As an essential tool in the ongoing shaping of the fictitious Central Asia nation of Grigovia, I drew of it a map. And while adding the final touches to this map, in order to correctly determine its bordering states, I consulted a pre-Unification Diercke Weltatlas (world atlas) from my days at the Gymnasium in Germany. I had forgotten how fascinating it was to look at an atlas, at my leisure to follow the contours of a random chunk of the Siberian landscape, to examine the living conditions in and population data for a township in Apartheid South Africa, to puzzle over a detailed and colorful analysis of the economy of Argentina in the 1989. Only with effort did I remembered my task, flip to the proper page, and write down Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan. My task completed, I looked back at the atlas fondly and appreciated it for having no bright display, no DSL uplink, no spyware, no malware, no netbook battery indicator counting down the minutes, no Tumblr feed to scroll through, no email to answer, no hyperlink to follow – that for ten minutes of my life on a Tuesday evening it was just me and a 20-year old book filled with pictures of countries, some of which no longer exist.
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
Showing posts with label grigovia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grigovia. Show all posts
25 October 2013
10 May 2013
bones of blog
Where will my blogs go once I stop updating them fifty years from now? And where will they go if the Interweb stops working, crashes, or is wiped out by virus or alien invasion? When elephants feel death approaching, researchers say they often remove themselves to secret areas littered with the bones of their pachyderm forebears, graveyards piled high with the massive skulls and valuable tusks of these smart, lumbering beasts. My blogs, I fear, are not much different: when their time is up and their duties have been served, they will either retreat quietly into the digital forest, randomized clusters of ones and zeros waiting to be re-born as a toddler's social media account, or they will sink forever into the shiny black carapace of some server tower humming away dutifully in the climate-controlled warrens of any one of countless South Asian server farms.
All the writing this author posted on those blogs will be gone if they themselves go: there are no hard copies of his body of work; no printed copies of the Grigovian fairy tales he composed; no tactile versions of the vituperative barbs he hurls at politicians and powerful persons alike; his legacy is 50% ethereal and 49% vacuous, and the few items that do exist for real resemble the ruined detritus of a foolish nonce who cowers in the dark shadows of the past while cursing the skies for making thunder and sending rain. No, his artistic effort will vanish when the systems crash, when the sky-brothers return for gold and human women, or upon the Singularity, whichever comes first, and he wouldn't have it any other way. Huzzah.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
All the writing this author posted on those blogs will be gone if they themselves go: there are no hard copies of his body of work; no printed copies of the Grigovian fairy tales he composed; no tactile versions of the vituperative barbs he hurls at politicians and powerful persons alike; his legacy is 50% ethereal and 49% vacuous, and the few items that do exist for real resemble the ruined detritus of a foolish nonce who cowers in the dark shadows of the past while cursing the skies for making thunder and sending rain. No, his artistic effort will vanish when the systems crash, when the sky-brothers return for gold and human women, or upon the Singularity, whichever comes first, and he wouldn't have it any other way. Huzzah.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
31 January 2013
on drawing well
In the years since the author drew his last set of pictures, he has forgotten how difficult it is to transfer an image from brain-stem to paper. To expand his overall portfolio, however, he has added physical artistic expression to his daily protocols; in addition to his two writing sessions, he now allocates time for drawing, making sculptures, and graphic design.
This unworthy whorphan thought it hard to write well; then, he tried to draw well. Writing and drawing share certain fundamental rules, including those of symmetry, planning, composition, patience, and simplicity. Whereas, however, one can fix a broken sentence by following the guidance of Messrs Strunk & White and look in a dictionary for the correct spelling of a thousand different words, one of the only ways for the artist who works alone to correctly depict the bent leg of a kneeling woman is to act as his own model and hope that the interface between finger, hand, wrist, arm, and brain works well enough for him to accurately reconstruct the desired shape on paper.
Drawing the Grigovian coat of arms was easy compared to trying to capture a human form in motion, but with enough tries and dozens of body parts sketched out and promptly erased, he finally has something with which he is satisfied. The only way to get smarter is to play a smarter opponent (The Principles of Chess, 1883, as quoted in the movie Revolver, by Guy Ritchie); the only way to sharpen artistic skills is to practice them every day. As he works, the old lessons – those learned in gymnasium and college – float up from the sunken wrecks of distant memory, guiding his hand as often as they remind him of the need to be humble, diligent, and forgiving. Among the lessons he remembers most vividly is to not press too hard when drawing with a pencil. His mother taught him this when he was a child; it is as true today as it was then. In practicing yoga daily and getting better at it with something akin to painstaking slowness, he is learning another lesson passed down through the ages: piece by piece, the the treasure of the universe is amassed. Gradually, he may just make something of himself. Failure rarely kills. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
This unworthy whorphan thought it hard to write well; then, he tried to draw well. Writing and drawing share certain fundamental rules, including those of symmetry, planning, composition, patience, and simplicity. Whereas, however, one can fix a broken sentence by following the guidance of Messrs Strunk & White and look in a dictionary for the correct spelling of a thousand different words, one of the only ways for the artist who works alone to correctly depict the bent leg of a kneeling woman is to act as his own model and hope that the interface between finger, hand, wrist, arm, and brain works well enough for him to accurately reconstruct the desired shape on paper.
Drawing the Grigovian coat of arms was easy compared to trying to capture a human form in motion, but with enough tries and dozens of body parts sketched out and promptly erased, he finally has something with which he is satisfied. The only way to get smarter is to play a smarter opponent (The Principles of Chess, 1883, as quoted in the movie Revolver, by Guy Ritchie); the only way to sharpen artistic skills is to practice them every day. As he works, the old lessons – those learned in gymnasium and college – float up from the sunken wrecks of distant memory, guiding his hand as often as they remind him of the need to be humble, diligent, and forgiving. Among the lessons he remembers most vividly is to not press too hard when drawing with a pencil. His mother taught him this when he was a child; it is as true today as it was then. In practicing yoga daily and getting better at it with something akin to painstaking slowness, he is learning another lesson passed down through the ages: piece by piece, the the treasure of the universe is amassed. Gradually, he may just make something of himself. Failure rarely kills. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
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