David Caesar

2011-03-02T14:07:00.000-08:00

Television

Walking through my neighborhood one evening

Past blue television lights that strobe against snow

From the safety of living room windows;

Hockey game on tonight.

Or reruns of a sitcom.

Maybe the news...

Heatless air speeds me on home

And without pause in my stride I glance

Accidentally from the sidewalk;

Glacial drift sits with precarious obediency

Stretching upon curbs and corners

Windswept between half-shovelled driveways

In demanding, uncivilized grace.

http://www.davidcaesar.com/

untitled

2011-03-02T12:47:00.001-08:00

Two hawks, male and female

Way way way up high

Interlocking talons

And spinning in the sky.

www.davidcaesar.com

Gods

2011-03-02T07:49:00.000-08:00

"To invite the gods, ruins our relationship with them but sets history in motion. A life in which the gods are not invited isn't worth living. It will be quieter, but there won't be any stories. And you could suppose that these dangerous invitations were in fact contrived by the gods themselves, because gods get bored with men who have no stories."
-Roberto Calasso
"Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia", 1933

Let us pretend for a moment that the gods are real. And simultaneously, let us also accept the notion that when one says that something is "meant to be", that we're not referring to destiny or of fate or of any god. Instead, lets shoulder the responsibility of deciding in what is (or is not) meant to be. Its up to us. Feel good? Of course, accepting such a responsibility leads to another - that of forcing or wrestling the chosen event into existence. This can take quite a bit of work and may mean lying, begging, bartering and cheating the affair into actuality.
I've let one of these decisions spin around in my mind, and it has taken very tight hold. Its nothing big, really. And its got very little to do with me. To the outsider, it would seem trivial. And that reminds me of an Andrew Wyeth story. When Andrew was a boy, his father,N.C Wyeth, prepared a drapery still life for him to draw. "You see the way this cloth is folded", his father said. "It has never been like this before. It will never be like this again. And that is just as relevant as the Napoleonic War." To the gods, nothing is trivial.

There is an pervading sense that I have unwittingly promised an event to the universe, to the gods. I have made my pledge, my oath, and there is no going back on it. Its not just a frivolous daydream anymore. I have, with unconscious deliberation, told this story to the gods seemingly countless times - they will see a moment wrought exclusively for them and they fully expect it of me now. It seems silly, I know, but I'm terrified of lacking the will or wit to "force the moment to its crisis". On the other hand, the sun is going to rise tomorrow and its not as though we have any choice in the matter.

http://www.davidcaesar.com/

Crows

2011-03-02T07:23:00.000-08:00

I pay close attention to crows. Whenever I hear one share her opinion with the world, often from atop a spruce or a downtown building, I turn my head to look. In which direction is she facing? From which pulpit does she preach and to what audience? The particular sound they make is telling and their vocabulary, while we think of it as audibly finite, will surprise us with its variety if we listen.
Just as their voices can give me chills, so too can their silence. There is a particular area in Guelph in which one can see a large murder of them flying noiselessly overhead on a regular schedule. Together, headed in the same direction, towards a single purpose, pumping the air with the same rhythm. I have seen this cluster head from one location to the distant other four times now and on all occassions it was during the same time of day. Strength in numbers; the hawks don't bother them.
The second time I saw this group, I caught glimpses of the first few trailing across the sky. I stood in one place and began to count. To my friend who I only imagined was beside me I said, "I'll bet there's a hundred of them". I kept counting; score after score of corvidae made its silent presence felt. And the number, to my delight, came to one hundred exactly. I imagined how impressed my (actually absent) companion must have been.
To the crows, their friends and family were as real and just as present as they were. And please, never mind that common wisdom that purports to know that animals are without a sense of self-awareness. Every crow I have heard from every pulpit is saying a number of things and one of those is voiced with absolute clarity: "I am here". We, the pretending omnipotents, walk around outwitted by gravity, muted by the immeasurability of the world and dumbfounded by the fact that we are stuck here without anyone telling us why. If this is awareness, then give me a birds' brain - I suspect that everything would be made perfectly clear if I had one.

This begs a nagging question. When we stare up in envy at a bird in flight, what are we really envious of - the creatures' ability to soar, or the apparent comfort that the creature has with itself and with its place in the world? There is comic truth is a wonderful quote I found by Blaise Pascal: "All the misfortunes of men derive from one single thing , which is their inability to be at ease in a room." Perhaps, however, one needn't a room to discover his unease. We are brought into this world cold and screaming. Few parents would push us from the nest until we're around 17 years of age. Coddled by years of comfort, the notion of stepping into wilder places can be met with trepidation, even outright terror. To which world do we belong? In which do we become comfortable with ouselves?

http://www.davidcaesar.com/

2009-10-04T22:32:00.000-07:00

untitled

Black willow rivers steal a kiss of snow
Through a cold-bone thicket, ice upon treetrunk
No footprints whatsoever,
Not even my own.
Valleys thieve all sense of direction
Where no shadow falls to call a compass;
"You're not meant to know where you're supposed to be
Only where you are."

www.davidcaesar.com

2009-10-04T22:28:00.000-07:00

untitled

Our feet search the ground
Cautiously, like new lovers
And we find our way through a canopy
Of red and white pine.
A coral reef of green is swaying like a storyteller
Drunk in the ocean of his breath.

The sun creeps away with a lazy brushstroke;
An intoxicated violet upon
The canvas of a dying madman
Is stretched across the sky.
We wander almost aimlessly underneath
Trying to get lost.

www.davidcaesar.com

2009-08-19T19:23:00.000-07:00

my WEBSITE is up!:

http://www.davidcaesar.com/

and all the others...

http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Caesar-Art/79690578137?ref=ts

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38503591@N06/

http://www.behance.net/davidcaesar

The Heron

2009-08-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

So thats the way the heron flies:
A winged stick-figure on the rise
And then descending from the skies
To bring a sudden, sad demise
To fish and frogs with google-eyes!
Was God not taken by surprise
To see this thing of lullabys
Devour Her other subjects' lives?
Perhaps the bird can't empathize
With creatures smaller than its size.
Winged stick-figures on the rise,
Thats just the way the heron flies.

untitled

2009-08-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

I had a dream the other night
That we were on a mission
To save the world from losing sight
Of a pre-historic vision.

And although the view was scary,
Full of mystery and danger,
It made the world, collectively,
More wonderful and stranger!

We had a master plan and
Studied every calculation
With which to globally replace
Hum-drum with fascination.

We put the pieces into place
Every stratagem compounded.
The Plan began to then unfold -
The world would be astounded!

Press-releases were dispatched;
The governing left and right
Warned the global populace
To watch their world at night!

We then installed two giant lens'
To the walls of a balloon
That lifted us into the air
And magnified the moon!

The people of the world looked up
Their psyches now admonished.
The night was larger in their minds-
The world could now astonish!

What happens next, I'm not so sure
That's where the story finished.
Perhaps we'd dance beneath the stars
The mundane would be diminished.

I don't bring mention of this dream
For no reason whatsoever.
It did convince the dreamer
That our two brains are pretty clever.

I might suggest one summer night
We travel by balloon,
And as we pass the world below
We'll magnify the moon.

-July 27, 2009
www.davidcaesar.com

The Bridge between Art and Language

2009-05-17T16:51:00.000-07:00

"In the beginning was the image. Then came five millennia dominated by the written word. The iconic symbol is now returning."
- Leonard Shlain, "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess

For better or for worse, I've become obssesed with visual connections between images and written languages. Specifically the western "Indo-European" family of alphabets, which includes everything from English to Latin to Ancinet Greek. In comparing images to one another and identifying those that tend to "stick in one's head", I eventually realized that a common ancestor to these images is the written alphabet. There are like characteristics which are undeniable, such as easily-readable silhouettes, profiles, crisp edges and symmetry. Landscape-proportioned images encourage one's eye to move across the picture from left to right, which we do unconsciously - it is simply how we read.

Aside from this alphabet family, there are several other ancient storytelling mediums - using images - that bear the exact same characteristics. Grecian urns or "Kraters" and Egyptian hieroglyphs are excellent examples. Even stained-glass windows offer similarities. This is a powerful triad - story-image-language - manifested in the unconscious dream world, where realistic imagery is carried by the vehicle of the story.

This can be a touch problematic for the image-maker who will have a notably more difficult time evoking stories than the story teller has evoking images. While the bridge connecting imagery to language is concrete, it is a bridge designed for one-way travel.

Nevertheless, it can be safely argued that most art forms are at their strongest when the role of storytelling is undertaken. As Alberto Manguel stated in his indelible "The City of Words", "Language is our common denominator".