banff, midway...

Castle Mountain, Rockbound Lake Hike with Susan Bowman, Scott Dorman, Charles Tucker (and me); Chuck Listening to Jazz; Columbia Ice Fields Visitor Center; Chuck and Lane on the road to Columbia Ice Fields.

We went hiking yesterday with Scott and Susan. We've been going to Jazz and making work. Here are just a few pictures from our adventures. I have a million more... sigh.

Charles Tucker, Lane Cooper and Scott Dorman in Banff

Wow... what a week at Banff! I've finished seven small paintings... I'm looking for the truth in painting, ala Derrida. Also looking for a subject for paint... I think the truth, the subject might be paint.

I'm shooting lots of raw footage for my videos. I've got to work out the sound design... but hey it'll come together. Yesterday I cast my finger and tomorrow I'm doing a papermaking workshop.

Our friend Scott got here on Sunday. It's so good to see him. He grew up with Chuck while I've only known him for nine years. He is such a sweetheart. This Saturday, we're all going on a hike and a picnic. In the meantime we're cranking the work. Scott is a chemist and he's working with Chuck on a project. It's so great to see people from back home.

Tonight we went to hear Jazz. The groups were amazing, especially the last one. These two sax players were incredible.

I'll blog some more tomorrow maybe. There's so much going on.

charles tucker, amanda almon and lane cooper -- that's right we're all here

Well I made it to Banff. I've actually started a whole other blog to chronicle my travels so I won't discuss the details of that here.

We've settled in and today the weather is beautiful. The week's been very hectic but we've met some great people and I've started to get some work done. I actually finished a video short last night but it's done using old footage. I've started shooting today on our hike up Tunnel Mountain... beautiful, beautiful, wish you were here kind of thing. Saul and Chuck have been squirreled away working on their research although we all take time out to hit the pub. Chuck, Amanda and I went to a puppet show today as well. It's not what it sounds.

I'll try to post about the folks I'm meeting here. They're very kind and interesting people. The land is amazing. I've never been anywhere like here although I have that strange feeling I've seen it before. So many pictures... you walk outside though and wham the scale is overwhelming.

Now I have a remaining five weeks to make work. It seems both long and short. It makes me though want to go on other residencies.

i am i am

i will be away for a while. maybe i'll blog on the way to banff. maybe not.

Chuck and I have been together for over ten years and ten years is a long time to be with someone. It is the nature of commitment - through good times and bad. I hope I make some good work while we're at Banff. I hope the people are kind there, respectful. I'm a bit nervous but I'm sure it will go well. Chuck is nervous too. We will face it together though and I think it will be fun after all. Overall we are looking forward to this time to do work and on the other side we should have a collection of things to show and the drive back with Katherine will be an adventure.

peace be with you.

to honor... that which is important...

Here I confide to you the deepest part of me. The driving reason for all my doing... It is the knowledge which underlies every choice. Do not imagine that I'm sad. This is just the compass of my heart.

Life seems to be about balance. Not too much of this or too much of that. Living well; to honor those things that are truly important; that is the only goal. How to parse it out and fill up the mind with those subjects which occupy and which allow for some sort of productivity? It is balance isn’t it?

What makes the urgency of this goal setting clear? What brings me to it? What are the engines, the causes, and the reasons of my work? What is it that I remember - those things which are seared into my mind … those moments that are unassailable, un-remittable, indelible. (C’est moi ma mere, c’est moi. Ecoute’ a moi si vous plait pour seul une moment.)

When I waiver, when I get lost, I remember watching you die mother and my own impotence, crying to a god I don’t believe in. I remember the cruelty of that god in forsaking you and I promise I will ask what you were afraid to ask. I will live. There was that stillness of that moment when your fragility was over come and there was no more hope for your betterment and I became cut loose, adrift. Your beauty, your worlds, your hope were washed away. There are times when this is all I can see and I rage at a world that does not mourn your loss as I do.

I remember that once in the world there was a person who wanted, as I want now. I remember that once there was in the world someone who loved me and wanted for me all the dreams she had.

Mother what can I do for you now but live the best I can?

(Picture: Charles Tucker and me from April 17, 2009)

purpose...

The purpose of this blog has shifted over time. Originally it was meant as a communiqué to my friends and family in southern locales. Initially it contained random bits of information from my day to day life and narratives of events I thought they would find of special interest – events like heavy snow (which still fascinates me anyway).

Gradually it has moved into the realm of the open epistle or personal essay. It is a place where I “confide” the interior self to a public realm. Since it makes no demands, the blog, it sits and waits for an audience, I feel ok with this. I feel no more vanity in putting myself here than I would speaking with a close friend. It provides me an unburdened witness. -- The interested will read and those that are not will pass on by. It generates within me the same feeling of joy that an empty canvas can sometimes elicit. It is pregnant with possibility and I alone censor its content. I am at liberty here.

I am grateful to the ether and its indulgence. I am grateful to an empty space waiting to be filled. It is nice to imagine kind hearts finding empathy with my words.

So in short – thank you.

small joys ... charles tucker, carey tucker and lane cooper (me)

lane cooper, banff and charles tucker...

Just so you know I will be at the Banff Centre for May 11 to June 19 or so. Chuck and Saul are going for their Thematic Residency "Analogous Fields" and I'm going for a self-directed experience. I will be working on video and writing. Frankly I'm really looking forward to it. I was thrilled when Chuck suggested I apply. I think it will be a good time. His daughter Katherine is going to come spend some days with us while we're there as well. Back at the homestead, Carey and Chris will be holding down the fort and feeding the kitties.


Leave comments if you like.

a razor's edge

I identify with Larry in Somerset Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge.” It is an elegant, and rather romantic presentation of a philosophical worldview – It is a discussion and a contrasting of ethics.

I have been thinking a lot about ethic as motive; the internal compass that drives decision-making. It seems, or I tend to imagine rather, that most do not consciously consider the ethic which drives. “What will it be?” “What are the limits I will set?”

The culture has slid so far from judgment that my perception is that the critical eye, the witness, has been largely shut off. The cultural position appears to be that it is ridiculous, antithetical, an exercise in futility to consider the larger significance of decision-making, better to respond, to react. It is more honest, more authentic to go with gut feeling.

I find that talking to myself will tell me, often, the truth of things, if only I will listen. To describe a thing to myself, if I hear those words then I may find the ethic which drives me. What do you want? To say “plenty of money” – first – then it is most likely this that directs my choices.

What do I want? Or rather what do I value?

To think, to talk, to taste good food, to know those who think and talk.
A glass of wine, a good book, a warm place.
To care and be cared for.
To do work and be satisfied with that work.
To breathe, to taste, to think, to have intercourse of all passionate sorts –
To live.

& then there are birthdays... lane cooper, charles tucker and beloveds...

I had a dream the other night. Sometimes I hear things in my dreams. "Well at least if they want a piece of you, then they want some of you." I took it to mean that there are some of us who want to be consumed just so we can feel wanted. Me... I don't think so any more. Let me eat cake.

Pictured: Anna Cottos, Carey Tucker, Marc Tomko, Charles Tucker, Saul Ostrow, residue of an evening, a sign for peace

picture this: Lane Cooper, Charles Tucker and Julie Langsam

Pictured: Lane Cooper, Charles Tucker and Julie Langsam

so every now and then i google myself... (doesn't everyone?)... when i do this, as i did today, i'm disappointed at the images that come up as "me." looking around my computer i find lots of pictures that i wish would google. some i like because i think i look good in them and some i like because i like who i'm with and some i like because they make my life look exciting. so i have lots of images that i would like to post just so they'll search but the ego self-indulgence would just be too obvious and my ego would not have that so instead i'll self-control and just post these. they're pretty good if i say so myself... and now in the hopes they'll search and i'll have a face on the internet that is actually mine (and not a mini cooper or some guy with a beard or a twelve year old) here are so pics. oh and don't let me mislead you... i have lots of pics not because i'm so photogenic but because i work to have good looking pictures. oh well... vanity thy name is lane.

thanks for indulging me dear ether. (me, me, me)

a walking shadow...

Ghost Dance to music from "The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford," - Song for Bob, by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis

-- an incredible soundtrack. Please buy so they'll make more wonderful music.

---

A walking shadow…

"She should have died hereafter;

There would have been a time for such a word.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more.
It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing." — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)

You, the other, are a fiction to me. All others are figments of my imagination, flesh made to bones through the text of acting on a stage. We perform. Even the secret is a performance… not hidden but a performance of veiling – an unveiling of intimacy.
My knowing of “you” – my knowing of others – is now; it is this moment; it is my memory of the last performance I saw of “you.” An act held in the line of the play by my memory of the acts coming before. I read the meaning through the lines and actions of the characters. I deconstruct to find meaning. Actions, Words, reveal logic extending from ethic that is motive.

More directly –
We cannot know others. We can only imagine them based on our reading of their actions – this is the text that we read. Throughout our engagements with others we tend to base our understanding of them on the last exchange yet framed by a context of earlier action. I read the semiotics of your actions but my knowledge of you, the other, occurs as internally as my reading of any text.

It is only after the last last act that the text takes on the sum of its meaning. The character becomes transformed and how we imagine them shifts from the myopic to the gestalt. The fragility of prolonged death falls away and it is replaced by the remembered vigor of youth. The most perfect form stands in place of ravaged minds and bodies and becomes what is lost, what is longed for.

I would talk about my mother in order to really explain but it’s not possible. To say that unto death… until that moment, that moment is inconceivable and it is unto that moment as yet uninhabited that we live in the now and it is now that defines the texture, meaning, state of a relationship. It is in that now we imagine the other until the now can no longer be sustained and while the text may be yet fully revealed, it is written.

bondage

As you are so I once was.
As I am so shall you be.


Age is interesting. It gives one a particular perspective on things. What once seemed easy and light becomes more ponderous and weighty. The frivolous undertakings of life, those things we once called fun, carry with them consequences and complicity.

Bon chance.

** Bette Davis from Of Human Bondage.

life and websites... charles tucker and lane cooper

Charles Tucker, my frequent collaborator and partner, and I are working to become more web savvy. Chuck and I both have websites up and now we're trying to figure out how best to use them. In addition I'm trying to balance my personal practice as an artist and my work with events at CIA, and teaching. Honestly I feel very excited and hopeful, as if a number of things are about to come together in a positive way. The studio-house is about to be ready. (I keep thinking this). I imagine evenings sitting in the house surrounded by our work, friends and visitors who are interested in ideas. The exchange of ideas; I want very much to create a space where this can happen. I do believe that when ideas and thinkers meet the sum can be greater than the parts.

Check out our websites! and when the house really is open I'll let you know the progress of my fantasy. The picture is from my "real" home.

katherine, carey and charles tucker (and me) New Year 2009

A New Year, a renewal, a re-beginning...

Here's a post for anyone who wants to know how our New Year's (and Christmas) went.

It was a quiet affair. We spent Christmas alone. Carey went down to visit his mother. Chuck gave me beautiful artist-made jewelry - a necklace and a bracelet. The necklace is wonderful because it actually matches some earrings he gave me a few years ago. It (the necklace) has yellow heart-shaped crystals and an iridescent glass center-piece. We had some wine, a little cheese... all in front of our "charlie brown" Christmas tree.

Carey came back in time for New Year's and Katherine flew in with him. I actually had pies baking in the oven for them. (For those of you unfamiliar, Chuck has three really amazing off-spring, Christopher, Carey and Katherine. Being able to share in their lives is the greatest generosity anyone has ever shown me. Thanks to Chuck and also thanks to their mom Karen.) Chris wasn't able to make it in I'm afraid. We re-did Christmas with them and then watched movies together for New Year's Eve. We had one disruption that evening but by mid-night everything had settled down and we toasted one another with asti-spumante... super sweet. The hillbilly in me loves it.

According to tradition (at least where we come from), what you do New Year's Day sets the course for the rest of the year. Eating greens brings money; eating black-eyed peas brings luck (the eyes i think); and a ham hock brings wealth. I made us all of the above plus a chicken. If I say so myself it was a great meal.

Chuck has spent the holiday keeping us in fires and we've worked on the house I bought for us to use as a studio. The cats have lounged and enjoyed everyone being home and the extra attention. All in all ... it was better than last year ... what could be better than being surrounded by those you love.

I hope everyone else had a wonderful holiday and that the New Year brings us peace and some contentment. With LOVE to you all. You're in my thoughts.

The pictures are from New Year's Eve and actually today, except for the one of Chuck and Katherine, which is from Thanksgiving at Chuck's parents.

speaking the name of god...

This year… or year and a half, has been about assessment - assessing my life… trying to find reason to it. I have not given you, the ether, a report on my condition, as of late – Let me summarize by saying it has been a year of loss and challenge… beginning with the Summer of 2007 I learned that my cancer had begun to grow again and it required a fourth surgery to remove five tumors. Not long after, on Thanksgiving of 2007 my mother died… I won’t go into details. Then on December 17th 2007, I had my fourth cancer surgery with Chuck by my side. In the Spring of 2008 I was deeply depressed and grieving. I received good news though in March… my cancer was, for the first time ever, below any detectable levels. The first time a possibility of a cure has ever been seriously mentioned in the twelve years of fighting it. Chuck went to Banff to make work. I went to New York to heal and do the same. During that time my personal life underwent an unexpected change and again I found myself living with uncertainty and grief. This time has caused me to look inward and once again take an accounting… make an assessment of the things I value and what choices should be precipitated through this evaluation.

More recently someone described to me his current existential crisis. It reminded me of my own major journey into that darkness in 1996 when I was first diagnosed with cancer. All I could see then was a black infinity… and nothing… “a million years from now is only 30 seconds away” was my most conscious and persistent thought. What did anything mean? How was there any purpose to the things I was doing? I would sit in the class I was teaching and stare at the floor… It was all-pointless… meaningless. I carried with me an anger for humanity’s stupidity. I remember someone telling me they believed me an angry feminist and who hated all men. They didn’t understand… I was just angry that life had lost its flavor.

Slowly I began to climb out from that darkness. It was a place where I had just been barely clinging to the walls. As part of that climb, I consciously chose that which would be important to me. I needed a system to determine the value of those “things.” I decided I to develop a “metaphysical” frame … That system began with: Lane ends when Lane ends -- but there is an interconnectedness among people. I am part. You are part. This is my god. What I say and do now telegraphs to the future… It is carried forward like the mutation in mitochondrial DNA – a marker influencing future thought. My individuality may no longer exist, but my thought, and to some degree my mind, continues in that it is embedded in any thought, any life, which contains a residue of my thinking. Each of us has influence on others in this way. It is both conversely rhizomatic and linear.

As a consequence of this understanding of meaning and its transmission to the future and conceivably infinity, I began to become more aware of the individual’s responsibility for signification … First I became aware of it in my work as an artist, and then in my life “acts” and how I impact others. This understanding of things gradually gained influence over my life and my thinking. It now provides a foundation of logic as to how I make decisions; choices; etc. It is an ethic that I apply with lesser and greater consistency depending on my own clarity and personal discipline. It guides me and provides a measure for the choices I make. As a result there are times and choices I regret.

There are those I know, well respect and love who believe that to regret is waste… but I understand regret as a kind of grief – an acknowledgement of a loss due sometimes to mistakes or perhaps failed choices … and it is only through loss, the experience of grief, that the full value of “things” can become clear against a non-hierarchal background. Sometimes that loss may be as simples as a particular sense of the self.

Valuing and evaluating my enacting of signification with a recognition that all signification is transmitted to the larger culture allows me to determine if I am “saying” what I mean, … being who I want to imagine myself to be… rather than intuitively creating myself – this process of measure and the taking of responsibility allows me to actively and consciously … with an awake mind … create myself.

love's labors lost...

Sometimes things are beyond your control... What am I to learn from this the past year? It seems there must be something... some task I've set for myself; some betterment of my greater person...

Let go and accept... let go.

A cat is a cat... not a person... no greater or lesser than any other animal... but my true and loyal companion... the one who made me the center... She fed me and now... even this... In the scope of things, surely not the greatest loss of my year -- but what a comfort she's been to me. I hope I was right daddy... I hope there is a heaven for kitties.

let go...

zoe, lucy's step-daughter is on the left; lucy is on the right. I'm such a sap... please send some good thoughts my way.