8.5.17

Bird Bath / Zongzi Lady

The video is of birds in a fountain in Lower Manhattan - near the Museum of Jewish Heritage and New York Harbor.

The video is of birds in a fountain in Lower Manhattan - near the Museum of Jewish Heritage and New York Harbor.

The audio is from a street vendor on Grand and Chrystie Street in Manhattan selling her portions of sticky rice wrapped in bamboo (Zong Zi (粽子)).

7.5.17

Greig Wakes Up After Reading the Last Chapter of The Sound and the Fury

Greig Roselli Signed Selfie
Discovering filters late in the game, I am all agog.


Do you ever wake up with an intense dream that fills your morning with a rather bizarre metaphysical tone about it? I know - I studied philosophy - so I am not sure if I am alone - but I have a hunch that most of us have had this experience - if not once - then quite possibly a hundred times, even more. 

It goes like this. It is a particular kind of dream. I wake up and I am seized by a memory from my childhood. I am in the backseat of the car on the way to swimming practice. Or I am a kindergartner turned around in my chair looking at mom in the back of the classroom. Or I am being stung by honeybees on a Summer vacation to Pass Christian, Mississippi.

The memory has a connection to the dream but it is not the content. The memory springs from the dream. The dream is often abstract. A silhouette of a man. An empty room that needs to be swept. I wake up and I am seized by the memory. What follows next is melancholy. I become so sad because the memories seem so far away from the current moment. Who was that person sitting in the back seat of the car? I can remember myself in the car but I cannot occupy the self of that person - of that other individual who is me but because either it was so long ago I cannot rewind the moment - or that I have become so different from that kid on his way to swimming practice that I can only archive the memory rather than inhabit it.

What follows the memory is a sharp intonation of mortality. I realize that I will die and I am again saddened by the passage of time. I know. It sounds morose. And it is cliché to say - "We're going to die." But I think when you feel your mortality in the morning after you wake up from this kind of memory sensation it heightens the feeling. It is more intense.

What follows is I think about how I am alive right now with many other people who are alive who share my timeline. People who were born at the same time as me; also, those people who were already alive and I have merely joined in - late for the party. Or, those who have recently joined us here on earth to have cake.

It's like the whole human race is a collection of dim lights that go on and off slowly - seen from above it would look like a slow-motion version of an air traffic controller's control board. As each light brims into existence, its light glows slowly to a fierce yellow then dissipates. But other lights are also coming in and out of existence. Once the light is gone it is gone forever. And there is not much variation - except the duration - because one light may brighten longer than another. 

It's probably because I have spent the weekend reading Faulkner. Like at the end of The Sound and the Fury, Luster takes Benjy on a furious ride around the Compton plantation on the family's horse and buggy - but very fast and in the direction Benjy is not used to taking. When Luster goes left - instead of right - Benjy groans and moans - roars! - and there is a horrific sense of the order of the world turned over. Of course, order is restored in the end and the world becomes "serene again as cornice and façade flowed smoothly once more from left to right, post and tree, window and doorway and signboard each in its ordered place."

It's like how at school kids always sit in the same place at lunch. Or how a broken clock can send a sharp sense of anxiety even in the most sensible of person. Or the feeling of dread when someone walks across the street and is almost hit by a careening bicycle. Composure is rattled. Like my morning awakenings. But with time everything regains composure and I am once again enveloped in the rhythm of the turning world.

Quote About Boredom by a Fictional Anthropological Personification

A quote about boredom and human beings from Terry Pratchett's character Death from the Discworld series:
“Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom."
- Death in The Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
Death in movie version of Terry Pratchett's Hogfather
Production still from the Hogfather (2006)
PDF Copy for Printing

2.5.17

Dramatic Interpretation: "Uninterrupted Consciousness Of Myself" from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions

In this post, I share an audio podcast dramatic interpretation of an excerpt from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions. 
Who would have thought a spanking would have sparked a revolution? In this Eighteenth Century biographical classic, the birth of the coming-of-age narrative finds its place in this sensuous tale of a boy's "first uninterrupted consciousness of himself" in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's philosophical biography Confessions (1786).


30.4.17

Dramatic Interpretation - "Dixie Dawn's Birthday Party" an Excerpt from Lewis Nordan's Novel Music of the Swamp


In this post, I present a dramatic interpretation of  an excerpt from Lewis Nordan's novel Music of the Swamp.
It’s Summer in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi and Sugar Mecklin is invited to Dixie Dawn’s birthday party - but the thing is she and her family are the pariahs of this white-trash town and no one shows up but our brave protagonist Sugar - in this rollicking farcical dark comedy by American author Lewis Nordan . . .

23.4.17

Selfie in the Subway

West Fourth Street Station New York City
Roto-Scope Style Selfie at West Fourth Street Station, Manhattan
So. I was exploring the city the other day. I took off from the 45th Street Station in Brooklyn. It's my home station. The one I depart from most often. For the commute, for everything. It's my everything station. Lulz. And by the way, there are two entrances,  one on the west side of the avenue and the other on the east side.

Did you know the station is not deep? - in fact, it is like many subway stations in New York City built according to the cut-and-cover method of subway infrastructure building. It is crazy to think that construction on this segment of the subway system underneath Fourth Avenue started in 1906. It took a couple of decades to complete the final project but now - today! - you have a one-ticket ride from Bay Ridge in Brooklyn to Forest Hills in Queens.

On this particular excursion, I, a straphanger with a 30-day MetroCard, took the Sixth Avenue bound express train at 36th Street and ended up at West Fourth Street station in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. Hence the selfie - notice the rotoscope-style photograph. I noticed Facebook added cool animation layovers to supplement the iPhone's camera function.

5.3.17

Boy Dancing on Mardi Gras in New Orleans: Street Scene

I went home for Mardi Gras. I recorded a boy dancing in the street before the parades started. 

Slow motion video of a boy dancing in the street before a Mardi Gras Parade on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana. @mardigrasnola.
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#boy #igersneworleans #mardigras #slowmotionvideo🎥#protectthedeck #louisiana #photography #louisianalife#nolaevents #sashayaway #travel #neworleans #nola #music#premiumnonskid #charleston #fishthedifference via stonesoferasmus.com

28.2.17

Adult/Teenager Banter in Manchester by the Sea

Production still from Manchester by the Sea (© 2016 Amazon Studios)
Nephew Patrick and Uncle Eddie squabble in Manchester by the Sea © 2016 Amazon Studios
I must admit one film that slipped by me was Manchester by the Sea - produced by Amazon Studios and a contender in the 2016 awards season. 

The movie is good and it has lots of witty examples of adult/teenager banter. I can see why it won an award at the Oscars for its writing.

Underneath the banter between Casey Affleck's character and his on-screen nephew, lies a serious and moving story. However, it's a hilarious movie even though it is about a man who is wracked with guilt over the accidental death of his three children and who is now faced with the prospect of raising his teenage nephew. For example, the conversations between Patrick, the nephew, who just lost his father, and his Uncle Eddie (Casey Affleck) are well-written and funny. A recurring string of dialogue is the nephew's hilarious pointed questions that undermine his Uncle's crotchety humanism - and poke fun at his complete lack of social aplomb. 

At one point a stranger overhears the two arguing. He says something critical - like, "Good parenting," and Uncle Eddie - as he does throughout this movie when he perceives a slight to his character - goes ballistic and Patrick tries to defuse the situation and then, hilariously, whips around and says "Uncle Eddie, are you fundamentally unsound?" and, later, "Are you brain damaged?"

Here is another funny exchange - but this time it is Uncle Eddie. He tells Patrick that "if you're going to freak out every time that you see a frozen chicken I think we should go to the hospital."
#funny

20.2.17

Video Travel Post: Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark (Somewhere Near Birmingham, Alabama)

I often take the long-distance train route from New York to New Orleans. It's a thirty-two-hour train ride. One memorable stop is in Birmingham, Alabama.  

Riding the rails en route to New Orleans, the southbound #19 @Amtrak #crescenttrain enters the city of Birmingham, Alabama.
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#americantrains #amtrak #trainspotting #timelapsevideo#travel #robotic #industrial #passengertrain #price #railways#railfan #trains #traintravel #industry #workforce #machinery#train #railway #timelapse #south #trainstations #railroad#photo via stonesoferasmus.com

PDF for Printing

19.2.17

Snow Builds Up: A Rocky Outcropping in the Bronx (Obligatory Instagrammable Photograph Post)

Snow builds up on a rocky outcropping near an apartment building in the Bronx borough of New York City.
Snow builds up on a rocky outcropping near an apartment building in the Bronx borough of New York City.
I like snowy rock outcroppings - especially when they jut out from side streets near the Grand Concourse in the grand borough of the Bronx.
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#rockyoutcropping #nyc #art #newyork #bronx #snow #nature #street_photography #photography #streetphotography #newyorkcitylife #firstsnow #streetview #winter #street #snowlife #newyorkcity #travel #city #streetshot #ig via stonesoferasmus.com