No time for love, Dr. Jones.

i am incredibly busy

• i have a presentation due on the 23rd (that i haven't started yet)
  
• three drawings due tomorrow (that i haven't started yet)
  
• a massive book project, twenty plates plus illustrations, for conquistadors
  
• Plus, i'm working with PERL, cgi and DHTML, to create a new look (a sort of livejournal like thing.) for my udub webpage. It isn't easy.
  

something must be wrong...

I'm still happy, even after reading this site, incidentally, i do agree with everything this is saying except the last page. I guess that makes all the difference.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/3493/lesson1.htm

conquistadors -- first state

i'm chosing conquistadors as my next project to tackle. (see the list below, (btw, if any of you are so inclined, most of the ideas i come up with are not very specific to me, "A6 reaction", and "manufactured evidence" for example, seem like projects that anyone could do, and have very different takes on, so if you are in a bind and need an "assignment," feel free to use one.)) as part of the process, i thought i'd catalog the work in livejournal. (Why not?) this way we can trace the progress a pretty shitty little poem written in the summer of 1995, as it turns into a pretty shitty little artist's handmade book in a limited edition of five. They'll be a lot of posts today and tomorrow, because i've a lot of material to add, (i've been working on this for a few weeks already.)

That said, here is "conquistadors" as it was first jotted down in 1995

its hard to say to you
so you can see
our lives of endless
      toil
searching vast deserts of tile
on every available plane
to find the wealth of nourishment
needed to make our
endless bretheren
we communicate by scout
the messenger sent to be shot
his body torn to pieces
as the throng sets out
mesmerized by his oration
"vast oceans...
wealth untold"
by the thousands we
hear them coming
their marching feet ring
like sabbath bells
whem they arrive
become mired and die
bodies encased by
rich amber hued sugar
scatter and slowly they sink
but the messenger's head spouts his prophecy still
"vast oceans...
wealth untold"
and the horde takes to foot
marches out still
and the mother
must make more
to bolster the tide
layer on layer
the horror continues
the carcasses hang
suspended
as in the air
each grisly corpse left
never to rot
no expression on any
still face
thorax and abdomen
contorted in pain
they all die
but still thay all come
"vast oceans...
wealth untold"
this is the fate of the singular mind
and at last i alone am only alive

typing that out, i can see that there is much room for refinement. in 1995 i had not yet abandoned simile, so there is some of that to be striken "feet ringing like sabboth bells," plus the beginning and end seem tacked on, the opening was like many of mine, a sort of stream of consciousness thing that falls into the rhythm of the forming poem. room for a lot of work there, plus the end, with it's sort of Moby Dick-ish "now I alone must tell you the tale," sort of thing, seems like an odd shift in tone, from narrator to participant/survivor. there is much work to be done.

conquistadors -- second state

careful thinking has to come next. If we are to transform a poem into a book, we must think about how the poem, which should naturally have a coherent and smooth flow, will necessarily need to be broken up, so that it can move naturally through the course of the book, and drag the reader with it. We are faced with interesting questions, like "How big should each "chunk" of poem be?"

This depends on how much information the reader can take in before attention wanders. Right before this occurs, we want to finish with text, and provide a compelling image. This also lets the reader focus on the picture, and think about the pair, picture and stanza, in context, and without having to absorb too much text before they are rewarded with the image. Ideally, they should not be bored, and should be holding both text and image in thier consciousness. This way, they will read an entire poem, stanza, image, stanza, image, where otherwise, attention might wander somewhere in the middle. (I'm using myself as a worst-case-reader model. I'm awful at appreciating poetry.)

As an excellent model of what I'm talking about, take a look at the work of Dick Bruna, a man who carefully refines his words and images, making sure to only include 12 words per image. (True, he's a children's author, but i think the rules are sound. it's not a large commitment from the reader, so you can hit them with some pretty heavy material, just in chunks. I've seen it work pretty well in some trial books i've made.)

So, more or less twelve words per page. In this case, I'm dealing with ABAB rhyme scheme, so i figure just those 4 lines will do it.

conquistadors

to live and die
by scent and scout
a life of toil
of the whip and the mouth

slow searching for years
for the track and the trace
through great empty wastelands
for hungers to slake

when on the horizon
a huge shining hoard
el dorado, ciabola, vast
city of gold

so now to hive
to tell great mother
the tale
and be rendered sweet rendered
and joyfully impaled

his life to be taken
so that all may know
the exact passage taken
the right ways to go

his torn form reeks of the
fabulous sensation
the hive stands transfixed
by his dying oration

"oceans of gold...
wealth untold"

a forced march through wastes
a thousand men strong
to the edge of the world
where the rumor is found

where they arrive
to be trapped, mired and die
bodies encased in
rich amber hued lie

thorax and abdomen
contorted in pain
all before died
still they all came

caracaasses hang
suspended in air
each grisly corpse
left to rot never there

scatter and slowly
they sink
and yet the messenger's head
spouts the prophecy's stink...

"vast oceans...
wealth untold"

the queen must make,
ceasless devoted tide
more to be doomed
to become mired and die

trapped and overcome
by amber hued lie
that is the fate
of the singular mind.


So right now, that gives us, say 16 images. Double that for each stanza and that's 32 pages. We'll need one more for title and end pages. Next... Decisions about the size of images, paper, and the end product.