visual fodder

These are the first few pictures I took with my new camera. Each of them has something I'm trying to teach myself more about - trying to activate. In this case it's reflections of lights in windows.

Here's the giant white whale in the room: the giant white hand with the giant white device, overhung with strange piano-key lights. Visual economics of what I call "public art," which includes everything that contributes to the aesthetics of public spaces: from building-face ad-banners to graffiti. [the Packaging = the Mask]

Media history through urban landmarks, including corporate logos as visual poetry.

Death of venus: skeleton exhibit, no cameras allowed, reflections on being a figure model, movement and stillness, shivering statues, high heels, growing up, skeleton chandelier, rearranged (dinosaur?) bones, application, dead lines.

Self explanatory. More words, layers of signs, etc.

This picture blows, but it's about where it's taken (from the bridge), plus the sounds that go with it. (The sounds of an upturned bucket as drum refer to the "can we make sense/cents?" question from a mural, and my video-activation of its visual poetry. Mural activation is a continuing series I'd like to do, including research on existing documentation of Chicago murals.)

many-track minded

Everyone in the city is a DJ these days, channeling crates of vinyl and generations of history through ever-shrinking devices connected to the internet-cloud or some digital "library" somewhere. Right now, Dorothy Ashby's "look of love" pops into my headphones. I lift one ear in the underground train station as i walk toward a street-performer, an old black man, stomping and singing "A Change Gonna Come" and then "Tracks of my tears." He blends in and out of time with Dorothy Ashby, and soon she's given way to Paul Simon. Share with your friends on facebook: Isaac is listening to "Sounds of Silence (Live)" on Spotify or the shuffled iPod, or the echoing halls of the underground. Like it or not, thumbs up or down, the one-song-at-a-time status update seems a little one-track minded, because here comes the train roaring over the man who now sings "Rock Steady" on request. As i step through the door while a disembodied voice tells me it's closing, i wonder, Maybe the words of the prophet are written on the Subway walls, which Paul Simon whispers into one ear. Or maybe the neon gods of SUBWAY, Bank of America, and the Blue Man Group have already colonized the walls that now rush past me on the train. Maybe i should like them on facebook, and write on their walls: "Eat fresh? Eat money? Eat with both ears, if you've got'em."

talking about the weather

Recently, i've had many brief conversations about the oddly spring-like days here in Chicago at the top of 2012. With many strangers i meet, especially grown white men in business suits, "the weather" always feels like it's on the cusp of a political discussion about global warming where we're both lying a little bit about what we don't believe, or what we blow out of proportion. But bringing up the apocalypse scheduled for next December is a sure-fire way to curtail any number of large-topic conversations, especially relating to the "current climate."

letter to a man i've never shaken hands with

Hello,

12pm thursday sounds great. You addressed me as Kyle (not my name), which is only a problem if the scheduled interview was meant for someone named Kyle. Otherwise, I'll see you soon!

Best,

Isaac

id/ENERGY(?): ideas for blogs with different taglines

i
d?
license and registration, please?
id/ENERGY crisis: ideas for blogs with different headlines
id/ENERGY crisis: ideas for blogs by other people
or,
how i decided not to capitalize
(on) the first person pronoun:
modern reflections on terrorism of self in the media

green graffiti font

- red white and blue kamikaze background
- auto-correct spelling ("kamikaze" and "graffiti")
- what font should i use
- this too shall pass
- other common fonts include:
- shit white girls say (about black girls)
- shit girls say
- shit yogis say
- "if i had a dime for every"
- white cup, unlabeled and half-full, at the yoga studio
- other people's similar predicaments
- hydrate
- hydrate?
- hydrate
- should i recycle this

- should i get an iPhone

- txt me the address

- what is that person's name again
- i said, "hey, how's it going?" but did she just say, "goodbye, have a good one"?
- what size bandaid?
- here, take a few of these
- can i even recycle this?
- what size font should i use?
- what is the current state of the color-name "skin tone" as it applies to Crayola crayons and band-aids?
- have these new sleek windows really made it warmer, on the whole, for yoga customers?
- hydrate
- hydrate
- hydrate
- breathe

sea my laughter clearly

It's only laughter, just like anything else,
but after that, she tells me
i'm a "nuke-ya-lurr reactorr."

Practically, the fear itself's
a sign of something slightly wackier
than books upon my shelf
bleeding shadows on white paper.

Sable skies so smoked and smothered by
the dollar bill's disaster...
the other joke the nuclear reactor never told
was the stocks piled high by the old white brokers.

After that i say: Go,
be broke, be bold,
break beyond the stolen clocks
with cloak and dagger on the docks!

The wind blows up the sandy fractals
caped across the actor's motion
as he angles t'ward the ocean
treating trust like he's a painter.

He reaches his lust deep
down into the evening.

From above, the seagulls just de-flower
the patterns of the rusting love
contained within the ship as it is heaving
heated bodies who are
bound to be grieving
at the sound of the bloody kiss of slavery, a-sleeping.

But SOMEbody did say to me that they'd be
leaving on time, this ship -- "Believing what? Baby,
it's something i'm just not at liberty
to discuss with you,"
the captain says...
and i caress the metal cubes, and i
hang upon the curtains, screaming
"hold me closer TO the building, sir,"
and certainly, YER dreaming
of exacting up the knife,
YER a pair'a part-MENTAL eyes distracting
fortune-5 hundred fact-or-fiction life from
the fast-romancing soldiers who ride, without wife,
into combat, on the chaos-dancing horses
from the countryside...

And their beat
of prancing feet seem
to answer his echoes so bitterly sweet:
with that same
old cry
of liberty / not at liberty
and suddenly
an unknown flag
waving goodbye.

Floating from this age, in a melting cage of ice
we sit side by side.
And now it's night-time, baby, soon
we'll be howling at the moon to change the tide.