Virtual Flaneurism

I do this far too regularly.

Inception spoilers:

From Eliza

Buy them here

So you're going to look at this video, and probably choose not to play it. And that would be your mistake. Give it a minute or so to get context and I assure you, there will be laughter.

“One of the most worn clichés in the realm of photography is the notion that a photographic portrait can somehow “capture the essence” of its subject. This has always struck me as pretty problematic; the idea that there is a moment that can be captured on film that encapsulates some fundamental truth about us, about who we really are seems to be a little reductive… I have always liked to think there was more to me than that. I can understand a photographer’s search for an image in which the subject is as natural as possible, forgets the camera and maybe even themselves. However, this may not be any more revealing about the person being photographed than an image in which the subject is playing to the camera, showing another side of themselves in the process.”

- Carlo Van Der Roer

Oh cow cat, I love you.

This map depicts US states with the flag of a country of equivalent population. Would be even better if it was interactive, as I recognize only a smattering of these flags.

I need to get to the root of why this video about coping with being alone reminds me most of what it feels like to be in love. And I mean that in an uplifting way.

Work

I wanted to be a rain salesman,
because rain makes the flowers grow,
but because of certain diversions and exhaustions,
certain limitations and refusals and runnings low,
because of chills and pressures, shaky prisms, big blows,
and apes climbing down from banana trees, and dinosaurs
weeping openly by glacial shores, and sunlight warming
the backsides of Adam and Eve in Eden ...

I am paid to make the screen of my computer glow, radioactive
leakage bearing the song of the smart money muse:
this little bleep went to market, this little clunk has none.

The woman who works the cubicle beside me has pretty knees
and smells of wild blossoms, but I am paid to work
my fingers up and down the keys, an almost sexy rhythm,
king of the chimpanzees picking fleas from his beloved.
I wanted to be a rain salesman , but that's a memory
I keep returning to my childhood for minor repairs:
the green sky cracking, then rain, and after,
those flowers growing faster than I can name them,
those flowers that fix me and and make me stare.

I wanted to be a rain salesman,

carrying my satchel full of rain from door to door,
selling thunder, selling the way air feels after a downpour,
but there were no openings in the rain department,
and so they left me dying behind this desk-adding bleeps,
subtracting clunks-and I would give a bowl of wild blossoms,
some rain, and two shakes of my fist at the sky to be living.
Above my desk, lounging in a bed of brushstroke flowers,
a woman beckons from my cheap Modigliani print, and I know
by the way she gazes that she sees something beautiful
in me. She has green eyes. I am paid to ignore her.

- John Engman

Stolen from Kristie:

One of my favorite oldies - but who knew that Del Shannon looked like Janosz from Ghostbusters II? *Shudder*

PS. For some reason this video starts to go flat during the instrumental. Not pleasant.