Sunrise Y2K

Photo by Roman.

Remember all the predictions of disaster for the dawn of the year 2000? How delicious it was in anticipation, like creeping toward the summit of a roller coaster… Except it wasn’t even that. Were you disappointed when civilization didn’t end? Or even stumble?

Not me.

I’m not sure just when in 2000 this photo was taken or, more puzzling to me, where. Had you asked me a month or two ago, I would have said it was on my way to work in the early morning from a Red Line CTA train. Maybe it was. Or maybe it was on the Loop. Or maybe… I don’t know. What does come to mind with certainty was how grateful I was for tasks that yanked me out of the apartment so early that I would experience the emerging sunrise.

It was often overwhelming.

Unlike most of the “Y2K” software bugs.

Real Soon Now…

The latest video from Cyriak illustrates a negative feedback loop and a sort of eco-surrealism that includes maybe a reference to the late John Brunner’s sci-fi novel, The Sheep Look Up? Full screen is recommended:

Fossils of Summer

Photo by Roman.

It’s only the shadow of the past in stone. If you see a face here, it’s time to lay off the weed, my friend.

Corpse Light

Photo / graphic by Roman.

An alternative view of a dead organism.

Hives of Steel and Glass

Photo by Roman

A peculiar construction of Homo sapiens, the naked mole rats of the Hominids, regulated by electronic pheromone trails and elaborate ritual and instinctive behaviors. Harmless, mostly.

Clouds Over Lake

Photo by Roman

Why Does Santa Like Rudolph?

Get your mind out of the gutter! It’s a simple thing:

Grant Kolton does a lot of commercial animation; you’ve probably seen his stuff but check it out. There’s a lot of clever stuff.

Light Ears

Photo by Roman

Here’s looking at you babe bacalled and becalmed in the foyer of life Shhhhh! someone is listening the walls have crustacean eyes lights glistening the sky is alight with the sound of the Big Bang echoing in glittering dark body radiation photons that see no time but all time at once a particle and wave good bye from the Perskeid meteor shower of fairy dust from asteroids swinging low sweet chariot… we’re home! At last! forever…

Existential

Photo / graphic by Roman

A painting here then gone:
More pointless hues upon
A wall oblivious to all.

— Yip

It is not that I have no past. Rather, it continually fragments on the terrible and vivid ephemera of now.

— from Dhalgren by Samuel Delaney

Shaun Has Some Real Problems!

And they are all in his head.

This is a pretty amazing bit of stop motion animation (claymation) combined with live action. (Whoa: what a concept!) It’s also quite the story of someone coming to grips with his own fears, made all the more compelling by an amazing, agonizing grotesqueness. Sam Gainsborough has a few other projects on his Vimeo channel, music videos and commercials mostly, but this is the one that I like. Apparently Vimeo does also.

I suspect that, for some folks, the video may be a bit intense occasionally.

As a story, the video falls into a popular narrative: That by discovering and facing the experiential origin of our fear(s), we can begin to overcome them or, at least, find ways of compensating for them.

Sometimes that’s true. It has happened to me, after all…

But sometimes it is not true. How often? I have no way of knowing. But I do know that people are sometimes fearful or angry or whatever for no other reason than they are just stuck in that mode.