The most viewed image in history is the Windows XP "Bliss" default wallpaper. #dmbfact #wednesdaywisdom #backtoworkblues [Bliss: screenshot of Windows XP Default Luna theme: photo by Charles O'Rear, late 1990s]: image via DMB @dmbrepresents, 4 January 2017
Bliss
Hello, where are you, and who?
Will we find bliss together?
Will we reach out in the night and touch hands across the inky gulf of eternity?
Or will it merely be tangled wires and short circuits?
A configuration of transmission cables and silicon chips?
A string of zeros and ones comprising a locale? A line of text simulating a human being?
Will the wisp of hair that clings to your temple and which you brush away distractedly with one hand
While you gaze into the lighted box before you, become a silent chord in the song we make together?
Will your mountains and islands and deserts be forever hidden in endless clouds and fogs?
Will the clarity of retouched screen-saver bliss never envelop us?
Will we dwell forever in the sock puppet artifice of identities we believe we have chosen in order to make contact?
Will the sleeping husband in the next room rise and walk across the universe to speak to the sleeping wife?
Will we find bliss together?
Will we reach out in the night and touch hands across the inky gulf of eternity?
Or will it merely be tangled wires and short circuits?
A configuration of transmission cables and silicon chips?
A string of zeros and ones comprising a locale? A line of text simulating a human being?
Will the wisp of hair that clings to your temple and which you brush away distractedly with one hand
While you gaze into the lighted box before you, become a silent chord in the song we make together?
Will your mountains and islands and deserts be forever hidden in endless clouds and fogs?
Will the clarity of retouched screen-saver bliss never envelop us?
Will we dwell forever in the sock puppet artifice of identities we believe we have chosen in order to make contact?
Will the sleeping husband in the next room rise and walk across the universe to speak to the sleeping wife?
Divers preparing for work: artist unknown, from Illustrated London News, 6 February 1873
Will the lover of a thousand dreams find a voice on another continent?
Will the isolated universes of our separate beings remain on parallel tracks to infinity?
Will we die before we have learned each other's real names?
Are our names so important after all?
Is there a "you" that is more than an assemblage of reconfigurable selves bundled together by accident?
An offscreen individual who is not simply a phantom or a ghost?
Will our dreams propel us into a future
We have before now only projected or vaguely imagined but never thought we'd actually see
In which the limitations of gravity which once pinned our bodies to the earth
Are left behind like vessels in a suddenly landlocked harbour
And the knowledge of certain death which heretofore obsessed us
Is forgotten in the flowing forward motion of a new and not yet explicable Spirit of Ecstasy?
Will the isolated universes of our separate beings remain on parallel tracks to infinity?
Will we die before we have learned each other's real names?
Are our names so important after all?
Is there a "you" that is more than an assemblage of reconfigurable selves bundled together by accident?
An offscreen individual who is not simply a phantom or a ghost?
Will our dreams propel us into a future
We have before now only projected or vaguely imagined but never thought we'd actually see
In which the limitations of gravity which once pinned our bodies to the earth
Are left behind like vessels in a suddenly landlocked harbour
And the knowledge of certain death which heretofore obsessed us
Is forgotten in the flowing forward motion of a new and not yet explicable Spirit of Ecstasy?
"Spirit of Ecstasy" hood ornament, 1971 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow: photo by Dan Smith, 2005
Hello my friend I'm just one more window in you
Wherever you are
Whatever you are
Said the one billionth self as always infinitely fluid
To the no one
In the flickering lights in the modem
In the digital etherium where you are what you pretend to be
It's surface surface everywhere
And no one is there
But you
And you
And you
Wherever you are
Whatever you are
Said the one billionth self as always infinitely fluid
To the no one
In the flickering lights in the modem
In the digital etherium where you are what you pretend to be
It's surface surface everywhere
And no one is there
But you
And you
And you
4 July 2009
After Microsoft: photograph [sans enhancement] of the hill at the "Bliss" location, Sonoma Valley, California: photo by Simon Goldin, 26 November 2006
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep #DMBQUOTE #creativity #ART: image via DMB
@dmbrepresents, 4 January 2017
Mood #Jeffmermelsteinmondays #Jeffmermelstein #USA: image via DMB @dmbrepresents, 24 January 2017
#ElectionDay #USElections2016 image by @ParrStudio: image via DMB @dmbrepresents, 23 January 2017
POTUS + FLOTUS = FCOTUS (1st Couple). Seems it matters. @MagnumPhotos #WomensMarch and #inauguration Photo @smeiselas: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 23 January 2017
Our take on this @pontushook photo from #inauguration2017. No, this is not a Ralph Lauren ad.: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 23 January 2017
"Alternative facts" notwithstanding: When a jacket, a shirt and a tie conspire to undercut a man's professional polish: image via Robin Givhan @RobinGivhan, 23 January 2017
Talking
@PressSec, we feel facts/clothing comparison fair game. We want
@whitehouse that is put together. Where things fit. #visualculture
image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 23 January 2017
image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 23 January 2017
Who is @IvankaTrump's official on-brand, glam image photographer? they're working hard... #inauguration: image via Robin Givhan @RobinGivhan, 23 January 2017
Last weekend’s Trump temper tantrum was bad. But there’s much, much worse to come.: image via NYT Opinion @nytopinion, 23 January 2017
A woman walks against
heavy wind in downtown New York on Monday. Millions of
people from the mid-Atlantic through New England were being advised to
hunker down as a nor'easter moves up the coast: photo by Andres
Kudacki/AP, 23 January 2017
President Donald Trump poses with union leaders in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on Monday. Vice President Mike Pence is at left.: photo by Susan Walsh/AP, 23 January 2017
President Trump signs a memorandum Monday, one of his first orders as president, freezing federal funding to health providers abroad who discuss abortion as a family-planning option: photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times, 23 January 2017
President Trump signs a memorandum Monday, one of his first orders as president, freezing federal funding to health providers abroad who discuss abortion as a family-planning option: photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times, 23 January 2017
President Trump signing a memorandum in the Oval Office on Monday: photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times, 23 January 2017
President Trump signing a memorandum in the Oval Office on Monday: photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times, 23 January 2017
President Trump meets with leaders of Congress from both parties on Monday at the White House: photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times, 23 January 2017
President Trump meets with leaders of Congress from both parties on Monday at the White House: photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times, 23 January 2017
President Donald Trump poses with union leaders in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on Monday. Vice President Mike Pence is at left.: photo by Susan Walsh/AP, 23 January 2017
President Trump signs a memorandum Monday, one of his first orders as president, freezing federal funding to health providers abroad who discuss abortion as a family-planning option: photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times, 23 January 2017
President Trump signs a memorandum Monday, one of his first orders as president, freezing federal funding to health providers abroad who discuss abortion as a family-planning option: photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times, 23 January 2017
President Trump signing a memorandum in the Oval Office on Monday: photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times, 23 January 2017
President Trump signing a memorandum in the Oval Office on Monday: photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times, 23 January 2017
President Trump meets with leaders of Congress from both parties on Monday at the White House: photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times, 23 January 2017
President Trump meets with leaders of Congress from both parties on Monday at the White House: photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times, 23 January 2017
Inmates gesture from
inside Alcacuz prison as a penitentiary agent stands guard in Nisia
Floresta, near Natal, Brazil, on Monday. Military police
entered the prison in northeastern Brazil on Saturday, and a temporary
wall separating two rival gangs is being built, establishing tenuous
control after a week of chaos and fighting between rival gangs that left
dozens of inmates dead.: photo by Felipe Dana/AP, 23 January 2017
Sometimes, a fashion choice tells you everything you need to know. @KellyAnnePolls #inauguration: image via Robin Givhan @RobinGivhan, 23 January 2017
#SNL @azizansari asked if Kelly Anne Conway was moonlighting as a doorman at FAO Schwarz! Welp!: image via Only4RM @Only4RM, 21 January 2017
#SNL exposes Kellyanne Conway for the grasping, attention-hungry player she is: image via VANITY FAIR Verified account @VanityFair, 22 January 2017
#JeffMermelstein #visualart #photooftheday #instagood #instadaily: image via DMB @dmbrepresents, 3 March 2016
[Untitled, Montana]: photo by Lucas DeShazer, 23 January 2017
No Hunting, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 18 January 2017
No Trespassing Sign, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 14 January 2017
No Trespassing Sign, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 14 January 2017
No Trespassing Sign, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 14 January 2017
Abandoned Farmhouse, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 16 January 2017
Abandoned Farmhouse, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 16 January 2017
Abandoned Farmhouse, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 16 January 2017
18/01 #Serbia A migrant stranded in #Belgrade walks through snow, near the main railway station By @iandrej @AFPphoto #Refugees: image via Photojournalism @photojournalink, 24 January 2017
Migrants gather around a bonfire inside of derelict warehouse used as a shelter near Belgrade's main railway station. By @iandrej #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPpphoto, 17 January 2017
Jesus in the Fog, Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 23 January 2017
All the flagwaving of course had to be expected. America has been aching to become great again for a while now... ever since it noticed it was not so great anymore... and perhaps never was. And too, all that damned carnage. (No worries, you can trust Bikers4Drumpf to be taking care of that, sharpish... in fact, we can already hear the angry backfiring through the drear veil of rain out front... or possibly it's just snarling packs of... and so on. This first hundred days already seems more like thousands... how fortunate are those of us who will not survive... ).
ReplyDeleteIn any case, that perennial flag motif -- remember George C Scott as General Patton in front of the wallsize magnum stars and stripes... "Americans love a winner!"
Now there's metonymy for you... and we're having quite a lot of that again now, as we skulk past the backfiring carnage, to become great again.
This other bit of Entertainment seems prophetic now, with the Patton reference -- what happens from 1:45 on:
Miley Cyrus: Party in the USA (2010)
Thanks for the Svboda poem. And for the good laugh I just had looking at those Conway pics. The captions are priceless.
ReplyDeleteLet us all hope the Occupier is de-throned as soon as possible.
yay
ReplyDelete