Book Animation

The Joy of Books



(Thanks to Type Bookstore, Toronto)

Path

In a warehouse on the outskirts of a city,
close enough to its heart to feel it's pulse,
deep enough within the fringe to move freely,

sounds unfold, 
fern-like.

Ears soak in the offering:

Sonic refreshment docking with ear-bones.

speaker diaphragms vibrate,
radiating the kind of music that is not only heard,

but felt.

through bodies,
through minds-

these vibrations are a bridge
reconciling emotional and rational hemispheres.

Waveforms search for eardrums receptive to their shape.

Ear-bones send electrical waves to brains like lit star-tracts through bodies

As these travel this inner-architecture, 
listeners respond; 

as sound rides passing through.

Music takes root in the night – exploring corners of reveller’s bodies; minds. 

Each beat exploring space, feeling out this new space deeply, safely;

by itself, but not alone.

Thought-trees bloom laterally in minds’ eyes, manifesting as moves on chess boards.. 

Pupils dilate;
Candles wash fabric with light.

Wine bottles emerge;
Complex equations still taking place inside bottles 
and people.

 

mergin metabolisms with the contents of their glass:
the liquid making a tour of the body;

merging with the bloodstream; exploring the mind.

Cultural Journeys 1

A man, born in a foreign country, arrives on another shore – and learns to approximate the words of his birth tongue using the sounds he finds in this new territory,

building sonic bridges between the two territories, showing the safe and secure route between them.

In this way, cultures transplant themselves. Soul-vehicles travel, planting themselves in a new place, re-inventing bodies in foreign lands- 

minerals drawn from the ground, ingested, metabolised by bodies – 
becoming electrical, chemical cells, bone, nerve material -

so that whether they realise it or not, their new land actually becomes part of them, 

and their ancestry,

their patterns of being,  
their traditions;

remain only as memory,

or the stories they tell each other.

Star Map

Gesture

On a bus, a woman talking on a telephone traces a letter in the ether with her finger,

putting a physical shape to some idea, some feeling she is trying to express.

Like some kind of emotional reinforcement, she builds a temporary retaining wall in the ether.

If there is no emotional connection, it will be forgotten,

but if it is resonant, it will be like eternity:

written in the mind's eye, by a finger of light

In this way some learn to reach inside,
birthing part of themselves into the world.

Stepping off buses, alighting from trams, climbing out of cars, and disembarking

from coastline-kissing ferries, workers walk up lit tributaries.

With the right kind of eyes, their movements could be mistaken for evening tides.

The decompression of emotions.

If only businesses were more in tune with these rhythms.

Some of the workers shake routines out of limbs as they approach dwellings.

Knowing it’s Never too late to improve.

Tendrils of street lamp light follow channels of street like giant nerves.

tail-lights of cars bloom around workers as they trickle back to homes.

Hearts beat a circadian music, tracing paths in the night in the shape of infinity

People walking in streets exchange a brief glance between each other,
 in this moment of passing, their eyes like electric channels, 
opening. 
many processes happening instantaneously... Scanning the other to see if there is a connection.

If there is no resonance, the two eyes part ways, 
but changed though:

closer now, to their own source.

de-compression

From bright lights workers return. Dimming switches; light’s radiance softened by pelmets, drawing curtains over windows like eyelids¹ muting light’s approach so that it becomes an orange glow.

On a smaller level they repeat processes of the day. Removing workplace-prescribed cultural straitjackets, undoing belts, breathing sighs in deepening stages of relief.

Instead of sexing themselves up for a corporation: they allow circus outfits to fall off soul-frames, touching the floor, like an earthing ritual. 

They replace corporate restraint with their own apparel. 
Comfortable now, even lungs able to take more in. 

Breath flows. Even the change in air-pressure from the street 

seems different. Limbs move more naturally.

Lighting candles, they replace neon with ambient glow.

Amongst the city that is always moving, inhabitants release the refuse of the day.

Engaging in rituals –cutting vegetables on a board under faint fluorescent light, repositioning objects (their own oracle machinery), or simply opening a microwave door, they prepare meals for themselves.

deep down, there is some part of you untouched, a reserve that seems able

to function perfectly despite the tired body. In fact, it's just starting to come on now...

1 Later, when morning’s light illuminates the building’s face, the curtains rise again like a slow-motion blink: Light spilling through the room as if it were an eye socket, and down the hallway as if it were an optic nerve… Stairwells, places of liminality.

The shape of pressure in sound

As graphology studies people’s handwriting,

determining personality through strokes,

so too the sound of cutlery on plates filters down from balconies,

spilling into the street,

 like some kind of music.

Gallery

A guitarist

with knowledge of his family, Further out in time and distance from his birth, begins to play.

fingers trace memories across stringlines, 

fretting notes, amplifying feeling;

thought.

These constructions through this machine that speaks not in words, 

but in vibration;

making internal maps – external.

He passes his vibrations to those who have ears to hear.

above the city in a gallery anchored not only on, but into the hilltop, 

his intention is met with an invitation to play background to a wedding of souls.

Musing upon the immortal nature of creation, and re-creation: 

of the extension of two families coming together, 

Each movement, each beat of the heart, 

mapping each other, their eyes reading each other's dreams, their actions supporting one another.

Through fingers his soul channelled into strings,  

 vibrating his offering into space,

 

from inside The signal flows, – fingers anchoring his signal into the guitar, taking the wood of the guitar to places it hasn't been before.

the guitar's signal to an amplifier, and out into the night altering the sound scape.

An act of sharing

Culture exchange

Someone allows you to use their electricity (indirectly via their refrigerator) to cool a beverage.

It is a cultural gesture of sharing,

It is a chilled bridge.

A different kind of feeling

Her vocals part air waves, words shifting vibration through skin.

The beat behind the music- a strange kind of movement:

the kind that makes you move involuntarily:

the sway of your body is towards pleasure, but also pleasure itself,
so that waves keep building: emotion feeding back
onto itself.

One person, a bridge to another.

Sometimes an offer is made, just from a look.

Other times, Eyes express gratitude- no need for it to be expressed in a soundwave. Those who do not see the inner life this way still prompt the eye-speaker to express thanks in verbal form.

But the prompter is on the outer, and not part to see along this bridge.

For them, It is as if the body is purely physical, and they miss some other realm, some subtle connection that runs through, across train-lines even, friendships meeting high above the city.

Past memories of light that do not lose their emotional connection or brightness:

for these type of connections are soul to soul.

Breathe

Depth, or recursion (and) feedback in action

Act the way you'd like to be,
and soon, you'll be the way you act

 - Leonard Cohen

Sometimes you have to let a friendship go.

not making any expectations on that person. only setting your authentic expressions out into the sea of time.
Letting it go like a boat.

The Thought - Boats

Across the seas,

the two would build them.

Each assembling their thought-boats,

carefully, measuring twice or more, their arcs of feeling,

so that the words they put down to express them would (as closely as words can), approximate the hulls of their emotional terrain.

the self: coming to the surface, breaking through all the bullshit,

all the false that has been learnt , shaken off like a second skin.

Then, when this payload is ready,

 Electric threads – feelings put down as symbols,

ferried across great seas to the other via  pulses of electricity.

reaching their berth in the mind, and heart

of their lover.

Once the package is received,

the other would unpack it, feeling it's meaning:

tasting words as if nourishment, and in their being, turn the words around,

connecting with them,

responding from their own experience.

When the response was assembled,

it would be sent back,

across seas, sailing on the currents of electricity.

The two go on like this,

building electric bridge, after electric bridge,

building elegant solutions to problems,

that were now:

no longer problems.

Energy

As people now look to the stars:in the future will they look at how their energy was expended?

How their form touched others,
or even more abstractly, how their Credit-card statements are like symbolic footprints,
molding a temporary shape, like a rivers path, through time

Tree

Do you work in a place that doesn't suit your energy?

(How can you even tell?)

Well, do you feel like you're making a conscious difference? Do you enjoy what you do?
Is going to work a struggle?


To get to new emotional (and thus physical) terrain,
you're going to have to do a few things first.


Imagine that the things that you perform each day, whether that be:

Walking form one end of a factory to the other to perform a certain task,

walking upstairs to press a button on a wall of your organisation,
then walking back down those same stairs,

or even driving your car to a parking spot, and home again,



as all actions that leave shapes.

Remembering Newtown

Her vocals part the air waves, shifting vibration through skin.

The beat behind her music:

a strange kind of movement - the kind  that

makes you move involuntarily: the sway of your body is towards pleasure,

but also pleasure itself, so that as these waves keep building, emotion feeds back onto

itself. The emotion crashing onto the shore of you, feeling her.

Her eyes, open, like channels.

as you move, you realise that those around you are feeling it too -

the recognition in eyes like some kind of barometer.

Like an ocean, feeling through nervous systems, 

 

not only their own pleasure, but the pleasure of those around them.

The pure channel of music streams into your body, surging through you; flooding

your veins with  light

Her lights, her eyes ask the question her mouth cannot.

Deeper presence

Just as in-band signaling delivers info along the same channel of a telephone used for voice, so too , a discussion ostensibly about books can be used to gauge mate potential.

So too in flirting scenarios, interest signalled in tone as well as what is said,
so that someone might be talking to you about 'x' (where x= an arbitrary thing) but really they're asking you what you think of them.

Certain cues displayed-and you are invited to dance.

The Passage

One of the last times in this house that has supported you as you have learnt to support yourself:

Hands drawn across the edges of walls as you pass through it's corridor,
reaching out, making this passage tactile. Not just in the mind.
As if to make this real, to feel in the gut too.

Moving forward now, you feel a new gear: Something untouched, perhaps only thought of, but now experienced:

As if the Earth is opening up her doors for you, to travel where you truly desire.

Good writing advice

Here

Josephine Rowe on Writing

Link

The Exchange

You feel the fullness of her speech, and you speak truthfully.

It’s like your entire body is an electrical receiver,

her being picked up by the radar of your nervous system:

spreading out through fingers,

hands,

arms, chest, skin,

heart: the inner that animates.

If two people vibrate at the same natural frequency, words are more like

exchanged waves of being.

Intonation, tone, carrying even more meaning than the words themselves.

Sending out waves, moment to moment-

to be in the presence of one who is also present, is to bathe in some kind of emotional wash,

and to give that oceanic depth, that fullness of being, feeling, like a blue-green sea of light.

An intense field even felt at a radius about three meters surrounding them.

The pulse, finally felt, the subtle current that runs through you like a hidden river.

Slowing down, you focus on cultivating this place inside, this source.

This essence which is underneath the shape and form of things,

is the eternal light, refreshing completely...

The Chanteuse and the sonic ocean

She and her guitar front the stage, as if her guitar is some kind of extension of her own body:

separate, yet somehow joined:

another limb through which her emotions may be channelled. Running free, rippling outward.

She plays notes on this extension first, then sings.

Even her body is an instrument.

The Words following the guitar’s sounds out into the ether like some kind of

emotional chaser

The words move upwards through your body.

A pianist

Blinking, closing his eye,

the keys- receptive to love, make their way out of the musical impasse,

the territory opening up,

already with an inner decisive moment -

the universe yielding.

The drummer

touching the cymbal like he is feeling the wake of the pianist.

Each

musical blow

of ecstasy flowing towards him, recording the wakes with fingers.

Trembling,

the cymbals ringing. His heart shaking, beating, aching, flowing,

The sweat appearing on his face. Dripping down, even in this moment,

communion.

fingers trace furrows on the brow of the bass player,

matching the fingers of emotion.

Heart

From deep within an apartment, a sound system

beats like a heart.

Speakers’ rhythmic contractions flood the room, wave after wave, pulsing

through valves of doors, down artery-like corridors

And out into the body-like street through  a window's channel.

Train Ride

Workers break out.

Cupping ears with audio hardware, a solemn act of screening out the outside world – an introvert's delayed reaction to having to endured 8 hours of pop-noise, 

now a chance to allow something deeper, more personal into ears.

The Power wheel felt under fingers, power buttons depressed. Current flows through the device that ferries music to ears, desire finds a path into skulls. 

 

The subtle pulse of electricity, the first wave, breaking on the the ear's shore, 

channeled through the ear canal, transferred via vibrations in bones to the inner ear.

Once the vibrations filter through, amplified, they pass to the inner ear like a ripple on water.

Like a wave, now travelling, these sounds, transformed into electrical signals¹ it all happens in an instant,

the complexity of it all already absorbed into your being. 

Travelling through the chemical ocean, these signals search for receptors,

and when they meet, finally, some kind of gate opening in the evening:

emotion: sent through the body. 

 

As wave after wave of sound crashes on ears, so too the wave of night rolls across the landscape.

Lights follow the wake's advancing front: currents surging beneath streets like the arrival of a new tide, travelling up lamp-posts, erupting in light.

Street-shores bathed, like ideas awakening in consciousness...

The further workers retreat from offices, the more they speak with eyes now.

To holes cut in the ground leading to transport connections, workers home-in; 

those smart enough filter out the mass market adds (designed to further channel people, as if they didn't have enough obstacles) move through space in a different way. As if their eyes see through the surface message. Like reading a newspaper might see the intent of the departments and the journalists writing it, like routes running beneath the surface, so the words or images...

The body too tired to write more.

Hopping on board the steel-trains that ferry you home. Some look at one another, spanning gaps in understanding with speech, as if words are electric bridges through time.

Sometimes, where words fail to support the flow of conversation, a look can act as the building medium.

People open their soul more when they’re not at a job they don’t enjoy. A man stands with presence, confidently breathing. A woman runs her finger with slight pressure over her lips.

Like somebody sitting on a train. Their energy goes in one direction, their eyes another. So that their body moves them forward on some kind of electro-biological imperative, Their vision adjusting to the pull of their own tide.

Some passengers bridge silence's gulf with talk; back stories revealed; 

emotional scaffolding slowly constructed between them so that conversations gain traction. During this exchange, wind runs through station corridors like air through an instrument. Passageways channel the air up stairs breaking out  into streets above like music from some bigger instrument.

Journeying through this instrument, those whose wakeful state is buoyed by a caffeine raft, 

feel the drug slowly ebb out of their metabolism, eyes harder to keep open, sleep swimming out to meet them, faster now.

Detaching their bodies from chairs requires more will. Some feel pounding in their head, Rivers of blood make tours of circulatory systems with a throb. 

Fingers search for blood-filled branches under temples, pressing here and there, diverting flows, just aware of the life river.

Slow down the mind baby, she said.

Breathe.

A caffeine raft supports workers who’ve moved to unnatural day-beats, rather than own inner-dance.

Some engage natural aircon, running hands through hair, allowing air to get to veins and arteries close to the scalp, cooing the brain.

Trains radiate out from the coast. As they penetrate deep into the ‘burbs, some of them realise: emotional connections take time. None of this fast-docking business.

Remember: Late in the afternoon, concrete foundations anchor dwellings to the coast. Pipes emerge from buildings like some kind of internal processes, visible from the outside.

Eyes already peering deeper. streaming through the night to homes.

1 http://work1.dosits.org/animals/produce/terr.htm

Pin-hole photography

Six-month exposure of a star's arc

Breathtaking...

the building naturally ventilated by the coastal air.

Salt-tinged Air pulled in through windows, curtains billowing like a dream.

Between the open side and the back of the building, the pressure difference pulls

air through, it flows, over objects, through others,

out of rooms, sucked back

through stairways,

retreating out higher, and venting.

As the wind flows through, Soft beats, like repeated waves crashing on a cushioning shore, is the music,

landing softly on eardrums,

transferred into your nervous-system, channelled deeply,

into that place where all great things move you.

imagine taking this idea, and

Following a line of thought, using this as a framework, adapting it as you move through life,

adding things,

moving aspects of it around

so that it learns as it were.

Then imagine developing other mental models like this, and moving through life.

Sometimes, you have to let some of them go,

jettisoning ballast, or

dropping an idea which no longer serves you.

Remember to tune into your own station.

Find something that flows with your

own frequency.

Don’t hold onto the pain.

You are free.

Vision Architecture

As with windows, so with eyes.

Your eyes cross her line of sight, and in a single look -
her inner city takes shape.

Like two possible sides of a bridge,
you exchange silent thought traffic,

inner-architecture

at a glance.