Correspondences: Bulgarous Movie Production Discussion Part I

In the interest of FULL TRANSPARENCY regarding the smoke-filled room deliberations of the itwaslost.org board, I will make public this correspondence about a possible MOVIE to be shot during our Blog Reunion in Bulgarious Bulgarity. Since the project will no doubt evolve even further from these earlier discussions, publishing our first ideas should give nothing away. The conversation composed many e-mails, so I will spread it over a few posts.

from "J____ Quill" ______@gmail.com to "Grainne Proinseas" ______@gmail.com, "Olaf Mary Mohammad" ____@gmail.com, "S. Sandrigon" _@itwaslost.org date Sun, May 31, 2009 at 11:08 PM subject Big Little Industry mailed-by gmail.com

Dear sirs,

Considering the time that you will be spending here and considering activities. I am proposing that during the time in the Big Little we utilize our resources and make a film. I would like to make a film with the available child actors at our disposal. Do we have ideas for bi or tri - lingual films? I am going to work on recruiting the kids here, but wondering what we have the way of concepts. I figure some writing can be done before you get here, most of it on the fly, either way producing things is good. Perhaps something with music and film? There is much to be harnessed. Thoughts?

James

from "J____ Quill" _____@gmail.com to "Grainne Proinseas" ______@gmail.com, "Olaf Mary Mohammad" ____@gmail.com, "S. Sandrigon" _@itwaslost.org date Sun, May 31, 2009 at 11:16 PM subject Re: Big Little Industry mailed-by gmail.com

Also, Grace... could you be convinced to bring your camera? Shooting with mine would not be adequate. I don't think you need to worry too much about gypsies.

from	"Grainne Proinseas" _____@gmail.com
to		"J____ Quill" _____@gmail.com
cc		"Olaf Mary Mohammad" ____@gmail.com, "S. Sandrigon" _@itwaslost.org
date		Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 10:16 AM
subject		Re: Big Little Industry
mailed-by		gmail.com

I think this is an excellent idea, and I was already planning on bringing my new HDflip with me...not a professional movie camera by any means, but it gets the job done, and the stuff I've been getting out of it is HD and actually looks really nice. the audio is better than i ever would have expected with such a small camera. I'm sure with your camera and mine we can set up some good 2 camera setups, too...make it more fun in post production, more to work with...haha
I actually just spent the weekend on a freelance gig where i was facilitating high-school film-making (about a racially motivated murder that happened in these kids town on long island) and discovered that I totally love working with kids to make movies. I'm sure it will be even better in bulgaria with a slightly younger crowd. between us brainstorming and providing direction towards non-conventional ideas, providing technical support, and kids improvising and just generally being absurd because of their age, we should come up with something good.

i also think incorporation of music is a great idea- maybe some of it could be music-video kinda things?- esp. since we will have mary and sandrigon and the instruments they bring....

g

--
"Let no-one be discouraged by the belief that there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills- against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence...few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
- Robert F. Kennedy

from "S. Sandrigon" _@itwaslost.org to "Grainne Proinseas" _____@gmail.com cc "J____ Quill" _____@gmail.com "Olaf Mary Mohammad" ____@gmail.com date Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 10:36 AM subject Re: Big Little Industry mailed-by gmail.com

Amigos.

Do they like superheros? I have an idea, (not at all inspired by the fact I'm re-reading the essential x-men.)
Big Little: a strange monster starts attacking it from the watermelon patches.
AMERICAN SUPERHEROS come to help.
Kids end up saving the superheros trying to save the day.

We'll keep the CGI down to a minimum.

Adios, AMIGOS.

Continue reading for the exciting continuation...
And PART THREE also.

The Bridgiest Muse: What more Brooklyn Bridge Poetry, Part II & Final & Cock-&-Bull!

This website was nearly rent irreparably after a filthy political cleavage & rap-warfare, a few months ago. After hip-hop legend William McGonagall, famed bard of the Tay Bridge in Dundee, dissed:

The New Yorkers boast about their Brooklyn Bridge,
But in comparison to thee it seems like a midge,
Because thou spannest the Silvery Tay
A mile and more longer I venture to say;
Besides the railway carriages are pulled across by a rope,
Therefore Brooklyn Bridge cannot with thee cope;

Brooklynites didn't take this well, & for months it raged back & forth with odes & tight lyrics & nasty radio smear attacks. NOW! When we thought the issue had been resolved by popular election, the Huffington Post goes & publishes a completely one-sided unbalanced article about Brooklyn Bridge poetry, with NOT ONE MENTION of Dundee's famous bridge. And the media gives this a free pass.

It may seem odd for a bridge to be a focal point for poetry, but the Brooklyn Bridge has inspired a remarkable number of good (and some great) poems. The Russian Futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky was moved when he first saw it in 1925, as he described in his poem "Brooklyn Bridge:"

...it stretches on cables of string
to the feet of the stars.

I stare
as an eskimo gapes at a train,
I seize on it
as a tick fastens to an ear.
Brooklyn Bridge--
yes....
That's quite a thing!

At the time of Mayakovsky's visit, the American poet Hart Crane was writing his great poem "The Bridge." Crane lived, for a while, in an apartment overlooking the East River, and in his visionary mind the Brooklyn Bridge became a springboard to the spiritual. Here's an excerpt from the opening:

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,--

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path--condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City's fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .

In 1956, the beat poet Jack Kerouac celebrated the bridge in another visionary poem (Kerouac's visions may have had a little...help) called "The Brooklyn Bridge Blues":

I looked at the red winter
disgusting dusk of the world,
saw the alleys beyond,
Brooklyn, Wolfe's redbrick
jungle (that I'd only
last night walkt, unto
Gowanus Cana!)----O!
--& I remembered the dreams
the dreams about racks
and Joan Adams and drear
and a tear appeared
in my eye over the river
on the Bridge of Sights
that as soon as I'd
(c r o c o d i l e)
crossed it, had taken
me to the shore
I was looking for!
Svaha! I am
the perfect man
the Buddha of This World

In case you're new to the Beats, you shouldn't worry if the poem doesn't make total sense. You might want to worry (c r o c o d i l e) if it does.

Oh, it makes perfect sense to us, HUFFINGTON POST! You go & lick your bridge on its central girders. "I seize on it as a tick fastens to an ear." Disgusting. True poets know a real bridge when they look on it in so grand array.

Mix Tape was lost! Vol. 21

GERSHON KINGSLEY DANCES WITH GOBLINS!
MR. S's SUPER SOCKS!
MR. X is ALL WRONG!
KARATE!
KING MONKEY!

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft Songwriting Prowess: Let the Eagle Soar

Mrs Eley-Nelson was looking for "feel-good songs about eagles" for a mix-tape - I looked up John Ashcroft (who famously lost the 2000 Missouri Senate race to a dead man before becoming Bush's US Attorney General), I've only ever heard clips of this song, but the full song is incredible, there's some tight rhymes!

Correspondences: Pocket Phone Calls

Speaking of my futuristic new phone, it apparently makes phone calls from my pocket. Miss Pele was kind enough to e-mail a recording of one such phone call. I appear to be discussing something enthusiastically with my housemate Miss Jenny Ruth. Is anyone good at interpreting or digitally cleaning up this conversation so we can understand it? (mp3 at the bottom of the post.)

NEVER UNRELATED, those images are from an incredible 1972 Biology textbook, Biology Today, which someone scanned online here. And wrote about here.

from Pele ____@gmail.com to S. Sandrigon _@itwaslost.org date Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 6:03 PM subject pocket calls mailed-by gmail.com

Your pocket said dirty things to my voicemail a week or so ago. About lint and maybe people looking for things...

RUTH on Scribd

Now I'm going to put a bunch of my shape-note folk hymns up on Scribd, too. I don't know if that website is all they say it's going to be for self-publishing, but it's easy enough to put stuff on it. All of these pieces are in the public domain. I've put many of these folk hymns up on this website, so I'll experiment with different ways of presenting them on the itwaslost scribd page & may be elsewhere. You can toggle to full screen with that button in the upper-right-hand corner, (&, in firefox at least, F11 makes the browser window full-screen.)
RUTH - Shape-Note Anthem from the Western Harmony
(I'm not completely happy with how that "CutePDF" writer makes the score look.) RUTH is a four-part American folk anthem with text from the Book of Ruth. The original post with other copies of the score & further explanation was HERE. The demonstration recording (featuring my sexy four-part solo quartet) right here:

Sandrigon in Bulgarigon: ПЕСЕН НА ТЕЛЕСНОТО ОЧИСТВАНЕ (Song of Bodily Purification)

Mr Anton Abadziev has translated the poem Song of Defecation into Bulgarian language, possibly to be published in Sofia & included in a presentation on "Modern American Poets & Poetry."

He just put his Bulgarian translation up on his blog http://antonabadzhiev.blogspot.com - & he has done a great job altering the rhymes & wordplay to work in Bulgarian. (He's already also completed Report from the Dee.- "Рапорт от реката Дии")

He e-mailed Mr Quill:

You dont write, bet you have good reason. Please have a look at the SONG OF DEFECATION.
To me it is a good poetry and no need to translate it ПЕСЕН ЗА СРАНЕТО или ИЗСРАНА ПЕСЕН.

So I put a milder yet ironical title - ПЕСЕН ЗА ТЕЛЕСНОТО ОЧИСТВАНЕ.

which means "Song of Bodily Purification." Mr Abadzhiev translated a short story by Mr Quill, Anchovy 2, that was originally posted on this blog a year ago, & published it in the Bulgarian paper Култура, Искуство, Литература (Culture, Art, Literature) last month (pictured to the right.) I was excited when I saw Anton's comment at the bottom of Mr Quill's post:

S.Andrigon is the next victim.
He will have not a piece of it but the whole nine yards.
That's what the editor said.
Anyway, I will perform a hero and discharge bayonets at the spur of sth quite so disastrous if truly recommended.
A.A
P.S. A.A stays also for Anonymous Anton.

Here it is in full Bulgarious:

ПЕСЕН НА ТЕЛЕСНОТО ОЧИСТВАНЕ

От С. Сандригон


Свойте щерки именува Америка
Ема или Емилия
Най-голямото мое женско чедо се клати на гърба на камила в Сейнт Луи Десет метра е висока камилата
Съгрешихте пред Бъфет фамилия:
Натъртена болка от животно разклатено.


Кайте се! Герои и влюбени!Следовници на църквата научна и мормони!
Аз жив съм и земята е господня, звучна е.
Дъщеря ми получи пет минути овации за своята славна битка с горгоните
Гола скита сега без право на нация, един банан ръката нейна не получи.

Проснете наземи телата си, от славене на Третата поправка сме разтъртени.
Заспете и сънувайте гърди, чудати изваяния там в папската градина
Все още червеи копаят под междущатската родина в очакване във Ханаан да се завърнат.
И дави се човекът в червени одеяния, пред всички ни в таверната изтърсва се доносник нов за за вярата
омайна.

Пак дъщеря ми, обажда се само, когато изпразни кесията.
Четири хиляди сто и четиридесет ангела борят се върху котлета в чинията.
С моето име на чело изписани.
Сиера Невада изригва в буря от пурпурни вихъри,
Канибали и плодояди разкривят моята песен във стихове.

Малини-пралини? Употребени; и мечката край тях не диша
Да надхитря аз словом предизвиках демократа от афиша
Тоя мамин любовник главата ми с палка премаза
Побягнах в долината на платената любов, притиснах се и дълго крих се в ямката на тягостната пазва.

Запей ми, ще изслушам някоя щатска песен потулена
Платихме в Ашфол, изкопахме дъщеря ми от фосилното й ложе
И звук бих кътал, но е късно – проблеснаха светлинни улеи
Робовете, копачите на гробове разпуснахме, да се сберем на Джеферсън с разклона невъзможно е.

Говорейки за сватби хванах бас, че няма да изкара и година
Тя не утрая даже половината и свърши точно в три минути със своите деяния – като на Кеневик луната
Секс простотии й напъваха обхвата
И губеха намного и нечути неща добри, като свещи и оригами.

Енергийни кризи, високопърдие, капрологичен хумор – всичко на светло, на къра
Брътвеж без цел за разни изми, доказана безкрайността
Кърмъзен спасител в докапчен казан, с кон занитен в южняшки яхъри.
Страхотно, казват; и изнизват се покрай гнева на пропастта.

Наричате ме шут, обаче аз не съм, аз съм натура
Пластичните касапи где са да клъцнат някоя известност
Детето ми изгуби вид от качамак и синекура
Изпратих острие в лика на бившия й мъж със самострел; и миролюбци като нас забравят свойта честност.

Фамилията тя не ще смени, но пре-прекръсти нощния амвон
Десет хиляди пъти, сърца, езици, форми, писмена и бардове не могат и поетите
А моята любов лежи сред бъдещето на парите и газеника на Плутон
В Тихуана в зори, там, под агавето си спомням планетата.

Събуди се, върни се, Пол Робсън! Най-ниският ти тон срази милитаристите
Износено, с лице червено зомби под пода нейде мърда се.
От местна парадигма мозъкът му гръмна, на секси-говедаря – антихрист.
Неубедената съвсем Америка с пророк офъфлен се нагърби.

Тя е мъртва в ръцете ми и смисъл вече няма, не капнах и сълза
И седмици се карах с биографа й да запечата тази лудост недостигната
За задушените копачи станах като пастир за своята изгубена овца
И връщам вкупом всичките Емилии и Еми на мястото, отдето са пристигнали.


От английски: Антон Абаджиев

Sometimes late at night I've been known to babelize things, meaning, send it thru the online robot translators a few times & see the nonsense wander. Now that there's proper human translations, I can send other languages thru a few times, also to see how Mr Abadzhiev used the text. Like, "The man in all-red chokes & collapses at the corner pub" Anton translated as "И дави се човекът в червени одеяния..." which google re-translates as "And he is drowning in red blankets before all our tavern..." More on that to come, a special feature on re-translated translations & babelization.

The original poem Song of Defecation was published on itwaslost.org HERE.

Shisha Department Presents: Hookah in Hip-Hop No. 1

The Department of the Shisha, special sub-department of Hubbly-Bubbly in da Hizzly-Hopply, presents a limited edition series of Hookah in Hip-Hop. First, this version of Three Six Mafia's "Smokin on the Dro" was youtube user waambat's final project for an electronic media class! It's long overdue that Lewis Carroll's caterpillar made his debut as a shisha-puffing rapper.


(Thanks to a tweet from @PeteButta, retwatted by @samamidon)

The MC Pseudo-Dionysius / Gold Diamonds song "Hillelujah" (lyric "Hallelujah, pass the nargileh / smoke it like you mean it, now take off your z-cup.") is HERE.