two field recording fragments from rilke...

lofty god of distant harmonies
i sense you everywhere deep in every
thing
upon the gently patterned slope the
trees
stand silent as when they first heard
you sing
---
.......... of the brown

.......... of the sonorous
dried-up earth of the forest
drums the flight of the faun
---

two fragments (i am assuming left unused) from rilke's duino elegies........

two stereo views...

i've had these two stereoviews sitting on my bookshelf, facing my work area for awhile now.

i think the top one with the origami figures is simply amazing, not only for its beauty but for the utter strangeness of the image. paper has never seemed so anthropomorphic...and somewhat menacing!

while the drum image initially didn't do much for me, over time it's grown to also be a favorite image, particularly because of the simplicity of the color scheme, which reminds me for some reason of whistler. it is also interesting how something meant to be seen dimensionally looks as flat as a japanese woodblock print, when seen with the naked eye as opposed to through the intended viewer.

five recent tintype finds...

when drummers have quivering hands...

when all is still and hands quiver, still.
when time so quiet, as stopped.

the faint sound of a drum
remains a whisper
gentleness, an air.

a fading of skin struck, a day
a week
a month
ago.

a soft kind of exhale.

and the hand, the quivering
from within.
knocking from the inside
shaking on the outside.

some tiny area at the tip
of a finger, opens.

spirit released.
all blurred edges and shifting forms
upwards. drifting. moving
as if a cloud.

then still.

the hand
and its fingers
emptied
of visual vibration and stutter
becomes.

an image of absolute clarity
without breath-
quiet as a group of small stones
sounding for those
with gentle ears.

certain moments
continue to drift towards us
resting, still, out of breath
upon our shoulders.
sounding softly
as we continue,
always,
to listen.

when drums look like windows...

drum on a tree...

nice RPPC of george, a member of the "ranch band", milwaukee wisconsin. i really love the tree stump cut to hold the drum.

for some reason, when i noticed the postage cancellation stamp on the back i began to think about this card and the person on the front. i never really read these things other than to get a date and location, but i noticed this one also has the time of day on it. i couldn't help but feel a weird connection to this person going to a post office at 3:30 pm on july 18, 1908 because i do the same thing around the same time many days here myself. i had a sense that this card's entire trajectory through life came out of a single moment; and that moment is recorded directly on this object. it's nice to find a kind of consistency to life in the fact that the kind folks at my post office still hand cancel a number of things with rubber stamps of almost the exact same design as they used in 1908 as we approach 2008...

nice drumhead...

two drummers... two drums...

little drummer boy...

nothing like getting a surprise gift in the mail, this one courtesy of mr. jenkins who runs a nice blog on the history of disneyland called stuff from the park (check out today's great old snapshot of a ticketbooth in frontierland!) - over the years he has dropped a number of little gems in our laps, and this one also shines.

according to the single link i could find online: "the shippen family band were music makers of 1890's. the shippen brothers family band was quite an organization, made up of two fathers and their ten children. they played at many events around the county".

the man with the tie and the drum...

i know nothing about fars bakchich other than his voice is unbelievable, his person seems a bit other worldly, and the cover design on this 7" is stellar. i was initially disappointed to discover that 80% of this entire 7" is talking - yes, it's fars sounding like he's speaking in tongues and taking on the voices of several people, telling what i can only surmise is a story, at a frenetic pace...but i wanted to hear the drum, and a song

by some miracle, the last minute and a half revealed this!

hand painted drum heads...

four nice hand painted drum heads from 1910-1920...

hit me with your rhythm stick...

some nice hand painted drum heads circa 1910. the life of a drum head is to be continualy covered with "patterns of duration that are phenomenally present in the music".