The Opposite of Prosopagnosia

I am fascinated by our ability to recognize ourselves and one another from the tiniest fragments. My series of photos of shop windows and what is displayed and reflected in them plays off this fascination while making abstract art of the intentional goods for sale, the street scene, the passing parade. In this shot, almost nothing of me remains. But there I am, a crown of spiky hair. And in my mind I'm quite confident it's me. My mind is, in fact, filling in the rest of the head and face.

I think one reason I take these pictures is that, in spite of my age (somewhere in the twilight or at least the late afternoon of life), I'm not sure who I am. I want to discover that I'm fat or thin (more the former), old or young (more the former as well) and whether my spiky hair is as insouciant as I hope (yes, I think so, sometimes).

Oliver Saks has a disorder called prosopagnosia. He has difficulty recognizing faces, sometimes even his own. I think I have an ability, once I know someone pretty well, to recognize not just their faces but their voices, body language, gestures from the smallest hints.

This heightened ability that I believe I have does not mean that I can describe a person accurately when they are not present. I'd be hard-pressed to tell you their hair color or eye color accurately. The ability seems somewhere beyond description and into instinct.

As to knowing myself. All one has to go on for the physical is looking at the parts of the body that one can see from the vantage point of one's head, looking in mirrors and looking at photos. (And reflections.) Mirrors (and reflections in general) reverse the image. Is this important? Not usually, I don't think.

Examining this image we have a wire chicken (although that isn't too obvious) some circle shapes and that hair. It's me. There is an, um, emptiness. But in expressing that maybe this picture is a very accurate self protrait.

For the second picture of the day, I offer a self portrait of me along with himself. Shapes and patterns abound. FFP is in profile with tip offs of glasses and nose. Certainly it's him. But my head and shoulders? Obscured by shop window clothes? It's definitely me. At least I can see it for sure. Can you?

Are these art? I don't know what you think...but they are my art. They are Multiply Appropriated Portraits and Landscapes. I've been thinking about this for a long time. See my original artist's statement and critic's comment. There are many more entries in this blog slogging through this subject. And these entries are illustrated with what I call art.

Do I have to do something more with them? Do I have to offer prints? Make physical objects (perhaps mirror-lined, reflective glass shadow boxes with prints in them or prints sliced and made into collages)? Do I do something further with them digitally? Make digital collages of them with varying opacity or animated slide shows of them? With appropriated music? The choices overwhelm. I think I'll take a nap and ponder it.

Frames of Reference

When you embark on some part of your life experience (marriage, moving, new job, illness, vacation) you have expectations from past frames of reference but really who knows what is coming? This year we tried to snap back from a time when my dad needed me very badly and tried to be those happy retirees in comfortable shoes who can drive long distances and fly off on weekdays. But illness and death had other things in mind. I can't find the words to describe my year and its ups and downs, trips and towns, exhilaration and gut-wrenching anguish (sometimes on the same day). So it won't be a year that I describe in a family newsletter or represent with a happy picture of our downtown abode. Which is why I'm not sending a holiday card. The collage above only partially represents my attempt to make sense of it. Maybe when Holidailies is done I'll have the ability to represent myself to the 200+ people I usually send a missive to on the holidays.

[I threw this together for testing Holidailies. So expect more coherency when that actually begins next week!]

In the Abstract

I like abstract art. I like collage. I like pieces that use letters, words, portions of words, torn paper. I like this piece. Only...it's actually a photograph of a window in an abandoned store front that has had posters adhered to it then ripped away.

Still, I like it very much. It's accidental quality, curated by me with a digital camera, makes me like it more, maybe, than a painting in a gallery. Or less.

I love collage. Not every artist, of course. I've been a fan of Lance Letscher for a long time. We didn't discover him until he was famous and expensive. But we did recently acquire a piece. It's small, but that's OK because we would have had to give up some other art work if we had gotten a large one. We don't really live large any longer. Except in our heads, of course. Or reaching out into the World Wide WEB to fill our heads with news, facts, images, opinions. And we couldn't have afforded a large one anyway.

I also like Laurie Frick. She created a collage that is in the lobby of our condo. At the recent 5x7 fund raiser for Arthouse at Jones Center, I spied a couple of pieces that Laurie had donated. You aren't supposed to know the artist before buying but I identified the work by its style and, when I bought one of them and turned it over, saw I was right. (Someday we have to explore this whole thing about how we identify an artist's work, people's images, etc. again.)

I want to create collages. I sometimes make homemade greeting cards that are collages of sorts. I put them together with rubber cement which makes for easy work but fragile ephemeral results. I don't know anything about physically making collages that last. I have made some digital collages. I made one of photos I made of assemblages of stuff. I have made simple ones layering on the scanner. I have made them by manipulating ephemera on the computer. I've made them manipulating letters and words and colors and shapes and ephemera on the computer. Not that I consider any of this art, really. It's more practice looking, learning what I like free of the influence of others. It's not unlike looking at work and seeing what I like about it and learning something new about myself.

I'm constantly learning, really. What I like, how I react to art and what art work I might someday is constantly evolving. Can you be unfinished, still, in the year when you plan to apply for social security checks? I don't know if you should be, but I think I am. I think I'm growing and changing every day. And learning. And finding out what I like. Maybe that's how I cheat death until, like everyone else, I don't.

I have been trying to finish this for days. But, I looked up Laurie Frick for the hyperlink (does anyone call them hyperlinks anymore?) and ended up having to look at everything on her site, friend her on facebook and have a chat over there before I could wind up writing this. Then I look it over and I haven't really said much. So it goes. But there is the 'artwork' up top.

Shrinking for the Global Good

While I've been missing from this space I've been thinking. Yeah, really. About lots of things. About how we are all connected. About shrinking the footprint those of us in the developed world make. About my own (continuing??? I hope) downsizing. We've been downsizing a lot of things, really. Commitments. Spending. But mostly stuff and space consumed and car trips.

Today's illustration is a collage of (mostly) decade-old scribbles from a notebook. Originals recycled. Yeah, I have no delusions of about the value of my own messy notebooks. I do however try to capture actual journal entries in a computer file and I enjoy scanning some of the hand-written and drawn stuff for my amusement. Several cubic feet of this stuff remains to be dealt with in the downsizing of the 2000's, but every little bit helps, I figure.

We have moved out of 3000 square feet on 2/3 of an acre into 1200 sq. feet in a high rise footprint. We still have a house that serves as a home for my dad (and housing for a few visitors) and we help FFP's parents remain in their cottage. So, yeah, decadent amounts of space. But less. We consider stuff acquisitions now in terms of having space to store things. I'm also thinking about how much I might use something. We are trying to buy local (from the grocery store downstairs, from local restaurants) and support local arts groups and charities serving our community. I go days without starting my (old but fuel-efficient and with maintained pollution control) vehicle. I am planning trips, but when I go somewhere I want to stay a little longer and make the jetting less wasteful.

When I read my papers about tent cities in the U.S. and conditions world-wide I feel a little helpless in the face of it, but I really think that what we do right here makes a tiny difference. I know that our lives are wildly extravagant to many people in my own city and country and unbelievable to millions around the world. I don't want to give up my computer and my AV stuff and my meals and fine wine and my glorious lifestyle. But I'm trying to make changes, not sacrifices, that both simplify my world and make a small difference in the rest of the world and the future. Is it 'enough?' For me, it is. I'm going to try to escape the next couple of decades (after which the world belongs to someone else) in relative comfort with time to think and space enough. Free time and free thinking...they are pollution-free and can be constructive!

Ephemera, Ephemeral

This title (illustrated here with a collage of scanned paper ephemera) has been kicking around in my head for a day or two. Also this one: Words and pictures.

Life consists of nothing but millions of moments. Each marked from our perspective with ephemeral thoughts or actual ephemera (a ticket stub, disposibile drip catcher, label, a piece of currency). Even the most substantial things eventually flee us...or we them.

Moments are marked by ambient sounds (I happen to be listening to Jeff Lofton's jazz trumpet on his WEB site as I type this), the light, the disappearing coffee in your cup. If you follow something like Twitter or Facebook feeds you can follow the beat of your friends' moments. There's you, wasting a moment, watching others waste a moment. [I stopped here to get another coffee from my Capresso Jura E8. I also thought "I wonder if I'll mention that I heard Jeff Lofton's quartet at Belmont last night after getting some free premium Crown Royals at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse bar. I wonder if I'll remember what we did last night next year or even next week."]

Making it all add up, looking back (looking forward is so much harder) is the stuff of memoir. If I ever write a memoir, please consider it less than accurate. Because...

Yesterday I was reading scribbled notes in an old journal, trying to see if there was anything worth capturing before I did something with the journal. (It's a pretty one with lovely paper, made in Florence with scenes of that same city reproduced in a watercolor on the cover.) I immediately fell into a curiosity about what I was doing at the time I wrote the notes (six years ago, 2003). I could see that we were getting ready for a trip to New York. I was confused as to why. I was only slightly less confused after reading pieces of a pretty comprehensive online journal. All of which made me think that I wasn't writing enough journal entries of the type filled with 'then we did this, then I did that, then I showered and put on blue jeans.' Moments lost.

Besides minutes ago FFP came in from his Pilates class and dug around in the drawer for our tickets to a ballet tonight and a musical performance at the Paramount tomorrow night and I was thinking how much less attractive and interesting the computer-printed and bar-coded tickets were than some tickets I saved in my ephemera boxes. I was thinking I probably wouldn't save them nor write about seeing Ballet Austin's "Hamlet" and Ramsey Lewis and Ann Hampton-Calloway in any coherent way that I could ever find again and associate with this Valentine's weekend in 2009. And that made me a little sad but that's life. How many moments do we spend trying to recapture moments as we hurtle forward through another day, another 86,400 seconds (some spent sleeping...did I mention I had interesting dreams last night now forgotten and unrecorded?). We can collect ephermera, words and pictures. But the past is running away to a speck in the distance, each moment an emepheron, souvenirs of same notwithstanding.

I love this forward motion, but something in me wants to capture it even while understanding that I will never succeed. Hence words and pictures to recall if not recapture.

Contradiction

I have been on facebook more than I'd like to admit lately. Why, after all, do we need to be that in touch with friends? When we went to see "The Wrestler" and we were leaving we saw a friend who was first in line for the next show, smart phone in hand. "I knew you were here!" she said. And, indeed, I'd said I was off to see the movie a few hours before. This is what the kids have been doing for a while, starting with their voice calls "Where are you? Oh, I see you..." and ending up texting a continuous stream to one another and now, with Twitter and facebook, to everyone they know. I'm not sure I'm happy with it. I don't use the phone that much and I tend to pull back eventually from chat streams to write entire paragraphs for you to read (or ignore) at your leisure. I'm tantalized by the immediacy of things and by all these smart phones in the hands of my smart friends. But I resist as well. (I have a stupid phone. It does text messages but don't send me one. I don't know how to read it.) This is typical of my contradictory nature.

People (including FFP) have been writing notes on facebook with "Twenty-five random things about me." They are fascinating, but I haven't done one myself in spite of being "tagged." I don't take to tags or tagging others. If I inspire someone to write or comment, fine. Otherwise I'm on my own spouting nonsense, usually here. (Or, you know, one blog or the other.) These lists, though, are conduits of contradiction as people find themselves writing that they are one way but act another or desire some other path.

The above photo is a house in Old West Austin. Dramatically modern and different from its neighbors it would be patina-less but for the winter-stripped tree in the yard. I love patina, actually, but I find the house and its modern, sterile aesthetic appealing, too. We adopted a very modern look for our condo decoration albeit softened with art and books and some whimsical toys and collectibles. We left the concrete pillars and ceilings with their patina of seams, nail marks, wood grain from the forms. We used wood which has its endless swirls of grain but we have some sleek glass and chrome, too.

My personality is full of contradictions. I like to go places and see people but I'm shy and have spent a lot of effort over the years trying to get comfortable in social situations especially with strangers. Yeah, I'm the person who will invite fifty people to a party and then be exhausted, not by the effort to entertain them but by the effort to interact with them. (Of course, we won't be throwing parties for fifty in our new digs. Maybe twenty tops.)

I'm constantly yo-yoing between getting out among folks and retreating to my recluse mode.

I like to talk and I like to be listened to, but social situations still feel like work.

My love of patina extends to art where I'm a fan of abstract or the slightly fantastical realism (but nothing too fantastical, mythical or comic-like). I love collage and found object sculpture and assemblage and well, whatever you choose to call it. Mixed media. I love clean modern lines, glass and chrome. But take some paper ephemera, arrange it artistically and it grabs me. Rusty junk? Priceless.

I'm a bundle of contradiction. We all are, I guess. Collage appeals because we see ourselves in the complexity.

Big Changes, Small Changes

This was taken a little over a week ago, peeking into the hole for the new Austonian condos. (Much fun has been made of the name since we call ourselves Austinites, but I figure its their hundreds of millions, you know.) Change is happening fast downtown and once ground is broken and hole is dug then before long up it will go. (We hope. Intel shell fiascoes would be bad for high rises.)

Our situation is changing, too, as we prepare in tiny small steps to change residences. We are going to buy new things, pick and choose from our old things, move things.

I like the changes small, really, but occasionally you have to make the big change. In 2000, we put my parents through it by having them decommission a house they'd been in for over thirty years and be homeless for a few weeks and move into a totally new place. My dad is settled into that new situation now and loath to change. FFP's mom and dad are dug into their home of over sixty years. They aren't even accepting of our change. FFP's mom wants to capture some furniture we are getting rid of for the move.

I was thinking yesterday about the subtle difference that small changes can make...in reading habits, writing, exercising. I'm always bellyaching about not accomplishing anything in retirement. But that's just because it's been the small things. Reading more. Becoming more informed. Writing more if only journals and blogs. Exercising and improving the quality of that very slowly.

I've learned where Gambia is located.

I've built up to the point that I used twelve pound weights for my bicep curls.

I've started James Joyce's Ulysses if not finished it.

I've taken the time to turn a single word over in my mind, making sure of the spelling and the dictionary definition. For example, dilettante. It's hard to remember which letter is double in that kind of word. And it's such a powerful word, too. Encompassing both a love for arts and the concept of being a dabbler. FFP says that when our move precipitates a need for new business cards that we will put on them, for a title, that single word. Dilettante. I love it.

Yesterday I was in the gym and I was thinking about sorting through the stuff, collage art and digital photography and a poem I wrote and a list I started of 'everything I owned.' I thought it would be funny to fuse photos of stuff and that list in a digital collage. Ha. I know I'll get that done. Well I went so far as to locate my poem again:

Dabbler, Babbler, Dilettante
Flitting about
Cannot stop.
Focus Free
Excuse me,
I must hop!

And I found my random list of stuff composed over several weeks or months in 2004. Happily or sadly a bunch of that stuff is gone. But not enough of it.