“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
“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
“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
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
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
“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 Pearl, Arts District DART Station
“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
“Life is too short to be living somebody else’s dream.”
― Hugh Hefner
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.
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.
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
I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I’d draw a big ram’s head, really messy. I’d never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman.
—-Jean-Michel Basquiat
This last weekend, I dragged myself out of bed… if not exactly very early, then rather earlier than later. I thought of what I needed to do with the rapidly slipping away day and I thought, “I need some miles and some photos.”
So I packed my camera into a handlebar bag and rode to the DART station – intending on taking the next train that pulled in, no matter which direction it was going. The Red Line came first, going south, so I headed downtown.
The day was warming quickly and I didn’t feel very good – so I wasn’t going to be able to get as many miles as I wanted. I rode to Klyde Warren Park and picked up something to eat from a Food Truck, read a book, and rested for a bit. Then I headed to Deep Ellum to see what I could see.
Sometimes, it’s important to be able to trust fate, to follow your nose and see where you end up.
As I crossed Ross I saw someone up on a ladder spray painting a mural on the back wall of a building. I’m a big fan of urban murals but have rarely been able to see one actually being made. The artist was working off a photoshopped photo of the site with the design, taped to the wall. I parked my bike and dug out my camera.
The mural was being painted by an artist from Denton, Eric Mancini. He said he was Velcro-ing some artworks to the building when the owner came out and told him he had been thinking about placing a mural there. Eric was glad to comply.
The mural was a stylized Technicolor portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat. “You can tell by the hair,” Mancini said.
We chatted a bit about art, about Denton (“Denton has become what Austin thinks it is” – one of my favorite sayings), this and that. “I’ll finish this later today and then do one of my tree paintings on the rest of the wall,” he said. He needed to get painting and I needed to get some more miles so I packed up and rode off – he climbed back up his ladder.
Now, this weekend I’ll go back and take some photos of the finished work. More photos, more miles.
Eric Mancini painting a mural of Jean-Michel Basquiat Downtown Dallas, Texas
Eric Mancini painting a mural of Jean-Michel Basquiat Downtown Dallas, Texas
Design for an Eric Mancini mural of Jean-Michel Basquiat Downtown Dallas, Texas
Eric Mancini painting a mural of Jean-Michel Basquiat Downtown Dallas, Texas
“Why the ancient civilizations who built the place did not use the easier, nearby rocks remains a mystery. But the skills and knowledge on display at Stonehenge are not. The major phases of construction took a total of a few hundred years. Perhaps the preplanning took another hundred or so. You can build anything in half a millennium – I don’t care how far you choose to drag your bricks. Furthermore, the astronomy embodied in Stonehenge is not fundamentally deeper than what can be discovered with a stick in the ground.
Perhaps these ancient observatories perennially impress modern people because modern people have no idea how the Sun, Moon, or stars move. We are too busy watching evening television to care what’s going on in the sky. To us, a simple rock alignment based on cosmic patterns looks like an Einsteinian feat. But a truly mysterious civilization would be one that made no cultural or architectural reference to the sky at all.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries
View down Elm Street from walkway, near Harwood. Downtown Dallas, Texas
For awhile now I have been interested in the phenomenon of Dallashenge. This is when, one certain days of the year, the sun is aligned to rise or set directly on a line with one of the major canyon streets of downtown, either in the evening or in the morning.
A lot of people do photography in New York at Manhattanhenge, but few realize the same phenomenon occurs in other big cities.
You can use Suncalc to determine the henge dates. I’ve gone downtown a few times to shoot both the morning and evening henges.
Morning Dallashenge from the triple underpass in Dealey Plaza.
When I first did this I had to look around for shot locations. One place I thought would be good was the pedestrian bridge over Elm Street – but at the time I wasn’t sure how to get into the thing or what the view would look like, so I opted for a street-level view.
Here’s a test shot I took that shows the pedestrian bridge.
Elm and Harwood Streets. I like this view. I’m not sure if the pedestrian bridge will ruin the shot. Also, the Lew Sterrett jail is at the end of the street and may block the sun’s orb..
As part of the tour we passed through the pedestrian bridge – it’s easy to get to and even has a cool coffee shop, Stupid Good Coffee nearby.
As you can see from the photo I took (the first one in this entry) during the tour, the view from the walkway is pretty good. One problem though, is that the distant Lew Sterrett jail blocks the horizon, so the best shot might be a couple days later (or before… I’ll have to think about it).
Plus, the tunnel system is officially only open from six to six and the sun sets at about six forty five – so I’d have to overstay a bit. A tripod set up with a camera might be a defense – we’ll have to see.
The next evening dallashenge date looks to be around October 26, so I have some time to think about it.
Bill Chance 