There is a role and function for beauty in our time.
—-Tadao Ando
(click to enlarge)
Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth
Tadao Ando, Architect
Beauty in Our Time
Tag Archives: Texas
Not the Shadow of the Past
“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?” That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
High Water,
Dallas, Texas
I Want My Fifteen Minutes
“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
― Andy Warhol
Self Portrait
Andy Warhol
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Fort Worth, Texas
All Secrets of the River
But out of all secrets of the river, he today only saw one, this one touched his soul. He saw: this water ran and ran, incessantly it ran, and was nevertheless always there, was always an at all times the same and yet new in every moment! Great be he who would grasp this, understand this! He understood and grasped it not, only felt some idea of it stirring, a distant memory, divine voices.
—-Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
I took this photograph a couple months ago, after the first flood. The Trinity river has gone back down now – I haven’t been down there since it dropped. I need to go, to see what happened to everything that was under so much water for so long.
Continental Bridge Park with Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in the background.
Dallas, Texas
Inside the Vortex
“The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.
To explain — since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation — every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.
The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.
Trin Tragula — for that was his name — was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.“Have some sense of proportion!” she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.
And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex — just to show her.And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.
To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.”
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe
inside of:
Vortex
Richard Serra
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Anyone With the Sensitivity of an Armadillo, or Even You
“Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist–a master–and that is what Auguste Rodin was–can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body.”
—-Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
To Photograph People Is To Violate Them
“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder – a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.”
― Susan Sontag, On Photography
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Fort Worth, Texas
A Drone Over the Trinity
“Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
The scenes of the swollen Trinity river have been popular sightseeing attractions here for the last few weeks. Luckily, here, the flooding has been more of an inconvenience that the deadly danger that it has posed downstream. The high water is an interesting and strangely beautiful change – and not so morbid of an attraction.
In this modern world, odd occurrences inevitably attract a new breed of gawker – drones. A couple showed up at the Continental Bridge Park while I was down there looking at the water. They had a drone in a case – extracted it, and flew it around the place.
I think it was one of these. It was very capable, flying all over the place, a surprising distance. The pilot must have been very confident – if anything went wrong it would have been lost forever in the rushing floodwaters.
The drone flying off the edge of the Continental Bridge Park, Dallas, Texas
The drone with the cable stays of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in the background.
The drone coming in for a landing. She would catch it as it landed.
This wasn’t shot on the same day, but some of the footage is in the same spot.
Texas Flood
Well there’s floodin’ down in Texas
All of the telephone lines are down
Well there’s floodin’ down in Texas
All of the telephone lines are down
And I’ve been tryin’ to call my baby
Lord and I can’t get a single sound
Well dark clouds are rollin’ in
Man I’m standin’ out in the rain
Well dark clouds are rollin’ in
Man I’m standin’ out in the rain
Yeah flood water keep a rollin’
Man it’s about to drive poor me insane
—-Texas Flood, Stevie Ray Vaughn
Trinity River,
Dallas, Texas
Legions Of These Myrmidons
“One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden
I was out moving around the city with my bicycle and a DART pass. I had my tablet in a backpack and decided to head downtown and see if there was anything interesting on my Love Lock USB Dead Drop. The water in the Trinity was up, but I didn’t know how high it was on that day – so I thought I’d at least give it a shot.
Crossing the river on the DART train I looked out and saw the Santa Fe Trestle trail snaking its way across and a few inches above the water – so it looked like I could make the crossing. I started to ride down from the Corinth train station and soon I was on a narrow strip of concrete with water all around.
Finally, though, I reached a spot where the water was coursing over the pavement. I’m not an idiot, I knew it was time to head back. I did get off my bike and fished out my camera for some flood shots.
Concentrating on the water and my camera I didn’t notice one important fact. All the fire ants from across the vast river bottom plain had been forced up onto the narrow strip of trail. At my feet they were boiling in a thick red mass.
If you know anything about Texas – you know that fire ants will swarm you and then when one bites, they all do. Nasty, nasty things.
It hurt, but not too bad. I did the fire and dance, sweeping them off as fast as I could.
Then it was out of there, as fast as I could pedal.
The Santa Fe Trestle Trail snaking its way through the flooded Trinity River Bottoms.
Dallas, Texas.
The view across the Flooded Trinity, Dallas, Texas
As the water moved from one side of the trail to the other, through drowned drainage pipes, it left a maelstrom in its wake.
Trinity River Bottoms, Dallas, Texas
Finally, the water overtakes the trail.
Dallas, Texas
Bill Chance 