painting/photography/changes
if you do not wish to read below, just proceed straight to all the new paintings and photographs:
paintings
black and white gallery b
black and white gallery c
color gallery b
at some point last year i decided i needed to paint. i've read many accounts of photographers starting off as painters but switching because they could more accurately render their vision through the lens.
my obsession with image started with photography but as the history of modern photography is informed largely by technically precise and sharp images i felt a little alienated at times wanting to produce what amounted to blurry abstractions with my camera. so i started painting. as i painted, my blurry photographic tendency began to undress itself.
then the exposure meter on my camera broke and i found myself having to estimate exposure for every image i produced. while frustrating, i had become pretty good at it and the process of interacting more primitively and intuitively with my camera helped me understand that with or without the exposure meter and regardless of all the niggly little settings necessary to make a correct exposure, i was beginning to improvise with my camera. like the first time i sat in a dark room and played improvised music in college... i was making something from the heart. letting go of the life ring (spiderman arm floaties) of theory.
so here i am almost a year later with my first batch of paintings ready to undress for you. and here also am i, having diggen through eight months worth of images from my humble little camera in all it's exposure meterlessness with several new galleries full of photography for our pleasure. hopefully here is something to bring sweetness, wist(fulness), cheer, contemplation and rest to the world.
enjoy!
happy new year. i guess. i don't love to say that....
it's a symbolic rebirth. it's an opportunity to reimmerse yourself in yourself (for the sake of spiritual awakenings of course ((meditation)) ). it's an opportunity to recommit to contributing love to the world and nothing but... to find within yourself the way to peace, to identify the things which don't serve your highest purpose and that of the earth and it's denizens and re-shape it into service to the higer purpose and nature in everything. yes, these things and more. perhaps service to the evolution ---> enlightenment of every last sentient being?
when i was younger, new year was a time for getting ripped and going for sex... or some variation on that topic. as i look out on the world, i see that playing out as if it were all that really mattered to so many. that and of course the endless march toward money. it's not bad it just is. and it will be eternally until each individual begins to stir in their roost and identify the meaninglessness of the reality that most people exist and labor without awareness to attain yet more money. or perhaps just enough money to survive.
war is among us and treachery, mistrust and manipulation serve the great mechanism which enslaves the mind to the end that the only "freedom" it might attain is some moderate supply of currency.
i can certainly seem nihilistic or at least cynical and.. wait... yes, i suppose to the extent that from within my world it appears that so many earthlings seem to have no interest in creating something of lasting love and peace on this earth i am. but in my heart i have an agreement: i have made a commitment to the service of every one of you in proceeding toward spiritual evolution. or, call it what you may. for the sake of objectivity, let's call it union with the "_____"ness which exists beyond all manifestations yet is everything manifest and unmanifest. and of course, as that "___"ness is not without subtle irony,, all of this can not be believed or perceived to any real extent without an experiential component. and this experiential aspect of it all can not be tasted without waking up from the deep sleep of the zombie body which is constantly at the whim of the mind and it's endless cravings.
how to wake?
meditation. deep prayer if the idea of meditation seems demonic to you. if meditation seems insurmountable to you, sit down close your eyes and count four breaths repeatedly only concentrating on those breathes and 1... 2... 3... 4... 1... 2... 3... 4... there. you have meditated. you will be bombarded with thoughts. after maybe ten days of this practice of anywhere between 5-30 minutes the mind will begin to understand who daddy is. then, you are beginning to awake. some people don't want this because they can't tolerate one minute without letting the mind take them wherever it wishes, or labelling everything in their path or simply because they can't tolerate one moment of simply being with themselves and no one else and not a single thought. this can actually be a terrifying experience for some of us.
anyway, i'm heading to a movie with my friend frank. (frank is my spades partner. we play yahtzee a lot and he believes in science and is much smarter than your average joe.. or frank for that matter). so, maybe this year make a new commitment to something you hardly believe in. make the mystic real. smile, make people laugh, say i am not real and I WILL DIE. what is the purpose of me? who am I? make love in public... actually that might be too extreme. question war, endless striving for money and product and anything which is fundamentally at odds with your beliefs. then, *very important* question your beliefs.
so i guess i don't like saying happy new year because it feels empty to me. i would rather hug you, look you in the eye and ask if you have made a commitment to something of value for everyone. in any event, all the best for 2008.
believe in what you do = know and trust yourself
you know when you believe in what you do just as you know when you've fallen in love.
true, just as you can learn to love, you can begin to believe in what you do over time... but why learn to accept something that doesn't resonate with who you know you are?
are you not good enough to have what you want in this life? do you not trust yourself enough to hold out for what you believe in? why invest your heart in something you don't believe in from the beginning? do you not know what you believe in... or what you want?
ah, the other side of the coin...
pragmatism tells you that the way things have been done is the way things ought to be done because there are quantified visible results of those things. getting a job that pays well is difficult enough and everyone has to work their way up the ladder and money and family and suv and newtonian physics and the american medical association and the media survey said it and it's always been this way and on and on and on... the soothing sound of the practical sleeping mind lulling you back into the endless maze of average self-disempowered illusion.
this diverse world has an almost infinite offering of interesting things for a person to devote their lives to. if you can't find something that turns you on then you can create something.
but what DO you want to do? what do you want? this little function of who you fundamentally are will kill any hope of a creative and/or passionate life if you can't identify at least one answer. and guess what? i know few, few people who know what they want. i am met with skepticism and doubt when i tell people what i want out of life. perhaps what i want is unconventional or perhaps a person can't enter my context because they don't believe what i believe. fine, but the greater and only real problem is often that they don't know what they want and that prevents them from moving toward it. then they perform the classic move: project their dissatisfaction with themselves onto the world around them through any random emotional or communication mechanism to gain some sort of power leverage over it which helps them obscure and bury their personal dissatisfaction they probably don't even realize they have. ugly.
knowing what you want becomes defined as you begin to know yourself. this is a lifelong work which takes devotion and practice. perhaps it is as simple as knowing what you don't want but even then you must have some fundamental insight into yourself or you will find it acceptable to repetitiously do something which you don't believe in, without even knowing it.
believing in what you do from a place of self or universal awareness is empowering and ultimately serves a goal far greater than ourselves. it contributes to the awareness of the universe. the evolution of consciousness through awareness... the song of the universe. if you look at our little world from a distance, the greatest leader in the lands becomes infinitesimal and utterly unimportant in their individuality. she/he is another tic in the heap of humanity. imagine 6 billion of those... knowing not who they are or what they do. what hope can any introspective, self-aware person have of their vision of an enlightened universe realizing itself if 97% of their fellow species walks around in a trance? scooping chicken shit could potentially be as enlightening and important as being president of the united states if done with belief in the purpose of it and from a place of love and awareness. perhaps it would be so if beings more advanced than ourselves were to look upon this world and determine just w hat it is that we believe in. do you see how it might be extra important to believe in what you do? real belief. belief in yourself and your contribution to the next stage of human development.
how? know yourself. honor yourself. love yourself and find what it is that you want and do it with joy in your heart.
symbolic virtual aphorisms/currents
peeping the quotes people display on myspace has me thinking about distilling the immediacy yet simultaneously isolating state of modern "virtual/real" social dynamics into condensed symbolic aphorisms.
i have written a small thanksgiving list of nibs.
these little nibs basically comment on modern life in the form of a small truth ~subjective naturally~ which seems incomplete.. basically a reflection of the ambiguous and often incomplete temporal social connections dominating currently, hugely in part to systems like myspace. of course it would be incomplete and enormously pessimistic of me to not comment on the positive aspects and potentials of this new social laboratory.. after all, i see it just as likely that a human mind/network of minds uploaded to some virtuality may indeed be part of our future or fulfill the prophecy of rapture or realize the concept of a critical mass, spontaneous mini-enlightenment (contextually speaking - after all enlightenment ((impossible to conceive of in our current little human forms)) means something and looks different now than it did 5-5,000 years ago),, and all this time developing "real connections in virtuality" has made virtuality a little more real and making positive connections in reality is is a huge part of what living a rewarding life is all about. that was a helluva mouthfull... but it's not over...and of course, enlightenment and rapture are positive things to those who put faith in them and if the internet doesn't die or give birth to an AI (artificial intelligence) that renders us obsolete, or we don't die, then the only possibility is for technology to continue developing somewhat exponentially and these systems like myspace and zaadz can only be seen as fledgling models of what future (possibly posthuman) reality may look like... but more real. and we seem to like them, so that is positive.
all this while remaining mysteriously silent on the subject of spirituality... maybe next time.
i just realized this is turning into a blog. that's cool. whatever.
of course this list would be **wholly incomplete** without some nibs regarding the overwhelmingly pompous, disgustingly self-important, treacherous "hidden in plain site" political control mechanism in place in our democracy. Are you a mind controlled slave begging the government and corporations and retailers for the very thing you've been programmed to need?
the nibs:
firm possibility
pic as friend
all new stuff
wholly incomplete
object oriented
offshore friendship
commodified sincerity
76% of 80%!! great numbers!!!
anonymously convivial
drinks
live code
powerful ambiguity
cyberspace constellations
political truth :: relative oppression
contextual concern
mutual inference
switching over
fish are vegetables too!
simplicity > cleverness < sincerity
plausibility potential verified
control imperceptible
kindness choice
i guess in retrospect, the list is eclipsed by the description preceding it. it's always the same: the ideal realm of the imagination is always better than the reality of it. the idea most often exceeds the action.
but,,,,,,,,, the journey is the destination!!! hahahahahahahahahahah. happy thanksgiving. later!
orwellian
"Conventional (pharmaceutical) medicine is the only system of medicine in the world that is so unpopular with informed consumers that it must be administered at the barrel of a gun. There is no other system of medicine anywhere in the world that resorts to such tactics to recruit patients".
this is an excerpt from the article
"Children herded like cattle into Maryland courthouse for forced vaccinations as armed police and attack dogs stand guard"
at newstarget.com.
check it out to see a living example of americans willingly surrendering their constitutional rights.
new
welcome to the current incarnation of brownspace. you are listening to "tonight i can write" a piece i am working on based on the poem "tonight i can write the saddest lines" by pablo neruda.
this site presents a cross section of the music, photography and thoughts of cody brown.
i have just released (11/07) an acoustic trio album of original compositions. the album is called unloved and features two very close friends, sam kennedy and paul shaw. there are some examples plus a few complete tracks on the music page. if you would like a copy of this cd, please contact me using the contact link on the bottom of these pages.
i have recently learned that my son is having terrible nightmares about penguins. welcome to my world luca. terrific dreams run in the family.
thanks a billion to stu nicholls | www.stunicholls.com | for the css/java script powering my new image galleries. seriously, he saved me from shaving a few years off my life due to rage at not being able to create my own this weekend. so, thanks stu!
glad you're here. if your interested in having me take pictures for/of/around you, making music with me or getting some sort of flyer, cd layout, sticker, or general design stuff done, i am interested.
enjoy!