What happened?
It’s like our experiences from younger days didn’t really transfer into a similar later pattern. We have no real friend in Blue Mountain now who we hang out with. In contrast, our best friend lives in Middletown. The wife’s family lives in Middletown, although we don’t interact with them in a large way. But it’s *people* we know there. We both like our jobs, but we haven’t made any strong or lasting connections through them. The last person I’ve had a strong creative connection to in Blue Mountain has been who I call Michael Won occasionally on this blog, but our relationship basically ended in 2007 when he left town while his wife attended graduate school in a larger place to the east. I worked with another person closely for 5 years after that, but we made no real connections. Not really. He had… issues as it turned out, and I was not the only one to perceive them by any means. I became increasingly isolated from the rest of my co-workers because of a lack of link. The relationship with my bosses has degenerated from a high in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. I have less support for what I would consider the main part of my job. I am on my way out (to retirement). We have made no creative links to the community outside of work either.
But, like I said, on the other hand I’m very pleased how my self generating creativity is turning out: the blog, the collages, the audiovisual synchs which I haven’t talked about yet. Isolation has helped in that respect. For now.
Yes, audiovisual synchs. Actually about any internet friends I’ve gained over the years comes from a community started by the Synchronicity Arkive in the late 90’s devoted to the hobby of audiovisual synching. Many or perhaps most gain entrance to the field through the landmark urban legend “Dark Side of the Rainbow”, and that’s certainly how I became aligned. On the opposite side of this are earlier web communities devoted to more traditional synchronicities, and I here think of the Synchroncity Phenomena yahoo board in particular. A handful of more friends over the years from that wellspring. But all that momentum seems have run its course as well. I have no real communication via email with any “synchers” currently. What’s happened there, at least on the audiovisual synching side, is that I’ve advanced so far beyond the simple one cue synch that I’ve lost touch with my base constituents. But it’s not that — I think *all* those old audivisual synchers and devotees have moved beyond one cue works, but most often into other fields altogether. And admittedly in the last year or 3 my collage producing seems to have become the main creative thrust, overtaking a/v synching.
A/v synching must be seen as a time capsule event for the most part. A/v synching involves copyrighted movies and albums almost exclusively, where rights will be held for many years to come for the most part. Why do them? one might ask. You can’t make any money off of ’em. And the same would go for a considerable chunk of the collages. What *will* be “legal” creativity in my lifetime? Well, the map book I spoke about in the former post. And I think I can bend collages and also related process art (here think extensions of woods happenings in Frank and Herman Parks) toward some kind of quite legal and perhaps sellable art. But it’s not going to be a/v synchs in that category.
Sunklands 