The Famed Dock Ellis LSD No-Hitter
The famed Dock Ellis LSD-no hitter, with narration by Dock himself.
Animation by James Blagden
via pitchers & poets
hat tip Poetry Hut Blog
The famed Dock Ellis LSD-no hitter, with narration by Dock himself.
Animation by James Blagden
via pitchers & poets
hat tip Poetry Hut Blog
hat tip http://twitter.com/JakeNYC
Wake up you sleepy head
Put on some clothes, shake up your bed
Put another log on the fire for me
Ive made some breakfast and coffee
Look out my window what do I see
A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me
All the nightmares came today
And it looks as though they're here to stay
What are we coming to
No room for me, no fun for you
I think about a world to come
Where the books were found by the golden ones
Written in pain, written in awe
By a puzzled man who questioned
What we were here for
All the strangers came today
And it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh you pretty things (oh you pretty things)
Don't you know you're driving your
Mamas and papas insane
Oh you pretty things (oh you pretty things)
Don't you know you're driving your
Mamas and papas insane
Let me make it plain
You gotta make way for the homo superior
Look at your children
See their faces in golden rays
Don't kid yourself they belong to you
They're the start of a coming race
The earth is a bitch
Weve finished our news
Homo sapiens have outgrown their use
All the strangers came today
And it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh you pretty things (oh you pretty things)
Don't you know you're driving your
Mamas and papas insane
Oh you pretty things (oh you pretty things)
Don't you know you're driving your
Mamas and papas insane
Let me make it plain
You gotta make way for the homo superior
Sung Hwan Kim, Sung Hwan Kim and a lady from the sea, 2005, Single Channel Video, 13min, Color & Sound, Image by Paul Perry
From the Commanding Heights...
In From the Commanding Heights … , a tale of love (between an actress and a president from a past, once inhabited by a living generation of now) is told through text, film/video, and music (in collaboration with David Michael DiGregorio, a.k.a. dogr). The music itself is made with layered voice, ocarina, delay, a sampling keyboard, harmonica, kazoo, pump organ, guitar, mallets, stretched membranous materials, jae-gum (Korean cymbals) and pang-eul (Korean bells). Through this process, a vocalist might turn into a character in the story telling process; the story might turn into music in turn.
A video remix of The Phil Donahue show by Javier Alberto Morales and John Michael Boling, with music by Jerry Goldsmith of The Omen.
via WFMU
Desperate for spiritual salvation and solitude, as well as a place to dry out, he secretly retreats to Lawrence Ferlinghetti's rustic cabin in the Big Sur woods. But his plan is foiled by his own inner demons, and what ensues that summer becomes the basis for Kerouac's gritty, yet lyrically told, semi-autobiographical novel, Big Sur.
One Fast Move or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur, takes the viewer back to Ferlinghetti's cabin and to the Beat haunts of San Francisco and New York City for an unflinching, cinematic look at the compelling events the book is based on. (...)
Johnson’s initial collages were mainly abstract works made of cut, painted and distressed paper strips and irregular designs. He referred to these early collages as “moticos,” a term he coined and used for several different elements in his work, including these collages and early poetic texts that he wrote at this time. Following his lifelong practice of cutting and recycling various materials, Johnson cut apart many of his early collages and used the fragments in later works. As Johnson once said, he created “Chop Art, not Pop Art.”
By the mid-to late-1950s, Johnson’s collages became increasingly referential, as he combined fragments from earlier works and ink drawings with images from popular culture. He included fragments of popular advertisements and images of Elvis Presley, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Shirley Temple, and others in a way that anticipated the 1960s works of Pop artists, such as Warhol. Due to his early use of popular imagery, Johnson is considered one of the earliest exponents of Pop Art. Johnson also included references to art world celebrities and personal acquaintances. In the late 1950s, Johnson began creating “tesserae”—small, highly worked blocks he created from layers of cardboard glued together, painted, and sanded—to add a three-dimensional element to his works.
Throughout his career, Johnson repeatedly returned to and re-worked his collages, adding additional elements and recording the dates of his progress directly on the collage. He developed several motifs and series in his collages, including silhouettes of artists and acquaintances, "Lucky Strike" symbols, Cupids, "Tit girls," Dollar bills, Potato Mashers, and "Fingernails." Johnson juxtaposed images, words, and ideas to create new meanings and endless associations.
In the late 1950s, Johnson began exploring the possibilities of Mail Art. He developed a network of friends, acquaintances and strangers to whom he sent highly conceptual images and texts. Like Marcel Duchamp, Johnson was one of the first artists to incorporate instructions for active participation in his artwork, as he encouraged the recipients to “add to” his work or to “please send to…” or to “return to Ray Johnson.” In 1962, Johnson founded the "New York Correspondance (sic) School," a name invented by Ed Plunkett and used by Johnson for his international network of Mail Art participants he spawned by mailing an enormous amount of material, including fragments of cut-up collages, drawings with instructions, found objects, snake skins, and annotated newspaper clippings.
One of the first performance artists, Johnson began staging what he called “Nothings” in 1960. These performances paralleled Allan Kaprow’s “Happenings” and later Fluxus events. Johnson described his “Nothings” to William S. Wilson as “an attitude as opposed to a happening,” and he staged numerous performances throughout his life, including his “Throwaway Gesture Performances.”
Severely shaken after being mugged and attacked in lower Manhattan on June 3, 1968, the same day that Andy Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas (and two days before Robert Kennedy was assassinated), Johnson decided to move to Glen Cove, Long Island, and then to Locust Valley. Until his death in 1995, Johnson continued his work in collage, sent out volumes of mail art, and staged numerous performances, but he became increasingly reclusive. As his contemporaries became famous, Johnson cultivated his role as an outsider, parodying celebrity through performances, fake openings, and photocopy-machine art. From 1982 on, he repeatedly refused offers from numerous galleries to exhibit his art, and for the last five years of his life, he refused all public exhibitions of his works.
On January 13, 1995 Ray Johnson’s body was found floating in a small cove in Sag Harbor, NY. All aspects of his death, revolved around the number "13". His age 67 = 6+7=13, the room number at his hotel was 247 which adds to 13, the date: Jan 13, etc. He jumped off the bridge on a cold winter night, and his body was found the next day. As with much of the particulars of his life, little is known about the circumstances of his death. Those who knew him best, inasmuch as they knew him at all, have even speculated that his suicide was his final performance (or Nothing as he then called his pieces). Johnson lived frugally, but had $400,000 in bank accounts at the time of his death. He left no will and his 10 first cousins inherited his estate.
via Wikipedia
Images: Raven Row
Raven Row’s inaugural exhibition was the first large UK show of the collages and mailings of New York artist Ray Johnson (1927–1995). Works in the exhibition can be viewed here.
"My Life" is a song by Billy Joel that first appeared on his 1978 album 52nd Street. A single version was released in the fall of 1978 and reached #2 on the U.S. adult contemporary chart. Early the next year it peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The melody echoes the ending of Elton John's 1975 single "Someone Saved My Life Tonight".The verse about an old friend who "closed the shop, sold the house, bought a ticket to the west coast, now he gives them a stand up routine in LA." is a reference to comedian Richard Lewis.Chicago members Peter Cetera and Donnie Dacus performed the backing vocals and sang along with Billy Joel during the bridge and in the outro ("Keep it to yourself, it's my life")."My Life" was used as the theme song for the television series Bosom Buddies (1980-82), however due to licensing issues it does not appear on the DVD release of the series.