Words and Things

Thoughts I scribbled down at work yesterday, and added to today:

Biblically speaking some words already existed before the things they pointed to existed:

"God said let there be light, and there was light"

That's interesting isn't it? Some things are like that, but then later Adam is asked to name the animals after they were already created.It's also interesting that God speaks. Why would the creator of all things use words? What sort of God speaks, and talks to himself? A triune God.
One that is a community. A trinity that has interesting conversation between the members.

Glorious!

Back to names and words. Maybe words and things are more connected then we normally think, maybe they aren't merely labels. It's also interesting how much emphasis is put on the Name of God. "In Jesus' Name"

There is power in words.

Makes me want to have agood conversation. Come to think of it, many of my favorite movies are mostly conversations: Waking Life, 13 Conversations about 1 thing, Magnolia.

Impossible...

And that my friends, is the single rudest thing a computer program has ever said to me. After trying to do a perfectly normal boolean too!

Maybe it has something to do with being made by frenchmen.

"the culinary argument for God's existence"

Doug Wilson's Blog usually hasn't been that interesting of late, but his most recent post is completely interesting.

Here's a quote:
"In this short essay I advance the culinary argument for God's existence, which Thomas Acquinas somehow overlooked."

Here's the link

And another quote:

"What kind of God would create a world in which literally millions of very different pleasures can occur in your mouth, and for no apparent functional reason? This is a God who loves pleasure, and is willing to throw those pleasures around His universe with wild abandon."

Weird Leithart Quote of the Day

"Political advertizing that highlights the candidate's sex appeal is tapping into something deep, and deeply correct."
- Desire, Prayer and Politics
Makes him sound kind of crazy, but read the rest and you can see his sanity.

mythopoeia

While I'm blogging...

Yesterday I went to a public 'open genre' reading here in rockport. I finally decided to read a poem Tolkien wrote Lewis while they had been discussing the use and validity of myth and fiction. I had always seen this quote of it, and thought it was the whole poem:

The heart of man is not compound of lies,

but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,

and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,

man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.

Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,

and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,

his world-dominion by creative act:

not his to worship the great Artefact,

man, sub-creator, the refracted light

through whom is splintered from a single White

to many hues, and endlessly combined

in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

Though all the crannies of the world we filled

with elves and goblins, though we dared to build

gods and their houses out of dark and light,

and sow the seeds of dragons, 'twas our right

(used or misused). The right has not decayed.

We make still by the law in which we're made.

While that's probably still my favorite part of it, the whole, much longer poem (to my delight), is available here: http://www.geocities.com/domachowski/mythopoeia.html

I've heard that this Poem was intrumental in Lewis' conversion to Christianity from Atheism.

Anyway, I ended up reading the entire poem. About a quarter of the way though, I discovered I was quite nervous to be in front of all those people, reading. But I forgot that before the end.

Most people there were reading there own poems or short stories. One guy apparently has a regular program on NPR! Quite a few of them were excellent readers. The last poet was so moving with his voice, that I felt the hair stand up on my back.

Bob Sabiston

Time for a quick blog.


Well, I found the Waking Life DVD at blockbuster for 10$, and I had a chance to watch some special features with Bob Sabiston before I went to see him. It was sort of surreal seeing him speak in person, just hours after watching interviews with him on the DVD. He showed several short films and excerpts of longer films.

All very interesting. Unfortunately they had some problems with the audio, and annoying person on the front row kept asking irrelevant questions, but that didn't detract too much.

The last thing he showed was sort of a moving abstract painting, which was very cool, even though I don't normally like abstract work. You can see it and a bunch more at his website:
www.flatblackfilms.com

The other work was mainly filmed interviews with people that was animated over. It was a very interesting way of exploring facial expressions.

Universally over-used man.

This is officially the most overused drawing. I love it, but it's been used so much it's degrading. Last seen neutered on the cover of R C Sproul's Table Talk, As a corny Werewolf diagram in the otherwise excellent Harry Potter 3 movie, and about a million other places.

And now I will go read Harry Potter 6 (which is free of stolen Da Vinci drawings) until I fall asleep.

Waking Life

On friday, I get to go hear the art director and leading animator from one of my top 20 movies: Waking Life ( www.wakinglifemovie.com)

Waking Life is an animated film made by Austin film maker Richard Linklater. It's about a guy who is always dreaming and the people he meets in his dreams. They usually do most of the talking and do something like tell him their philosophy of life. It was actually filmed and then animated over, but it's an excellent use of animation, because each character is animated to express his worldveiw or exemplify what he's talking about.

I recently stumbled upon the blog of the man in the picture:Caveh Zahedi
He has some really interesting things to say about art at his website:

"...But I believe that all art is “channeled,” i.e. that it comes from God, however one defines that word. But the modern view of art is that it is the self-expression of a sui generis individual, a “genius” who is somehow more brilliant and talented than the rest of us.

The truth is that we are all manifestations of the genius of God. The artist is no different than anyone else except insofar as he is closer to the source of his Being. But today, the artist has acquired the status of a saint, and the culture of celebrity has become our new religion. Only instead of a panoply of saints, known for their virtue and good works, we have movie stars and rock stars as religious icons. These people are worshiped not because of their spirituality or wisdom, but rather because they enable us to project a more grandiose image of ourselves, namely that, like them, we too can be more important and powerful than we actually feel ourselves to be."

Anyway the Art Director Bob Sabiston is going to be in corpus on Friday, and I don't even have the movie to get him to sign. Drat. Maybe I'll go trybuy tomorrowrrow instead of eating one day this fall. Pretty good trade off.

Linklater and Sabiston are also making an animated movie of the Phillip K Dick novel A Scanner Darkly (Watch trailer here ) Dick wrote the stories behind Minority Report and Bladerunner and other scifi movies. I read A Scanner Darkly a few months ago. I had always wanted to read Phillip K Dick, and I was not disappointed.

Hurricane weather.

(this was meant to be posted last night, but my bro had the modem.)

This evening at 8:00 I saw the oddest light cast by the sun that I've ever seen. It must be because of the hurricane. Thankfully she won't hit us, but anyway, it was sort of an orange gold, but it was very diffused by the cloud cover and coming from all directions. It seemed like it was dark, but it wasn't, there was this very odd sickly gold light. My sisters and I went out in the street to look at it, and when I looked back at the kitchen window where the light was on in the house, it was looked very odd in comparison to everything outside, sort of pale green blue, even though it's just normal white. Anyway, it was very odd.

More(phs)

The left is my brother and I, the right is my brother and dad. If I do me and my dad, then I'll have all 3 of us, equally represented, but not us. That would be odd. Sort of like the Trinity, but lets not get blasphemous.

beauty and nihilism.. animals and people.. trees and vegans.

In a previous post, I mentioned that I discovered Christopher Alexander and the Nature of Order, I don't remember exactly how I found it, but I think it was a link off a blog that had something to do with literature, but definitly not Architecture or aesthetics. Odd thing is, like 3 days later George Grant recommended the same Author/book to me, after I commented on a post at his blog . Odd how connected things are on the internet.

Anyway, I've been reading a very interesting interview with Christopher Alexander, here's a quote:

"That is because there was a nihilistic view of living organisms, earth, and stars. There was really a nihilistic view of all that, of course in the second half of the 20th century...So then, architects living in the 2nd half of the 20th century, by and large, in effect, being educated to believe all that, could not use the word "beauty." Because you cannot use the word beauty without getting actually somewhere close to the idea of God. I mean, you can use it, but not really, because you sort of shake inside when you do it and realize your at the edge of something dangerous "

and a little bit later:
"It was cool, really, to be scientific and nihilistic, to look down your nose at things that mattered, or even at the idea that anything mattered."

I've watched Harry Potter 3 again with my siblings. It's my favorite of the 3 movies. I was just thinking about how much like humans, animals are. Not to spoil anything from harry potter, but it's interesting the animals certain characters turn into, and how like them they tend to be. My sister got to puppies earlier this year, and it's amazing how animal's personalities and looks can be like people's. I've always had a debate with my sister that dogs always seemed masculine and cats feminine. Anyway, if man is the image of God, perhaps animals are images of us in a sense. They, after all, have eyes and ears and hands (or hooves) and faces. There are big birds around the harbor here (rockport) that impeccably remind you of old men. Reminds me of another one of my favorite digital artists, who did a series of portraits of the Bird family, here's two of them:





On the subject of animals, I was thinking about an uncle of mine who lives on a ranch and hunts dear and everything, but he also raises deer. He has lived with them in his house. Now, no animal rights activist truly loves or knows deer the way he does. Yet they see hunting as murder. I love oak trees, our yard (the one I grew up in) has about 13 (all at least 150 year old) Live oak trees. So beautifully shaped by the coastal wind. They make the perfect climbing and treehouse trees. Now, any environmentalist would probably think it wrong to climb trees, let alone 'rape' them by building tree houses in them. Yet, I know and love trees all the more because I have climbed them and build treehouses in them, and cut them down and warmed our house in the winter with them. That it what it means to know a tree and to love a tree. Interesting.

I've been listening to some Renaissance music lately, namely "Renaissance Flemish Polyphonists" (I get most of my music now from www.allofmp3.com, which is apparently legal, and very cheap about 1$ for an entire cd). I've always loved listening to choirs sing in languages I cannot understand. I'm not sure why, maybe it's just the pure beauty of the human voice, without the intellectual content of the words. Makes great music to read by. You here bits and pieces of this sort of thing in a lot of modern film music. LOTR, Starwars, Hans Zimmer.

My sisters

This is a picture of two of my sisters:


Morphed together with Morph magic
Here they are separately:





The originals wern't exactly the same position or lighting so it's not that great. I discovered morphing software several years ago, and haven't used it sense. It's very fun. It's pretty freaky for me to see that top picture though, because it's like my brain can't decide who it is. It wants to put it in either the Susanna or the Kathleen category, but can't. I converted them to grayscale because the lighting was too different. And that unintentionally makes it kind of moody, and dark. I'll have to post a color one.

I'll do some better morphs later. Maybe me and my dad, or me and my brother, or me and my baby pictures perhaps. That could be interesting.

John Howe on illustration

"Do you think that fantasy art and artists are overlooked by the artworld or treated as 'illustrators' while abstract painters and conceptual artists get recognition as 'serious' artists?

Actually, it's quite refreshing to be spared all the veneer of solemnity and nombrilism that pervades the fine arts. Abstract and conceptual art is a serious business; if you can convince everyone that a gigantic gilded flower pot on a pedestal is an essential baseline gritty grass-roots indispensable comment on our modern world, then you really must have talent and conviction. Actually, given a little thought, it probably is, given the screwed-up state of world affairs... Narrative art is not in style. It is curious, though. No one criticizes authors for using existing words rather than inventing their own incomprehensible language. I find somewhat sad that many illustrators seem to long so dearly for recognition as fine artists. "

Quoted from this BBC interview
also check out his blog and galleries . I also love his commentaries on the LOTR extended editions.

Against Christianity

"Theology tells us that God is eternal and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.

The Bible tells us that God relents because He is God (Joel 2:13-14), that God is "shrewd with the shrewd" (Ps. 18:25-29), that He rejoices over us with shouting (Zeph 3:14-20), and that He is an eternal whirlwind of triune communion and love.

Theology is a "Victorian enterprise, neoclassically bright and neat and clean, nothing out of place.

Whereas the Bible talks about hair, blood, sweat, entrails, menstruation and genital emissions."

Liethart , from Against Christianity (p.46-47)

[edit] Hey, this post just disappeared suddenly, sorry about that, but I now repost it, also I'm going to quote some of the preface that might qualify this a little:

"I cannot hope to convince readers or prove anything here, since I have certainly not provided enough argument or evidence to compel agreement. I hope instead to hint at , gesture towards, trace, or sketch what may be a fresh approach to the issues I discuss, more to change the readers angle of vision then persuade."

"As ironic modern worshipers we congregate at the cinematic temple. We pay our votive offerings at the box office. We buy our ritual corn. We hush in reverent anticipation as the lights go down and the celluloid magic begins. Throughout the filmic narrative we identify with the hero. We vilify the antihero. We vicariously exult in the victories of the drama. And we are spiritually inspired by the moral of the story, all while believing we are modern techno-secular people, devoid of religion. Yet the depth and intensity of our participation reveal a religious fervor that is not much different from that of religious zealots."

-Geoffrey Hill, Illuminating Shadows: The Mythic Power of Film
(quoted in Brian Godawa's Hollywood Worldviews)

"If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land" -Chronicles

Successful doodling

My icon is the only remaining image of some mushrooms
I modeled a long time ago while listening to Josh Groben,
I now remember. Anyway, My hard-drive crashed and
this is all that remains. So anyway I opened it up in
painter and blew it up:



















Started doodling on it:


















Just scribbling really, but I liked what was going on in the top left corner, so I rotated it and cut it out:


















And painted some:






Looks
like the
start of
some
fantastic
door:



Here is a close up:


And here's some messing with the colors in photoshop:












It's definitely unfinished, but that's all I'll do tonight.
Done while listening to: the Prince of Egypt by Zimmer; the Terminal by Williams; Road to Perdition and Shawshank Redemption by Thomas Newman; and parts of Mission and the Les Miserables movie (not the musical).