flanerieoconnor | Recent Entries

Went to an exhibit last weekend at the local art museum on "Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art". Quality was gratifyingly high, and moreso for the first half, which focused on uncanny/haunted American painting from the colonial period up through High Modernism or so. The second half, which was much more heavily "outsider-art" focused, was less successful- a curatorial mixed bag divided between works that obviously seemed to stem from a genuine encounter with *something*, and an obsessive desire to communicate the contents of that encounter as faithfully as possible, and things that looked much more like glorified doodles inspired by an inflated sense of self-importance- and the fact I found this difference so evident, but was obviously unnoticed by the people who put the exhibit together made this section feel more than a little patronizing. Still, there were some highlights I'd like to look at again: there were a wonderful series of mandala-like drawings warning of an psychically-sensed impending earthquake on the Alaska Coast and the Octopus-like entity that was perceived to have caused it, for example, and some awfully fun paintings used as the backdrops of Sun Ra performances, which were much more impressive in person than similar things look online. Spiritualism, in general, didn't make a very impressive performance- there was an early 19th channeled "spirit drawing" that looked like the direct ancestor of some of the creepiest pieces of 80s and 90s Colorado-style Evangelical art I've ever seen, and in general, pretty much all of the medium-produced work had a kind of sickly-sentimental quality with something unsettlingly off about the eyes. I could see a plausible case that something native to the ambient landscape or culturescape (to the extent these can be separated) was being channeled, but if so, that something was neither friendly nor wholesome.

(my thoughts about the exhibit were more than a little colored by the Erik Davis' exploration of the distinction between the "weird" and the "uncanny" from his "High Strangeness", which I'm currently working my way through after hearing an interview with the author on an old episode of the Hermitix podcast, but which can be found excerpted here: https://boingboing.net/2014/07/14/weird-shit.html).

This was by far my favorite single painting in the exhibition, though (an image on screen doesn't do the presence of the real thing justice, but is still worth reproducing):

-Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, John McCrady

In my adolescence and immediately post, it often felt like the most important things in life were the books I was reading and the music I was listening to. To a large extent, I feel like my connection with both has fallen away over these last few years of isolation and estrangement, like my spare time has been increasingly devoured by screens and current events. I listen to podcasts and nonfiction audio books and news radio while at work, and scroll through articles and social media takes of the events of the day on my phone when I get home. Some of this, I'm sure, is a natural part of aging into midlife, but it still feels like a kind of calcification, and worth struggling against (I remember, as a kid, my father talking about how he found he couldn't get interested in novels/works of fiction anymore, and how terribly sad that made me). So, over the last couple of months, I've been making a conscious effort to do so- taking some time to read a physical book, preferably fiction, for awhile before sleep rather than looking at a screen, and finding albums to spend concentrated chunks of time with while driving around/commuting like I used to do back when buying CDs was still a thing and you wanted to get your moneys' worth out of them, rather than absent-mindedly flipping through the radio. I'll get to books in another post, but first wanted to share a bit of music:

First, I've been listening to a *lot* of Beach House lately, which has been a wonderful surprise. Until last year, I hadn't really listened to any of their stuff since "Teen Dream" came out roughly a decade ago, to rave reviews and lots of hype. At the time, I was pretty underwhelmed- it felt like the sort of thing that I ought to love, in theory, but which I just couldn't warm up to, and so I never really kept up with anything they did since. Last year, out of curiosity, I gave their latest-at-the-time album, "7", a listen (don't even remember what prompted me to do so), and was surprised to really like it, though it felt like a bit of a guilty pleasure, and so I followed along with the release of their new album, "Once, Twice Melody" in stages this winter as it was released (initially in video form, in four chapters), and it turned out it was good. Really, really good, and immersive, and improved on each listen. Went back and listened through things I'd missed from their back catalogue, and found they hadn't really released a bad album in the last decade, and that each one was better than the last. So, I've got a new belated new addition to my list of favorite bands, which was an unexpected delight (also got to see them live about a month ago, which was my first time really being in a crowd of people since COVID hit, and made me feel human and alive again in ways I wasn't really expecting). Favorite song linked below, which always makes me choke up just a little:

Watch on YouTube

Also been listening to a lot of music from an internet microgenre called Dungeon Synth, whose existence I only found out about through an algorithmic youtube recommendation (lest it be said that this is only a force of malevolence)- it's a mixed bag, of course, as with any self-conscious scene/genre working within deliberately chosen stylistic constraints, but I find the good stuff awfully charming. I've always assumed there was still interesting DIY-type stuff percolating around odd corners of the internet that I'd simply lacked the skills/interest to find (another feature of aging), but it's pleasing and reassuring to come across a live example of such. Material for further research at: https://www.reddit.com/r/Metal/comments/kvt60e/homebrewed_an_introduction_to_dungeon_synth/
And again, my favorite that I've listened to so far linked below:

Watch on YouTube

A few more thoughts I wanted to get down before moving on: I'm typing this right now on a notepad app open on a laptop computer. Last week, I was typing directly into the "post an entry" page on Dreamwidth. My thoughts then, I feel, came out as a bit of a jumbled mess, in large part because of the affordances of the technology itself: writing in a webpage with a box for text, and an "update" button at the bottom, makes it difficult to edit. There are few formatting options, the font of the text you're writing is small, and the text box itself occupies only a small portion of the total screen. Attempting to re-arrange the order of sentences, or re-write earlier portions while keeping later ones quickly becomes busy and confusing for the eye (as an example, I just skipped down several lines to try out a couple of versions of this sentence, before coming up with one I liked well enough to copy and paste back into the main body of text- easy enough on a word processing app, much less so in a text box). At one point, I was afraid I'd mistakenly deleted everything I'd written through an accidental click of an "undo" button. Everything about the design of an blog/social media update page encourages a kind of labored spontaneity of style- of recording thoughts just as they come, or seeming to do so, to the extent that re-writing or organizing my thoughts at all felt like I was somehow going against the grain or the "spirit of the thing" (without having any clear idea just what that "thing" might be). This is true, I suppose, of all digital-native genres and media, and even truer of later developments of "social media" than it was of the comparatively primitive blog- first twitter, optimized to be used via smartphone, so that you can record your internal monologue's presumed constant stream of spicy hot takes in real time (which feels to me like the reductio ad absurdum of what I've described above), and above all visually-oriented platforms where you curate your life through uploaded pictures (directly digitizing your visual experience of the world) or speak directly to a webcam. The ideal of web design pushes inclines naturally in this direction: rather than laboriously "composing" (in a discrete space like at a desk in an office), you're encouraged to instead effortlessly, frictionlessly, "update", from wherever you happen to be. Not particularly original thoughts, I know, but it was a little disturbing to me to realize how much of this is built into the very nature of writing on the internet. Even now, within my own head, I feel vaguely embarrassed at how long it's taken me to write this, still an internal voice saying "isn't this all kind of forced? Shouldn't it be easier?"

(Yes, I'm aware that this is all an illusion- that all blog posts worth reading are edited, instagram pictures elaborately staged, tweets workshopped in group DMs, etc- nevertheless, the effect one must strive to give in order to idiomatically produce "content" for the internet is one of studied nonchalance- one must appear frictionless. Also, the original version of this that existed in my head, before I tried to write it out, had a section on the ironic contrast between the silicon valley ethic of "mindfulness"- a kind of protestentized, Americanized ersatz Buddhism prone to metaphors about the mind as a clear, still pool or a steadily burning, flicker-less flame, and the effect given by reading a twitter thread transposed to a page as it it were a paragraph, which invariably reads like an amphetamine abuser in the midst of a manic episode- the apotheosis of monkey-mind. I wasn't sure how to work this into the rest, but I'm keeping it here for posterity. After all, no need to be too formal about this- I'm just writing down some thoughts, no?)

Possible framing devices for a blog post:

1. Motivation:
"I was starting to write an overly-flowery metaphor comparing things encountered when aimlessly scrolling through one's phone at odd moments of boredom throughout the day (dozens and dozens of times for most of us, I suspect, taking up a greater portion of our attention than would be anything near comfortable to acknowledge) and flotsam drifting by as we float aimlessly on an otherwise-featureless ocean, driven we know not where by hidden currents. The metaphor got away from me, obviously, but all it really amounted to was to say "lately I've been reading some stuff about the internet on the internet" (or, if we're going to be pedantic, "and listening to", since some of it was podcast episodes), and it's gotten me nostalgic for the experience of writing in my old livejournal, abandoned now for a good decade. And so I thought, why not exorcise said nostalgia by writing something like a blog post again?"

2. Situation:
"It's early afternoon on a cold Saturday in late March, and I'm sitting in my mother-in-law's airy, Victorian living room in Jamestown, North Dakota, listening to an endless parade of pickup trucks drive by on the road outside, my dog (9 year old greyhound) asleep on the couch beside me. I've got the house to myself for the day, since my wife and mother-in-law are in Fargo for a baby shower for my newborn niece (born roughly a month ago two months premature, and still in the natal intensive care unit), the reason for the trip. And so, left to my own devices for an afternoon, alone in someone else's house, why not try to write a bit?"

The irony, of course, is that I'm writing in the sort of diaristic style that feels self-evidently interesting when at 21, but much less so at 40, on a site I registered in comment on a blog dedicated largely to ceremonial magic (not a turn I expected my online life to take), which will be of less than no interest to the readers of said blog, the only people likely to find this. And now, thinking back on it, there are certainly life-stage appropriate reasons why I abandoned my old livejournal, and with it this kind of writing, at the beginning of my 30s, besides the fact that the site was self-evidently dying. I also note that the last time I posted something here was almost exactly a year ago, last March, which leads me to wonder if there's something to do with cyclical energies within the year that give rise to the urge to blog? A time of stirring but frustrated energies, of new life trying to break through still-frozen ground? I was reading recently (hat tip to "readoldthings") of early spring being the traditional season of starvation, when the reserves of winter are beginning to be exhausted, but nothing new has yet had the chance to grow. As a middle-class inhabitant of a rich, industrialised society, I obviously don't experience this physically, but I feel like something analogous still happens in my emotional life, a feeling of exhaustion mixed with an itchy, frustrated wanderlust that seems to strike around the weeks on either side of the spring equinox. So, maybe I'll post occasional updates on what I'm reading/listening to/thinking about here from time to time, as I currently have the intention of doing. Or maybe this will lie dormant for another year, and I'll find myself reading this again next March- interesting, I suppose, to find out either way. In the meantime, this has taken me nearly an hour, and the dog is beginning to stir, and is in need of a walk.

(and, on the off-chance that anyone stumbles here from comments on JMG's Magic Mondays, a quote from one of the most beautiful and potent bits of magic I know (source for this text/translation is http://www.christopherklitou.com/the_great_blessing_of_the_waters_hieratikon.htm):

"O Trinity supreme in being, in goodness, and in Godhead, almighty, who watchest over all, invisible, incomprehensible, Maker of spiritual beings and rational natures, innate Goodness, Light that none can approach and that lightens every man that comes into the world : Shine also upon me Thine unworthy servant. Enlighten the eyes of my understanding that I may make bold to sing the praises of Thy measureless beneficence and Thy might. May the prayer be acceptable that I offer for the people here present. Let not my faults hinder Thy Holy Spirit from coming to this place, but suffer me now uncondemned to cry to Thee, O most good Lord, and to say: We glorify Thee, O Master who lovest mankind, almighty, pre-eternal King. We glorify Thee, the Creator and Maker of all. We glorify Thee, O only-begotten Son of God, born without father from Thy Mother, and without mother from Thy Father. In the preceding feast we saw Thee as a child, while in the present we behold Thee full-grown, our God made manifest, perfect God from perfect God. For today, the time of the feast is at hand for us: the choir of saints assembles with us and angels join with men in keeping festival. Today the grace of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descended upon the waters. Today the Sun that never sets has risen and the world is filled with splendour by the light of the Lord. Today the moon shines upon the world with the brightness of its rays. Today the glittering stars make the inhabited earth fair with the radiance of their shining. Today the clouds drop down upon mankind the dew of righteousness from on high. Today the Uncreated of His own will accepts the laying on of hands from His own creature. Today the Prophet and Forerunner approaches the Master, but stands before Him with trembling, seeing the condescension of God towards us. Today the waters of the Jordan are transformed into healing by the coming of the Lord. Today the whole creation is watered by mystical streams. Today the transgressions of men are washed away by the waters of the Jordan. Today Paradise has been opened to men and the Sun of Righteousness shines down upon us. Today the bitter water, as once with Moses and the people of Israel, is changed to sweetness by the coming of the Lord. Today we have been released from our ancient lamentation, and as the new Israel, we have found salvation. Today we have been delivered from darkness and illuminated with the light of the knowledge of God. Today the blinding mist of the world is dispersed by the Epiphany of our God. Today the whole creation shines with light from on high. Today error is laid low and the coming of the Master has made for us a way of salvation. Today things above keep feast with things below, and things below commune with things above. Today the triumphant assembly of the Orthodox keeps this holy festival with great joy. Today the Master hastens towards baptism that He may lift man up to the heights. Today He that bows not, bows down to His own servant that He may set us free from bondage. Today we have purchased the Kingdom of Heaven: for the Lord'ss Kingdom shall have no end. Today earth and sea share the joy of the world, and the world is filled with gladness. The waters saw Thee, O God, the waters saw Thee and were afraid. The Jordan turned back, seeing the fire of the Godhead descending bodily and entering its stream. The Jordan turned back, beholding the Holy Spirit coming down in the form of a dove and flying about Thee. The Jordan turned back, seeing the Invisible made visible, the Creator made flesh, the Master in the form of a servant. The Jordan turned back and the mountains skipped, looking upon God in the flesh; and the clouds gave voice, marvelling at Him who was come, the Light of Light, true God of true God. For today in the Jordan they saw the triumph of the Master; they saw Him drown in the Jordan the death of disobedience, the sting of error, and the chains of hell, and bestow upon the world the baptism of salvation. Therefore, sinner and unworthy servant though I am, I recount the majesty of Thy wonders and, seized with fear, in compunction I cry aloud to Thee:

Great art Thou, O Lord, and marvelous are Thy works; no words suffice to sing the praise of Thy wonders. (3)

Each time the Priest says these words, the choir shall sing:

Glory to Thee, our God, glory to Thee.

The Priest continues the prayer

For Thou by Thine own will hast brought all things out of nothingness into being, by Thy power Thou dost hold together the creation, and by Thy providence Thou dost govern the world. Of four elements hast Thou compounded the creation: with four seasons hast Thou crowned the cycle of the year. All the spiritual powers tremble before Thee. The sun sings Thy praises; the moon glorifies Thee; the stars supplicate before Thee; the light obeys Thee; the deeps are afraid at Thy presence; the fountains are Thy servants. Thou hast stretched out the heavens like a curtain; Thou hast established the earth upon the waters; Thou hast poured forth the air that living things may breathe. The angelic powers minister to thee; the Choir of Archangels worship Thee; the many-eyed Cherubim and the six-winged Seraphim, standing round Thee and flying about Thee, hide their faces in fear of Thine unapproachable glory. For Thou, the indescribable God, without beginning and inexpressible, hast come upon earth, taking the form of a servant and being made in the likeness of man. For Thou, O Master, in Thy merciful compassion couldst not bear to see mankind beneath the tyranny of the devil, but Thou hast come and saved us. We confess Thy grace, we proclaim Thy mercy, we hide not Thy beneficence. Thou hast set free the offspring of our kind. Thou hast hallowed a Virgin womb by Thy Nativity. At Thine Epiphany the whole creation sang Thy praises. For Thou, our God, hast appeared on earth and dwelt among men, Thou hast sanctified the streams of Jordan, sending down from on high the Most Holy Spirit, and Thou hast broken the heads of the dragons hidden therein.

Therefore, O King who lovest mankind, do Thou Thyself be present now as then through the descent of Thy Holy Spirit, and sanctify this water. (3)

Each time the Priest says these words, the choir shall say Amen.

And confer upon it the grace of redemption, the blessing of the Jordan. Make it a source of incorruption, a gift of sanctification, a remission of sins, a protection against disease, a destruction to demons, inaccessible to the adverse powers and filled with angelic strength. That all who draw from it and partake of it may have it for the cleansing of their soul and body, for the healing of their passions, for the sanctification of their dwellings, and for every purpose that is expedient. For Thou art our God, who didst renew through water and Spirit our nature grown old through sin. Thou art our God, who didst drown sin through water in the days of Noah. Thou art our God who, through the waters of the sea, at Moses' hand didst set free the Hebrew nation from the bondage of Pharaoh. Thou art our God who didst smite the rock in the wilderness: and the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed, and Thou didst satisfy Thy thirsty people. Thou art our God who by water and fire through Elijah didst bring back Israel from the error of Baal.

Do Thou Thyself, O Master, now as then sanctify this water by Thy Holy Spirit [3]

Each time the Priest says these words, the choir shall say Amen.

Grant to all those who touch it, who anoint themselves with it or drink from it, sanctification, blessing, cleansing, and health.

And save, O Lord, Thy servants our faithful rulers. Keep them in peace under Thy protection; put under their feet every enemy and adversary; bestow upon them whatsoever they ask unto salvation and eternal life.

It occurs to me that, writing for the most part for myself only, without much care for audience, I can use this space to, for example, post recipes. It being spring, and Lent, and desiring a healthier vegetarian snack to help wean myself off my unfortunate salty processed snack food habit, and also craving something probiotic and alive to help even out my gut, I decided to make some pickles.

Batch 1:
Carrots, Mustard Seed and Brine- about two carrots all told, chopped into match sticks and stuffed into a pint-sized mason jar- proportions taken from the recipe in "Art of Fermentation"- a rather mild brine, 1 tablespoon/pint of water, which makes, according to another portion in the book, a roughly 3.5% brine solution- enough for a "half sour" rather than a "full sour", if we're talking deli cucumbers.

Batch 2:
The remains of some aging mini orange bell peppers and a bunch of scallions, with some garlic and hot pepper flakes to no particular measured proportion, also in a pint jar. Same brine concentration as above.

Batch 3:
An attempt at Dilly Beans- green beans, half a package of store-bought fresh dill, a couple generous spoonfulls of minced garlic and a vigorous sprinkling of black pepper, in a quart-size jar- this time, a kind with a rubber stopper- NOT a good seal, as I found when I tried to shake the contents, and brine sprayed everywhere. A higher concentration of salt- 1.5 tablespoons/pint, or about 5%.

Made the first two batches on Saturday evening, 3/29- third batch this evening, Tuesday 3/20. As of now, not much activity on the first two batches- a few desultory bubbles, but nothing vigorous, and there's not much of any sourness to the flavor on the samples I've tried. The carrots, which I've really liked when I've made them in the past, taste kind of broad, overly sweet and a bit sickly so far- the scallion/pepper mix, salty and full of infused onion flavor, but without much zip. I'd have expected a bit more by now- maybe the lack of salt is to blame, or maybe the chilly-ish March weather? Obviously haven't yet tested the third, as I made it tonight. Will report back on results.

N.B. tried using ziploc sandwich bags partly filled with rice as makeshift weights- seems a lot more civilized than most of the contraptions I've used in the past.

FOR FUTURE REFERENCE, A NOTE ON BRINE STRENGTHS
3 tablespoons/quart of water (1.5 tablespoons/pint)- roughly 5% solution, or "full sour"
2 tablespoons/quart of water (1 tablespoon/pint)- roughly 3.5% solution, or "half sour"
2 tablespoons

Watch on YouTube

So, a blog post again for the first time in years and years. I'd been meaning to perhaps write something in here for quite some time, and am now doing so, inspired by JMG's post for people to post links to their personal accounts. I can't imagine anyone else would find much interest in this, but there's a certain freedom in that- it's nice to be divorced from the social media poison of posting for "likes", and this has a nicely nostalgic reminder of my old lamented livejournal of long ago (which nostalgia might, I hope, also help to wean myself off the horrible habit of reading about politics/current events on twitter, which always results in a seemingly endless cycle of hypnotic doomscrolling with slowly rising bloodpressure, followed by regret). In any case, I hope this might be interesting to me at a future date as a record of the passing of time, and a map of the ebb and flow of interests with the seasons. Where, then, to begin? It's been unseasonably warm for early March, but after the last couple of years of snowy Aprils, I'll take it. Currently reading "Little, Big" by John Crowley, a few chapters at a time before bed (which I'm about to retire to in a few minutes), and, very slowly, "The Occult" by Colin Wilson. Going on a bit of a Sun Ra kick at present, and trying to give a couple of his albums a decent hearing in chronological order- earlier in the month, had been listening to a lot of Renaissance music (John Dowland's Lachrimae, and Monteverdi, trying to work my way through L'Orfeo), and a boxed set of the Cocteau Twins' singles/eps, to try and get a playlist of the ones that actually seemed worthwhile. Just about finished with making my first violin, a bit more than four years after starting- the varnish work is largely done, which only leaves cutting it a bridge and actually putting strings on the damn thing, which I hope to do on Sunday. After decades of disdain for the stuff, I'm also slowly drinking my way through a bottle of Windsor Canadian whiskey, bought on a whim after being uncertain what be both cheap and would suit the weather and my mood, and am finding that with lowered expectations, it's not actually that terrible- an odd bonding experience, retroactively, with my grandfather, who apparently drank nothing but. And now, off to bed.