time to change this line i think

dan philips images

danp — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 20:35:59 +0000

random 2010-2011 images

images are as transitory as life

danp — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 00:39:24 +0000

- these days, as Mable turns 96 and little kids i knew progress through high school into university and drama school and such, these days i cannot stop seeing things.

- a few years ago, when i was traveling a lot, and before i was buffeted by the economic conditions of North America, i thought that image grabbing and image making was fun and worthwhile . . .

- i flew and walked and drove about seeing and grabbing and having a great old time . . .

- most probably where i was at that time, where i worked . . . formed a great influence over me then.

- but even then things began to blur . . . partly because the old reliable CURVE OF CHANGE continued to accelerate and climb upward faster

- for one thing, FACEBOOK bloomed up and out of the guy’s dorm room and across the upscale universities and out into the REAL WORLD ( and it is still growing ) and i found that it was so easy to use, and i had given up on any sense of privacy or image or content ownership so many years ago, that i found myself shifting into a new state of mind . . . one that coincided with my now ‘senior’ aging body at 61 years young.

- i was finding that many of the things that i thought and felt 40 years ago were returning to me as being more important than a lot of the things and thoughts and methods that had sustained me for the last few decades.

- a shift was taking place . . . in me, and in the world i was watching too.

- falling in love with viola, and learning from her over these last 6 years has pushed me and my mind and my heart and my behavior along an uncharted route too . . .

- old and new were mixing and mashing together into some newer thing . . .

- old image making stopped – words were born instead . . . on their own, unbidden.

- even the images that did force their way into me came by way of dynamic body movements moving though light and space, snagged by digital capture and embedded digitally in computers that exist somewhere in the cloud . . .

- i remember all this concussive craziness from when i was four, and again at eleven, and then at twenty-two . . . but i did not ever expect it all again in my early sixties . . . hell, i thought i’d be gone by thirty.

- i credit viola joyce forde with much of this, whatever it is . . . and i graciously accept my role as humble recipient of ALL THAT LIFE WILL THROW AT ME again.

- the two of us continue to learn more about each other as the world around us changes faster and faster and we both ride those currents of newness as much as we can enjoy them . . . and i find myself alternately compelled to charge forward to write out as much as seems to be contained within me . . . or shrink back to sit and listen and absorb stories written by others as i drive, or lived by others as i work . . . on those CARTOONS IN SPACE . . . for now . . .

- and next?

- well several months of this . . . and then taking all of this with me as we blast ourselves with other-than-domestic events and experiences . . . which may act as triggers for faster change . . . . . . . or just simply as heightening enjoyment of each moment being lived . . . not bad, not bad at all.

- more to come . . .

- the end – for now.

NO MORE, not for holidays, not for Rubber Stamps

danp — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:56:18 +0000

The first sign was that he had not made a rubber stamp this time. He had always made a rubber stamp when he moved. There was something about the act of committing the new address to molded rubber. Something about the pushing of that new molded rubber into the old ink pad and stamping it down onto the physical envelopes that said

“This Is Where I Live Now”.

But that need seemed to have passed.

He was not going to analyze it any more than that.

That part of doing those things was over now.

The fun and enjoyment of finding and fixing

up the ‘right’ image of head and face, and then later of their faces together,

did not assert itself to be done.

He tried to think of it as a stage of growth, though what he was growing into or away from he really did not know. It seemed that after all this time he should have some sense of this, but no. Life restarted each morning independent of the past. Life pushed him up and out with no regard for what he had thought should be important. No consideration of what he felt or had been feeling, Life proved to be unpredictable.

Holidays, for instance, used to be anchor points in a year. Although commercially motivated now, it had always been thus. Holidays that had begun for agricultural or religious or procreationally purposeful reasons had settled, formalized, and stratified into specific booking periods within each year, and he had come to rely on them for a rythym of sorts.

That too seemed to be passing, or at least changing enough that he could no longer count on any sense of comfortable familiarity throughout the year. The cultural shifts away from the Average White Old Guy society had also brought new and festive events into the stream to fragment and sparkle the passage of time across the months. And when it came to the end of the still somewhat conventional calendar year, the flashing facets of changing newness amidst the competing holidays of all the faiths and ethnic groups did impart both a new excitement and a growing bewilderment of confusion.

Maybe because of this he saw many pulling back, opting out, stopping certain things. Many friends and acquaintances had long since ceased sending physical cards at the holiday time.

Not that the seasonal greetings no longer came in, they always did, lots of them

. . . but almost all were digital now.

Heading into this new decade was to be the end of rubber stamps for return address envelopes and the end of sending physical Holiday Season’s Greetings cards. He was sad to see these go.

Almost as sad as he was at seeing his old big wooden art-table go. The need for these things had gone. The need for them to be gone increased.

He had a couple of the last of last year’s Greeting cards left, but he would send those out to his two sons in their far-flung addresses along with the requisite number of old family photo albums. The photo albums were no longer needed either. In fact, the return of the photo albums were the last condition of the divorce that was slightly older than his now used car.

He lifted his head, straightened up his jaw and chin, stiffened his upper lip, and moved forward.

He said to himself and the air in general, ” I need to change the “he” in that old !@#$% AWOG book-to-be. . . The “he” is now ”JACKSON KELLEY.”

And so the writing of the book was reborn to tell the story of the death of Jackson Kelley,

average white old gentleman.

“Kelley turned on his heel, the way he had been taught in basic training 4 decades ago,

and said goodbye, for now . . . “

( end )

dream laughter question

danp — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:21:43 +0000

cfb

danp — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:44:10 +0000

cfb

Long Cool @ 70 MILL

danp — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:25:58 +0000

Determined Little Beauty In The Long Cool Love Cave @ 70 MILL St.

He looked at her silhouette against the bright window at the far end of the place.

The lovely smiling curves of her small body surrounded by the glowing brightness

of the windows to Toronto at the other long end of their most recent home.

Earlier, there might have been a very selfish thing taking place as he drove home.

Before, when he was driving the long way home from his new work in the old car

he had heard that one line from the Talking Book CD by DeLillo

called COSMOPOLIS that said :

“When he died he would not end, the world would.”

He could not help but smile.

This was a time of enjoyment at being alive.

This was a time of not being dead and gone.

It was all of the wonderful things that found him each new morning.

It was the look of it all when you opened the door to their new home.

When you opened their door on the 9th floor, after you had entered the turn-of-the-last-century 1999 first floor that had been mixed with and butted up to the heavy solid rack-house brickwork from the 1800′s century before that, with all of that sitting on the small street across from the main Distillery complex of Victorian Industrial buildings of stone and brick with painted British wooden trim and windows, it was the look of the place.

The small street had a combination name that also made him smile at its obsolescence.

70 MILL Street . . . it reminded him every day of the now rapidly disappearing movie format of 70 millimeter film that movies had been made with for so long. Now, in this digital age, they lived with one foot in this future-present and the other in their 1800′s of worn brick and metal and stone. It felt just right.

After passing the small trees and gardens at the street level entrance, tended to by the earliest residents of the building, and after riding the small elevator up to their 9th floor in the not-too-big building, and walking down the short and modest hall to their door, it was the look of it when you opened the door to their new home that pleased them both so much. The look of it that drew them in, toward the light at the far end of the place.

She in this place was the same determined little beauty that he had met back in ’04.

Her progressive motion, cloaked in style, had pleasantly packaged up her inner driving creativity.

All of this flowered forward throughout their new living space.

Her dark eyes flashed bright and her smile gleamed wide as her strokes and motions took form in the shapes and placement of everything. The stretch of organic and curves on the right side ( that somehow became his area ) meshed and locked with the left side of her compartments and open spaces. Both the left and the right sides married in the middle-flow of what now struck him as the Long Cool Love Cave. It was long and cool in the hot summer when they had moved in. When you opened the door from the hall your eyes were pulled through and past the long dramatically lit central space and right out the bright windows to the northern view of Toronto with tree tops poked through with old and new buildings sticking up and through and beyond the leaves, right up into the big bright northern sky.

She could be herself here, and all the constantly occurring ideas with their transitory experimental juxtapositions could all play out in this new long space.

When visitors came to call and asked whose ideas these where in this new place he pointed his right arm and hand directly at her as they both smiled.

He had never really just given in when living in a space, particularily one that was most obviously now HOME. But she was better than him at seeing and playing and doing this.

She created a new space for the both of them to truly settle down into.

And as things moved about, as certain new or old objects left the space they were in yesterday and ended up resting somewhere else today, it never bothered him because they always looked better and somehow supported the feeling she was giving birth to in this place as the jazz music played through the digital air.

This new sense of HOME in this place had fanned out to the city of Toronto itself.

He no longer asked her which way to turn, or where certain streets or addresses were.

Something in his mind clicked, then slapped down into a new clean functionality.

He knew where he was in this city. Everywhere in the *whole* city. This was new. He really had not learned the lay of the land anywhere since he had lived in Vancouver 40 years ago. Now it seemed as though he had just been drifting, at varying rates of speed, for about four decades. He now knew the North, South, and East and West of it all. And he liked going HOME here from any of these four directions. He knew things had changed and he wondered ( but not too much ) about what would happen next. He would just take it the way it came. And he somehow knew that “When he died he would not end, the world would.”

He was enjoying being alive.

He was glad that he was not yet dead and gone.

It was all of the wonderful things that found him each new morning.

It was the look of it all when you opened the door to their new home.

(end)

LABOUR DAY and some reasons WHY

danp — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 17:11:16 +0000

Yes, just what was it that did happen way back there, way back then . . .

AND WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW ——————- RIGHT HERE ——————— IN CANADA

This blog was supposed to come out in May on MAY DAY 2009, but I delayed. Life itself had become too frantic and busy in the Spring and Summer, but now at the end of Summer and beginning of Fall of 2009, it seems that I feel more like sending this out.

A while ago, and perhaps even now, there had been some speculation about why I left LAIKA, why I was laid off.

On that uncomfortable day last Christmas I was told “ There is no work for you to do “.

In the strictest sense, this was true. The people actually responsible (for getting new movies through and out of DEVELOPMENT, so that those of us in PRODUCTION could actually *make* the next movies) had not satisfactorily completed their work and so ….. there really was no PRODUCTION work to be done …… probably for the next 12 to 18 months or so at that point in time ….. somewhere around the end of 2009 or even the middle of 2010.

This blog might help to cast some light on at least *my* 2008 layoff situation. Although there really was other work for me to do there, the proverbial “POWERS-THAT-BE” ( not a bunch of Powers really … only one “Decider” with some advisors really ) deigned that the work should be done by someone other than me. This Decider did not have the character nor guts to talk with me himself, and in fact on the same day I was laid off, when I saw him emerging from the office of my boss the CEO, he turned his face down to the floor and away from me to avoid looking at me ….. though we were only about 15 feet apart in an empty hallway. But I knew all this was coming. I had sensed it almost a year earlier and had been very frustrated for that entire year. The following is an excerpt from a phone call exchange with a truly objective outside party, made just after the LAYOFFS in 2008.

After some discussion about why all of this happened, both to the 300+ production people in general, and to me in particular . . . . I ended up saying something like :

“Well, thanks for the call . . . and I do agree with your more objective critique.”

“In fact, I know that if I had revolted against my boss and allied myself with aggressive people to go to the owner behind my boss’ back, I would have succeeded in staying at the studio and working at LAIKA. ( I probably could have even been promoted )”

“ I knew that well over a year ago

( when my boss specifically asked me to step back a bit from the first LAIKA movie )

( when my boss specifically did not want me to help in DEVELOPMENT, told me ‘no, just let them do it’ )

and when I chose not to step over my boss to the owner of the company,

as others had done … successfully.”

“I just don’t work like that . . . not because I can’t, but because I choose not to.”

“I would make that same decision again today,

so I am at peace with “the situation” at LAIKA.”

( easier to be at peace when you are out of it )

I went on to explain to the caller “I ran into this same LA-style corporate-aggressive-rule-the-roost climate in DISNEY years ago, and it was one of the reasons for me deciding to leave DISNEY after working on many good movies there. But, thanks again for your call because I admire and respect your work and your integrity.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

That was the gist of the phone call conversation way back in December of last year, just after the layoffs when I was trying to make sense of what had just happened there in Portland, Oregon.

If I had acted much earlier, and had aggressively TAKEN OVER the Development-Into-Production process ( rather than politely-respectfully trying to influence it with Plain Old Common Sense ), or maybe even gone around my boss very early on in the making of the first LAIKA movie when we *all* KNEW the work was growing in scope, size, and complexity ….. maybe things would have been different ….. but after telling my boss about growing concerns every week, I was told to let it continue, and then eventually to back away from it ( and that first movie grew from 80 budgeted minutes to 100+ unanticipated expensive minutes that fortunately eventually found a large enough paying audience . . . so none of the practicalities ended up mattering at all . . . such is show-biz ).

Although I had attempted to influence the work needing to be done, both in the making of the first movie and in the development area of the next movies ( that really should have been ready for production after two and a half long years in Development ), my boss directly asked me to step back from both areas ….. and I respected and followed my boss’ request. After all, my boss had given me good raises over the three years, as well as MERIT INCREASES based on my truly productive performance in the new LAIKA company.

But, even if I had approached it all differently, it would not have been neat and tidy.

It would have been messy. The lack of clarity about who was actually responsible and in charge of the movie-making side of LAIKA caused many of us great difficulties. Several left voluntarily even before the layoff. When a post-mortem interviewing was done on the making of the first movie the pattern of feedback and answers was obvious and consistent.

Until all of that is dealt with…. ( and perhaps it HAS all been dealt with by now ? ) …. the bad operational history will just repeat itself at LAIKA.

Further adding to my long period of frustration was the official response I received when trying to correct specific management problems …… during attempts to identify, quantify, and simplify production problems within the very first movie, I was sneeringly told at that time by the naïve and mostly invisible Leader that :

“we do not need a Police State” at LAIKA.

All in all, when the confusing and toxic smoke has finally cleared, ( and maybe it HAS all cleared by now ) I think we will all see that during at least that specific period of time from 2006-to-2009, we had all been just toys in a rich man’s play-box, and that the eventual moments of truth will come to those whose fervent desire for something so different ( “cheaper-edgier-scrappier” ) is stronger than their ability to see it what it actually takes to create and build quality stories and movies on a continuously improving basis in a multi-picture movie studio.

Out of all of this, over the last three years or so I learned that Portland and Oregon are truly beautiful and wonderful places full of genuinely friendly people. But along with that I also had to learn that both are ruled thoroughly by the King of Oregon and those he sanctions. I had seen this kind of COMPANY TOWN fear and disdain before. When I grew up years ago in old Detroit no one could say anything against the now infamous BIG THREE automakers ( mostly because everyone and their sister and cousin worked for them in Detroit . . . and now we all know how that attitude caused things to turn out for the entire Midwest of the United States ). Much of what I read & heard in Portland after the 2008 LAIKA layoffs seemed to ignore the way over 300 people had been managed right out of the company as they were let go late in 2008 ………. any talk or coverage of the events seemed to distort the situation into something else too?

This older book

about Portland of the past

described a nature of the city

that I seemed to see signs of again later in the more current Portland media ?

And to be very honest, on top of everything else I have just described I guess I have always had problems with authority when it refused to make sense, or acted in a juvenile and irresponsible manner that negatively affected the organization, the people in that organization, and the real work to be done ……. and in this particular case, when it also remained cold and silent to its own people……

. . . out of ignorance, fear, or disdain.

But TIME really does take care of all these things, and as I said, I am glad to be out of that situation.

SO – THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED THEN,

AND HERE’S WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW, RIGHT HERE……

Now, after all this time, I am back in Toronto-Ontario-Canada again.

In many ways it feels very similar to my more frugal existence back when I was an art student in Detroit in the 1960’s. While I miss some of the extravagances of spending that we had enjoyed in recent years ( at least those years after I rebuilt from the devastation of a destructive surprise divorce in ’03 ), there is a degree of comfortable simplicity and almost a quiet neutrality of being that comes with making and spending less.

The change, the chaos and upheaval that is going on now in the world most probably outweighs any of the turmoil I had experienced before, even back in my “student” days in the 1960’s. It was/is inevitable that confusion and difficulty would be on the rise as the technological ( and economic ? ) curve of change accelerates and steepens.

Sitting in Canada now, instead of the United States of America, does give me a more clear view of what seems to be all around us, all of us. At this point in time it feels like the same END-OF-EMPIRE that I saw happen to England in the 1950′s-1960′s when I was sitting in the United States. That did not alter the problems England faced, but it certainly changed the way Life was lived, and the way the rest of the world regarded England.

I am glad and happy to back in Canada. Canada has its own unique set of problems and challenges but even now, forty years later, the friendly and civilized Canada that I first met back in 1969 still presents itself and lives in an honourable and positive way in this world. In short, we are happy to be back in Canada.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

But another big change because of all of this has been me leaving the arena of MAKING MOVIES. ( i refuse to call them “films” any more )

- movies movies movies . . . I am done with them, the MAKING of them I mean.

I will still go to movies in theatres . . . for the communal experience, and for 3d stereo

… at least until 3d stereo come to my 68″ big home screen in our living room.

- but the making of them, especially the making of animated movies requires an attitude of

acceptance about loyal artistic samurai becoming roaming nonaffiliated ronin, armoured against

the violence and collateral damage of THE MARKET PLACE & PLANNING APATHY & INCOMPETENCE.

( to this day we remember still that masterless samurai called ronin caused troubles for themselves during the early Edo Period in Japan. )

No, for me treading forward with the wisps of semi-retirement swirling about my strong but aging veined ankles, … for me … if i must put effort in again, it will be to LEARN that which i have avoided . . . some REALTIME INTERACTIVE.

Not about the LOOK and STORY so much as about the culture and psychology of making new things for others to create or indulge themselves in some addictive participatory creativity of their own.

( as I get deeper in doing this I remember back to childhood when branches and sticks from the forest, or even manufactured green plastic soldiers only about 2.5 inches tall, how they all lost their stiff lifelessness and became real living things in my young and playful hands, and how long I could STAY in that world . . . enjoying myself with my own fiction )

- yes, if I have to do it again in any way I want to learn ( RElearn? ) about things like this.

But I will always like movies.

Movies were my Educator growing up. Movies led me to Music, and Art, and Literature.

In my last days in Portland Oregon movies led me back to Fiction Literature from the 1930′s. As I read and read ( while trying to sort out what had happened, and what had been lost, and what was next ), I came across this text from Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 San Francisco story of THE MALTESE FALCON :

“He returned and sat, elbows on knees, cheeks in hands, looking at the floor. Red rage came suddenly into his face and he began to talk in a harsh guttural voice. Holding his maddened face in his hands, glaring at the floor, he cursed Bundy for five minutes without a break, cursed him obscenely, blasphemously, repetitiously, in a harsh and guttural voice.

Then he took his face out of his hands,

looked at the girl, grinned sheepishly,

and said :

“Childish, huh? I know, but, by God, I do hate being hit

without hitting back. It’s a cheap price to pay for winning.

Though I will remember it.”

More bloggish writings to come on 1830’s British warehouse architecture

and living in Toronto The Good,

but for now, ( the end ).

what?

danp — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 10:54:51 +0000

L I N D E N W O L D

danp — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:47:06 +0000

LINDENWOLD in the German language means “Linden Woods”. There is a town in New Jersey in the United States that is named LINDENWOLD, supposedly because the town’s founder wanted to plant many trees in and about that town. But this is not about that New Jersey town. This is about Olde Toronto, in the country of Canada.

Just the way that Oregonian SIMON BENSON had lived in his Oregonian house on the spot where they eventually built the big condo tower in which Viola and I dwelt in the city of Portland, another intriguing spot of interest and curiosity was where LINDENWOLD once stood, the home of JAMES G. WORTS of “GOODERHAM & WORTS” grand imperial distillery fame, in Olde Toronto, Canada.

Viola and I had lived in this Distillery District before moving to Portland and had liked many aspects of it. The place we lived in at that time was on the very southern edge of the Distillery, where the big lake with it ships unloading used to be before landfill allowed more building out into that edge of the Lake Ontario.

But we really had not looked into nor come across anything about early family homes, particularly the home of James G. Worts which was on the northern edge of the Distillery at that time.

Some of the history behind this started with James G. Worts’ wife Sarah, and her father . . .

The building of LINDENWOLD and the women

that lived in it and ran it can be seen at :

http://www.distilleryheritage.com/snippets/91.pdf

The distillery expansion into the largest distillation company in the British Empire caused LINDENWOLD to come down, being replaced with large . . .

. . . Victorian Industrial stone and brick distillery process buildings. Today there is a dignity and solidity to these structures that, for some reason, made them feel good.

This series of images of the buildings of The Distillery District and the building we came to live in were taken last Spring, before our great cross-continent trek out here to Olde Toronto.

I remember liking old buildings with strength and color and texture all the way back to about 4 years of age. There is something about all of these buildings in this area that resonates strongly with me.

The architecture, the building styles, and that which you do not see in these images . . . the people and the music and the eating and the walking and the baby stroller pushing and the dog walking . . . . this place, once busy, then desolate empty, is now ALIVE again.

Our building is actually right next to, and also built on top of, the old brick Distillery buildings that went up on the site of the old LINDENWOLD household.

Our building is a humble 1999 12 floor condo building with an 1830′s basement.

The front entrance has a big wheelchair ramp to the left of the front door, but i usually nip into the side door between the old building and ours.

A cadre of neighbours are constantly planting and growing in front of and to the sides of the building.

The re-birth of “The Park”, eh ?

Well, people had kept trying to bring back this area over the years . . . but now the governments ( city and provincial ) are actually doing it.

From the Don River to the east of us,

right past us and on into the downtown of Tornonto too

. . . it will be just fine to live in

( it is already, and gets better by the month ).

As the summer came and Viola and I travelled across both countries to come HOME to this place we both grew to like it even more than before.

I know it will be cold ( but beautiful ) in the winter when the snows come in November or so, but we will like it as much as we do right now.

Although the interior ( of our condo unit ) is still a little cluttered with the last cardboard boxes, our NEW *HOME* is taking shape and we will send images of it soon.

- but for now,

HELLO from LINDENWOLD,

in the old heart of the Olde Toronto.

- More to come.

70s_pic_hair

danp — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 01:02:47 +0000