Take A Closer Look!

An abridged account of my thoughts on everything

More on Time Travelk: June 10th 2016
I think the most important thing with time travel experiments is attention to detail. One must be aware of many things: sounds, colors, expressions, inflections, font types, and the methods of producing all of these things. Getting the slightest thing wrong can jarringly bring one back to the present moment. If you're going backwards producing anything by hand will get you there pretty quick, but one must still be mindful of when trends came in and out. Minimalism is also a very useful commodity, even in an era where minimalism was not in vogue because nothingness; total silence, a black void, these things belong to no time at all and are absolutely true, magical, and readily available methods of time travel.

In our specific situation we must know exactly when we are going and who we are there. I know that Creatures of Yes is a low budget educational show in the late 1970s with a small but dedicated staff, probably in Akron Ohio. These cameras became affordable around this time, so it would make sense that we'd use them, but we could never afford computer graphics or anything that flashy. Thus, our show in the late '70s is dated. Watching it back then, one might think, "Gee, this seems a bit old fashion". I believe this layer of detail - being dated even for it's own time, adds immensely to it's authenticity. In truth, how many shows of this sort were ever cutting edge? Perhaps these days (now that children have money), but back then?

Our patron Saint, David Walter McDermott, once said "the further back in time you want to go, the more money you must have". He's right. This is one reason why time travel isn't for everyone, it takes a good bit of dedication to move through time at all (even the normal way - but that comes more or less naturally to most). If I had more money the Creatures of Yes would be a decade further back, set in the mid '60s, but antiquated to the '50s. I'm reaching for that time now, but it still seems so far away. It's like there's some impenetrable barrier right at 1969.

Wrinkles in Time Travel: March 18th 2016
When I talk about the Creatures of Yes being set in 1979, I don't' mean exactly 1979. I'm not trying to adopt all the exact fashions of that specific year. I think of 1979 as more of a stoping place; a somewhat arbitrary number that seemed (technologically and stylistically) a good place to stop. Because 1979 isn't just that year, it encompasses every year that came before it.

I was recently doing a puppet show at an elementary school upstate. The auditorium / gymnasium was straight out of the 1950s (maybe earlier). Nothing had been changed. It was a perfectly functional time capsule! They made announcements (the lunch menu, a weather report, the pledge of allegiance and the joke of the day) over an intercom from that era and it was delightful . If I was experiencing this sort of time travel in 2016, imagine what points they were still hitting in 1979 - probably back to the 1800s! Of course, we can still see the 1800s and even further back today, in a museum, but I'm talking about accidentally stumbling upon another time, by magic!

This sort of time travel magic doesn't always have to be accidental though, if you know what you're doing you can conjure it. The difference between an exhibit of the past and time travel magic is that the real stuff has life and is functional still.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_snobbery

Obsolete Technology: March 1st 2016
I always think it's strange when people say something is obsolete - when it still works just fine! Or, there is a wonderful, aesthetic reason for using it. How can an artistic medium be obsolete?

Growing up I was very interested in analog music synthesizers, which at the time (the mid 90's, and the midwest) were considered obsolete. Some people would listen to my tapes with a sympathetic ear, but could only allow themselves to hear it in a retro or quaint context. I always wondered why the technology of guitars was able to be frozen in time at it's best, but synthesizers always had to be progressing. I think, in the dominion of synthesizers, the voltage controlled oscillator is akin to guitar strings. You would never get rid of guitar strings in favor of new technology, that would be absurd.

Well, it seems the rest of the world has come around to my thinking in regards to analog synthesizers (I'm way ahead of my time). But the visual equivalent, CRT video, is still banished to the land of the obsolete. Film = piano strings (it's so classic bring it back!), CRT video = analog synthesizers (it's not hi-def enough! get rid of it!), digital = digital (the end of all things). We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

But would I even care about any of this stuff if there was no grain to push against? ...YES!

Rambling in Color: December 26th 2015
I think I heard somewhere that colors don't exist. You know, that sort of thing where it's like, your brain just perceives them as certain colors or whatever. It's kind of upsetting because I'm obsessed with colors. Does this just further prove that everything I care about doesn't really exist?

I took a Pantone quiz a while back that tells you how keen your color vision is. I got a perfect score. I can distinguish colors almost as good as a woman. (Women have more cones in their eyes, allowing them to see colors more accurately.)

The names of colors are also pretty relative. We have no way of knowing what colors looked like when Isaac Newton was analyzing a spectrum of color from his prism. If he documented them, then they've faded with age by now and if we attempted to restore them we might go too far in the other direction and miss the mark completely. So, we have no way of knowing for sure what blue looked like exactly to Isaac Newton.

I prefer to think of blue as a color that is tiptoeing towards teal. Not the modern version of blue - what is commonly referred to as "electric blue," which is actually violet. Alright, so maybe I don't believe in relative colors, because if blue is actually violet, then what is violet? It has nowhere to go!

Here are some colors I'm working on:

An Awfully Positive Beginning: December 25th 2015
It's hard to say why this is happening, but I'd like to think it is a happening of sorts - similar to the art happenings in the '60s. It all began exactly one year ago. I was talking with my mother-in-law about what I (really) wanted to do with my life, and during that conversation a seed of The Creatures of Yes was planted. I'd already been thinking of making videos with puppets and things, but saying it out loud made it seem more concrete. I spent the next year teaching myself to build puppets. I took my creations to the National Puppetry Festival where I performed twice at their prearranged variety nights. With trembling hands I saw my characters take on a life of their own. And there was the old magic again! ZAP!

Puppetry, for me, is channeling something from somewhere that you could never access otherwise. What spirits are contributing to this work? I'd like to think that Richard Hunt is looking down on us and sending waves of guidance from beyond. And Sister Mary Corita Kent's hands are hovering over mine when I cut a piece of paper. And if I am just imagining it... what's the difference really?

We're listening carefully to the echos of a sound that started sixty years ago and broadcasting our own television show from an imaginary station.
What is this? Jerry, what is this?