* (restored/expanded)

“ABRASION HOLOGRAPHY”
HAND-DRAWN HOLOGRAMS
by William J. Beaty

I’ve stumbled across a technique for drawing holograms directly upon a plastic plate by hand. It sounds impossible, but I’ve been sitting on the livingroom sofa making holographic images of floating polyhedra, words, 3D starfields, opaque objects, etc. No laser, no isolation table, no darkroom, no expensive film plates. This takes nothing more than a compass and some scraps of plexiglas. There’s an interesting story behind this technique, but first, the instructions. (continued)

Watch: the Kate Moss hologram from Alexander McQueen’s show (2:43)

 

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Self-driving hearse will project holograms of the dead

‘Aeternal, the futuristic, high-tech hearse from Imaginactive, a Montreal-based nonprofit purveyor of creative ideas, would be auto-piloted or driven by remote control and could maneuver in tight spots at funeral homes and cemeteries, thanks to wheels that move independently from one another.

‘A projector would display moving images, such as holograms of the dead, while music played on a surround sound system accompanies the visuals.

‘”The Aeternal is made to offer all the simple pleasures someone used to enjoy,” reads a description of the product. “Not only will the body be displayed so that family and friends can see their loved one for the last time, but a part of the soul of that person as well, since the Aeternal can play their favorite music or project holograms of the deceased when they looked at their best.”‘ — Leslie Katz

 

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This Floating 3D Hologram Looks Like it Was Stolen From Tony Stark’s Laboratory

‘During a recent business trip to China, the folks at Big Screen Video, an Australian company that makes giant digital signage, found a brilliant little gadget that appears to replicate the 3D floating holograms Tony Stark uses in his laboratory.

‘What you’re actually seeing is a 3D animation being played back on a handheld fan that uses LED-covered blades to function as a display when the entire thing is spinning. That’s why you’re also seeing those rotating black lines slicing through the animation; the motion of the spinning blades doesn’t quite line up with the shutter of the camera recording this video.’ — Andrew Liszewski

 

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‘Magic’ Modi uses hologram to address dozens of rallies at once

Narendra Modi’s relentless campaign to be India’s next prime minister has been so frenetic he has often appeared, magically, to have addressed several rallies throughout the country at the same time. Today his party officials paid tribute to his pioneering use of hologram technology which has allowed him to do just that – speak live to the world’s largest electorate at rallies in dozens of remote towns all over the country as though he were there in the flesh.

Now Mr Modi plans to use the technology increasingly at his rally appearances to reach five million more voters in the last two weeks of the Indian election campaign. He will appear live, in 3-D, at more than 90 rallies in small towns from Andhra Pradesh in the south, through Bihar in the east, north through Allahabad, his Congress rival Rahul Gandhi’s Amethi constituency and up into the Himalayan foothills at Nainital in Uttarakhand and Bilaspur in Himachal Pradesh.

He has already addressed more than 800 rallies in hologram form where his lifelike performance has been greeted with a mix of awe and disbelief. Many poorly educated voters had stayed behind after rallies to check behind the dais to see if he was really there, officials said. (continued)

 

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Why holograms look so cool in the movies—and so lame in real life.
By Paul Boutin

Ever since I saw a 1-foot-high holographic Carrie Fisher plead, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi,” I’ve been waiting for a 3-D video player to call my own. I’m not talking about fake, View-Master-style 3-D that lets you look at an image from only one angle—you can already get that on a $3,000 laptop. That “360-degree hologram phone” you read about last week? It’s not even a real hologram, just a stereoscope that’s 3-D from left to right, not up and down. Impressive? Sure. A video hologram that lets you check out your subject from front to back and top to bottom? Not even close. (continued)

Watch: Hologram from the NTT DoCoMo R&D; Center, Yokosuka, Japan (0:32)

 

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Artist Joanie Lemercier creates controllable holograms with mist, projectors, and motion capture

‘Artist Joanie Lemercier has spent years working on projections and holograms, and his latest project is the culmination of that life’s work. Lemercier used fine water mist and projectors to create 3D projections that he calls nolograms. He insists they’re not true holograms, but they’re much closer than pretty much anything else.

‘As if a smokey nologram is not cool enough, Lemercier connects his projector to a depth sensors and to turn his projections into a motion-controlled interface. The end result are images he can grow or shrink with his hands and a holographic version of himself made of spooky vapor.’ — Avery Thompson

 

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from Three Dimensional Imagery’s Hologram Production Lab: Building a Holography System

Holography is one of the most significant discoveries humankind has ever made. Its discovery has had such a profound effect on our lives, that the person who discovered the process in 1947, Dr. Dennis Gabor, received the Nobel Prize in 1972. There are many types of holograms and holographic techniques, but this site deals exclusively with display holograms. I highly recommend that you read through the whole website before you start building your holography system and creating holograms. (continued)

Watch: a sample of ‘Sin Episodes,’ a holographic video game (1:37)

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Tupac Hologram Wasn’t a Hologram

‘For those who thought the immaculately-chiseled rendition of Tupac was based on some sort of old footage, more disappointment: Rolling Stone reports the rapper was CGI. But at least it was good good, expensive CGI, “created by the Hollywood special effects studio Digital Domain, who have previously worked on films such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, TRON: Legacy and X-Men: First Class.” Total price? Somewhere between $100,000 and $400,000. And it paid off: other than the weird super-abs, occasional unintentional moonwalking, and the performance’s finale, wherein Tupac vanished in a burst of light, the whole thing was plenty realistic. With all the weed and ecstasy throbbing through Coachella, there were probably a good number of fans who thought they were actually witnessing a reincarnation.

‘But that’s just the image source—how did AV Concepts, the firm behind the display, actually project Pac on stage? It calls him a hologram, but hologram he is not: it’s a fancy reflection technique called “Pepper’s Ghost,” named after a mid-19th century optics researcher John Pepper. Yep! 19th century. The trick is based on the fact that glass is both transparent and reflective, meaning it’s possible, with the right angles, to bounce a picture off of it that appears to be floating in air. But it’s not—it’s just stuck on an expensive screen. Pac’s totally 2D.’ — gizmodo

 

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Bamiyan Laser Project: June 2010
Hiro Yamagata

World famous artist Hiro Yamagata, known for his large-scale holographic works, plans to recreate two towering 1,600-year-old statues in Afghanistan. The statues, Bamiyan Buddhas, were destroyed in 2001 by the former Taliban regime. This caused great local and international outcry, drawing the attention of Yamagata. He plans to recreate the Buddhas by projecting 140 neon pink, green, orange, white and blue laser “statue” images onto the cliffsides where the figures once stood. Each image will be up to 175 feet tall, just like the original statues, and the display width will be four miles. (read more)

Watch: a tour through the home and collection of Korean holographic artist Juyong Lee (9:31)

 

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Japanese Public Broadcasting Envisions 3D Future
Courtney Ostaff and Jason D’Aprile

Japan’s national public broadcasting authority, Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), is pursuing a Super Hi-Vision 3D television. NHK’s research has centered on the integral imaging (II) technique for creating 3D television. This avenue of research was chosen because the 3D image can be viewed without the use of special glasses. In addition, because an actual three-dimensional image is replicated, eyestrain caused by viewing “ghost” images is avoided. (continued)

Watch: the Lexus hologram, new dimensional advertising (1:26)

 

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Metal singer digitally rose from the dead ahead of a full theater and festival tour

‘A hologram of Ronnie James Dio debuted last summer at Germany’s Wacken Open Air Music Festival. This likely won’t be the last time audiences get to witness the technological recreation of one of the greatest singers of all time, as a theater and festival tour is currently being prepped for later this year. According to Eyellusion CEO Jeff Pezzuti, this particular performance of “We Rock” “is now being retired and production is underway on a full show. We are pulling out all the stops to create a live experience that is unlike anything Ronnie’s fans have seen before.”

‘Pezzuti recently told the Talking Metal podcast (via Blabbermouth) that the “over-the-top, mind-blowing experience” will feature representations of Dio from different periods in time. The current model comes from the Dream Evil era, but “for this next tour, we’re going to be somewhere later than that for certain songs and maybe earlier than that for other songs.” He added that fans can expect to hear “We Rock”, “Holy Diver”, and “Rainbow in the Dark” amongst three to four other songs. There will also be duets with Owens and Logan, and there are plans to “bring album covers to life.”’ — Ben Kaye

 

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Japanese scientists have created a new type of hologram that you can actually feel

‘Researchers have built a machine that renders holograms touchable, adding to a growing body of “telehaptic” prototypes released in 2015.

‘The holographic machine is called Haptoclone and was developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo. It consists of two boxes, one containing an object and the other displaying a hologram of that object. If a user puts her hand into the second box to interact with the hologram, she’ll feel it—thanks to ultrasonic radiation pressure emitted onto her hand.

‘The technology is limited for now. It can only emit a “safe” level of ultrasound radiation, meaning that the degree of tactile feedback it can simulate is confined to things like lightly stroking an object. It can’t yet emulate a handshake or a bear-hug, as Motherboard noted.’ — Joon Ian Wong

 

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Did You Know Salvador Dali Once Made a Hologram of Alice Cooper’s Brain?

In early April of 1973, a mind-melding of sorts took place in New York City. Over the course of about two weeks, shock-rocker Alice Cooper and surrealist king Salvador Dali, ate together, drank together, and basked in the glow of each other`s exceptional uniqueness. The latter made a suggestion that went something along the lines of, “I would like to turn you into a work of art. It’s name will be ‘First Cylindric Chromo-Hologram Portrait of Alice Cooper`s Brain.’”

The surrealist then handed Cooper a sculpture of his brain, sculpted out of plaster, with a chocolate eclair running down it`s middle and ants crawling all over it. The painter said, “This is Dali`s version of Alice Cooper`s brain,” to which Cooper replied, “Wow, I never thought I`d ever get this.” And so the first 3-D hologram art work was inspired. The artwork features Cooper, and his ant-covered eclair brain, biting the head off of the Venus De Milo while wearing $2 million worth of diamond tiaras and necklaces.’ — SuperRadNow

 

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Weird hologram “city” appearing in China

‘A floating city seen in the skies of China by thousands of people has sparked claims of another dimension appearing above Earth, with aliens “highly interested” in humans. The apparition was allegedly seen by thousands of people in Yueyang, a city with one population of one million.

‘It is the latest in a series of so-called floating cities seen across the globe, often in China. The emergence of the phenomenon has prompted several theories, including that it was visible because a portal to another dimension was briefly opened.

‘Other theories included that it was a secret government hologram experiment, known by conspiracy theorists as Project Bluebeam – an alleged plot to create a fake second coming to exhort more control over the masses, or even connected to aliens.’ — Jon Austin

 

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THE JONATHAN ROSS HOLOGRAPHY COLLECTION

Begun in 1978, my collection has evolved over the years to incorporate a wide variety of material and may be used as a source of reference by individuals wishing to learn more about holography and the many different ways in which it can be utilised. This diversity of material has characterised the collection as it has developed for, although I have concentrated more in recent years on work by artists, I have also continued to accumulate commercial artifacts and thus have succeeded in creating an archive which illustrates most of the ways in which holography has developed over the two and a half decades in which I have been associated with it. (see and read more)

Watch: Musion Eyeliner System, a new and unique high definition video 3D projection system allowing spectacular freeform 3-dimensional holographic moving images to appear within a live stage setting. (1:30)

 

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Weird Hologram Planet appears on NASA’s Stereo Ahead HI1 Satellite

‘A strange phenomenon appeared on NASA’s Stereo Ahead HI1 satellite, again. Streetcap1 who recorded an object what looks like a holographic display of a planet wonders why does it appear intermittently then not at all and is still waiting to hear a valid explanation for the weird phenomenon.

‘It is interesting to know that a team of theoretical physicists and astrophysicists have provided what researchers believe is the first observational evidence that our universe could be a vast and complex hologram. They have published their findings in the journal Physical Review Letters.

‘So, is it possible that we are living in a holographic universe and this planet-like object is a hologram accidentally exposed by a solar flare?’ — Out of Mind

 

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What is a 7d Hologram?

‘The universe exists in 3D space with time often considered a fourth dimension. The reason that a 7D hologram has so many dimensions is that the hologram is captured from a large number of positions that surround the scene or subject of the hologram.

‘Each position is described in 3D space. Each position captures a variety of viewing directions in 2D space. Two additional parameters are captured for each direction: image intensity and time. If you add these up you get 7 parameters, known as dimensions.

‘A 7D hologram is like having a bunch of photographers surrounding a subject. The position of each photographer is described in 3D. The angle each photographer is pointing the camera is described in 2D. Each camera records light properties and time. The resulting parameters are: 3D position + 2D angle + time + light properties = 7D.’ — John Spacey

 

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Whatever Became of Holography?

A generation ago, hologram exhibitions attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors in major cities around the world, and entrepreneurs confidently forecast applications in art, photography and television.

As holography became more ubiquitous, however, it lost some of its luster for public audiences as well as for professional scientists and engineers. But the technology still makes an impact today, although not with the same punch it had a quarter-century ago. Popular culture celebrates it through science fiction and a steady trickle of news reports about imminent consumer advances—although there are a number of modern instances where semi-transparent images of television announcers and pop stars are mislabeled as holograms, further confusing consumers who don’t understand what holograms are realistically capable of showing. (see and read more)

 

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* Create a Halloween Virtual Hologram Using a TV

* See and buy ‘fine Russian holograms’

* Big Scream TV: Spooktacular creators of 3D special effects

* See and buy animated holograms from XYZ Imaging

* Watch: UFO at Nellis AFB: Test flight of a hologram (0:29)

* The Amateur Holography Society

* Frank DeFreitas’s Holography World

* Wikipedia: Holography

 

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CV01 Hatsune Miku – World is Mine Live in Tokyo, Japan

Bluebeam, Jesus crucifix in the sky.

France: Presidential hopeful Melenchon appears as hologram at rally

Burberry’s holographic runway show in Beijing

Holograms for freedom

Hologram Airplane!!!! Madrid Spain

Mariah Carey holographic concert Poland Cracow making of Christmas TV ad

Japanese Aqua-Hologram

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Lucas, Hi, Lucas. Ah, so you are coming over. Like I said, let me know if you want to meet up. T’would be nice. Uh, oh, about the class, but did the workshop vastly improve the thing? Err, okay, that school does sound a bit, how to put it, unhelpful? ‘Out 1’, lifesaver, cool. My day? Saw friends, coincidentally the Assistant Director of our film who was here on his way home from Cannes, and the set photographer, plus Zac. Pizza and catching up and all of that. The rest of day was pleasantly unremarkable. I am working on the script for the new film. It’s slowish and involves mostly experimenting with ideas so far, but it goes well, I think. So, yeah, was the workshop (and the rest of your day) a lot more than sufferable, I hope? ** Charalampos, It’s a goody. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. Welcome back to your mom! PTv2’s newbie is still cued up but yet inexperienced, but any sec. I agree with you and your friend, even though I’m over here and unqualified. Oh, no, about the class. That so totally sucks! Is there another option? Oh, man, that’s so disappointing. Any chance that you and maybe other people who were in the class might just set up an online workshop on your own? ** Jack Skelley, Party to be Jack. I guess I imagine Bob’s disembodied voice saying ‘Ouch’. I’ll go find your review. You sang ‘The Gnome’ a capella? I know Syd didn’t write it but I’d kill to hear you sing ‘Corporal Clegg’ a cappella. Make it happen. You chose ‘The Mix’?! Wow, that I would not have guessed. Huh. I guess it’ll be interesting to find out if they have further updated the tunes since I would imagine the updates on that LP must sound pretty dated at this point? Quiet evening at home to be Dennis. xo. ** Huckleberry Shelf, Hi, Huckleberry! I Zoomed with Amy Gerstler on Saturday, and I dropped your name, and she said your poem was so far and away the best and most exciting poem in the contest that you winning was a no brainer, and she’s excited to ready more of your poetry, as am I, needless to say. How are you? How’s writing and everything? ** Dominik, Hi!!!! Awesome. My guess is I will probably never quite get to ‘Tarot’. Just a guess. Does your love of yesterday take requests? Love explaining why people who aren’t artists seem so obsessed with having the power to control artists, G. ** Misanthrope, There you are. I was wondering. Sounds like your away time qualifies as a bit of a holiday albeit with irksome interruptions. Right, Memorial Day weekend, I’ve forgotten about that thing. France has what seems like eight or nine of them. I’m ok, hanging in there, doing my Dennis thing(s), ok. xo. ** Bill, Yeah, right, about the Bob book. After8 has been around for a while, but it used to be the book section of an art gallery in Belleville, then it moved into a tiny space in an arcade off Rue Sebastapol, and it’s been in its still modest but roomier current location for about, oh, five years now maybe? You must visit it when you’re here next. Good old SF Cinematheque. It should get some kind of Nobel prize or something. Or at least a MacArthur Grant. ** Steve, I don’t know that film. I don’t think I know his films at all. Obviously, I’ll go knowledge up. Thanks. Oh, I should do a new music day in June. I haven’t done one in a while. Thank you for the nudge. I’ll do that, yes. ** Harper, Hi. Yeah, his books have been so out of print that his poetry was pretty much forgotten in general for ages apart from those of us who knew him and were poet chums of his. I like dazed too, I mean being dazed, and there is a special quality to that daze created by systematic collapse due to an overdose of stress. Have you pried some writing out of yourself with its help yet? I like ‘Deep End’ a lot too. It’s my favorite film of his, I think. I was kind of obsessed with John Moulder-Brown for a while after I first saw it as well. ‘Multiple things at once’: for sure. I always want things I make to be doing multiple things at once, don’t you? ** Bernard Welt, Maestro. I’m happy that I added the necessary ingredient to Paris, gosh. Today I have to figure out what to read at the Bob event since you tagged two of the best candidates. Editing video is fun, no? A Surrealist take on Bob’s poems is a newbie, nice. He’d be … well, he gobbled any form of attention, so he’d be chuffed. Can I have Raging Scallion’s URL, please? ** Sarah, Hi! He got fat and then he made himself get skinny, so I suspect that’s a big part of his deflated look? Enjoy the four free days. I can’t remember when France has their Memorial day(s). I think it was a couple of months ago. I mostly only realise it because the cigarette stores close. I haven’t seen ‘Challengers’, but it’s becoming more and more obvious that I need to. Thanks. Oh, great! About the short story! I’ll go read it when I’m finished up here. Congrats to you and mostly to the wise site! Everyone, Sarah, who is known to the wider world as Sarah Cummins, has a short story newly published online, and this is your chance to discover her fine, fine work. The story’s called ‘Bound in Skin’ and it’s right here. Exciting! I will investigate the site at large, yes. I don’t know Morgan Vogel, but I will figure her out. I’m a person who eats basically the same thing all the time. Mostly because I’m lazy about food preparation. I generally just eat really basic, quick to build vegan stuff. Sandwiches or pasta-based or rice-based. I like eating differently, but I save that for restaurants. I had amazing vegan sushi the other day. And great Ethiopian food too. What about you? Are you a foodie in the traditional sense? ** Cletus, Hi! And his work even inspired you to write! The highest compliment a writer can get. I read the poem quickly because the p.s. necessitates speed, but I’ll revisit it post-p.s., and it seems terrific. Thanks! ** Darby🐶, It’s you. I was about to do the whole, ‘welcome, thank you’ thing that I write to new people. Okay, that other name is 6 feet deep. I could never look at myself while I was talking about myself or about anything, so I feel you. I hope your head is over it now. Sometimes it’s worth a 0. No mess. It was only intriguing. ** Cap’m, I’m going to channel Bob for a second and say, ‘I think I did want a date, now that you mention it.’ What is International Mr. Leather weekend like in the flesh. I’ve read about it. I’ve seen pix. The worst dancers … haha, why is that so hilarious? Because it is. I’m flashing back to those club scenes in ‘Cruising’. ** Oscar 🌀, *smoke signal* Hi, Oscar! Actually, there’s morse code in Zac’s and my new film, but I don’t think anyone who sees the film is going to realise it. There’s a scene where the two main young male characters are in tents set up side by side in the yard of a house at night. One of the characters turns on a flashlight and points the light through the wall of his tent towards/through the wall of the other character’s tent, and he starts using his hand to cover and unleash the light in an organised, flashing pattern. What he’s doing is sending a message in morse code to the other character — ‘Come in here’ — but I can’t imagine anyone watching the film will realise that and decode the message. Well, unless they saw this comment, I guess, haha. Glad you liked Bob’s poem. I really like Charlie Fox’s writing. I love their book ‘This Young Monster’. I met them once, and I thought they were really cool. Thank you for the link! I don’t know that piece. Great! No, the printer is still printing the book, and I haven’t heard about the UK date yet. I think it depends on how quickly the book is finished. I will let you now as soon as I know. Wow, your hope of yesterday is never to be outdone. I’m flabbergasted. Awesome. I’m going to go really minimal and hope you ate strawberry upside down cake for breakfast. The whole cake. ** Okay, let’s see … Right, holography. Today you are humbly requested to put holography somewhere near the center of your thinking process. See you tomorrow.

 

‘Cause for celebration: Bob Flanagan’s tortured, elegant poetry is finally back in print! Alive with carnality, love, abjection, relentless self-exposure and fatalist laughs, these poems are as fresh and stunning as when they were first written. Bob’s work lays bare the eroticism of punishment and the punishing possibilities of the erotic. Every meticulously chosen word between these covers drips with blood, cum and tears.’ — Amy Gerstler

‘Bob Flanagan takes the scalpel of poetry, sectioning the veins of humanity’s plea for every soar and dissolution, replacing liters of blood and its liquid memory with purple wine. We have no chance of escaping the lores and laws of existence, so it would seem; how to put our back into living, exsanguinate phenomenal eternities? Fun To Be Dead is a rhapsodic intubation of love, breathlessness, and despair slid between linen sheets cracked in bleach, wheezing lungs, salted skin, and moonshine light years and centuries ahead. Whistling new tunes of prospect with chapped lips, turning tricks with prose on fleek, as lungs drown in fading time: the dimming duration of cystic fibrosis Flanagan handled with kid gloves and cynical, elegiac resolution. Fun To Be Dead chapters all the luminescent ties and appetites we hold to earth and those we don’t, bleeding humor and sagacity over cold tiled floors in lilac liquid mercury. Which is to say, his otherworldly cosmos, planetary alignments filled with affection and incursion form a brilliant collection of breathy abnegation that charges us with lack and anticipation. Fun To Be Dead is sky and leaves: my newfound amulet.’ — Estelle Hoy

‘Bob Flanagan makes me sick and I love it. Is there a right way to be ill? I dunno. Probably you’re meant to keep quiet or frighten anybody too much, just be a strung-out angel in waiting, please. This is very much fucking not what Bob Flanagan did. He took his wrecked body, his pain, his urges and, yup, his death, everything that he was supposed to keep to himself, and he turned it into work that’s ferociously alive, hilarious, strange. In these poems, he’s singing to you in the back of the ambulance while the dogs prowl outside and ‘the sky glows orange like a match.’ It’s beautiful, it hurts.’ — Charlie Fox

‘I think of Artaud when I read Bob Flanagan’s poetry. Artaud had no choice but to use his madness/sickness to make his art, and the same with Flanagan. To do his poetry/performances, he had to move through his physical pain. Yet he kept his humor and charm throughout the process. On many levels, I think of him and his work as poetry on a Saint level. I don’t have that many heroes in my life, but I know if I follow The Bob, Sainthood is not that far off. — Tosh Berman

‘As an upgraded Culture Wars casts its shadow across the land, a veteran combatant rises from the dead. Conservative-baiting performance artist and ‘supermasochist’ Bob Flanagan emerges in this collection as an extraordinary writer, whose work is suspended between tenderness and violence, gravity and glee, and palpitates with the quintessence of the quick. Cometh the hour, cometh the man: it’s Bob o’clock.’ — Diarmuid Hester

 

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Further

Bob Flanagan @ Wikipedia
Bob Flanagan Poems
Bob Flanagan’s New York Times obituary
Bob Flanagan: Taking It Like a Man
Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist @ Letterboxd
Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose Visiting Hours Interview (1994)
Bob Flanagan; Artist’s Works Explored Pain
Bob Flanagan The Pain Journal
Seven Artists Grapple with Bob Flanagan’s Legacy
RACK TALK
The Bob Flanagan Archive
Bob Flanagan’s Book of Medicine
‘Pain Journal’
Supermasochist: Art & Adoration
Bob Flanagan’s Crip Catholicism, Transgression, and Form in Lived Religion
Solitary Confinement, the 60s and Bob Flanagan
BOB FLANAGAN: METAMORPHOSIS THROUGH MASOCHISM
Disability and BDSM: Bob Flanagan and the case for sexual rights
Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose Collection
Buy ‘Fund to be Dead’

 

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Extras

Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist Trailer

Why? by Bob Flanagan

Cystic Fibrosis Song

Aesthetic Self-Medication: Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose’s Sick Art

 

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from BOB, An Introduction
Jack Skelley

Bob laughs. Then coughs.
—Bob is a comedian. He’s always “on.” Making up songs. Impersonations of Dylan and Bukowski. He is not above the most cringey pun. The worse the better. I go see him at improv workshops. From the audience I shout prompts: “Chickens!… Donut!”
—Bob makes everyone laugh, including himself. The laughs come often but not easy. Bob struggles to repress his own laughter even as he desires—needs—to make me laugh, because every laugh verges on a cough. Brutal bodyquakes that shake the phlegm clogging his lungs and festering with infections.
—The laugh/cough is a bell that tolls. And yet, in the tangled restraints of Bob’s doomed body and dazzling wit, he craves that laugh/cough because his faulty lungs—barreling his skinny chest—can’t push enough oxygen to his tick-tock sick heart, a struggling pump. The laugh/cough memento mori allows precious breaths.
—As I enter Beyond Baroque and hear that cough in the crowd I know Bob is there.
—It’s Bob O’Clock.

*

When Talking Heads’ Remain in Light comes out, Bob points to “Born Under Punches” with its refrain, “All I want is to breathe,” and I recall another line from that song: “I’m so thin.”

*

Laughs, coughs, and sex: Life preservers. Early on, Bob reveals why, since boyhood, masturbation and orgasms have entwined as a pain escape. A good orgasm is a good hurt. Later in “Why” he lists more reasons.

*

I’m the person who brings Bob and Sheree together. The occasion is a 1979 Halloween party thrown by me, Amy Gerstler. The three of us—along with Bob and a handful of others—are the core of Dennis’ “gang” at Beyond Baroque. (Beyond Baroque supporter Alexandra Garrett hosts the event at her Santa Monica Canyon home.)
—Sheree and I are good friends. We had met a few weeks earlier when she and her young son Matt came to see X play a benefit at Beyond Baroque. Now I invite her to the party. She goes as a decapitated Jayne Mansfield. And there’s Bob. He is a zombie in a bloody white dress shirt, chomping a plastic hand.
—The vibe is electric and Bob is lit. Bob sits cross-legged on the living room rug: center stage in a circle of party people. He’s rifling through their wallets and purses, making jokes out of every driver’s license and baby picture. Sheree laughs her head off. It’s love at first laugh.
—Thereafter, for Halloweens to come, Zombie Bob and Jayne Mansfield Sheree memorialize this meeting. They dust off their costumes and reenact it in poems, photos and performances.

*

Memories are zombies. They lurch, they stagger, they just keep coming.

*

The Halloween party holds other auspicious meetings. I also invite high school friend Rick Lawndale. Soon Bob, Rick and I form Planet of Toys, the “folk punk” trio that later evolves into a six-piece rock band. Bob and I are co-songwriters. (Rick and I later formed Lawndale, the psychedelic surf band on punk label SST.)
—We take our name Planet of Toys from one of my poems. This also becomes a song of the same name. Bob and I harmonize the threatened innocence of Bob’s poetry:

Mister Machine will keep the streets clean
Teddy bears will comb your hair
Barbie Dolls will cry for you when nobody else wants to…

Another number, “Fun to be Dead,” becomes our “signature song.”

Problems, problems, everybody’s got ‘em
Not me, not me
I look around from a hole in the ground…

When I wake up on the morning I’m still asleep
Dreaming that the birds in the trees go cheep
Waiting for somebody to knock on my door
But no one’s gonna knock on my door any more

Cause it’s fun to be dead, fun to be dead
Lah la la la la laaaah… UGH!

—That refrain—“Lah la la la la laaaah… UGH!”—the song’s last line—is essence of Bob. A gut-punch of glee. Pangs of dread on a beautiful day. A goofy Liebestod. Bob O’Clock is the time to taste honey-sweet desserts on Death Row.
—“Waiting for somebody,” “everybody’s got ‘em”: Bob’s verses (and verse) are his body, a corpus compressed, scarred, solid.
—In the bodyverse of Bob, poems are kinesthetic wind-up toys that go kablooey. Bold outlines in bruise-purple Crayola. Penal Colony sentences inscribed on skin. Childlike cheer where yearning for love is punished.
—The kid is father to the man. A buoyant boy bobs on the surface of sunny Los Angeles, while the man with a battlefield body drives into dying light sucked daily down its black hole in the ground.
—In “True Confessions” Bob blacks out “in a strange hospital where they poke me with a hundred needles.”
—“It’s real life and it scares us to death,” he says in one of his essential “Slave Sonnets.”

 

____
Book

Sabrina Tarasoff, editor Fun to be Dead: The Poems of Bob Flanagan
Kristina Kite Gallery/Pep Talk

‘“Explosions, fireworks, ka-boom:” Lingering in the intensity of experience, and so inscribed into the eternal, as set to verse here, it only seems possible to introduce the collected poems of Bob Flanagan with a festive salute to the end. The six volumes in this collection court ideas in the undertow of left-on fairy lights following some kind of grand fête. Dimmed images appear in the fragile atmosphere of last night’s memory loss. A crushing, kind comedown. Tinsel shimmers against a marble-heavy heart. Gut-wrenching lines hang still and serpentine in the air, arrested in the formal collapse of what has been celebrated. Balloons weigh as much as the preoccupied mind-shaping, and re-shaping, refrains in the aftermath of things said. What is left behind often amounts to a poetic atmosphere–in this case, assembled from the debris and scatter of the significant other, a poetics of restraint.’ — Sabrina Tarasoff

‘The first complete collection of Bob Flanagan’s poetry, edited by Sabrina Tarasoff and with contributions by Jack Skelley, Sheree Rose, Chiara Moioli, David Trinidad, Dodie Bellamy, and Dennis Cooper.’

Excerpts

The Wedding of Everything

Today looks much like
the rest: simple,
a handy kind of day,
a meat and potatoes day.
The bright buildings of the past
are launched upward
into an unrumpled sky, ordinary
beyond our wildest dreams.
Personality takes off
into the blue. No mail
today: things: everything
groping towards us
like 3-D. Oranges
as orange as crayons.
A moldy piece of bread.
Junk. And the birds
will sing sing sing.
I can almost understand
a day like this.
My troubles seem so puny.
Delicious day, I will eat you up
like a mountain of white cake,
chunk by chunk.
I’ve got new shoe laces.
My feet slip into my shoes
over and over again.
So easy. Everything
pleasing me, sliding down
my throat (those soft
boiled eggs) the way I slide
into this day. CRACK!
That’s what I mean.
CRACK! the way a baseball
smacks a bat. and THUMP,
the way it snuggles into a mitt.
A day is as a day does,
and this day, like the rest,
is leaving, and everything
grows sleepy.
The sun rises to a place
in the sky, and leaves;
and behind it leaves
a blind spot:
the purple sun, blooming,
cut down and tossed like a bouquet.
Congratulations, everything.

 

Slave Sonnet #1

I’ve been a shit and I hate fucking you now
because I love fucking you too much;
what good’s the head of my cock inside you
when my other head, the one with the brains,
keeps thinking how fucked up everything is,
how fucked I am to be fucking you and thinking
these things which take me away from you
when all I want is to be close to you
but fuck you for letting me fuck you now
when all that connects us is this fucking cock
which is as lost inside you as I am, here,
in the dark, fucking you and thinking–fuck,
the wallpaper behind you had a name,
what was it? You called it what? Herringbone?

 

Slave Sonnet #7

I’m an instrument. I’m a clarinet.
Maestro, I’m an oboe if you say so.
An animal if music’s not enough.
Dog on command, shepherd or Chihuahua.
Eat when the dinner bells chime: Ms. Pavlov,
these experiments you’ve unleashed on me
hurt and strip me of everything human;
even dogs live better lives than I do.
Confession: truth is my life’s a picnic.
Here I am, the ant you’re about to squash.
“Ow!”–Make that “Ooo.”–My lips the letter “O.”
I’m a zero; nothing lower than I.
Confine me or crush me–but like magic
each reduction makes me all the more huge.

 

Slave Sonnet #10

The name stamped onto the lock says, “Master.”
But the keys are yours, Mistress. My body,
wrapped in this neat little package, is yours.
Do I dare call myself a present?
I’m the one who’s on the receiving end.
You took me on, taking in my stiff prick
and swelling my head with your compliments,
your complaints, even out and out neglect.
Nothing–when it comes from you–is a gift;
wrapped in your aura of authority
even shit tastes sweet, and the void you leave
leaves me full.

It’s a Christmas whenever you put your foot down,
and the stars I’m seeing must be heaven.

 

Why?

Because it feels good;
because it gives me an erection;
because it makes me come;
because I’m sick;
because there was so much sickness;
because I say fuck the sickness;
because I like the attention;
because I was alone alot;
because I was different;
because kids beat me up on the way to school;
because I was humiliated by nuns;
because of Christ and the crucifixion;
because of Porky Pig in bondage, force-fed by some sinister creep in a black cape;
because of stories of children hung by their wrists, burned on the stove, scalded in tubs;
because of Mutiny on the Bounty;
because of cowboys and Indians;
because of Houdini;
because of my cousin Cliff;
because of the forts we built and the things we did inside them;
because of my genes;
because of my parents;
because of doctors and nurses;
because they tied me to the crib so I wouldn’t hurt myself;
because I had time to think;
because I had time to hold my penis;
because I had awful stomach aches and holding my penis made it feel better;
because I’m a Catholic;
because I still love Lent, and I still love my penis, and in spite of it all I have no guilt;
because my parents said be what you want to be, and this is what I want to be;
because I’m nothing but a big baby and I want to stay that way, and I want a mommy forever, even a mean one, especially a mean one;
because of all the fairy tale witches and the wicked step mother, and the step sisters, and how sexy Cinderella was, smudged with soot, doomed to a life of servitude;
because of Hansel, locked in a witch’s cage until he was fat enough to eat;
because of “O” and how desperately I wanted to be her;
because of my dreams;
because of the games we played;
because I have an active imagination;
because my mother bought me tinker toys;
because hardware stores give me hard-ons;
because of hammers, nails, clothespins, wood, padlocks, pullies, eyebolts, thumbtacks, staple-guns, sewing needles, wooden spoons, fishing tackle, chains, metal rulers, rubber tubing, spatulas, rope, twine, C-clamps, S-hooks, razor blades, scissors, tweezers, knives, push pins, two-by-fours, ping-pong tables, alligator clips, duct tape, broom sticks, bar-b-que skewers, bungie cords, saw horses, soldering irons;
because of tool sheds;
because of garages;
because of basements;
because of dungeons;
because of The Pit and The Pendulum;
because of the Inquisition;
because of the rack;
because of the cross;
because of the Addams Family playroom;
because of Morticia Addams and her black dress with its octopus legs;
because of motherhood;
because of Amazons;
because of the Goddess;
because of the Moon;
because it’s in my nature;
because it’s against nature;
because it’s nasty;
because it’s fun;
because it flies in the face of all that’s normal, whatever that is;
because I’m not normal;
because I used to think that I was part of some vast experiment and that there was this implant in my penis that made me do these things and allowed them, whoever they were, to monitor my activities;
because I had to take my clothes off and lie inside this giant plastic bag so the doctors could collect my sweat;
because once upon a time I had such a high fever my parents had to strip me naked and wrap me in sheets to stop the convulsions;
because my parents loved me even more when I was suffering;
because I was born into a world of suffering;
because surrender is sweet;
because I’m attracted to it;
because I’m addicted to it;
because endorphins in the brain are like a natural kind of heroin;
because I learned to take my medicine;
because I was a big boy for taking it;
because I can take it like a man;
because, as someone once said, he’s got more balls than I do;
because it is an act of courage;
because it does take guts;
because I’m proud of it;
because I can’t climb mountains;
because I’m terrible at sports;
because no pain, no gain;
because spare the rod and spoil the child;

BECAUSE YOU ALWAYS HURT THE ONE YOU LOVE.

 

from The Book of Medicine

A

abdomen From infancy the physiological and emotional core of my existence, taking second place only to the genitals, many years later. From the beginning that’s where the pain was. It was the excuse for missing school. It’s why I couldn’t gain weight. It was the reason I started masturbating. “Don’t do that,” my mother said on one of those sick days, with the pain so bad that only my rubbing against the sheets could soothe it, my entire body thrusting in an effort to throw off the pain. Suddenly there was this thing down there, throbbing, the way moments earlier my stomach had throbbed, but different; this was pure pleasure. And as my penis swelled, the pain of my stomach retreated and felt far away, muffled as if it were buried somewhere deep in the mattress below me. “Don’t do that,” she said. “Only babies do that.”
aberration I was born an odd-ball and have been that way ever since. My poor parents. Not only did I take them by surprise, being two months premature, but from the start there was obviously something wrong. Barely out of their teens when they had me, I’m sure they have had high hopes for this new family of theirs. They had to have envisioned it as a relief from their own horrific and abusive upbringings. What a slap in the face I must have been.
ability I have the ability to do a few things well. I can accept the good with the bad; I can be alone; I can commit to one person for life; I can do impressions of famous people and friends; I can draw and paint; I can endure long hours of bondage; I can establish close friendships; I can find lost objects; I can forgive and forget; I can fuck several times a day, everyday if given the chance; I can get along with most people; I’m good with my tongue; I can hang a fifteen pound weight from my balls; I can make people laugh; I can masturbate all day long if given the chance; I can select unimportant objects to throw or break during outbursts of temper; I can sing and play the guitar; I can spit up cups full of mucus; I can be slapped in the face repeatedly and get a hard-on from it; I can stick myself with needles; I can submit totally to someone I love; I can swallow foul tasting liquid if it’s for my health or if someone I love tells me to do it; I can take a lot of pain, especially from someone I love; I can walk up one, maybe two flights of stairs with only a moderate shortness of breath; I can write. able-bodied Sheree could barely contain her anger and fear at the sight of me in the hospital hooked up to an IV and breathing oxygen through a tube. “What if I wanted us to go to the Himalayas? You can’t go to the Himalayas; you can’t go anywhere with this stuff.”
abracadabra People disappear and there are no magic words to get them back. And the ones who don’t disappear change into something else right before your eyes. SHAZAM! “What the…?” If there had been a secret incantation to conjure up my darkest desires I must have said it in my sleep or mumbled it unknowingly; because here I was, naked and on my knees, a miserable slave, kissing the feet of the cruelest and most demanding Mistress I had ever dreamed of. But what the fuck. Nine months into the relationship she says to me, “I only did those things to please you, but that wasn’t me. I don’t even know what’s me.” POW!

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. I’m among those who have been waiting a very, very long time for the appearance of the book the blog is welcoming today. Bob Flanagan is best known/remembered today as Supermasochist — maybe you’ve even seen Kirby Dick’s documentary of that title about him — but poetry was Bob’s primary artistic vehicle, and his poems are fantastic, and all of his poetry books have been out of print for decades. Hence, the book up there is a boon for everyone. Please give it your time. And if by chance you’re in Paris, Sabrina Tarasoff, Bernard Welt, and I will be reading Bob’s poems and talking about him at After8 on this coming Thursday, 7 pm. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yay for GoDaddy coming to its senses! So great to see you, natch! And I’m glad the posts in-between caught your fancy. Nope, still no ‘Tarot’. I’m being bad or saving myself the trouble, I don’t know which. The parrot was taken back to the park setting where it was rescued and presumably is now having an awesome airborne life with its old chums. Big congrats on the taxes! I wish I could say the same. And thanks to you and love for the cake which I will devour post-haste. Love putting his mouth where his money is, G. ** Nick Toti, Hey, Nick! My biggest pleasure to be of assistance, of course. Thank you! Enjoy shooting the horror. Excited for that! ** A, Ha, I’d put what I find sexy up against that thing he called his boyfriend for years any old day. Oh, shit, about the Hobart thing, but better safe than sorry, etc. You and Elle Nash combining brains and fingertips: nice. I have no assistant. I am my assistant. I’ll tell me to be careful. ** Sarah, Hi, Sarah! Lovely to see you! Glad you liked the unfinished post, and me too, precisely. Hm, well, maybe he did look just a little a kind of like a tiny, deflated Alfred Hitchcock maybe? How are you? What’s going on in general? ** Don Waters, Wow, well, I hope you like them. I suspect they’ll feed you something. My eyes are peeled for the Magnus Mills, you bet. I’m hitting Paris’s best bookstore in a couple of days, so maybe, just maybe I won’t have to pay for postage. Fine day to you, D. ** Cletus Crow, Hey. Thanks, I’m blushing, and the blog would be too if I could figure out to change its background color. ** Nicholas, Ho, ho! I believe the only time I’ve ever used AI is when we were doing the sound mix on our film and the sound mixer used to it to make some background sounds he didn’t have in his storage. But that’s it, I think? Oh, a sentence blurb thing. Okay, I’m in a rush today ‘cos I have a meeting, but I’ll sleep on what it could be, sure. Uh, I saw friends and did my Zoom club thing and wrote some and a mouse got caught in our humane trap and is now living elsewhere and I don’t remember? Food today? I’m having pizza with some friends at my favorite local pizza place, and that’ll probably be my main meal. You? ** _Black_Acrylic, It’s time again! Everyone, _Black_Acrylic’s crucial musical podcast Play Therapy v2.0 is back with its new episode that he characterises thusly: ‘Ben ‘Jack Your Body’ Robinson embarks on a desperate quest infiltrating the strange world of electronic music in an attempt to reunite his family through a patchwork of horror.’ Can you possibly resist that? I think not. Enter here. Man, so sorry to hear about Leeds’ loss, but you sound stoic about it. Here’s to the future always. ** Lucas, Hey, Lucas! My weekend was alright, relaxing enough, I think, thanks. I for one am most curious to hear what the filmmaking class causes in and for you. I’m pretty sure that the Sean Baker Cannes winning film is filmed in a more regular way. I feel exactly as you do about films being so/too ‘intentionally “about” something’. That never works for me. I just see what they’re usually ham-fistedly trying to tell me that I need to see in their film, and it usually just corrupts the film. I guess I like films that are about what they’re about and give viewers as much space as possible to do whatever they want to do with the film imaginatively. I don’t know. Anyway, I’m with you. I like being in cinemas. I guess they have the opposite effect on me or something. I always feel really small and invisible there. It’s strange. But I also think the ‘you must see films in theaters’ thing is just overly romantic, retro thinking. Who cares really: exactly. I hope for the same for your week. Maybe we can give each other luck in that regard. ** PL, Sure. Thank you, I will. You know, I’ve never watched ‘Deathnote’. I just realised that. It’s strange. I’ve seen a lot of gifs related to it. Everyone I know was into ‘Deathnote’ at one point. Okay, I should find out. Cool about the digital pad. You’ll ace it for sure. I think that idea for your short is a great one, of course, because … it just is. Proceed, if you ask me. I’m good enough, thank you. I hope your week has started respectfully. ** Steve, I’ll read a poem or two of Bob’s and probably talk a little about him. After8 is a very small store, and people crowded into it get antsy after too long, so the thing is to keep the event economical. Nice, glad you’re so into your music. I’m piqued. Everyone, Steve has reviewed Vince Staples’ DARK TIMES here. ** Harper, Hi, pal. That sounds lovely: the Arthur Russell event. Nice. I remember the London tube after dark on a weekend, yes, with stiff shoulders. Really hope you get that job. It just sounds so odd, and oddness + the grind of a job sounds like a best case scenario. Money worries are the worries I most worry about having, so major hugs and crossed fingers re: yours, or hopefully not yours. ** Oscar 🌀, Ha, I guess it is a mouthful, that word. I can’t remember the last I spoke it aloud. Gosh, maybe never? My weekend was okay, not a huge deal, just fine, no big whoop or disaster. Ha, no milk in my refrigerator but plenty of other things that I am virtually sure are in their death throes, so if I can transfer that wish onto them, I would be grateful. I’m going to assume that okay. I hope the opera about you that some great composer has been working on for years has a debut performance so controversial that it makes Stravinsky’s first airing of ‘Rite of Spring’ seems like a Mozart recital. ** Okay, Be with Bob Flanagan and his poetry until further notice meaning until at least until I see you again tomorrow.