Watch the full video at Baeblemusic.com

Test

Watch the full video at Baeblemusic.com

back to the future

haven't posted in a bit, but i heard some free thinking performing arts kids may be coming through. so i decided to revive the blog with some of my creative poetry work. enjoy.


this is an exercise in playing with expressions.

my bravery
is the china on display
when the bull walks in

the bush
is chirping and
my hand is empty

i tried to
throw a stone with
my jelly arm
but my sleeve is like the glass
busted.

Meta-Critique

In conclusion, my musings on the more obvious qualities of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks left a little room for expansion; namely the ironic possibilities of the lonely life portrayed in the work. I think the Americana feeling that the piece has taken on in todays Onto-Historical world has led to many parodies and references in pop culture, all of which I could not possibly categorize here. I hit a few.

Also in terms of it's influence on the other arts, i.e. music, I could further explore it's referential points in many other works besides the work of Tom Waits. I wish I could not only experience the painting in person, but experience these musical works live as well, to better understand the virtual feeling and sound-in-time. I could also take an entire analysis to explore and deschiper the various levels of referential meaning in the Tom Waits album, which is something I am considering doing on my own free time to further my analysis of Hopper.

My historical and onto-historical sections, luckily, were only helped by the original explorations of Hopper in class; however, I was also limited by the statements and influences of many other peoples opinions of Ed. Perhaps I would have been better suited picking an artist, or a painting I was not already familiar with to some capacity, to avoid too many pre-existing prejudices or judgments. I tried to bracket them out as necessary, but I may have failed here and there.

Finally, I wish I could be more expansive in my analysis. At the risk of being too long winded in any given section, I made sure to not 'ramble' or go too far; this could be considered a weakness in my overall work. I wanted to be concise and insightful, but in setting out to be concise, might have missed an opportunity to push my exploration. If any point or detail needs elaboration or further discussion, I invite all of you to respond to the post and request such an act. I will be happy to do so.

It has been an incredible experience immersing myself in the work and seeing how it has inspired me to other forms of art, as well as how it has inspired music and culture.

Second Open Viewing

The inherent irony of the painting is that it is the picture of loneliness, while portraying four people trapped together, clearly not alone. The diner is bright and almost an unnatural glow, especially for the late night. Most of Hopper's work would capture this sort of ghostly, melancholy dialogue between the man made world and man's more intangible possessions; emotion and qualities of life. Hoppers onto-historical world introduced the fluorescent lighting that would dominate urban establishments like this one, as well as many other leaps in technology which on a larger scale (bombs and such) wrecked havoc on the world. While Fluorescent light is far from the destructive capabilities of the weapons of horror that Hopper's world gave birth to, in a way, it is part of the urbanization that left so many people in one concentrated place feeling so alone, so dehumanized.



Also, upon closer viewing, the windows on the building in the back corner appear similar to the ones in Early Sunday Morning, showing not only a theme running through Hopper's work of this era, but perhaps a comment on the night versus the morning, the nighthawks versus the empty streets.


Note the brownish, two story building with the green awning and windows. It's a slice out of Early Sunday Morning.







We could easily be glancing out the back windows of the diner, seeing the view of Early Sunday Morning.

Speaking of windows, it is interesting how Hopper treats them like they dilute or distort reality. We can't really see through the two layers of windows to the building behind the couple. Nor can we use the windows to see any reflection of the single man, whose face remains a mystery to the viewer. The shadow on his back is proportionate to the shadow to light ratio of the whole painting, or so I think. Also, one last observation about Hopper's insights into the lonely urban world: the streets are always clean. This seems especially odd, due to the rampant smoking and littering of the early 20th century, not to mention an inefficient department of waste management. What kind of alternative dream-verse of Greenwich Village was Hopper seeing? It certainly was just as lonely as the real thing.

I'm not really sure how to proceed with a performance guide, since it is more for a musical work than a painting, although I would recommend for recreations of Hopper's work to paint in an extremely isolated setting, and to not talk to anyone until the work is done. With that, I will end here and resume with the Meta-Critique.

Onto-Historical World

Hoppers World: Edward Hopper lived through some very turbulent times in American life. He was growing as an artist through both World Wars, atrocities no one in the world could comprehend, and the Great Depression, which no doubt affected American Life in a way that would forever influence the modern art movement in both visual art and literature. The painting was created immeidietly following the attack on Peral Harbor, a truly sobering moment for Americans. In the wake of the first real foreign attack on American soil, the paintings character is true to the feelings of the decade. Hopper's obsession with American loneliness and melancholy was no doubt deeply rooted in these tragic times; urban America of the forties is very well represented in Nighthawks.

His combination of American realism and impressionism is the perfect blend to represent this time period, a combination of a reality and the surreal too intense for a people to handle. Turning to the night, the streets could never be as empty as Hopper portrays, and yet, it seems right to make them so.

A podcast about Hopper and his work, also where I drew many of my references from, can be listened to here.

Today's World: I can understand his movement from the sub-urban life in the Hudson Valley to life in the big city, I experienced a similar move in my own life. Urban life can be very lonely, even in today's world. I visited Greenwich Village, the area of Hopper's influence and the supposed location of the infamous diner. The diner has since been demolished, and the feeling of the neighborhood Hopper inhabited so many years ago has changed dramatically. Walking the streets at night, people flooding in and out of bars cheerfully, I don't see the empty feelings of the 1940's resonating in today's streets of New York.

Hopper's work became infamous in the decades after it's creation, and has been imitated and referenced in countless numbers in popular culture, especially in today's world. TV shows like the Simpson's and That 70's Show have built on this tradition.

Virtual Feeling

The poem I wrote was an attempt to convey my virtual feeling of the piece; the melancholy, the loneliness, and the jealousy of the man sitting by himself. I like the duality of certain things in the painting, the light of the cafe versus the dark of the street, salt and pepper shakers, the single man versus the couple, etc. It's as if Hopper is trying to convey loneliness through a contrast of many different elements. Besides the obvious empty streets and late night setting, this painting is almost two-thirds devoid of people. Loneliness is a given.

The woman is the only thing that bothers me. If Hopper was trying to perceive the (ironic) loneliness of the modern urban landscape, why have a loud, hot girl in the mix of the painting? I think the secondary objective here is jealousy. The single man sees the couple, at whatever varied degree of hapiness they may be enjoying or not enjoying, and is simply jealous of them. The red being so vivid, leads me to belief that the jealousy is intense and saddening at the same time. We can't see the single man's face, but I'd imagine its less neutral than the rest of the bunch; I'm pegging him as the protagonist of the story of the painting. He is the voice in my poem as well. Although it's ultimately the loneliness of an entire city that Hopper is trying to convey, he is the one we identify with as truly lonely in this still shot.

I feel like this is a movie, and several things I read supported this; Hopper liked the cinema. I can see the camera zooming out at the end of the shot, to a slow, dizzy saxophone, trailing off into the fade to black.