy The Peach reads one of his published Haiku tweets, "Whippoorwills awaken when Peonies go to bed".

[33:51]

Steve asks if there are questions on Twitter. Emory asks how do you sign up? Go to Twitter.com, Steve answers. David thinks you need a cell phone for it, but Steve says, no, you can use a computer for it. Mary asks what's the advantage? She sees how it is appropriate for haiku writing Jimmy The Peach and she loved the examples, but what a would she or David or Emory put on it? We talk a lot about tools, but not as much about content. David says he never thought about it for himself, he thought it was for people with too much time on their hands, but he sees that it could put you in touch with a lot of people. Steve characterizes it as a garden, you put work into it, you get rewards. Peach says the way people use hashmarks for topics on Twitter you can see all current tweets using a certain hashmark. He says that he's had other poets connect with him by following the haiku hashmark. David reports that a concert he attended had a screen displaying tweets where the audience responded to the songs and tweeted to each other, it was flirtatious, going in all kinds of directions, he laughed, quite interesting, immediate. Emory says his resistance comes from his belief that he needs to devote most of his time to his novel. But, since his novel involves these things, he knows he has to find a way to engage them, but can't shake the feeling that he's wasting people's time and his time. He says he has tried to start a blog, but doesn't think that he has anything to say. Altho, he doesn't have that problem on Facebook, he's become familiar with that. He'd like to be less resistant to Twitter and blogging, to find a new voice in there. He'll have to work in the context of his new novel, otherwise, he'll feels he is distracting himself from his important work.

[39:29]

Steve suggest that he think of Twitter as the cafe society. The writer finishes his daily work, goes to the cafe for sociability, exchanging ideas and making plans with other artists. Twitter is quick and realtime, Facebook is realtime and great, also, but it's limited by not being public. Using social media, you want people to find you, you want to build audience and you want to find other people. Ruth adds, you want to excite your audience about what you're creating, if you have a particularly good line, throw it out there.

[]

Emory says this dovetails into the Seth Godin on Q interview Steve posted earlier, which he found fascinating. He suggests that Mary listen to it. Steve interjects that it's from Q on CBC. Emory continues that Seth's statement is very quick, doesn't waste your time, but expands your imagination. Steve explains Seth's subject as changes in book publishing and media since the advent of the Internet and eBooks - moving book publishing from scarcity to abundance. Mary says she likes listening to Q and finds host, Jian Ghomeshi's voice sexy.

[42:53]

Mary asks how could, for instance, David use Twitter? She continues, thinking of it as Cafe Society, would she and Emory, when finished with their day use a cocktail hour hashtag? Peach suggests #happyhour. How would David use it for his music? Steve suggest when David uploads a new song to Soundcloud, that he tweet out a brief description and a link, say "check it out". Peach adds that they do, right away.

[43:47]

Emory says the (Seth Godin) podcast explains exactly why this is a useful activity. Because writers today need to connect to their own audience, rather than relying on a publisher's or publicist's audience. Some echoing threaten to interrupt the conversation as Steve is saying the Seth Godin distills it better than anyone.

[44:09]

Echoing interrupts, Peach needs to leave, says his goodbyes.

[49:53]

Mary says she can't see herself using Twitter until she has something to say to the world. On her blog, she's almost guaranteed that no one will read it, so it's just a way of letting off steam. She quickly adds that every once in a while somebody does look at it and that's always amazing.

[51:40]

Ruth suggests to Mary that after every day of writing, she tweet the best phrase of the day. People would start to enjoy her phrases and begin to want to know when they can read the whole book. It's just a matter of creating excitement about your work.

Mary says, "Okay, that's an interesting way to look at it." She says she appreciates the idea, exclaiming, "you guys, are leading us all forward!" She thinks she may be dragging her feet in the mud. David adds, "Some of us just want to be reclusive." Steve says, "Everybody has that right." Ruth says, "You don't have to check every five minutes to see who cares about your phrase." Steve adds that Mary could tweet a link to each blog post she writes so there's more of a chance someone reads. Mary says she has mixed feelings about whether she wants somebody to read it. Part of the fun for her is feeling no one will find it amongst all the other stuff in the blogosphere. She says she enjoys the tension between discipline and freedom: discipline because it is published so she is careful, freedom because no one's looking over your shoulder. She would be stepping out from that cover. Steve reminds that she would only be a little bit more public because there are so many tweets, it's still possible no one will see the tweet, either.

[54:18]

David says he's posted a line or two of song lyrics on Facebook, it is sometimes helpful and people do respond to it. Steve points out that Twitter is that public, index by search engines and everything we put on Facebook will always belong to Mark Zuckerberg. It's scary to read what we agree to when we use Facebook. They could claim that the song you put on Soundcloud belongs to then when you post a link to it on Facebook.

David asks if the group knows of Dan Gordon's Song of the Day. We do not. David thinks that Facebook does not claim to own those songs. Steve thinks Facebook could, if they wanted to. "It's bullshit," Steve says, somewhat unreassuringly, "we're not going to let them get away with it." They do have us agree to it, Steve continues. Ruth adds, "and they have the money for good lawyers." Mary adds that her artist friend Diego, doesn't put anything on Facebook, because he doesn't want them to own his work. She adds she doesn't put anything on Facebook although she sees what others post and responds by email.

The ownership issue doesn't bother Steve, but he doesn't like that Facebook's content is not indexed by search engines. Since search is the default means of discovering content, unindexed content is undiscoverable. Everything you put on Twitter, blogs, or Google Plus is discoverable, it becomes part of human knowledge, what is on Facebook remains hidden away in private databases. Steve quickly adds that he uses Facebook all the time, thinks it's awesome, but there is the limitation of it not being fully public.

Emory thanks Steve for being so thoughtful about these things. He's resistant and dragging his feet, but he appreciates hearing Steve talk about it.

[58:15]

Mary is the first to say good bye, then the rest sign off, too.

References:

 

• Studio Gallery: Willie Middlebrook Video Interview
• Talking Andy Carvin, Twitter And The Arab Spring At ISOJ 2912
• Andy Carvin: the man who tweets revolutions
• excerpt from Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities "... you grant us (Facebook) a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it."
• David King's song, "When Kit Came to the Creek"
• David King's song, "Northern Dream"
• popwisdom (David King) on Soundcloud

Staff contacts:

Emory Holmes II

• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=600713051
• http://emoryblog.posterous.com/

Mary Burns

• http://maryburns.ca

Ruth Parson

• https://twitter.com/#!/cucaskirt
• http://www.p0ps.com/originalArt/ruthParson/ruthParsonArt.html

Steve Harlow

• https://twitter.com/#!/
• https://www.facebook.com/steve.harlow
• http://gplus.to/p0ps
• http://therealsteveharlow.com/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/p0ps

Listeners and readers, please add your comments, questions, concerns, corrections, additional information.

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