Last week I went on a walk in the forest. It was raining heavily but I still took some pictures of the wonderful textures I saw. When I loaded the images onto my computer, however, I realized that I had captured a silent and sinister battle of the trees.

tree scream

black army

fallen general

sending out scouts

flesh and spears

a bird tricked into wood

innocent bystander

burn victim

frozen in stone

armour

writhing

hiding

]]> http://antares489.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/vanish-phantasmagoria/ Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:21:06 +0000 antares http://antares489.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/vanish-phantasmagoria/

「Vanish…」
Phantasmagoria

素敵な思い出と夢、忘れた事はないけど
みんなの思いに立ち止まった
静寂は螺旋に乗って光に変わり始めて
呼吸は覚醒を呼び戻す…

変わりゆく運命に孤独を感じてた夜
憂鬱な夢に咲く花を見た
全てが今日の世界に繋がっていたのか？
願いが在る場所へ舞い降りる

止まっていた時間を裂いて、呼ぶ声に動き出した
瞳を閉じてあの日を思った…。
光をもう一度だけ君に輝かせてみよう
これ以上何も望まないから

去年の今日流した涙色をした蜃気楼は
霧に包まれた僕だった
行方知らずの本当の自分の姿で
思い出の場所で再開しよう

forbidden…

壊れた世界をずっと抱きしめて生きて

insanity on the“UNDERWORLD”

変わりゆく運命に孤独を感じてた夜
憂鬱な夢に咲く花を見た
全てが今日の世界に繋がっていたのか？
願いが在る場所へ舞い降りる

ここに立つ理由なんてないかもしれない
僕が僕の生きる意味を知る

色褪せない笑顔と情景、最愛の｢深絆｣で…
全てが終わり、時間が消える…

~♦~

‘Vanish…’
by Phantasmagoria

Though I haven’t forgotten the wonderful memories and dreams
I was halted by everyone’s feelings,
Silence took a spiral and began to turn into light,
my breaths summon back awakening

Nights I felt loneliness from my gradually changing fate
I saw flowers bloom in a melancholy dream,
Was everything tied to the world of today?
I want to alight in a place where there is hope

Splitting time which stands still, I began to act through my calling voice,
I shut my eyes and thought of that day…
I want to make the lights shine for you just one more time,
I wish for nothing more than this

The tear-coloured mirage I shed last year on this day
was me shrouded in mist,
In my true self who didn’t know his destination,
in a place of memories I will restart

forbidden…

Living while always embracing the broken world

insanity on the“UNDERWORLD”

Nights I felt loneliness from my gradually changing fate
I saw flowers bloom in a melancholy dream,
Was everything tied to the world of today?
I want to alight in a place where there is hope

I may have no reason to be standing here
but I know my reason for living

Smiles and sights whose colour doesn’t fade, with beloved “deep bonds”…
everything comes to an end, time vanishes…

I have chosen you my friend, you’re mine
locked inside this frightening dream
nowhere to hide
every night my demons you will see
an apparition festival, through hell you’ll ride

phantasmagoria
sleep well
phantasmagoria
in hell

some one here is calling out your name
look out, i play inside your brain
fleeing from my shadows, you’ll never pass my test
don’t you know that ghosts never rest

phantasmagoria
sleep well
phantasmagoria
in hell

approaching, you writhe, we take control
unholy inquisition, sentence very cold
my servants, demons, take you down the hole
your mind destroyed, now i want your soul

phantasmagoria
sleep well
phantasmagoria
in hell

phantasmagoria
phantasmagoria
in hell!

I guess I have been living down the rabbit hole for the past 4 years, as I haven’t heard about the Marilyn Manson film Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll. Though I am not a Manson fan, his kooky craziness could hold fantastical filmic potential.  The movie, to be released in 2010, will star Manson as Lewis Carroll, Lily Cole as Alice, Tilda Swinton as Manson’s love interest, and Evan Rachel Wood as Alice’s alter ego.  However, after “Heat-Shaped Glasses,” I believe the only thing now we have to worry about with this cast is a red headed orgy.  Check yourself Tim Burton!

HUGS,

Hannah

People are always talking about dreams, you know those hyperbolic parallel realities that we conjure up for ourselves. Well ask yourself a question, is attaining your dreams really such a great thing. Ok the human mind can and does wonderful things, and I am sure asking it to make up new dreams really wouldn’t be a problem. Well  lets just say you accomplish your dreams. Does this mean that your dreams were really that fantastic in the first place? What happens the next day, hour, minute, second? Does a new emptiness creep, an emptiness that you haven’t felt before due to the energy that was put into this previously unfulfillable dream? Is the answer to create and then strive for dreams of such unimaginable magnitude that they could never conceivably be attained? I think that there is a fine line to dreaming, that the truest and best dreamers are able to construct these magnificent goals that exist in the outer reaches of the phantasmagoric. In the end I just hope to settle on the line.

The Process of Writing, Part Three: Character Creation

I hope my bit of pseudonomical help, actually helped someone last time. Pseudonomical, is that even a word? Eh, the dictionary isn’t too far away for me to reach, but at the moment I’m going to choose not to use it because I’m hoping that you can guess as to what pseudonomical may mean. If you don’t, I’m using pseudonym as a root word. It may not be the root of the root word, but I’m sure that it will be fine, and I’ve my fingers crossed that it will work.

I say that I’d mention character creation here, and how the characters in our heads have to remain true when they appear on the page. I used a method of Holly Lisle’s to come up with the example that I’m about to show you, if I’d had the character planned enough in my head it would have worked, alas I didn’t and all I ended up with were a few points:-

Name: Paige Demeter Braddock

Age: 17

D.O.B: 17/06/92

I really didn’t go that much farther. I knew where she was going to live, what the first scene was going to be and who she would eventually end up as, yet, because I didn’t have this fully-formed character in my head, just this brief spattering of a beginning and an end, I decided to forego this character in favour of Felix Booth and Phantasmagoria, the story I am now planning. As you may be able to deduce, the events that involved PDB and FB: Phantasmagoria, only happened a few weeks ago.

So, after I’d tried a great many methods and failed, I decided that I needed to know everything about my characters before I even thought about writing a plan, before I even decided to put this idea into action. In this, I managed to expand upon the antagonist of my novel.

If you have read James N. Frey’s self-help book, “How to Write a Damn Good Novel: Two” then you will have read what he has to say about characters and how all characters should have a motive, even if it is the smallest motive. They also need to be well-rounded. Now, as soon as I read that line, three motives popped into my head.

These concerned three characters that although they may have villainous qualities I have come to know and love. Now, one of the themes in Phantasmagoria is more of a question than anything. One that I thought long and hard about myself, trying to figure out what my answer would be: What would you do if you could lawfully travel back in time?

Now, there would always be consequences upon the present day, but this one thought added to the motives of my villains and I found myself knowing that thse characters weren’t all bad, they did what they did because they needed absolution; as is the case with many characters. Within life, many of us may find that we are searching for absolution in something, it may be the smallest of things but we want it and we will have it, it doesn’t necessarily make us villains, but it doesn’t make us the best of people either.

This is something that I wanted to portray with my main antagonist. I know that he has done evil things, some of them incredibly unforgiveable, but these evil things are simply because of a craving, one aching thing that he wishes he could change. Which is why he searches for the ability to travel back in time; even though in his world, it could potentially mean expulsion from the society.

It is with the things I have mentioned above that you are able to create well-rounded characters.

1. Pose a question that surrounds all of your characters. This is probably the question that you will want to answer in your novel.

2. Think of your character’s motivation. Why do they do the things that they do?

3. Consider your character’s backstory; there is no doubt that this will influence their motivation.

4. Who is your character? This is the point where you must decide, are they an antagonist, or purely misunderstood, or are they both, could they be part and parcel to their own eventual downfall?

So, there we have it, four questions that you should ask yourself when you are planning a novel. It’s a tried and tested method that I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and it’s that gut feeling that it provides that makes it all the more worthwhile, I really recommend it.

I hope that I’ve helped you consider more options on expanding your characters and really getting to know them. You’re Maria Von Trapp and these are your children.

Next time: The Process of Writing, Part Four: Is my goodie, really a baddie?

The Process of Writing, Part Two: Idea Overload

I have this rather bad idea of placing questions into writing, it can be done well, but nine times out of ten it isn’t; this is why I was rather wary of beginning this post with a question, alas I suppose it is the only place that I am going to be able to begin. You see, the question that I have to pose to you is: What is an idea overload? And how do you overcome it?

 Throughout today’s piece, I intend on answering those questions. Last week I mentioned initial sparks and how they can be found in most places. May I take this time to thank you for your comments, I guess that I hadn’t considered some of the things you mentioned, even though I have been through them before. Anyway, I shouldn’t be enlightening you with this information, because I told you that I’d answer this question, so let’s begin.

 Transforming the Initial Spark

All right, so you have the initial spark and you’ve got to decide where to go from here. This initial spark is now transforming itself, expanding into a great many different ideas. Say you’ve had this brilliant idea already, you’re going to create something better than what is called the greatest novel in the world at that moment. Yet you’re being bogged down by ideas.

You want swashbuckling pirates, but you also want homosexual magicians and belly-dancers from Latvia. It’s going to be a YA story, which is why the protagonist is seventeen years old. He or she is going to do such and such a thing and another thing and be the most brilliant at what they do.

Then you have another idea, now you want to add another theme, a few more characters, then you realise that you’ve got another story on your hands. You start planning both, making half-hearted attempts as you go along.

You’ve got another idea and you plan this story out as well. Now, you’ve put a third of your imagination into each story. Why not savour each? This is where self-discipline comes into effect.

My Own Idea Overload

I often have the problem that I’ve mentioned above. When I first joined www.teenagewriters.com, I decided that I would write three different stories at the same time; one was based in a fantasy world and had a girl finding out that she had no place being a slave-girl and yes, basically it wasn’t very good. The second story was a vampire story, yes, this was before I’d even heard of Twilight. There was going to be a series of 8 books, and I’d planned them all out. I wrote 50,000 words of this vampire book before I stopped; insane vampire queens and illegitimate love-vampire-children doesn’t work. The third story, I can’t remember, but it was something to do with solving a crime.

I managed to ban them from my mind for a while and focused on writing something else, but then another idea would come along, I’d push it away, write some of that, push it away in favour of another story and thus the cycle continued.

At least it continued until someone mentioned it, I managed to finish a novel eventually, but this overload of ideas never finished. I still continued to jot down ideas. I eventually self-published “Instinct” with www.lulu.com after my attempts at publishing failed, but I cancelled the publishing because it didn’t feel right. I was, at the moment, writing Serendipity.

Now, the answer on how to stop an idea overload is that there is no way to stop it other then exercising your self-control. If you have an idea, jot it down and think no more of it. Buy a notebook. Just jot ideas onto an ideas page and you can pick and choose these as you like.

So, I’ll leave you with a note on my planning for Phantasmagoria, page twenty of planning and not much else. I’ve made large plans and I’m noting dialogues and other things. I am quite confident about this story and it makes me feel happy. Someone asked me if I thought this story was the one and I guess that we’ll just have to wait and see.

Join me next time for: The Process of Writing, Part Three: Character Creation.

Fitzgerald and Lichtenstein: Could they by any chance have had an evil offspring?

Back on my hobbyhorse. Michael Hofmann has an essay on Frederick Seidel in this month’s Poetry magazine. It’s a review; but it’s a review of the new Poems 1959-2009 (who knew! Okay, so I’m slow, aggghhh) so it’s more like an essay on the phenomenology of Seidelica, and it is a thing of such intense beauty that – well, you’ll have to read it for yourself. (If I were a certain kind of person it would make me think I should just get out the pool and go home, and never write anything again. As it is, it makes me think I should either go get some water wings and go in the deep end, or else throw mine away and swim proper. One or the other.)

Either way, there’s not much I can add to this exquisitely subtle rendering of an exquisitely subtle poet. People talk about Seidel as a brutalist, and he is; even Hofmann refers to his “cartoonishness.” But he’s a subtle, delicate brutalist, and spares not himself. Lots of people seem to think one ought not to think Seidel is really all that good. Hofmann says all the things I’ve been trying to say to them:

Seidel’s poems go against most prevailing trends of poetry. There is nothing photographic about them, they don’t home in on detail, they don’t seek feeling, go in for tolerable introspection, or try to make an unassuming music. One might go so far as to say that the impulse behind their making has nothing lyrical about it. That probably is why reactions to them are so strong, why—apart from a small but persistent minority of supporters and admirers—readers and critics are so often outraged, want their money back, call Seidel all sorts of names. Where’s the pissy beauty, the undemanding truth? Conditioned to the sort of poetry where the poet tries hard to be precisely the “bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast,” readers are no longer able to understand what happens when—in the rest of the Yeats tag—a phantasmagoria imposes itself.

And more.

Parenthetically: I’m not sure if Seidel really goes against ALL the prevailing trends, by the way (I know Hofmann says most); he’s right in there with the postmodern disjointed allusive anti-narrative and the cartoonishness. But he’s more sophisticated than 99.9% of it. It’s this relentless sophistication – intellectual, cultural, verbal, emotional – that makes him bigger than a trend. It’s out of fashion, anyway, isn’t it? People distrust any sort of surface, calling it “decoration” – even while they flock to the Hirst shows, the Koons in Versailles – tell me it makes sense. Well, they like Hirst and Koons because they know they don’t mean anything. They’d hate to have to be held to anything! And we hate words in our current culture. Yes, we do. I mean, I can’t believe people are still talking about “formal-unfriendly journals,” and saying they don’t like poems that rhyme! You might as well not like an equation because it added up: so retrograde, so anti-postmodern. Anyway, a Seidel poem uses the solution to show how there is no solution. Back to the essay.

There’s a wonderful structural comparison of “whatever poem Seidel is writing” and “For the Union Dead.” (Seidel was a student of Lowell’s.) And lots of talk about what is the lyric impulse, and channelling poetry – the Muse vs the Ego, I suppose – and Seidel has this to say in an interview with Wyatt Mason (who, if you haven’t looked him up and read his stuff, you should):

Looking at these poems [. . .] is sometimes an extremely strange experience, as if . . . who the hell wrote this? What’s odd is that, at the same time, I also remember alternative possibilities and associations at the time of the writing of the things. So it’s interesting, that one should have that going on as well. It’s rather a surprise, almost as if it were a surprise that they managed to get done at all.

This is straightforward, honest talk about what it’s like making things. By someone who has never been part of the Academy! And the things themselves are colourful and shiny and delicate, with lots of moving parts. People who talk derogatorily about flashy wordplay are missing the point, I think, as I said above. The point is in the quote I used for the headline. Sheer existential-angst-loaded bliss.

I’s all a bit exotic over here though: as many people as raise an eyebrow, you get more than that saying “who?” or that they’ve heard-the-name-but-never-read… the comments on Hofmann’s review are very knowledgeable; mine by contrast looks like the gushing of a school librarian in a very small town indeed… (No offence to school librarians! Do they even still exist?)

More embarrassingly, I think I need to go read more Hofmann.

“We’re all mad here.” The Cat

La excepcional obra de Lewis Carroll, “Alice in Wonderland”, fue sólo el comienzo de una serie de historias tan épicas como descabelladas. Tanto sus novelas, como “Through the Looking-Glass” que continúa las aventuras de Alicia en el País de las Maravillas, como su poesía y sus ensayos son altamente valorados por su interesante lenguaje y vivida descripción de alucinantes situaciones.

The Complete Works of Lewis Carrol, Edición de Lujo, tapa dura en cuero grabado, $22.000.-

En la misma edición de lujo en que ofrecimos los Cuentos y Poesía Completos de Edgar Allan Poe, y las Crónicas Vampiricas de Anne Rice, esta vez les ofrecemos las obras completas de Lewis Carroll. Una edición de lujo, ilustrada, que contiene “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, “Through the Looking-Glass”, “Sylvie and Bruno”, “Sylvie and Bruno Concluded”, “The Hunting of the Snark” y toda su poesía y ensayos, además de una gran colección de sus otros escritos.

Una obra extraordinaria, una edición extraordinaria a un precio increible.

$22.000.-

Escríbenos a kthulu.store@gmail.com y reserva el tuyo.

The Process of Writing, Part One: The Initial Spark

If you read my last post, then you will have realised that writing plays a big part in my life, and after reading posts from katieday and owlandsparrow (who’s few comments this weekend have helped my train of thought, immensely) I thought that I would comment on my own writing process, from the initial spark to the final press of the key, and that utter excitement one feels at that point. Yes, in this semi-autobiographical way, I’m hoping to help others.

Intro.

Sparks can come from anywhere, sparks aren’t the ideas, but rather the thought that makes you wonder about ideas. The spark spurs you on to create an extravagent piece of prose that will leave you feeling a blissful that sensation that permeates your senses. Here, I’ll tell you about four sparks I have had with my novels in recent years :-

Spark One: Words.

July 17^th 2007: My fourteenth birthday and the day that the character of Juniper Brown sped into my mind. 2007 is also the year that www.teenagewriters.com started what has become an Annual Novel Challenge – you set your own goal and write it between the months of June and August. Word Wars take place every night in the hope of you achieving this goal. The Third Novel Challenge finishes today, and now I’m preparing for NaNoWriMo. Either way, I digress.

July 17^th, the day Juniper Brown came into my mind. I was sat in bed at six AM, excited about the presents I’d receive, and what would happen later on in the day. I happened to keep a dictionary beside my bed in case I wanted to do any planning. I opened it and let it fall flat on the floor. My eyes became immediately attached to the word, Juniper. I didn’t need to know the meaning, I just knew at that moment, that a character had arrived into my head. Juniper Brown, and she was a wytch, no she was more than a wytch, she was a shamanka.

By nine o’clock, I was downstairs, there was no school and the Disney Film, “Read It and Weep” was on the television. Throughout that film I wrote plans and plans, who was Juniper Brown, I didn’t care about anything. By the end of the day I’d written three chapters and posted it on TW, creating lies that this was in fact something I’d written years before and improved. Yes, I was now obsessed, and “The Clockmaker’s Daughter*” was pushed to back of my mind.

That year, I didn’t achieve my goal for the novel challenge, but I did go on to re-write it for NaNoWriMo, and then proceed another re-write last year as well, adding new dynamics to the characters.

Spark Two: Films.

Has anyone seen Howl’s Moving Castle? Anime adapted from a book by Diana Wynne Jones, at least I think it was her. Either way, when watching this film I became fascinated by the character of Howl. He is such a mysterious character that I couldn’t help but be entranced by him. There was this darkness to the character that made you dislike him, yet he had this vulnerability that had you feeling sympathy for him. Sir Benedict popped into my mind then.

Sir Benedict, I decided, would be pure evil, because we don’t get enough villains that are pure evil, that are oozing with blackness. Blackness brought me to thinking about ink and what would I do if Inks were given humanoid forms and used as warriors against people, and all in the hope that the Inks could be used in a war. So this is another plan I’m working on at the moment with “Phantasmagoria”, but something that influenced the characters here were:

Spark Three: Images.

Or, to be more specific, the images on cards. If you look at a pack of cards, the images drawn on the card of often different. Inks were modified at this point. Which is sometimes a good thing, having one spark modified by another can be brilliant because it can add a higher dynamic to your novel. Alas sometimes they don’t work. At this point it transpired that images on cards didn’t work. But I’m sure that images can work just brilliantly, when utilized in the correct manner.

Spark Four: Articles.

The new beginning to Juniper Brown’s story came about because I was searching about fantasy on wikipedia. I came to an article about “The Korrigan” and this lit a spark for me. A brilliant spark that soon became a fuse. In fact, 13 pages were drafted out of thin air just because of what I knew about the Korrigan.

So, from this, I hope you have seen that sparks can be found anywhere, films, books, images. Just look outside and you can find millions of sparks, just think about an empty street. A ghost street, almost? Ghost! I came up with that idea a while ago, so please, don’t use it, unless you use it in a different manner. I can cry, because that story took me ages to plan.

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading and I’ll be back later with “The Process of Writing, Part Two: Idea Overload.”

  *The Clockmaker’s Daughter is being adapted and will be published online at www.thedoctorwhoproject.com, next year.

Por Clarice dos Santos

Envelope bonitinho, prestes a ser arregaçado, em cima do meu cobertor fofinho...rs

Finalmente, depois de um longo e tenebroso inverno, eis que surge em casa (ontem) a primeira edição da OLD!Gamer. Como o próprio nome diz, a revista é voltada para os fãs de games antigos, assim como aqueles que são jogadores desde os primórdios do videogame. O conteúdo vai desde o LINDO Megaman 2 – nem que seja só em imagens por enquanto *_* – até Phantasmagoria, jogo extremamente gore/sangrento/nojento/doentio lançado para PCs.

Não reparem nas "lembranças" da infância do lado da porta! xD hauhauha... Jogos olímpicos da escola rules! m/

A capa da revista – assim como um dos assuntos – é uma homenagem ao Rei do Pop, Michael Jackson, analisando Moonwalker e suas várias versões para outros consoles, como Commodore 64, Master System e Amiga. Tem bastante conteúdo sobre MJ, mas ainda tem muito assunto.

Uma coisa que gostei muito foram as entrevistas presentes na revista. A primeira com David Crane, fundador da Activision e criador do clássico Pitfall, e a segunda com Hiroshi Fujioka, intérprete do “mascote” do Sega Saturn, Segata Sanshiro. Hiroshi também é muito conhecido por ser o primeiro Kamen Rider e ele também participou como dublador de FF VII: Crisis Core e Kindgom Hearts II.

Outras matérias que vale muito a pena em conferir são sobre o Atari da Atari no Brasil (hãn?hãn? Entenderam?rs) e sobre Street Fighter II. Ficaram muito legais, bem completas, sem falar na diagramação da revista toda que deu um show. Não posso esquecer de citar também os excelentes textos sobre Chrono Trigger, Phantasmagoria, Yo!Noid, Simpsons e uma matéria super legal sobre as Donzelas dos games. Vale a pena dar uma conferida no material, está muito bom mesmo! Tem até uma matéria sobre o Jaguar!! Animal, não?

Agora um ponto ÓTIMO sobre a revista: NÃO TEM PROPAGANDA!!! Cem páginas sem uma propaganda sequer! Ótimo, uma maravilha!!

Enfim, OLD!Gamer é uma boa leitura para os saudosistas de plantão e que querem matar as saudades de ler ótimos textos sobre seus games de infância preferidos. Ah, esqueci de comentar que vem um PÔSTER junto! Na edição deste mês veio a capa de Super Mario Bros do NES. LINDO!!!! *_*

Frente

Trás

Estarei no aguardo da próxima edição em poucos meses!! Se não chegar nas bancas de onde vocês moram, a revista pode ser comprada online AQUI. Boa leitura! E quem já comprou, recebeu e leu a revista, poste nos comentários suas impressões sobre a mesma! ^_^

Dreaming under high heat,
dancing over stimulation,
with beloved in full dimension motion pictures,
and i awaken cleansed,
refreshed,
completely siesta’d.

Dream done i seek mango,
my darling’s most luscious flavour in a fruit,
the tangy sweet,
the juicy sticky treat,
and i take my blade to take the flesh,
delightful bliss concrete.

Earthen is the autumn,
harvest brings nature cornucopia,
though mind may still capture all as phantasmagoria,
ghosts and demons held back with a drop of meditation,
and dreams horror or ideal fall away with the autumn day,
my heart polished to reflect the truth,
my love remains through any harvest,
bright or dim,
the light of love outshining,
this my real harvest time.

Inland Empire (dir. David Lynch, cin. David Lynch, 2006)

***

Miami Vice (dir. Michael Mann, cin. Dion Bebe, 2006)

***

Plastic City (dir. Yu Lik-Wai, Lai Yiu-Fai, 2008)

***

I am only satisfied if my spectators,

shivering and shuddering,

raise their hands or cover their eyes

out of fear of ghosts and devils dashing towards them.

—Étienne-Gaspard Robert

My dear child, today we’ll have a little talk on ”phantasmagoria” and the fantoscope. A long long time ago, long before the first computer was invented, long before the internet trapped us in its entangling and mesmerising web, long even before the television was invented, people still lived their lives in accordance to the same desires and needs they show today. That of course, applies only to a certain level of extent, but none the less, it serves the purpose of creating a set for our story.

Imagine therefore, the same people, in need of the same things that helped them achieve happiness and comfort. Imagine them living in their little houses, using oil lamps, and having carriages and horses instead of our complicated cars. Imagine them being more inclined towards believing in god, more naive but none the less as eagger to learn and to wonder. Imagine also a world where fear of the unknown played its role and where sorceress and magicians used to entertain and shock audiences while performing on stage shows presenting what they believed were – and what truly were at the time – ”the world’s wonders”.

In this fairytale world lived a man that claimed to be a magician and that was in fact a scientist and an artist. This gifted man quickly found a way to elude the limits of his time, and to amaze the world with his inventions. He was born in a little country that we called then – and still call today – Belgium. But for the atmosphere of our story, we’ll say he lived in a kingdom far far away, and his story traveled through the seemingly narrow and elusive paths taken by the  lonely traders and nomads of the time until it reached the edges of the world.

Having the soul of an artist, he wanted to make people wonder, to trigger the hidden strings of their curiosity, to trigger their strongest emotions… and he succeeded at his task after playing with a magic lantern and with magic mirrors that allowed him to raise the spirits of the dead, and to bring them for a short second back to their loved ones.

His show both astonished and scared the audience that always wanted to know how he did it – but like any good magician, he too heavily guarded his secret and it was only history that revealed to us what machinery was used to create such intricate illusions. It was a complicated device, that linked together an ingenious science, a spark of talent, and a drop of madness. The magician named his device the fantoscope, and the world it created, phantasmagoria. And he went on and on for years, gattering crowds and showing them their dearly departed, or their past models, invoking the shadows of a misty spirit world. Some believed he was a fraud and tried to unveal his secret. Some believed he was a real sorcerer and could call people from beyond… but no one knew for sure until he decided to let them know. And it was a good thing he did, because today, my dear child, the little box you see on the top shelf over there, and you know as being a somewhat dull projector, is the grand-grand child of the fantoscope.

P.S.: It’s a pitty that we don’t remember the atmosphere of that world, that we are yet so brittle and we have our years counted into units that are farless greater than the imensity of time.  History is just a pile of dusty papers if we don’t make the effort of using our imagination.

The Outline
www.myspace.com/theoutline

An experimental band from Los Angeles, The Outline features some very unique sound, centered around the dark, yet intriguing lyrics that Graham Fink, the lead vocalist, sings will much passion. Their sound encompasses many genres, everything from dream-like riffs, space-age, and hard rock sound. You wouldn’t at first think that a band name like “The Outline” would produce something such as this, but you, the listener, will be pleasantly surprised. They have  a new album, Phantasmagoria, expected soon.

Dig It: The Outline – Why We’re Better Now
(Myspace)

Arvo Pärt’s Magnificat (1989), eerily and beautifully aligned with industrial scenes from 1950s urban America. not sure what to think of this yet, and i’m not sure how i even came across this (suddenly, i was watching it, having looked for something else). skyscrapers and gigantic industrial machinery, and the continuous flurry of human activity pushing these things along through the universe, have frightened me for some time now (they are like Sysiphus, multiplied into hordes). but this juxtaposition of post-modern choral music and post-war industry somehow seems to have something new to say about the problem of the human relationship to technology, the self, the universe, and God. what this something new is, i don’t know yet…

but speaking of which, i received this excellent photo from my friend Andrew of what he calls a ‘post-modern Sysiphus’:

a post-modern Sysiphus

La lluvia que cae sobre la luz

La oscuridad de la noche iluminada por una deslumbrante luz

Cubierto por ella, ahogado en ella

Escucho el sonido de un llanto cayendo

Mi cuerpo se enfría al ser mojado

Seguro, desde que la tristeza de ese hombre

Empezó a ser lluvia

Siento un calor fiable

Veo viajes en mis sueños

La lluvia que sigue cayendo sobre mi cuerpo

¿Por qué sigue estando llena de gentileza?

Lo que algún día esperé que llegara ha llegado

Sostengo entre mis manos una brillante luz

Seguro, desde que la tristeza de ese hombre

Empezó a ser lluvia

Siento un calor fiable

Veo viajes en mis sueños

Así el baño de luz me sigue marchitando

Cuando esta mano dejó de moverse, desde entonces nació la lluvia que cae

No se pueden detener las lágrimas de tristeza

Que siguen ahogando a mis sentimientos

 Sin una sombrilla, sigue cayendo la voz de la lluvia

Parece que mis sentimientos son llevados por una tambaleante luz

Creo en mi deseo que al ver al cielo parezca que después de la lluvia sale el sol

Así el baño de luz me sigue marchitando

Cuando esta mano dejó de moverse, desde entonces nació la lluvia que cae

Este cuerpo sin fin

La vida es como “la luz y la lluvia”

Farol giratorio ~Cielo pasado~

El cielo que vimos en el pasado no ha cambiado en nada

Otra vez me pregunto hacia donde se dirigía el cielo que vi en el pasado

El tiempo corre llevándose el cambiante paisaje

Como si la tristeza nos rondara, grabándose dentro de mi corazón

El tiempo que pasamos juntos y el paisaje que miramos juntos

Sin desteñirse, despiertan en mis recuerdos

El cielo que vimos en el pasado no ha cambiado en nada

Otra vez me pregunto hacia donde se dirigía el cielo que vi en el pasado

El pasado que ambos conocíamos no ha cambiado en nada

Parece que el pasado que ambos conocíamos camina en nuestros sueños

the prophet Jeremiah (Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel) was a contemporary of Heraclitus, as were Lao Tse, Zoroaster, and the Buddha. all of them participated in bringing about what's been called a Great Leap of Being, of which we need another.

lately i’ve been reading Heraclitus through Richard Geldard. to my joy, what the back cover of his book (Remembering Heraclitus) promised turned out to be true; through Geldard, i have advanced my appreciation and understanding of Heraclitus as “one of the principle sources of Western mystical thinking.”

here are some of Heraclitus’ fragments:

3. Listening to the Logos, and not to me, it is wise to agree that all things are One.

13. To God all things are beautiful, good, and just, but human beings have supposed some things to be unjust, others just.

15. Nature prefers to hide.

16. They do not apprehend how being in conflict it [the Logos] still agrees with itself; there is an opposing coherence, as in the tensions of the bow and the lyre.

39. You would not find out the limits of the soul, even by traveling along every path, so deep a Logos does it have.

53. I searched my nature.

And a thought from Geldard, inspired by his study of Heraclitus: Consciousness is not a part of us (generated, for example, by the brain); we are part of consciousness (the Greater Consciousness, the Logos). Just as any given radio can transform the flux and flow of all-pervasive electromagnetic waves into something locally coherent (a particular song, at a particular volume, in whatever room the radio resides), our central nervous systems are that which transforms Consciousness into little-c consciousness, our consciousness – a local coherence, or resolution, of peculiar being.

Phantasmagoria ist ein kommender Fantasie-Horrorfilm von Marilyn Manson, Geoffrey Cox und Anthony de Silva. Es ist sein Debüt als Filmemacher. Es wird geschätzt, dass der Film ein Budget von 4.200.000 Dollar hat.