Harold Carr 04 2005

Another Language/Worden Collage

Last weekend we attended the opening of the Adam Worden collage exhibit at the Salt Lake Art Center. Alex Caldiero performed poems he composed to the images. Alex and the collages got me to thinking about the Interplay series by Another Language. They are creating real-time collaborative collages spanning art forms, space and time. I've taken the liberty to mix images from Interplay and Worden to give some idea of how they are in the same vein. However, the Interplay images are only snapshots of a moving moment instead of a finished image like Worden's.

Worden worked alone, collecting bits-n-pieces and putting them together to form a finished work. Another Language works in real-time with musicians, actors, dancers, poets and technicians all over the world to form multiple audio-visual streams. A viewer can choose to look at a particular stream or even watch one of the live performances in their location.

With Worden we have a solitary viewer looking at a single image containing multiple perspectives and material created by a solitary artist. With Another Language we have an audience choosing their stream, each stream made up of the real-time creation of multiple people/places/forms. With Worden we have pieces of art we can contemplate. With Another Language we have images and recordings of the streams, but the piece is essentially "lost" once the performance is over.

more pictures...

Craig Crowther Poetry/Music Tribute

Tonight we honored our friend Craig Crowther with music and poetry.

Sandy Anderson opened the evening reading what we wrote for John Saltas of the Salt Lake City Weekly (and other papers).
Next, Hector Ahumada told a story he felt was apropos of Craig.
The Cowdaddies (Kennard Machol, Rex Flinner and me) played Cucooz and Navajo Trail.
Sandy read poems relating to her long relationship with Craig as poet and publisher.
Harold read a message and poem from Jose Knighton who now lives in Portland, Oregon.
The Cowdaddies did a couple more tunes: some unnamed Latin tune Kennard taught us the night before and Sally Gooden.
I read some of what I wrote after I returned from Chile and found out Craig had died. I lightened it up a bit with my "trick-ta-piss" that was one of Craig's favorites. I continued with a poem I wrote a year after Craig died hiking the first trail I ever hiked with Craig. Then I picked up my bass and did Lew Welch's Graffiti - a poem Craig would always make me do regardless of the setting. Then I read a fun poem by Craig, Moab Has Seen The Last Of Me. I finished by reading one of our favorite poems (by Lew Welch), that we call Ring of Bone.
Sandy read a message from Miriam Murphy and a message from Charles Potts.
Sherm Clow read a funny and ironic poem he wrote about finding out both he and Craig worked in the bowels of the Utah State capital.
The Cowdaddies ended the evening with Home On The Range.

A great number of Craig's river buddies were there, as well as most of his family. We all hung out and enjoyed each other's company. Here are some photos.

Update: The night of the tribute I dreamed of Craig. Very simple. He was sitting on a couch smiling at me, singing a song.

more pictures...

The Tragic Sense of Life

The movement from a view of life as essentially simple and orderly to a view of life as complex and ironic is what every individual passes through in becoming mature. ... Amid simplicity and order rationalism is born, but rationalism proves inadequate in any period of upheaval. Then equilibrium must be created out of opposites. Such inner peace as [we] gain must represent a tension among contradictions... A feeling for [dramatic] paradox allows seemingly dissimilar things to exists side by side, their very incongruity suggesting a kind of truth.

Robert Venturi quoting August Heckscher

We are surrounded by life but everything dies - thus the irony.

We ourselves are alive and seem to escape death like Odysseus under the ram, but our family, friends and we ourselves, die - thus the tragic sense of life.

The trick is to turn this tragic sense into a source of joy and wonder. Into the infinite now.