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May 13, 2005
A Lucid Evening
There is something so intangibly wonderful that happens when design, great house music and cold beer in a pilsner combine to form a magnificent evening; like when the colors of red, green and blue light coalesce into the purest white imaginable. This evening was a true collaboration of my core passions.
Stenciling, and the design sensibilities it draws to the surface, has been devouring all aspects of my creative consciousness since last weekend. So much so that during conversation I just nod my head, feigning interest and imagining the world around me through the filter of contrasted colors separated by thin partitions of white with the recently applied paint dripping down at random. I'm not sure what it is about the process: its immediate recognition after quick application, the roots it has in graffiti, the way it can quickly be adapted to a wearable medium or the very male imagery it naturally communicates. Honestly, I don't really care what explanation espouses my instinctive draw to stenciling but, rather that the reaction itself exists and I am free to enjoy it with reckless abandon.
Another one of my non-sentient mistresses is the documentary and my voracious appetite for them has never been fully sated, even after all day Discovery Channel marathons. Allow me to elaborate further.
I rarely ever happen upon these broadcasts; channel surfing isn't an activity I particularly enjoy. Rather, I seek these things out, marking my calendar and planning the activities of my life so that they will effortlessly flow around them, like a shallow river parting swiftly past jagged, upward thrusting rocks. Shark week, the latest David Attenborough series, an hour-long special on Stalin and Hitler - after hearing of these programs, and others like them, impending arrival to the small screen I am filled with both excitement and excess saliva leaving me in a feverish, moistened frenzy.
It was once said to me that the whole notion of offering these programs for sale directly after a free broadcast seems completely ludicrious. It is sort of embarrassing to admit this but I'm exactly the sort of fellow who is excruciatingly tempted to purchase what I had just seen, credit card burning in my wallet as my fingers long to dial the appropriate 800-number. I imagine the surprised sales representative on the other end of the call wondering what fool would spend twenty-five dollars for a forty-five minute presentation on humpback whales as she hastily inputs my order, longing to return to her game of Spider Solitaire.
I do own a few of these series and my reason for telling you all about my documentary fetish is that I found a veritable treasure trove of this type of entertainment in a most unlikely place. I knew the films themselves would be excellent considering I had already seen them at the cinema and was a big Tolkien fan. The real treat of this expensive box set is the Appendices which contain over 8 hours of documentary content per movie. I have been ingesting this prodigious amount of footage with such propensity that I could easily be classified a glutton.
This morning I started the final disc in the set and am dreading the whole experience ending. I feel as though I am an integral part of the cast and am confident that if I saw Billy Boyd walking towards me on the street I could aptly recall private, on-set moments of an experience I was never a part of; my recollection frightening him with a trekkie-esque grasp of the most insignificant details.
Posted by Jon at May 13, 2005 03:15 AM