Better to Travel Than to Arrive

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

When I was a kid, my father bought a piece of property somewhere, I don’t really know where. On that property was a barn and in that barn was an old International Pickup Truck – I’m guessing about 1950 or so. It was black.

If memory holds – all the thing needed was a new battery and fresh fluids and it started and moved. I thought it was so cool to ride around in that thing.

It was cool, but not as cool as this one.

Invasion Car Show Deep Ellum Dallas, Texas

Invasion Car Show
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas

Invasion Car Show Deep Ellum Dallas, Texas

Invasion Car Show
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas

Hood Ornament

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It’s going to be commercial and nasty at the same time.”
― J.G. Ballard

Invasion Car Show Deep Ellum Dallas, Texas

Invasion Car Show
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas

Willing to be Jaunty

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Some hats can only be worn if you’re willing to be jaunty, to set them at an angle and to walk beneath them with a spring in your stride as if you’re only a step away from dancing. They demand a lot of you.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

Klyde Warren Park Dallas, Texas

Klyde Warren Park
Dallas, Texas

The Mean Reds

Posted on by Bill Chance

“You know the days when you get the mean reds?
Paul Varjak: The mean reds. You mean like the blues?
Holly Golightly: No. The blues are because you’re getting fat, and maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid, and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?”
― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

streak1

“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgandy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

streak2

Streaks from Tree Mural by Eric Mancini.

The Most Powerfully Advertised Commercial Product of This Century

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The ambiguous role of the car crash needs no elaboration—apart from our own deaths, the car crash is probably the most dramatic event in our lives, and in many cases the two will coincide. Aside from the fact that we generally own or are at the controls of the crashing vehicle, the car crash differs from other disasters in that it involves the most powerfully advertised commercial product of this century, an iconic entity that combines the elements of speed, power, dream and freedom within a highly stylized format that defuses any fears we may have of the inherent dangers of these violent and unstable machines.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition

Deep Ellum Dallas, Texas

Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas

Invasion Car Show, 2015

Proceed from the Dream Outward

Posted on by Bill Chance

Jung said: “Proceed from the dream outward…”

It is interesting to return to the original definition of a word we use too often and too carelessly. The definition of a dream is: ideas and images in the mind not under the command of reason. It is not necessarily an image or an idea that we have during sleep. It is merely an idea or image which escapes the control of reasoning or logical or rational mind. So that dream may include reverie, imagination, daydreaming, the visions and hallucinations under the influence of drugs – any experience which emerges from the realm of the subconscious. These various classifications are merely ways to describe different states or levels of consciousness. The important thing to learn, from art and from literature in particular, is the easy passageway and relationship between them. Neurosis makes a division and sets up defensive boundaries. But the writer can learn to walk easily between one realm and the other without fear, interrelate them, and ultimately fuse them.
—-Anais Nin, The Novel of the Future, Chapter One – Proceed from the Dream Outward

Eric Mancini Mural Dallas, Texas

Eric Mancini Mural
Dallas, Texas

The other day I rode my bike past Eric Mancini painting a mural of Jean-Michel Basquiat on a wall in downtown Dallas. Last weekend I rode back by there to see the finished work. Basquiat in on one side, and a cool stylized tree is on the other side of the liquor store sign.
I really like the murals – they are in a crackerjack location – a lot of people are going to see them.

Eric Mancini Mural face of Jean-Michel Basquiat Dallas, Texas

Eric Mancini Mural
face of Jean-Michel Basquiat
Dallas, Texas

Eric Mancini Mural Dallas, Texas

Eric Mancini Mural
Dallas, Texas

Eric Mancini Mural Dallas, Texas

Eric Mancini Mural
Dallas, Texas

No Roof Between Those Depths And Me

Posted on by Bill Chance

“When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with out-stretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

Sculpture and Building Downtown Dallas, Texas Near the Arts District DART Station

Sculpture and Building
Downtown Dallas, Texas
Near the Pearl, Arts District DART Station

Google Maps Streetview of the location

Beyond Your Peripheral Vision

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Squint your eyes and look closer
I’m not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
And I’m beyond your peripheral vision
So you might want to turn your head
Cause someday you might find you’re starving
and eating all of the words you said.”
—-Ani DiFranco

Mural Deep Ellum Dallas, Texas

Mural
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas

Somebody Else’s Dream

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Life is too short to be living somebody else’s dream.”
― Hugh Hefner

Playboy Dallas Design District Dallas, Texas

Playboy Dallas
Design District
Dallas, Texas

Over the last year or so, the Dallas Design District has become one of my favorite destinations – especially for riding my bicycle.

Right off Riverfront, in the heart of the district, appeared a huge steel replica of the Playboy Bunny logo, alongside a black-painted muscle car on a tilted slab of concrete.

On group bike rides there was some snickering and snide snarky sermonizing about these incongruous objects. I, on the other hand, never really gave it much thought – except to get out my camera and take some snaps.

Today, I was surfing around this internet-thing, and stumbled across the story of the Playboy Marfa. The mystery was solved.

Marfa is this strangely cool West Texas town – half old-school West Texas ranchland, a throwback to the old wild west – and half postmodern hip art colony. A mix that doesn’t always agree – but somehow gets along to the betterment of both.

One thing that both groups don’t like at all is crass commercialism.

So when the Playboy Corporation rented some space and erected this faux-artistic giant steel advertisement the locals were appalled. They resented the use of their wilderness artistic tradition for advertisement. Everyone was up in arms, including the Texas Highway Overlords.

Playboy Marfa now moved to Big D Marfa, Texas

Playboy Marfa
now moved to Big D
Marfa, Texas

It didn’t take long for the site’s permit to get itself yanked – Playboy Marfa had to go. The locals were happy.

But, What is Art?

Luckily, there is Dallas. You see, Dallas doesn’t care about crass commercialism. The crasser, the better. As Dallas updates itself it is careful not to fully abandon its past – its history of tackiness, moneyed kitsch, and big everything. And I like it.

It is embodied in the phrase I’m starting to see – partially in response to the popular “Keep Austin Weird” campaign down I35 a few miles…
“Keep Dallas Pretentious”
…which is interesting on several levels – once you think about it and embrace it.

So Dallas gets a new sculpture – Playboy Marfa becomes Playboy Dallas (at least for as long as the exhibition lasts).

Good.

Design District, Dallas, Texas

Design District, Dallas, Texas

Design District Dallas, Texas

Design District
Dallas, Texas

Design District Dallas, Texas

Design District
Dallas, Texas

Tongue-Tied and Twisted

Posted on by Bill Chance

Into the distance, a ribbon of black
Stretched to the point of no turning back
A flight of fancy on a windswept field
Standing alone my senses reeled
A fatal attraction is holding me fast,
How can I escape this irresistible grasp?

Can’t keep my eyes from the circling sky
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
—-Learning to Fly, Pink Floyd

Pocket Park Downtown Dallas, Texas

Pocket Park
Downtown
Dallas, Texas