We Are Analog Creatures (Part 5 of 5)

The following is an email and attachment sent from Liza to the group on 30 November 2015.

go away
to the sacred
cathedrals of attention
go now
in stillness and silence
to recharge your
soul

You know,
despair can be the
engine of intimacy
grow grateful for the
complications
embrace the only life
you have
from idealization to
actualization

And at last remember
we are analog creatures

We Are Analog Creatures (Part 4 of 5)

The following is an email and attachment sent from Liza to the group on 30 November 2015.

close the door
on the vicious
institutions
be too aware
that they have
tried to train
the artist
the children
the musician
the living
the dead
the mind
the mind.
both me and you
to live at
the speed of light
A pace
determined by
the kinetic strivings of
multidimensional machinery

and when
it seems like time
accelerates. And we've lost
the the meaning of
community
and
"aboriginal sensible
muchness"

run away
turn from Delusional
perceptions from the
profane temporarily
abandon the ambient
noise of information
the constant hum of
the digital age distraction

We Are Analog Creatures (Part 3 of 5)

The following is an email and attachment sent from Liza to the group on 30 November 2015.

it is
sitting still
in those places
that have moved me
as one vast moving
canvas. moving down
from the mountain
toward the speed
of life and

it is
the people I
encounter And that
I cherish
I trust, I value
associate them
and, in fact,
the whole of you
with everything in
the offline world
more beautiful than
everything in that
overstimulating world
of information
machines
of forced oblivion

We Are Analog Creatures (Part 2 of 5)

The following is an email and attachment sent from Liza to the group on 30 November 2015.

I suppose
the intellect
can't begin to do
the heart or the spirit
a wondrous
justice
Oh well.

But really,
I hope not
through the mind
but through my heart
the things I can't explain
eventually
make sense

and listen
I believe God
is capable of making
sense of it
all of using
it all to
wonderfully
create something

In other words,
Everything

the invisible one
I find most often
in silence and looking
after
other people
In the face of stillness

We Are Analog Creatures (Part 1 of 5)

The following is an email and attachment sent from Liza to the group on 30 November 2015.

Monday greetings to old friends and new,

Excuse my absence over these past couple of months. I've been leisurely absorbing your messages, all the while jotting down questions, notes, ideas, complete sentences, sentence fragments, and all the word streams in between into a palm-sized scratch-pad. I'm hoping to upload it your way(s) after class this evening.

In the meantime, here's a cut-up poem I created during a Dadaist exercise I explored with my students last week.  The words were cut at random from the pages of our poorly written textbook, Vol. 8 of The Believer, and a printed transcript of an interview Krista Tippett conducted with Pico Iyer for her podcast On Being. Though unintentional, as I look over the completed poem now, it thematically encapsulates the unifying message of the scrawled pages I soon will send. A prologue for you, from one analog creature to the next.

I hope each of your Thanksgivings were saturated with love, beauty, bliss, and gratitude. I'm endlessly thankful for the abundance of blessings that surround my existence in this world, one of which is your continual communication with one another and with me.  Your collective words, and your separate selves, are immeasurably powerful and moving, admired and appreciated.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Inspired and humbled, as ever,

Liza

A Growing Gratitude for Crosses

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 26 November 2015.

The Crucifixion by Andrea Mategna

Some thoughts on Thanksgiving, also having finished transcribing Liza's What the Lord Hath Made Crooked letters:

I could enumerate so many blessings—worldly things—I've received in this life. That said, the most transformative perspective or schema I've experienced has been a growing gratitude for crosses:

for crookedness and constraints
for suffering and setback
for perplexity, sickness, and sorrow
for being passed over for honors,
for not even being in the running
for being hindered, hobbled, and hampered in the pursuit of accolades, ambitions, and accomplishments

Why is any of this a blessing? As the prayer goes,

Pray for us Mary, mother of sorrows, that we will crucify our pride with Christ on the Cross.

For me, the biggest shift has been having children. I started to realize that these sweet messengers of God's love were simultaneously scourges and sources of setback and suffering. But without scourging, I disappear into myself. Without the way of the cross, I don't look outward from an inner sense of my own importance.

Camus's Sisyphus doesn't attain consciousness until he embraces the full weight of his fate, absurd though it may seem. And yet, my fate is even more embraceable because it is eminently lovable. Marriage, too, that most ecstatic of human unions, has hidden within it a cross. Christ imbues all his sacraments and life generally with his paschal powers. But most especially suffering. Even all our joys and accomplishments have a cross hidden within them.

These moments and opportunities and honors and laurels that pass me by—usually because I am paralytic or pariah—these are blessings too. Because as Christians, we are all waiting on Christ, keeping our wicks trimmed through suffering.

The striving and struggle, when Christ crests the hilltop of Golgotha, when he stretches out his arms to the universe he created. In that strangest of all moments in our strange, singular religion we discover the unsearchable greatness of God

his terrible deeds
his glorious majesty
his wondrous works
his abundant goodness
his great kindness

It is at this moment when Christ himself, according to G.K. Chesterton, "seemed for an instant to be an atheist."

Pray for us sinners, for a grace that overflows the cup of suffering.

Farthington's Voicemail: chilean way of thinking about art

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience.

11/20/15 4:49 PM 3 months ago (910-541-3466)

So I think I'm interested in this I need we away is that 10 verse engineered, and that are this is one of the maybe the main ask the trip to him first so is that you know there is no insurance day the ality and then bases in a petition off and everything chilean way of thinking about art is that the the our defense that actually comes first the and and that the reality hallows. Alright the hybrid reality falls, and you know there's been some instances the system or example what I'm doing right now. It's recording a message on to presents, and see if it's there isn't enough itself, but we've got a lot of interesting things that God be here just checking in God help me Eric night. I think next time you got that I that whole idea we got is is what the which was Justin. It's transcription was something that I said I have no idea what I said originally, but the Google voice transcription sad is is what being and so that is sent speak of them kind of the central Mantra Central slogan of knology. Is is what's being? And so that seems to be a pretty interesting idea and and I'm I'm seeing this by having to get on the phone like this is personally because I haven't had any sort of time to philly right to the extent that I thank you and of like to and I feel bad about that but that's one of the aspects of this project is that some of the more interesting things have come out of really intent based on. Reality something other than reality reality in terms of other sounds coming out of my mouth right now, but they're being misunderstood and then we'll stories are being based on those misunderstanding seems to be seems to me to be a nother. Manifestation of this not on

Farthington's Voicemail: through April 1st processed

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience.

 11/20/15 4:44 PM 3 months ago (910-541-3466)

Hey, so we say that this is one step beyond love lily it's variance. You know maybe the the the Madman the the person is Insane was the prophet of this coming arrow where we are the image of the symbol or the sign would become more real than reality It's Ralph and that the reality which day. So that's the world and let's show Lazarus junior fine since so and then it's it's I mean potentially. Even more just tripping when something. Get out that really shouldn't exist. Cakes for and I'm reminded of the whole creepypasta Slenderman Phenomenon where by you know someone kind of makes this off makes it up, and then I'll just you know it and then kind of through April 1st processed. That that Artist becomes reality and maybe even maybe even a greater kind of reality Tell you know and and I think this is I'm feeling ideal this place and I think a lot of people feel this bye. Just driving around right now and being a flag at half past seems like every single day flag fan, and you we get into wondering. What is the flag at half-mast? And ever since 9:05. I think thank you x x I have finance class started flying at half past all the time or you know fairly often where you don't even know what it is that we just point help of points does flag buying it have passed actually drive whatever the cast your teams and so the black find a half mast and knows why it was. You know lowered. But you know it creates if you pastor free. And so I think that one of the things is dramatize Bye Joe Lazarus junior Confronting his clone Joseph flat surface the 3rd.