There is no doubt we all had one,
waist deep as we are in the evidence of diaries,
home movies and strange names in old address books,
not to mention Architectue and Geology,
stone clocks that measure the deeper past.
And we have anecdotes, warped beyond recognition,
and a scar on the chin from a fall,
but nothing to compare with those few vivid moments
which are vivid for no reason at all-
a face at a children's party, or just a blue truck,
moments that have no role in any story,
worthless to a biographer, but mysterious
and rivaling the colors of the present.
Remembering them is like reading a poem
that begins by carrying us, zombie-like,
down basement stairs as if to leave us in the dark
feeling the air for a light cord,
but when a little metaphor begins to grow
with such detail that it becomes a place,
a lake, for instance, cold and pine-bordered,
which we could dive into and feel nothing,
or a sunny white room where we could live
without ever having to be alive.
(A poem by Billy Collins. This was posted outside David's office door.)
5 comments:
I am not the person from Sweden, however, I googled David's name to understand the tradegy of this past week, and your blog came up. Thank you for your postings.
David left a diary on line. He was born in 1970 in Riverside California. He studied film, video and new media at the Massachusetts College of Art, (BFA 1997). In 1999, his "Here and Now" project was commissioned by New Radio and Performing Arts with funds from National Endowment for the Arts. In 2000, Crawford's "Light of Speed" project was a finalist for the SFMOMA Webby Prize for Excellence in On Line Art. In 2003, his "Stop Motion Studies" project received an Artport Gate Page Commission from the Whitney Museum of American Art and an Award of Distinction in the Net Vision Category at the Pix Arts Electronica. (www.stopmotionstudies.net).
David received his M.S. from Chalmers University of Technology and his Ph.D. from Goteborg University in Sweden, awarded three weeks ago. He had teaching experience at Pratt Institute, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago. His most recent publication is "The Implication of Movement: From Bergson to Bohm," in New Realities: Being Syncretic. I had never met David. He was my child's teacher at Flagler this semester. She was inspired by his kindness, his intellect, and his future vision of media art and the internet. Something must have gone terribly wrong this week. He will be missed by those he inspired in his lifetime.
Thanks for posting these things. David was my thesis adviser for my MA here in Sweden. We talked a lot together and had similar intuitions about things. My thesis was about Bohm, whom he was also familiar with.
He was a great guy to talk to and had a really bizarre sense of humour that I appreciated, as well as his speaking style which was as if there was too much in his head to say. It would often seem like, when speaking, he could not do much then try to articulate these thoughts as best he could; his eyes were always all over the place.
In retrospect he did seem troubled in some way, in the sense his emotions always seemed out of reach. But we all have troubles and it's usually impossible to see something like this coming.
It's a big loss for me as I had hoped to see him in the future and continue our talks. That is impossible now.
I hope he understood how important he was for his students. Everybody over here liked him and really appreciated him and his teaching. He listened and read so carefully, and tried his hardest to understand what we were doing. This is something so rare in arts education. Someone who could listen, think, and respond constructively in the most respectful way.
It is a poem by the great Billy Collins, btw.
Here is information about David's work. The website Turbulence commissioned and spotlighted many of his works. You can view them if you have the programs required.
Here and Now 1998
National Velvet 2000
Dance to the Radio 2002
Stop Motion Studies - Tokyo 2003
Algorithmic Montage 2: A walk with David Bohm 2007
Best wishes and Peace
There is a lovely memorial website for David at Wilsontimes.com
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