Twelve photos representing seven dogs and one Great Lake. The past few years, whenever someone’s dog is in the water, I ask if I can take underwater pictures of it. Sometimes they work out, sometimes they don’t. Here’s the best ones, including three dogs of winter.
Stanislaw Lem was born in 1921 in Lwow, Poland which is now Lviv, Ukraine. He died in 2006 in Krakow, Poland.
He was a Jew who survived the Holocaust, which in Poland was bracketed by two Soviet invasions. He went on to become one of the greatest science fiction writers in the world. His best-known work (in America) is the novella “Solaris,” which became a 2002 film directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring George Clooney. Lem sold more than 40 million books worldwide.
J.G. Ballard was born in 1930 to English parents living in Shanghai. He died in London in 2009.
I directed this debut video for Duluth singer/songwriter King Garbage, aka Eric Lester. The song is “A Garbage Journey” from his EP Raccoon Heart.
William S. Burroughs was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1914. He died in Lawrence, Kansas in 1997.
My friend Erin Tope (now Sola) and I collaborated on these pictures in the French River a few years ago. From the first they suggested characters and supernatural narratives, which I initially put to a series of four wordless short videos set to music. That sparked years of subsequent imagining about who these ghosts are. Words have now been joined to pictures to form the final iteration of the project. In the absence of an actual physical publisher, I have posted them at their own site where I consider it a free 16-page e-book. I post them here as well for your enjoyment — although you may want to leave the light on.
“Bar Fight” is a Duluth-centric science fiction vignette in the style of William S. Burroughs. It reads like a hard-boiled noir tale of a private eye tailing a crooked cop to the bad part of town, ending in a scene of shocking violence — except the private eye is an interdimensional traveler in a space suit, the crooked cop is the god Osiris (now a beat cop for Jehovah), and the bad part of town is a bar in Limbo (modeled after the Pizza Luce bar). I performed this through a megaphone while speaking very quietly because it gives the feel of a distant transmission. I recorded this a couple years ago late at night, but abandoned it because I thought it was silly and I was a mess. Now I’ve viewed it again and it is making me laugh, so I’m posting it. There is a gap of a few seconds in the middle as I scroll my page down. This is the first video release on our podcast, which you can see if you click through but it’s just me reading at a table. The video has a surreal shuttering effect which was unintended but I like it. This story originally ran in the Transistor.
I read, and re-read, the same few authors. I find them impossible to put down. Here are my favorites, the biggest influences on my own writing — and why.
Jorge Luis Borges was born in Argentina in 1899.
In my years of recording every moment in the lake (and the rivers and streams), I have encountered many fish. Here are some highlights.
Top 20 list of my Lake Superior Aquaman videos, with commentary, from a billion years of posting at Perfect Duluth Day:
#1.) Official video for the Low song “Gentle.” 2015. My one paying video gig and crowning achievement. Low saw Lake Superior Aquaman footage I posted here and requested I fit it to this song. The imagery is of the collapsed column of Uncle Harvey’s Mausoleum/The Icehouse in Duluth’s outer harbor off the Lakewalk.
My whole life was organized around going out for drinks. The party’s over.
The Duluth art and music scene seems preserved in amber. I can see it in my mind’s eye from every angle, but I can’t touch it.
Has the virus infected time?
I was days away from participating in a group art show in Duluth Coffee Company and its Roasteria taproom. The Facebook event page was hours from launching. All the art is on the walls. I left a hammer there I was going to go back for, just before the stay-at-home orders unfolded. It’s probably right where I left it, timelessly suspended as if let go by an astronaut in orbit.
The Embassy art-church had just opened, promising untold events, unseen sights, and unheard sounds. It reached as if for the hand of God in the Sistine Chapel — a frozen gesture.
My favorite captures from a billion years of posting at Perfect Duluth Day. Follow me on Facebook and Instagram.
Reconstructed by the Richardson Bros. from records at the St. Louis County Historical Society
Full text below.
“The Haunted Groom” is a supernatural adventure story set largely in the Duluth bar scene. It explores PTSD, addiction, abusive relationships, and the coronavirus lockdown. Full story below.
Part 1: I Married a Ghost. Part 2: Trapdoor to Hell. Part 3: The Demonizer.
