Lee Barry's Blog, page 37

Focal Points

SNL last night was an interesting glimpse into how the internet is evolving and how social media is growing up. Years ago people talked about "growing up the internet". But there's nothing we need to do to make things grow up because life just happens to it. Coronavirus is an inflection point and speeds up the growing process for all types of things--even before we've had a chance to think

On Murder Most Foul

I'm glad Dylan released this when he did. But I'm suspicious that it's not what it purports to be. People seem to think it is all righteous and elegiac for Kennedy--and it certainly can be--but there's lots more to read into it--and is what Dylan has always done with cunning in his songwriting--to make it ambiguous enough to provoke thought and controversy. That's his genius.

My first reaction

What Happens When the Loneliness Is Over?

My first poem/lyric idea I've ever posted on this blog and may become a prose entry at some point. It even has music (at least for the chorus), and so cliche traditional functional harmony it's almost "Stairway to Heaven".

But it's true--what happens when the old Normal returns and we don't recognize it?

What happens when the loneliness is over? 
What happens when the ship comes in?
What

Windows Overlooking Life and Death

"Rooms without a view are prisons for the people who have to stay in them."

When I walk down Forest Avenue in Oak Park--a veritable gallery of early Frank Lloyd Wright homes built in the first decade of the 20th century, I now think "I'd love to shelter-in-place in those places!". Many parts of the houses are designed as nooks or alcoves (and in some ways the entire house is a cluster of mini

Mind the Gaps (Silences)

Mind the Gap (2916)

What does a pandemic sound like? How does it show up on photograph? 
My father was annoyed by classical music because he couldn't understand why it got suddenly soft or loud. Part of the reason was that people mostly listened to music in cars against the din of traffic and the softer parts got drowned out. Birds tend to find and adapt to the territory where they can be

Keeping Your Distance (Cont.)

Everyone is deeply affected by physical spaces--perhaps at the epigenetic level, rippling through all the generations since the Silent Generation. We may now be wired to want to be alone, or it may be the atomizing effects of radio, TV, the internet, and ironically, social media--all done from private spaces.

I am reminded of Jeremy Rifkin's late-90s book Entropy where he discussed the

On TV

1935. The making of art is a form of 'imagery control' by individual consciousness--the opposite of the manufacture of imagery by the collective consciousness (or unconscious) of the entertainment industry. TV productions are a form of manufactured art, but what is made is not by artists as we have known them. In that situation, we no longer completely control imagery, and it winds up

Keeping Your Distance

A friend recently asked whether working remotely and being away from the office fueled my creativity. Initially, I said it makes no difference. But there is a difference: We actually need to move around--even short distances for a few hours to revivify the places we left.

One of my Dynaxioms is "The studio isn't a place you go into, it's a place you come back to." Now with imposed isolation

Course of Empire

Imagine that every generation gets to paint its Representational Painting. Each generation cannot fully see the previous generations' paintings, but older generations can see how the new paintings are being made and can compare them. After hundreds of years elapse, no one can really know the actual experiences and intentions of the generations that were viewing each other's paintings. In 2100,

Don't Stand So Close To Me

All generations are no longer created equal in technology. For GIs, and perhaps older Silents, their first atomizing technology was radio, and perhaps a record player. Film also existed of course, but it was strictly a social medium, as you watched films (and got the latest news about the war) in a movie theater. If you were born in the mid-80s, a PC connected to the internet was the first