Fires

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‘A piece by Danish artist Jeppe Hein where a flame ignites in the center of the pool, and it’s then pushed up by a spout of water.’

 

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‘I hope you die in a fire! Hope you’ll be stabbed in the heart, hope you’ll get shot and expire! Hope you’ll be taken apart! Hope this is what you desire! I hope you die in a fire!’

 

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Around the Fire
by Ted Berrigan

What I’m trying to say is that if an experience is
proposed to me—I don’t have any particular interest
in it—Any more than anything else. I’m interested in
anything. Like I could walk out the door right now and go some
where else. I don’t have any center in that sense. If you’ll look
in my palm you’ll see that my heart and my head line are
the same and if you’ll look in your palm you’ll see that it’s
different. My heart and my head feel exactly the same. Me,
I like to lay around of a Sunday and drink beer. I don’t feel
a necessity for being a mature person in this world. I mean
all the grown-ups in the world, they’re just playing house, all
poets know that. How does your head feel? How I feel is
what I think. I look at you today, & I expect you to look
the same tomorrow. If you’re having a nervous breakdown, I’m
not going to be looking at you like you’re going to die, because
I don’t think you are. If you’re a woman you put yourself
somewhere near the beginning and then there’s this other place
you put yourself in terms of everybody. “The great cosmetic strange-
ness of the normal deep person.” Okay. Those were those people—and
I kept telling myself, I have to be here, because I don’t have
a country. How tight is the string? And what is on this particular
segment of it? And the photographer, being black, and the writer,
me, being white, fell out at this point. And he didn’t want to
look at it—I mean it’s nothing, just some drunk Indians riding
Jersey milk cows—but I wanted to see it, I mean it was right
in front of my eyes and I wanted therefore to look at it.
And death is not any great thing, it’s there or it’s not. I mean
God is the progenitor of religious impetuousity in the human beast.
And Davy Crockett is right on that—I mean he’s gonna shoot a bear,
but he’s not gonna shoot a train, because the train is gonna run
right over him. You can’t shoot the train. And I always thought
there was another way to do that. And it is necessary to do that
and we bear witness that it is necessary to do it. The only distinction
between men and women is five million shits.

 

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‘In 1971 a search for gas went wrong when a whole drilling rig fell into an underground cavern. Natural gas started coming up from the hole. It was set alight so it wouldn’t kill everything around. For 35 years now the flames keep burning. At night the burning gas makes the crater seen from miles away. The crater is located in Turkmenistan in the heart of the Karakum desert. The crater is called Darvaza or The Burning Gates.’

 

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A Portrait Destroyed By Fire

 

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‘Designed by a team of Hungarian engineers originally as a means of mass decontamination for Cold War-era tanks in the event of a CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) attack, this fire-fighting chimera has found a niche in the modern world. The Big Wind is one part T-34 tank and two parts MiG 21 jet engine. Specifically its a T-34 tank chassis with a pair of Mig 21 jet engines mounted to its roof. Windy needs three crewmen: a driver inside the tank to steer and stop it; a controller in a rear cabin at the back of the platform to run the jet engines and the water jets; and a fire chief who walks about 15 feet away, issuing orders to the two other crew members through a remote-control unit. When the water is turned on, the six nozzles above the MiG engines unleashing an immense blast of water that mingles with the jet exhaust and becomes a ferocious spray of steam. The water is moving at a maximum rate of 220 gallons of water a second, or twice what an average U.S. household uses in 24 hours. (If you hooked up this machine’s water pump to a typical suburban swimming pool, it would suck it dry in about 50 seconds.)’

 

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‘The world’s most weird fashion show where all of the models walked on the ramp with the fire flames burning on their body.’

 

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‘A museum in Italy is burning artworks from around the world to protest harsh austerity cuts by the Italian government. Antonio Manfredi, director of the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Naples, kicked off the protest this week by setting fire to a painting by French artist Severine Bourguignon. Manfredi says the museum will burn three artworks each week as part of its “Art War” campaign. “I have 1,000 artworks from artists around the world, and they’re already facing destruction due to the indifference of the government,” he told CNN. “We want the government to pay attention to the country’s cultural institutions.”‘

 

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‘Veteran stunt man Tom Steele replaced James Arness in the fire scene. Steele wore an asbestos suit with a special fiberglass helmet with an oxygen supply underneath. He used a 100% oxygen supply
which was highly combustible. It was pure luck he didn’t burn his lungs whilst breathing in the mixture.’

 

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I made myself ready presently, and walked to the Tower, and there got up upon one of the high places, Sir J. Robinson’s little son going up with me; and there I did see the houses at that end of the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side the end of the bridge.

The poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconys till they were, some of them burned, their wings, and fell down.

The wind mighty high and driving it into the City; and every thing, after so long a drought, proving combustible, even the very stones of churches.

The houses, too, so very thick thereabouts, and full of matter for burning, as pitch and tarr, in Thames-street; and warehouses of oyle, and wines, and brandy, and other things.

So near the fire as we could for smoke; and all over the Thames, with one’s face in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of firedrops. This is very true; so as houses were burned by these drops and flakes of fire, three or four, nay, five or six houses, one from another.

We staid till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruins. — Samuel Pepys

 

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‘This demonic little girl who set fire to a kid’s house.’

 

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‘Fire Therapy involves setting yourself on fire. The therapy involves placing a “fire rope” made from some 20 different Chinese herbs on the patient’s body. After covering the rope with a plastic wrap, two wet towels are placed on top. Then, alcohol is poured on top of the towels and an attendant sets the whole thing on fire.’

 

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‘When the Bombardier beetle feels threatened, its ass releases a chemical compound which is very close to being fire in liquid form. The beetle doesn’t just excrete it, but actually mixes up the chemicals in its inner chambers then shoots the deadly chemicals as a high-speed boiling spray at the remarkable rate of 368 and 735 pulses per second. They can aim the spray precisely and with great force.’

 

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‘I can only imagine the amount of stress Tarkovski was under when this astounding sequence shot was filmed. His other great “burning down it all” scene (at the end of “Offret”/Sacrifice) lead him to madness, because of a little out-of-time movement of a character. He had to beg for cash to re-film it again, and died from lung cancer the next year.’

 

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‘Boy band Westlife burn themselves in effigy for their final performance on June 22 in Dublin.’

 

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‘Weird Paul Petroskey has been writing and recording music since 1984, and has written or co-written over 700 songs and appeared on over 50 released albums. Petroskey formed his label Rocks & Rolling Records in 1987, through which he released his first album In Case of Fire Throw This In on cassette tape. In 1990 Petroskey began performing with drummer Manny Theiner and in 1991, signed with New York record label Homestead Records. Through Homestead Records the two released the album Lo Fidelity, Hi Anxiety, but was not picked up for a second album.’

 

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‘Constance Hockaday explores the neurological processes triggered in emergency survival scenarios and clumsily plays with how to apply them to slow motion disasters of global and historical proportions.’

 

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Trilogy

 

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This Fire
by Alice Notley

No one loves you more … more … more …    
There were sincere lies everywhere placed directly before
the next step. Does everyone pretend, part of alive
I am proposing words — All structures have crumbled
in earliest death. I’m crossing the yellow sands
It’s so hard to know without relating it, to you
shaping a heart, take hold of me and someone says
I don’t get it! You don’t have to have love,
or you do, which? I don’t think you do; before
the explosion? I was here without it and have been in
many places loveless. I don’t want you
to know what I’m really thinking or do I, before
creation when there might be no “I knew”
Everything one’s ever said not quite true. He or she be-
trays you; why you want to hurt me … bad
Want to, or just do? Treason was provoked
everywhere even here, by knowing one was one and
I was alone, a pale hue. The sky of death
is milky green today, like a poison pool near a
desert mine. Picked prickly pear fruit and I
tasted it, then we drove on, maybe to Yarnell.
These outposts where I grew up; I didn’t do that
I have no … identity, and the love is an object
to kick as you walk on the blazing bare ground, where …    
sentimental, when what I love, I … don’t have that one
word. This fire all there is … to find … I find it
You have to find it. It isn’t love, it’s what?

 

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‘He cheated. She’s angry. But this is one of the most extreme pay-backs we’ve ever seen. The wounded partner filmed herself dousing her sleeping boyfriend’s private parts in liquid before setting them alight. He wakes up to the horrifying realisation his testicles are on fire. The woman is heard saying: ‘Yeah that’s right…You cheat on me with my f******* co-worker, you didn’t think I wasn’t going to f******* find out? You stupid a** n***** – get the f*** out. You and that b**** can go to hell.’’

 

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‘I always have a certain sim couple I play with (My simself and my boyfriend’s simself) and I sent them to university once. I put them in a dorm (I don’t remember which one, sorry.) and picked a room and everything. Everything went well until every other roommate just started to cook their own food. One of the females ended up setting the stove on fire. So everyone panicked because there was a giant fire. Boyfriend-sim called the firefighters twice. 2 firefighters arrived but they didn’t do much. Boyfriend-sim tried to help putting the fire out but then this happened.’

‘I know he’s hot but his butt shouldn’t catch on fire. Luckily, he didn’t die. He ended up signed and I teleported him to their room and tried to keep him there. It took me a few tries though. He already had about 3 near-death experiences that day. I teleported my sim to their room, too. I couldn’t lock the doors during a fire so I just kept canceling their “Fire!!!” actions. After a little while I just kept getting messages that the firefighters couldn’t reach the fire. I thought it was weird. The fire stopped after a while but it had taken someone. Everyone in the dorm got the moodlet of witnessing death.’

‘My sims were okay, but everyone else in the dorm was just crying all day and screaming about the person that died. They didn’t go to their classes, they didn’t eat, they didn’t sleep, etc. So they ended up falling asleep in their own puddles of pee while smelling like hobo and it disgusted my sims because they were just lying in around in the hallway. My sim used the cry on shoulder and cheer up interaction a lot, and the moodlet just disappeared for them after 2/3 sim days. But the roommates just kept crying and I don’t know why. Anyone else had this experience with a dorm in University life?’

 

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Fire Tornado!

 

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‘Maniac Cop 2 contains the best man on fire scene in the history of cinema. Director Bill Lustig cut the picture in only three months utilizing a team of editors, just so he could have a print ready for the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. That’s right — Lustig wanted Maniac Cop 2 to premiere alongside Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague, Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams and David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. Sadly, the film wasn’t accepted into the prestigious fest. Maniac Cop 2 doesn’t give a shit with whom the audience emotionally identifies. Yet this complete disregard for life is also what makes the movie sadistically special.’

 

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‘I remember the first time I saw Isabelle Hayeur’s Fire with Fire video installation. A four storey building seemingly ablaze, with projected flames filling the windows of the top three floors, best viewed from the derelict end of Vancouver’s East Hastings Street. At five p.m. each day, as dusk settled over a city overrun with Olympic boosterism, Hayeur’s work was switched on; staff waited 30 seconds between igniting the second floor projector, the third, and the fourth, to heighten the sense of inexorable consumption. In a few minutes, the fire builds to a mute roar, filling 20-foot expanses of glass (backed by opaque paper for the projection to play on). The effect from street level was thrilling and, each evening, homeless folk paused alongside international media and wayward tourists to collectively indulge in Hayeur’s mediated schadenfreude.’

 

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I’ve devoted myself to the enterprise of destroying my memory . . . I set fire to it, and with its debris I charcoal-scrawl the paper. And each day, if I succeed in seizing some glint, if I manage, as the old Irish hermit says, to lead the darkness to the light, my basic purpose will be to entangle it with the banality of these lines, wobbly, black, relatively crooked upon the paper, in the yellow oval slicing the table, and where soon, once daylight filters in, and I lay down my pen, it will vanish. — Jacques Roubaud

 

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‘Essential to Alberto Burri’s work is that, for the artist, “combustion” refers not to the fire from the torch itself, but rather to the process of burning, which transforms a flammable material into another.’

 

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‘A man wearing what appears to be a tiny wooden shed on his head is inexplicably strolling along a residential street blaring dubstep music while flashing coloured lights are visible inside the shed. It was filmed by stunned Edward Jenkins, 35, while out for a walk with his wife Poppy in St Werberghs, Bristol.’

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Cool!!! My ear seems to be slightly improved, so hopefully that will continue. May we be the fraternal twins of perfect health at any moment now. Gotcha on ‘Longlegs’. Kind of assumed so. I wouldn’t mind having a life-size doll of Vincent Kartheiser circa his starring role in ‘Another Day in Paradise’, if love really doesn’t mind. Love setting anything you want on fire, G. ** James Bennett, Hi, James! Good to see you. The drops are vaguely kicking in, and I’m hoping they’re just being a little shy at the beginning but will soon reveal their true extroverted selves. Awesome you’re reading Thomas’s book. Mm, in a way I’m tempted to recommend ‘The Voyeur’ because it’s kind of a good starting place with R-G, but my personal favorite is ‘Recollections of the Golden Triangle’. They’re all really worthy though. Dude, awesome, congrats about the grant! Is it just a general support grant? I mean, you didn’t have to propose some writing project in particular? Great news! Yes, summer can’t breathe its last too swiftly for me too. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. It’s the rare even great French actor who doesn’t appear in a lot of mainstream French garbage that never escapes France’s borders. Income, I assume, since the great films probably don’t pay so well. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, new fan. If only ‘House of Mirth’ could read itself. With us looking over its shoulder, mind you. Well, it’s no news that I’m very happy if your writing gets priority access to your talent. Place an upside down drinking glass to your screen and press your ear against its base and you’ll hear me cheerleading. ** NLK, Hey. If you don’t know, Re:Voir also has an exhibition space here where they screen films and show videos and exhibit filmmakers’ artworks. It’s a big boon to living here. Mm, living here, it’s just a quick metro trip to see hard-to-see films mostly, and I can’t remember seeing anything where I didn’t at least enjoy the opportunity to know what some legendary thing actually is. But, yeah, there are a fair share of letdowns. I’ll try ‘Le grand chariot’. I really should try to catch up with his later stuff. Interesting: the Rivette opinion. That early peak thing is a thing. Who would think that Ridley Scott ever made three fascinating films? ** Lucas, Hey! Awesome, so glad you like Greer’s work. The drops are still just maybe working, I can’t tell yet. I do know what you mean, absolutely, yes. Ugh. Concorde is still blocked off, although they reconfigured the stadiums and stuff. The Opening Ceremony is happening there this evening, I might walk down and take a peek. I’ll give you my poop about Lingua Ignota once I dig in. Thanks for the link! That looks like a great entrance. Do you like Pharmakon? She has a new thing coming out or just out or something. ** Tyler Ookami, Hi, Tyler. Not much going on here either if that’s any consolation. That is a nice wolf boy. It looks like it’s up to $70 bucks now, eek. Ooh, ASP looks super fun based on the peek I just took. I will stream all those vids today. Thanks, pal, yeah, they look and sound ace! Everyone, Check out this super fun looking Japanese band that Tyler Ookami shared yesterday. He described them beautifully as, and here I quote him, ‘a Japanese girl group with a “menhera” (mentally ill or psychotic in a cute or fashionable way) image a digital hardcore influences in the production. The current explanation for their name is “Anti Society Punks”, but they initially said it was “Anal Sex Penis” but walked it back. Their videos are pretty colorful.’ Here are two to start with: ‘Make a Move’ and ‘Black Nails’. Thank you kindly, sir! ** Berkstresser, Hello there. Well, my pleasure in German, whatever that would entail. Tom Jones still performs? Those days were definitely the icing on the cake of these days. Thanks! Take care yourself! ** Måns BT, Hi, which I guess probably also translates to ‘hey’ (?) as well. I live across the street from the Paris IKEA and that word ‘hej’ is printed about a hundred times all over its facade. Such a friendly place. Well, gosh, I will fall to my knees in prayer and stay like that until I get your hopefully very positive ramen review. Gröna Lund is very nice, a little, yes, petite, but solid. Liseberg is top level, an excellent park. This might be perverse of me, but I actually kind of loved Astrid Lindgrens Värld even though there are no rides there at all. I thought it was very weird and trippy. I was interviewed for a magazine called Buffalo Zine that apparently comes out twice a year. I’ve never read it, but friends tell me it’s trending. That is a tough decision there. Well, it wouldn’t be tough for me because I hate parties and don’t like drinking alcohol and avoid parties like the plague. But I understand their virtues. Hm, the party will only happen once. ‘Jeanne Dielmann’ is eternal. So maybe the party? xo, me. ** jay, It’s weird because I actually think my work is quite funny or by intention at least. Um, I’m reading in NYC in early October, but I don’t think you’re in NYC? Oh, I haven’t actually seen that many of the Australian horror movies, but my horror movie buff friends talk about the ‘new Australian horror’ phenom. Some of the films they’ve mentioned are ‘Late Night with the Devil’, ‘Sissy’, ‘You’ll Never Find Me’, others, and of course ‘The Babadook’. ** Poecilia, Sneaking in a hi to you. ** Harper, It’s possible you did ask about a GL post and that I was consequently inspired to make one. Yeah, the journals/notebooks are great. There does seem to be revival of interest in her work. I think maybe there was a retrospective of her stuff in the US recently, so that might be why? Good luck with the new room. I have to struggle to write anything long. I have, like, the opposite problem. ** Steve, Houellbecq meets Iggy Pop (trailer). I doubt I would too. Hence my averted eyes. No, I think you just said you were going to write about it. Everyone, Steve has reviewed the restored/re-released Holly Woodlawn 1972 film vehicle SCARECROW IN A GARDEN OF CUCUMBERS here. ** Justin D, Howdy, Justin. I’m so happy you like her work. I’m on the fence about seeing ‘Kinds of Kindness’. Maybe less on the fence now. Thanks for the fill-in. My ear might be improving, that’s the hope, hard to tell or be sure yet, thanks, pal. ** Cletus, Hi, Cletus! How are you? My total and great pleasure on the GL post. ** Don Waters, Right, checking the scores. When I first moved over here I used to check to see how the Dodgers were doing, but then I/they faded out. I know about Enchanted Forest, park nerd that I am. I think it’s been in a post here at some point. I remember it looking pretty. We have two big amusement parks near Paris, and it’s still not nearly enough. Still floaty? Is there anything, like, pleasurable about that? Can you exploit it for your writing for instance? ** Uday, Agreed about aesthetic masochism. And aesthetic sadism, I suppose. Is your roommate pleasurable to be around at least? I do like Akhmatova, but I do feel like the translations of her work are very clunky, giving her the benefit of the doubt. ** Oscar 🌀, Oh, yes, your composition idea is much better, or I mean more fun, or I mean more fun for the likes of me and perhaps likes of you. In honor of today’s post, I’m going to spend the day burning various of my belongings and learning how to send smoke signals with the express and only purpose of causing you to casually glance up into the Scottish sky then pulling out your little smoke signal decoding book and going, ‘Aww, you shouldn’t have’. Let’s hope the skies between us remain windless and cooperative. Or maybe we should make a voodoo doll that resembles a certain producer of ours and stick hundreds of pins in it. The 9th, tick, tick … Your friend has very cool punk rock earrings. On one ear, at least. Thank you for the intro! ** PL, Hey. Glad you liked it/her. Goblins in bottles: that’s new to me. Sounds exciting. Awesome about the cover/Pitchfork thing. I usually look at Pitchfork just after I finish the p.s to wind down, and now I can do that, see your work, and get phonky at the very same time! I like William Castle. I don’t remember if I’ve seen that one. I did a post about him, if that’s of any use. Here. You have a swell day as well! ** Okay. Fires, lots of them, all kinds of them, that’s your story for today. See you tomorrow.