consistent concentration

something to aspire to.

last friday the dread pinwheel was spinning a hole in my screen. eventually, in the car, sister-in-law driving, trying to get work done on the animation, blocked at every click, decided to take a break. some solace knowing that chess rendering would continue back at my studio while i was out of town for the weekend.

did some walking saturday, with reasonable load (twenty-one pounds).





















here's how my niece and i appear to the shadow world.





















ruminated on what matthew and i might like to do together to make the kisokaido trek meaningful and fulfilling for both of us, and give us an opportunity to make some unique art which would otherwise not exist. keep returning to memories of our collage sessions in tokyo. painting in numazu was fun, but the tokyo sessions seemed more "serious" and the work is far more accomplished. of course, situationist-inspired wanders and games put us into a rarely-attained state of mind, but none of that has ever been shared, beyond a few participants. there might be a way to incorporate tasks and rules into, say, photographing certain subjects, or using certain methods to take pictures, which will enable us to share some of those sensations with an audience.

sunday morning up at six to climb the highest mountain in connecticut (haystack). oh, there are no mountains in connecticut. well, i climbed a hill.



















view from the top






















but what most impressed me was the sunlight diffused by the fog yet still backlighting this structure, seeming to create a murky sillouette somewhere between our world and the shadow world.





















witnessing visions like this, as rich as imaginings, provide a great deal of the motivation for undertaking the kisokaido journey. that and a mysterious desire to wear a clown nose with matthew again.

back in the studio, there were again moments when i saw a still frame of the animation in progress and thought "wow, i'm glad i was stuck here looking at that"























amazing how quickly that sentiment was replaced by visceral frustration






















faster computers? more-easily-executable ideas? concentrating on what i'm doing would help, too. realized, late sunday, never hit the "export" button and all those chess clips i was relying on my machine to churn through while i was off playing human with my brother's family - aren't ready. aren't even started. can't animate one thing and render another at the same time. so, it has been a week, was up late doing as much as i could. this isn't really what i had planned, but those ideas (of visual rhythm) are now notated and i did learn quite a bit. this animation is now complete, called "i never get that far" because it seems to illustrate the difficulty in thinking anything new - we are who we are and we think the way we do and we think the things we think over and over and over. everything is changing all the time but there is of course a paradoxical sameness inherent in how we live our lives. just over a minute, hope you enjoy it.