Hello. I'm skimming the surface of THE MORPH FACTOR Surface today.
Very soon --this weekend-- a Food Saver will be mine! I'm linking to a review of the Cadillac of the Food Saver line (the reviewer's comparison) partly because I have committed to the product and partly because the PoDos deserve it (I have been influenced by L'Oréal to think of this brand when I think about worth and entitlement and overextended spending: I'm worth it!) --so smack dab (not the best way to apply lipstick, but if you happen to be driving under the influence of needing to look good when you arrive at your destination or when the fender bender happens, then smack dab is the protocol); smack dab, as I was saying, on the surface of the middle of L'Oreal influence, the brand gets a(nother) mention right here: PoDo and Tine D.A.D.A. central give a nod to L'or-we-all know who, leaders in cosmetic transformation.
(It's no secret, if you see me, that I do like, because I wear it daily, lipstick despite the competing truths of lipstick --click here too --but no mascara, no pressed powder, no foundation other than some built-in basic color [by Melanin] that matched well Cover Girl's tawny, and matched it even better when the built-in basic was sun-adjusted (approaching CG's toasted almond) --my hair would redden, as if just to match well, that one time, an 80's Chrysler LeBaron whose hood I sat on near a southern California beach on our way (me and my husband) to San Luis Obispo. What great surfaces those were, reflective surfaces giving back to me images that please when I remember them —oh the joys of tawny pleasure, mornings that cracked pink-streaked tawny dawn except for the one we drove through dangerously, in love with the mink stole fog slinking down mountains heading for my shoulders.
(--Let me assure you that the dolled-up [consult the album cover] Beyoncé did not get in this club on purpose, but, as I say, I have been affected; I remember that Fox reality show The Swan dedicated to body improvement, beautification of the reflection as seen in the eyes seeing someone, the beauty of possible intimacy enhanced, maybe even saved --we have to want to get close to ourselves as manifested in every type of mirror, every type of regurgitative feedback, the series of mirrors angled so that what stands before it disappears; we have to be willing for involvements in interfaces and connections, all of which begin on surfaces, and extend from outer surfaces to inner surfaces as they become revealed. We have to outfit ourselves in receptiveness to interaction, some of which may be cruel, may be collisions, may be mergers, may be fashionable/unfashionable.
But, excuses aside, Beyoncé is here, and for a moment, Tine D.A.D.A. Club appears on its surface to be a Beyoncé fan club. I have never met her, but I once feared [too strong considering our nonexistent relationship --just as Oprah isn't really my girl even though when one of the publishers of my poetry sued another publisher of my poetry over three poems in dispute because of revisions for which I was served a subpoena and ordered to bring to court all versions of the poems in question, versions I promptly set about creating and had ready when the Wall Street Journal reporter came to my home and interviewed me, only a little of the L'Oréal Colour Riche #860 spice-tone lipstick that is still my favorite on the surface of my front teeth like beet residue;
well; after that interview and the fuel of the story also making The New York Daily News, I was heading to the Oprah show either just before or just after the court date when it was going to be determined at which point, legally, a revision became a new poem --something I needed to know and would have had plenty of time to reflect on in jail --I was hoping; I was holding my breath-- for revising poems --oh the joy of doing time for tampering with rhymes! --that's why Beyoncé's here, because the publishers settled out of court, and I missed all those lucrative opportunities that would have put me on different maps whose purpose is to assist with an understanding of specified surfaces on specified scales, sometimes cross sections to provide access to different angles and perspectives of surfaces; for instance, slices of the thinly sliced body in a Chicago museum exhibit, the surface of each slice magnified and enhancing what those surfaces say more forcefully when magnified, sayings that can be read better for the surface having apparently been increased --extended capacity to perceive, and extension of what is available for perception
--which includes, because part of these surfaces touch, a magnification that happens in the recording studio where in the amplification of Beyoncé's voice, her breathing is also amplified, so she sometimes sounds like what I think of as asthmatic between notes and breaths involving lungs that I believe to be the color, at least on their surface, of L'Oréal Colour Riche #860 spice-tone lipstick--] yes; I've feared that Beyoncé could have asthma, so could find herself gasping for oxygen while on The Oxygen Network. Please note that I did not say that Beyoncé has asthma; I am not starting a rumor. But if she does have asthma, I've backdoored myself into a feedback loop (and I claim to not like roller coasters ever since a ride on Cedar Point'sBlue Streak, now the amusement park's oldest coaster, a woodie in operation since 1964. I bruised my lungs hollering up a blue streak on that ride on my honeymoon; there are still marks on my husband's arm that also try to prove that that arm was played like a flute). The point is, with all that breathing so audible in Beyoncé's music despite the volume of the instrumentation, it seemed reasonable to me that her lungs were being bruised --turning Colour Riche #860, the color of fairly fresh leftovers from necessary and unnecessary acts of predation, the color of gloss.)
(--the preceding offers some evidence of what's happened to the quality of [my] dreaming--)
Here's a very colorful video from You Tube that explores artistic transformation through the revision of the surface of a female animated face --the video amplifies the DD to PoDo movement, which the DD to PoDo movement can seem to echo for following the video which does offer paths (maps) of transformation:
It's true that my work on DDs (Discarded Dolls) is makeover work.
It's true that this work will take place on the surface, is cosmetic even when implying superficiality as well as beautification, something that is hardly trivial, the beautifying of the spirit for instance, beautifying of social interaction; a more beautiful relationship with the planet might mean a relationship of more sustained balance. A state of grace to unite, maybe even dominate, existing states.
I used to, but I no longer try to steer students away from the surface. I was damaged for many years in my efforts to dodge the surface, attempts to bypass the surface and go straight for depth. When I was a graduate teaching assistant in New Hampshire, I remember attending a faculty meeting on the teaching of freshman composition in which the presenter pointed out, on the surface of the blackboard (let me interject right here while I'm still on the surface of the blackboard, that the photographs of John Chervinsky explore some of the pleasurable complexity and pleasurable deception of surfaces, including surfaces of blackboards); the presenter pointed out, on the surface of the blackboard, that in educators' crusade to eliminate vagueness, the word black was a red flag indicating the presence of vagueness, easily eradicated by substituting, for instance (the best example of the presentation), irreversible damage for black wherever it appears (in student writing in particular).
This link to To Eliminate Vagueness by Thylias Moss might seem on the surface to lead to the poem instead of to a restricted access online journal archive --I mention this to clear up any vagueness of the connection. The poem is also part of Pyramid of Bone by Thylias Moss (a different link).
The substitution of irreversible damage for black wherever it appears is a makeover of the landscape, for, quoting the poem's first stanza that follows instructions to substitute irreversible damage for black wherever it appears, black is:
In the red-legged locust's black raids upon midwest soybeans, in their illicit transmission of tapeworms and parasites to quail, turkeys, and guinea fowl, in all the black calendar days that are supposed to indicate the ordinary.
Interactions generally happen at surfaces. Surfaces offer locations and opportunities for the range of connection, the range of interaction (including trespass). Magnification can reveal details of surface that can associate even smooth surface with complexity, irregularity, surprise, meaning, unevenness, a range of textures whose details are less predictable than [a pure-gloss long-last] slick [of L'Oreal Kissproof Invincible lipstick]. Magnification can reveal the presence of universes on surfaces. Hordes of bacteria that threaten to outnumber the stars that perhaps cannot be reached in human lifetimes, but the bacteria are with us, on us, inhabit many locations including the surface of skin which includes whatever may reside on scalps. It's best to consider yourself colonized. Oh the pleasure of grossology! On the Surface of Things by Felice Frankel offers amplified (with a scanning electron microscope --ahem: I hope it's obvious what I want for Christmas) images of common and uncommon surfaces, accessible and usually inaccessible surfaces, images that are sometimes aesthetically breathtaking and linked to visual patterns repeated throughout existence on many, many scales, a repetition that invites and demands metaphor as a means of recognizing and navigating the links. I am happy to build PoDo bridges.
There is another interface that L'Oreal is exploring, some of the surface of Science connecting with some of the surface of Art, resulting in the L'Oréal Art and Science of Color Prize offered by the L'Oréal Art and Science Foundation. At the link, the 2006 winning work can be seen, and comments from the applications of the scientists and artists may be read. This year, however, is the last year of the Foundation's activity; I do not know why. Cycles of demise and fortification, of stability and instability are indications that systems are working; signs of activity are signs of health and hope, signs that a system can and does change, that whatever situation prevails in this moment will not prevail in every moment or at every scale (no matter how much a utopian preference might want the moment to be unchanging and finished growing). The Foundation slips through tines of the Limited Fork, and this blogged acknowledgment (that comes just in time) of the Foundation is some of what sticks to the tines, some of the residue.
By the way, I was in a small discount store once where generic and sample lipsticks about the length of fake fingernails worth paying for instead of growing natural ones were sold by the pound. I started to buy a pound of lipstick to participate in and encourage what I wanted badly to be some refreshing oddity, but I opted for a pound of chocolate instead, choosing from: Nest Lee, Nest Hearse, Nest Em in Gem, and reveling in transformation.
Thanks for reading.
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