Who reads blogs anyway?

Funny thing is once you start writing one you start to read them too.... Birds of a feather, I gather; or could it be that even-though no one reads mine it is heartening and within the range of possibilities that someday, after paying my dues online, I will have a readership of mine. I can't say that I am too concerned about it because I really enjoy writing, and besides, it keeps me busy and my mind occupied, like the hands in the devil's playground. The devil's playground..... I wonder what that looks like and what kind of rides does it have? Is it like Great America or Six Flags, like the ones they have in Baghdad?

In other news: My friend Marissa just started a blog too and posted a good one about donuts and a 4 point 2.

Flag Post.

I found this cardboard flag floating over a kids' classroom earlier this afternoon. Seventh and eigth graders sit beneath it and doodle, sculpt, glue, paste......space. When I went to middle school, the only decoration which graced our walls was a small crucifix; overlording and hovering above us forty two, twelve year old convicts.

I am not much of a flag waver but the American flag, and those gold visors astronauts wore, to protect them from exploding eye sockets, always remind me of Apollo eleven's baby steps; when I was six and missing my front teeth. They are forever etched in my mind as the only colors in that otherwise greyhish universe. As for crucifixes, they remind me of how interminable this kid's universe used to feel and how much like penal colonies these institutions used to be.

In other news: "It means nothing to me. I have no opinion about it, and I don't care". Pablo Picasso on the first moon landing, The New York Times, (1969-07-21)".

What's that sound in your eye?

# Since all we get these days are data files and images, is it too much to ask to get to know what Mars sounds like....?

Like any self respecting fan of all things celestial, I take great pleasure in reveling in the facts that no matter how self-obsessed or delusional I may get, there is always a place, far from where I dwell, where I can go and marvel at the unmentionable vastness of the known universe.

A few weeks back, in early July, I went camping in the Sierra Nevadas where, as luck would have it, this god fearing, prostate packing, 42 year old's tool, made him get up and take a mid-summer's night piss on the closest evergreen he could see. Not too close to my tent as one might suffer the consequences..... le lendemain.....but not too far either, as to not fall, and off that precipitous cliff he might have imagined. Being that it was the middle of a dark and moonless night, it seemed reasonable to assume that a precipice might be harder to anticipate if your neck is cranked way back, looking up and away.

I like to wonder as much as the next guey**, but plunging to my death while relieving myself, is a stunt I'd rather wait to taste just before I finally take my last steps and kiss The Little Prince's cape...... But when I do, we'll kiss and greet on both cheeks, and I'll finally get to piss on that snake, the one that looks like those hats men used to wear, before JFK caught a bullet with the back of his head (if he had worn a hat, that fateful day in Dallas, instead of baring his head to an assassin's rifled gaze, he might have lived out a more lead free and prosperous presidency).

There's nothing like looking up at the sky and pissing on the ground beneath it. There's still nothing like reminding the forest and the beasts that a man will pay twenty bucks to stay the night, eat a steak and drive home the next day. It's not every day that he gets to piss on a stump beneath the Milky way......Just another way to further remind this here Universe, that free will and a tank of gasoline brought me here, while 'they', will spend the rest of their natural living days trying to open garbage pales or chase down four legged protein shakes....... At the very least, not bothering to treck on over to the latrines, at three o'clock in the morning, feels better than splitting open my chin on the bathroom sink.......and it's good way to keep my feminine side humming.........since whatever estrogen I have coursing through my veins needs as much tending, as the peaches in Voltaire's silk breeches; those same treatises where Buddha meets Plato meets Rousseau meets snow globes or the cold wet steel of a French Guillotine (I have a hard time believing that Voltaire did much gardening and will presume that he meant it metaphorically).

As I stood there, I thought about the fact that there are millions of great images of Mars, Saturn and the Moon***, but that galactic sound files are not that easily found or downloaded on the information super highway. I understand, but regret that because there are no molecules for sound waves to travel within the vacuum of space, that there is no sweet celestial music for us to hear. Nevertheless, Mars has an atmosphere and that ought to be worth at least an MP3.

The only space recording I have ever heard came from what the Cassini/Huygens probe sent back and recorded while descending into Titan's atmosphere. That was sweet... but in the future, can I please listen to other atmospheres.

In other news, landslide and meteor strikes; how on earth are we supposed to get out of the way if there is not a sound to be heard on either side of the Moon.

* Multi-year mission to Saturn and it's moons. ** Guey. That would loosely translate as "dude", in Spanish. *** Hell, as we speak, they are sending a giant camera to Pluto which will reach the icy body in a little more than a decade. # Also commonly known as the Red Eye nebula.

Fantasy photography leagues....

My friend Raul posted an image by Peter Henry Emerson who "was one of the first vocal proponents of "naturalistic" art photography (photography done out in the field) at a time when most art photographers worked exclusively in the studio" and it got me all thinking and shit.

Looking at these photographs reminded me of how great it would have been if photography had been invented by amphibians, in a Cambrian swamp the size of Switzerland. I'd kill to see some pics, of the first flowering plants, Napoleon and Josephine or Polynesia, circa 1465.

Emerson(1856-1936) quoted*: "I have...I regret it deeply, compared photographs to great works of art, and photographers to great artists. It was rash and thoughtless, and my punishment is having to acknowledge it now... In short, I throw my lot in with those who say that Photography is a very limited art. I deeply regret that I have come to this conclusion..."

History proved him wrong, even if it took far too long. After him came the throngs who blissfully ignored the ruminations of a man who lacked the imagination to understand that, given time, any new form of self expression will eventually blossom.

Over time, artistic expression accrues and grows like those interest rates your bank charges. Despite what he thought, there is nothing like traveling back in time and seeing what it really looked like; at least through someone else's eyes. To my eyes, it's actually more interesting, than any thought he might have ever had in his lifetime.

*Via Raul Gutierrez.

"Post-Jungian empirical naming conventions and cultural appropriations in French Canadian contemporary Photography".

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I am currently in the process of writing and editing a white paper for submission in the "Dawson City, Boeuf/Meyer/Ju'dGazon, Neo-pictorialist Ontological Filipo-Acadist journal and foundation"; an on-line, bilingual, Canadian bimonthly publication and society, dedicated to the advancement and promotion of contemporary post-Jungian cross-gender boundaries in French Canadian neo-pictorialists. Here are a few excerpts in lieu of a preview.....

In other notes, I originally delivered a 'pre-print' version of this paper, in lecture form, to the Supreme First-Nation Tribal Gerontology Leadership Council for the Preservation and Advancement of Pre-Columbian Lingual Atrabilism and Gender Representation in Sub-Arctic Agrarian Atavistic societies.*1

Synopsis:

"Post-Jungian empirical naming conventions and cultural appropriations in French Canadian contemporary Photography". Authorship by Olivier Laude, 'Proboscis Annum' Post Doctoral recipient of the Judith Butler Gender Prognosis Honorary academic medal, awarded yearly to an outstanding post-doctoral candidate involved in the promotion and dissemination of academic excellence in the fields of Lingual Atrabilism and Pre-Columbian gender representation in sub-arctic neo-agrarian consanguineous societies.

Begin excerpt*2:

Post-Jungian literary critics have only recently started dissecting the contemporary ontology of sub-arctic still-pictorialists and are presently adopting interdisciplinary gender-branding polities to deconstruct social and cultural post-reconstructivist cross-gender appropriation theories in urban and pre-urban socio-representative agrarian societies. Once the exclusive neo-conformist stomping grounds of post-modern gender theorists these institutionalized social constructions, or "artifacts", have recently been adopted by Acadians, who, ten to twelve years ago started using the pictorial representation of their "non de plume" as boundary cannons; itself a revolutionary and transformative ontological construct designed to outline the regenerative nature of perceived cultural exploitations at the hand of filipo-lingual deconstructivists..............Unwittingly, subsequent generations of Acadian pictorialists quantified these empirical and cultural appropriative naming conventions within the same socialized interpretative and anti-deterministic "artifacts" as their filipo-lingual theoritical nemesis..........More recently, an ethno-political fracas over the abuse and overt use of Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony has both prefigured and enriched the current social and resulting filipo-Acadian discourse by injecting much needed Durkeimian dialectics between Filipo-lingual pictorialists and Filipo-Acadists........... Might we be living in a time when these feuding and long standing epistemological rifts between Filipo-pictorialists and Filipo-Acadists are to be resolved once and for all ? We shall see......

In the meantime, I am looking forward to seeing you all next spring at the 53rd annual convention of the "Dawson City, Boeuf/Meyer/Ju'dGazon, Neo-pictorialist Ontological Filipo-Acadist foundation", in Dawson City.

*1-I understand this method is unorthodox but 'in the text' annotations were deemed necessary to these pre-journaled intrusions . *2-Courtesy of the "Dawson City, Boeuf/Meyer/Ju'dGazon, Neo-pictorialist Ontological Filipo-Acadist foundation".

The History Boys.

"How the White House flunks history", by David Halberstam, in this month's vanity Fair; and everything else . I recommend it, my words exactly, except it would have taken me decades to write and research it.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

If I am not mistaken, I think I first saw "The treasure of the Sierra Madre", the 1948 John Huston film by the same name, in January or February of dos mil tres. I might rank it as my all time favorite, not just because it is a film fantastic, but because it so closely matches my own aesthetics. Anyway, I have little to say besides professing my love and admiration for such a great movie. Rent it, buy it, steal it, do whatever best suits your spirit, but see it before you meet, "The" Great Spirit; which, as you may already know, can happen, quite suddenly, to you and me. Please to admire the scouting, the light on the cacti, the cinematography, and the acting, if you fancy that sort of thing.

I do not own a copy of the film and have only seen it once but I remember watching it soon after having a psychedelic black and white dream, which found me skinny dipping, under the keels of World War II battleships. Bathed in moonlight, the great ships were being shelled by unseen and murderous aerial bomb attacks. Thankfully, they seemed to always miss the mark, their blind and angry marksmanship resulting only in creating beautifully lavish underwater vortices. To my submarined eyes it looked like mixing galaxies with egg whites, sea salt and half and half. My dream had matched the mood and contrast of the Sierra Madre's black and whites; if not for my bit parts.

Glibberish.

Here are a few more "Art Speaks" I am now bound and determined to collect feverishly. May be someday, they’ll be worth something. I will start a new category called “art speaks”. Every week or when I fancy it, I will collect these priceless gems from one web site, which shall remain nameless, and post them with or without wisecracks. Site one:

This one does not have the prerequisite glibberishness but I like it. It sounds so, how to say? Like a very small marketing niche. Definitely not selling out.

“artist name withheld’” exquisite photographic prints focus on the offbeat subject matter of piles of yard waste in suburban California towns, with an emphasis on the regions surrounding San Jose”.

Run of the mill literary work, a good primer and a collector’s must.

“San Francisco-based ………. continues the multi-volume cross-genre narrative work begun in his Micro-climates. Hopping from fragmented shards of poetry to cerebral prose to an odd and funny one-act play, …………sardonically explores the follies and momentary pleasures of existing in a jarring landscape saturated by media, detritus (real and imaginary), and other humans, a place where we occupiers find ourselves continually re-occupied by malevolent…well…unknowns.”

Bust the move…… gently.

“A formalist with a brimming, elegiac soul, D….. will gently rock your attitude toward cinematic landscape.”

Bravo...? It takes guts to use a word like that.

“After about three minutes I began to be aware of the subtlety of rhythm, within each shot and shot-to-shot, which carried each cut, causing each new image to sit in-the-light of those several previous…a little short of a miracle. Bravo!”

I am not sure if I am supposed to be offended or run to Yoga class.

“From P…… the particles are still there and the light is still there, but now there is the distinct impression of watching air blowing sand, yet the air is as transparent as the viewer’s mind.”

Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Way way back when, so far back in time that I can't remember exactly when, someone mentioned in passing, that if you were going to be a poet that you should never use abstract words or concepts to express yourself. May be they/he/she said something else but overtime this is what I remember hearing somewheres in my head...So remember, if you are an artist, an amateur artist, a curator, a critic, an amateur critic or a gallerist please keep big words far from your nimble and feverish mind and snuggly tucked somewheres in inaccessable body parts. Otherwise, you'll sound like a tool and will only impress those of you who are dumber than you; the rest of us will be forced to ignore you.

Steer clear of Art speaks like these: Narrative(!), resonant(!), dissonant(!) meditative(!), discourse(!); cathartic(!), organic(!), dialectic(!); mediate(!); appropriate(!), gender-based(!), textured(!), imbued(!), fractured(!), manufactured(!); pioneering(!); fractious(!), contentious(!), heterogeneous(!)....

They may not have the heart to tell you but when you write like this, you sound like a fucking prick. Construct(!) phrases others might like to read, instead of making the rest of us skip your entreaties(!)groaningly.

Take Hiroshi Sugimoto for example, whose show I just saw at the De Young, in San Francisco. Try him on for size and see if this is a paragraph you might be able to craft. Lo and behold, it's actually interesting and informative(!)....After reading what he has to say I find myself liking him and his work even more. Go to his site for more.

Portraits: "In the sixteenth century, Flemish court painter to the British Crown Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) gave us the imposingly regal portrait of Henry VIII now kept in London's Royal Portrait Gallery. Based on this Holbein portrait, the wax figure artisans of Madame Tussaud's in their consummate skill recreated an absolutely faithful likeness of the king. Which allowed me—based on my own studies into the Renaissance lighting Holbein might have painted by—to re-do the Royal Portrait, substituting photography for painting, the sole recording medium available at the time. If this photograph now appears lifelike to you, you had better reconsider what it means to be alive here and now." (see portraits above). You see it's not that hard, just come out with it and stop giving the Arts and your fellow artists or critics a bad name.

So, yesterday I went to the De Young in San Francisco's Golden Gate and saw Hiroshi Sugimoto's. I have always liked his work. Let me re-phrase that, I have always really liked half his work. I like his Portraits, his Dioramas, his blur-chitecture, theaters and Chambers of horrors. The rest of it, the conceptual forms, Joe and in Praise of Shadows are less interesting to me personaly. I may not appreciate his more "cerebral"(!) works, but at least when he writes about it, I respect it and understand it. I am interested in what he has to say, and do not, as I often do, find myself wishing I could strangle him, or you, with a shoe lace. Check it.

Please to take C14H19NO2 twice a day.

I just came back from a date on Clement street; San Fran's™ Chinatown's ugly-homely second cousin. In San Fran™, we are blessed with lots of Chinatowns; there are at least a dozen Chinatowns in San Fran™. The famous one is downtown, the one where you can go looking for props like straw sandals, the ones buddhist pilgrims wear on Emei Shan™, or a dozen oddly sized Golden Buddhas™. Those are in my home office now.

San Fran's™ second biggest Chinatown is located in what I sometimes call Clementtown™*. It's not technically a town of any kind but I don't mind. From Arguello, it runs down the length of Clement street and peters on 26th. It's also creeping south, branching out and sideward™ towards Geary boulevard, pushing Russians onward™ . Clementtown™ might have spread on to California Street, just north of Clement street, but there the neighborhood changes abruptly from lychee stands to ritzier stomping grounds. It's a predominately rich white ward, a tougher nut to gentrify.

To fill my pills, I visited with Doctor Z... Them pills help me to concentrate on the " Day to Day™"; like not forgetting to listen to people when they speak to me, or wash my hands after I eat fish bits. We chatted, it was great..... We laughed, we cried™, he watched me dry, he's used to that.... I told him all about my Dearly Departed™, who took too many pills, and promptly keeled over into a pauper's grave; leaving nothing useful behind; at least, none that we could find. Those natty pills make it easier to focus and remember people I love to hate and flood my brain with: Meth-yl-phen-i-date™.

*C-town, see the C eat the T, that's a tasty part of town.

Backpackers' Paradise.

I was doing a little house cleaning when I came across some of my old diaries. I am not sure I want to re-read them again for fear of personalizing embarrassment, but still, I found some pics, when I was twenty three. I am very much against self incrimination as a general rule of thumb. These pictures were taken in the spring of 1987 while in Hong Kong and Thailand. I think the mustachioed ones were shot in a booth in Kowloon, within shouting distance of the Chungking mansions; Hong Kong's Nathan road's backpacker's overnight attraction. I can't recall exactly where I bought the mustache but I vaguely remember purchasing it a couple streets over, near that movie theater where I used to watch kick flicks before returning to China on a new visa. The middle image was shot in Bangkok that same year in July; the details of which are lost to time and within the putrefying folds and cavernous recesses of my forty two year old mind.

Anyway, and since I am going down that lane, here is what I looked like in 1978, when I first traveled to the United States. All of five feet one inches. My hair has since migrated towards the gray but my eye color still has not changed.

It's a rental...

Dredging canals.

Here are samples keyphrases internauts have used on popular search engines to find me. I harvested these by accessing my very own web statistics. I'll have to plug them in myself and see what transpires as some of them seem rather unorthodox. Some keyphrases are mundane and to be expected while a few others appear to be the figment of sleep walking incidents. olivier laude, fifi abdou, olivier laude blog, filles des mers du sud, laude, www.olivierlaude.com, filles des mere du sud, tippler pigeon video, boris yeltsin, loretta lux, ky michaelson, oliver laude, weatherford cliff notes khan, monkey train dot, 206, photographer people, shakespeare candle maker, photography sf olivier, dear diary introductions, taryn simon philosophy, taryn simon philosophy, damien hirst, small old, the edge of insanity, alec soth, play the oculist, fairy grandparents, candle makers shakespeare, les filles des mers du sud, magma ghandi, forbes magazine photographer, jeff wall hedge fund, grass waffen-ss new yorker, my trip to kabul, images des mers du sud, fuck, millbrook new york, video archives dear leader, cipro, easy manner, dear diary intro, raining rats, tahiti images, 105, loretta lux scope, what would trotsky do, blog/olivierlaude.com, tight ass, has anthropology influenced weatherford s view khan, nexium, filles de bora bora, leader fuck, loretta lux curriculum vitae, dear leader olivier, how i spent the war grass, jeff wall photographic tableau, tenuate, up magma com laude history.

Photography is a beautiful lady.

For the past fifteen years, I have had the pleasure of seeing the photography industry transformed into more of the same. One thing by now is certain, it's that, if anything, necessity is the mother of invention and invention is the bastard chump of imitation. Consequently, and if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery it might just so happen that flattery is to photography what imitation is to its means of production.Categorizing is by no means one of my strongest points. Generally, any attempts at organizing my thoughts rapidly lead to roam. So, if you, out of boredom, have decided to read on, you will surely come across my inner curmudgeons. No need to point them out, they are already known. I was born with an extra helping of curmudgeon; making any agreement to provisionally suspend judgement, in exchange for the promise of entertainment; a cantankerous proposition . So here it is, Photography as I see it, it's all the buzz, and yet, I can barely hear it:

1- Nombrilism (fancy for navel gazing):

Historically speaking, these folks would have done well in the British Navy, given their love of uniforms, square meals and the sea's deep blue immensity. Practitioners of this dark and thoughtful art are beloved, the world over, by sadists, MTV and non-profits. Naturally, they generally remain unseen when your cabin needs a good sweeping.

2- Fetishism:

Itself a great sin, Fetishism is undergoing a revival of sorts as an offshoot of afore mentioned category. Modern Fetishism is a daftly concocted reduction designed to cleverly shift attention from the navel gazer and his/her reflection to the relationship between them and their material possessions. This is the cult of the "Casual observation". It is devised to bring attention to the everyday travails of inanimate objects.

Casuallity, as it is also known, is defined as the relationship between one object (the casual) and another object (the casualette); itself the consequence of the first object casually informing, suffice it to say, the narrative* tension of their respective and repetitive daily usage. In other words, if said "Casual" cannot be easily defined by its relationship with its afore mention "Casualette", an observation may become delightfully and casually complex. Nevertheless, should such an unfortunate object occur, quickly turn lone object North North West and chant: " I don't know you that way".

To be continued....maybe...! * I'll get to that later.

Knie einer Biene.

Over the pass and into the valley, and to the lake we went. Here is what dem woods made us done do! Es ist, aber wie ein preiswerter scan einer Kontaktseite jedoch I Liebe es noch. Lieben Sie es auch? Will there be more little Holzfällers...?

A bee's knees...

Let's pretend you are living on a deserted island and that you've already taken care of your most pressing needs. You have lots of clean drinking water while fruit and seafood are plentiful. Unfortunately, the goats and chickens you rescued disappeared and flew the coop. You forage by day, but at night you sleep fitfully, under a moonlit, tropical landscape. You have explored every square inch of your domain; but thanks to some unexpected flotsam, you can still shave every day. It's been at least a dozen years since your boat took on water and sank without a trace....

Ask not what your money can do for you, but what you can do for your money.

Don't get me wrong. I love money... but I just thought that it be wise to proclaim that my love of riches is an acquired taste . Money does not grow on that tree but you can, with an axe, take his house, and his wife, and bring all his birds and his bees to their tiny collective knees. After-all, even the last noble savage knows that his money can buy the guns he needs, to keep the bank from building a branch in his tree. Money buys: That sandwich you just ate, that country house in Greenwich, the one by that creek where your children would have loved to play. Without it, you might live in a crate and smell like piss and jack fruit paste. Without it, that prime rib and real estate, might just be out of your two handed, tigh fisted reach. Money buys: That foreign cheese you'd love to taste but without it, you'll have to keep smelling those limbs you like to call your feet. Without it, you can't buy clay pigeons and rat poison, George Clooney or Helium three, liverwurst or Damien Hirst.

Which brings me to the moral of this story, the money shot if you wish. Maren are you listening?

So, Damien Hirst loves cash money almost as much as diamond rings; and diamond rings love cash money almost as much as brides to be. So, he casted a pauper's skull in platinum and covered it with enough bling to spit, shine and polish every pimpish grill from Monrovia to Peoria. It will cost some guy a hundred million cash, but his gallerist will take his half and bureaucrats a hefty tax. But once these checks have cashed, he'll commission a replica; phone in some cats for a quick heist and switch the fake for his carats.

But someday, when he's old and grey; he'll call the cops, fess up and die. He'll stun the world with this last farce, quite possibly his best and last. So, in death, as in life, he'll have as they call it; the last laugh....

How I wish I had the skills to play the field as well as Damien Heist....! I wish mama had taught me how to cheat and lie, and look sincere for all the while....

"What's so funny about life, death and misunderstandings..."

Last Sunday, Charlie, Mitch and I drove to the Sierras. We found a beautiful meadow.

Sat in a creek and shot 12 sheets because 8x10 ain't too cheap.

Steve is so much more than behind the counter...

I wrote a dirty little ditty for my friend Steve Reczkowsky. I had originally written this poem for the Art World but soon came to realize that it could be used quite liberally. All I had to do was replace the “it’s” with a “he’s” and there it be. Steve, here it is, and thanks for all those wonderful years tending Robyn's counter. " Steve; he's like.... "

He's like snatch; but sweeter He's got swatch; but sooner He's got stash; but bigger

He's like smack but stronger He's like you; but better He's like Yak; but butter

He's like; nice but later.... He's got racks; like "Hooters" He's got back; like looters

He's like grass and fiddlers... He's like ass, and fingers He's like mass but longer....

Fuck....!

Fuck, fuck, fuck....today is one of those fucking days...!