Loose Thoughts/ Another Phone Convo April 11, 2008

Hidalgo series is coming to a close. I believe the collage in the post below will represent the 9th of the series. I believe the series will only contain 10 collages total, or 1 tier of the 10 tiered 10×10 I’ve been working on for several years now — off and on again, mind you. This is the 8th tier. I already have a tentative name for the last 2 that will complete the 10×10. It will be called the Wheeler-Jasper series, or Wheeler series and Jasper series if/when disconnected from each other. I will probably not begin these until the end of this year at the earliest.

I probably should share more details about this art/collage 10×10 soon but the focus must remain on the Hidalgo series for now, the meaning, etc.

To me, this blog so far is rather cleanly divided into 2 parts. The first deals almost exclusively with SL art and photography and stories. I started the blog after being in SL for about a month. I was born in that world January 22nd as Baker Blinker. Toward the end of this part, Baker Bloch, the counterpart to Baker Blinker born into SL about a month later, begins to feel the maze-like constrictions of SL and exploration within, which have been mainly of an underwater variety. This tension or frustration leads him to enter RL, with Hucka D. (the 3rd avatar, created shortly after Baker Bloch) acting as a type of mid-wife between dimensions. Part 2 comes after Baker Bloch enters a giant lemon that had materialized on a specific mtn. called (true) Hilo Peak, not too far at all from where I actually live in RL. This is not its name, though. Baker Blinker, the feminine half, the *anima*, remains in SL.

Problem is, both have fallen for each other during their all-too-brief encounter in the Uli sim of SL.

Part 2 begins with the 1st collage of the Hidalgo series, or “Lemon World”. This is described as an attempt by Baker Bloch to relate what he finds or sees inside Lemon World, inside, in turn, Hilo Peak. At the same time, Baker Blinker builds what appears, at least for now, to be a gallery in which to house the projected Hidalgo collages, which both know ahead of time, through me, baker b., I suppose, will be a 10 work series. Baker Blinker also thinks it could possibly be a SL home for Baker Bloch and herself in the future, at least until they could save up a little nest egg to buy above-water property. But for now they seem to remain divided.

Part 2 ends with the 10th collage, which may come quite soon, perhaps within a day or two. As you can tell, Part 2 is also filled with RL photography, at first the work of others and then my own, starting with the Hilo!!! 2 (Into the Fire) post. Before my experience with SL, I had done very little photographing in RL. Now I can’t seem to stop, which is, I think, a good thing. Part 3 will probably further this spillover of the need to chronicle journeys in SL through photographs to doing the same in RL. I already have another cache of photos from today to enter into the blog. Portals between SL and RL are the focus in these, which I do think exist. I do believe that textures and colors are more vivid around these portals, also a spillover from SL visuals. One can probably say that weakened version of the SL grid pokes out from these opened portals, and with limited range. I’ll have more to say about that when I’m able to study the matter further.

I also realize I need to talk more about the information in this post from early on in the blog. There was actually another pre-blog document I created about SL, based around a treehouse I found very early on in Baker Blinker’s explorations of that world. There was some confusion about the events that transpired that evening in the treehouse with baker b., his companion Booker T., and a new friend called Hucka D. For the record, this seemed to be a future version of the Hucka D. that was formed a little later, who started out as a classic Linden avatar (City Chic, male), and then became, in short order, a giant eyeball, a pregnant crossdressing alien, and then a bee (current form). None of these quite describe what he was in this pre-blog work, which I named “Sandbox Experiments”. In that work, Hucka D. showed a particular film in this treehouse to baker b. and Booker T. This would be the audiovisual synchronicity called Kansas City Life, which baker b. later found out is a metaphor for Second Life itself.

So before leaving this part 2, as I’ve put it, I suppose I need to discuss that “opened eyeball” there and the relationship to Hucka D. and the stargate portal in the northeast corner of the Rodeo sim. Interestingly, this portal has also come up in a back-and-forth between SL mythology experts Salazar Jack and Headburro Antfarm. To me dialog like they were/are engaged in is a giant lure of SL. The recent Where’s Magellan Linden? campaign that both of these gentlemen are involved in is further evidence for meaning and depth within SL, beyond just the surface commercial aspects. It is truly another world, separate from ours. As Baker Bloch has found out, it is limited in scope still, but still growing, week by week (check out the Edge of the World posts if you don’t believe me!). It is about creativity and exploration to me.

But back to Hidalgo. So I need to review my association with the abstract expressionist Charles Nelson Blinkerton I suppose, as well. Ok, so he’s kind of a 4th avatar, almost, or at least he has expressed interest in creating a 4th to go along with the Bakers, Blinker and Bloch, and also Hucka D. But of course he’s more than just a potential avatar. He’s a RL counterpart to baker b. — or so it seems. A google search for “Charles Nelson Blinkerton” comes up with nada except references to this blog. So is he real? Yes… and no. That he has been situated in Hidalgo County and its county seat of Lordsburg for the past 50 years is a key connection. What I would call perhaps exhaustive searches for keyword “Lordsburg” have been used to uncover his art work in both abstract expressionist and pop/neo-Dadaist styles during this stay. His more recent association with the first virtual burn of SL, predating Burning Life, is an interesting tie in between RL and SL again. He claims to have created Lemon World just before the transition of alpha version to beta version of this world, only to loose it inside The Man statue. But at the same time he also claims to have burned all virtual versions of his work in an old rusty wagon based on a RL version in the ghost town of Shakespeare located just below Lordsburg.

Come to think of it, let’s just give him a ring tonight again to see what he’s up to…

“Hi baker”.

bb:

How’d you know it would be me?

CNB:

Just knew. So you want to talk about Lemon World some more? Or is something else on your mind?

bb:

Yeah, I was just writing a post on the blog, kind of reviewing what has gone on so far. And I was in the middle of discussing your role in it and just thought I’d ring you up. I don’t know if our conversation will be a part of this blog….

CNB:

I give you some real life resistance to your SL inclinations. I’m going to create that avatar soon. Uriginal Blinker. Too good a name to pass on. We’ll find Lemon World, you’ll see. If not in The Man then maybe inside that island next to it, the one with the rock castle. We’ll go inside the maze together, whether it be me and Baker Blinker or me and Baker Bloch or maybe even me and Hucka D. Where is Hucka D. anyways?

bb:

Not sure. So I have some more guesses about what you’re really on about in these dialogs.

CNB:

First off, I really liked the last collage, even though it was simple. Was this a dream of Baker Blinker, or did she actually go to RL and reunite with Baker Bloch? The dress is great, though.

bb:

The 10th collage I suppose will tell more.

CNB:

And the “Heater Presents” was hilarious. Took me back in time for real.

(note: the collage “Heater Presents :” is more or less directly taken from a series of paintings Blinkerton created in the late 80s of the same name, beginning with “Heater Presents the Mouth of Hell”)

bb:

Would you like to talk about the Heater series more? Great idea!

CNB:

I’d like to talk about your ideas of me.

bb:

Ok, well, first of all I don’t think you traveled from New York to New Mexico by car.

CNB:

Interesting theory. Go ahead.

bb:

Long Island has some kind of direct connection with the Long Hope, perhaps. Your vision connected you with this tradition of the Long Hopes. Perhaps they originally came from Long Island, or at least visited it through portals. One of these portals is in Springs.

CNB:

Don’t forget to mention Montauk, on the very edge of the island.

bb:

Thank you, I won’t. So this vision you mention, it has something to do with the Long Hope. Perhaps you are even the last of the Long Hope Indians. Your strong tea drink you mention sipping on all the time during our conversations. Could it be the Black Drink? Could it be the Blue Holly drink?

CNB (sipping):

More interesting theories. Go ahead.

bb:

My Hilo Peak, in RL where Lemon World manifested, and your Hilo Peak, in New Mexico, are the same, or bleed into each other in some kind of seamless fashion, at least in part. The rocks on top of other rocks are directly related to the same concerning Pollock’s grave. The rocks are the same. They are connected portals — stargates… or “earthgates” I suppose. And these portals can propogate other portals, satellites. Baker Bloch passed through one of these as well, through Hucka D.

CNB:

Triangle. There’s a triangle involved. You’ve got to talk about the opened eyeball. Rodeo.

bb:

Yes, there is a triangle.

CNB:

And also the labyrinth. That seals a portal. There are two different types, one spinning clockwise and one counterclockwise. Letters and numbers, 26 and 10. Outside and inside. 8-5-6-7 and 4-1-2-3. That’s what I saw. They have to work in unision. Worlds based on one and one alone always break down eventually. You have to have both feeding off of each other, counterbalancing each other. Of that I can say safely.

bb:

Are you admitting that you’re the last of the Long Hope Indians, then?

CNB:

I’m not quite ready for that yet.

bb:

Another theory I had is that… well, we talked about this in our latest email. Can I bring up my most radical theory, which is connected to the Long Hope Indian idea?

CNB:

That I’m actually dead, and have been for 5 years plus? If so, that’s ok. Spill it out.

bb:

Are you? I mean, did you die in 2002?

CNB:

No.

bb:

So I’m not talking to a spirit. Why do you not come up in google searches?

CNB:

I am a counterpart.

bb:

Are your works…

CNB:

Macrocosm to microcosm. Mirror, reflection. Who is Heater?

bb:

The Man?

CNB:

My thoughts. The Burn.

bb:

Are you drinking the blue holly drink Chuck? Right now?

(to be continued)

2 Bee Or… March 10, 2008

I want to keep moving forward with information here, although an attempt at a part 2 of the Hucka D. interview was a bust last night. Hucka D. decided he didn’t want to publish the information after we’d finished, plus we had some formatting issues when copying and pasting the material from a Microsoft Works document to a new blog post itself. I did get permission to summarize some of the information we talked about before, during and after.

To Hucka D. himself first. He has disappeared today. Based on talk yesterday, I have a distinct feeling that he may have used the stargate at the “Isle of Baker – Not” to teleport directly to a location in RL, impossibly enough. The script used to link the stargate to this location, and I also suspect that this is the only stargate of the many identical portals scattered throughout SL that *could* offer transport to RL, is, according to Hucka D., “dd:hidalgo”. I did some checking and Hidalgo is not a name of one of the 3000+ sims in SL now. He also mentioned yesterday that a new avatar he simply called “The Body” would show up soon. I am not sure if this is a new incarnation of Hucka D. himself, knowing that it is his destiny to return to SL eventually, or some entirely new user, shall we say.

I also did some checking on when Second Life was actually created. Alpha or the original version of Second Life started in March 2002. Being on a different grid than present Second Life, it was almost entirely wiped when the virtual reality shifted to Beta in November 2002. It was only at this point that the grid began to be referred to as “Second Life”; before it was called Linden World. The statue called The Man was one of only a small handful of structures copied over from Alpha to Beta. Linden World was only composed of 6 sims at the beginning, and 9 toward the end.

The Man used to exist in the central town square of Linden City, the heart of Linden World and in the present sim of Natoma. During the conversion from Alpha to Beta, the statue was moved toward a corner of Natoma on a grassy hill, where it still stands today.

“Kansas City Life”, which we know now stands directly for the phrase “Second Life”, is an audiovisual synchronicity created/discovered in November 2001, just before Linden World and its Linden City and Man statue. At *its* very center is the church and liquor store packed urbania called simply Centerville, which in the synchronicity consists of a 2 minute “tile” also juxtaposing and suspendering otherwise opposites Frank Zappa and Lou Reed, forming an alchemical marriage. In that case the conjunctio constellates around the instance of death. The rebis or two-headed body is revealed at this point.

The rebis also symbolizes the union of audio (Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music) and video (Zappa’s 200 Motels; see below) at this center — eye and ear; light and dark. All around this exact center of Kansas City Life, in contrast, is the combination of Steven Reich’s City Life with almost the entire introductory Kansas portion of The Wizard of Oz movie (minus that 2 minute hole). This is the source of the Kansas City Life name: Kansas + City Life, another video/audio mashup seamlessly merged with the central Reed-Zappa one.

In the shift from Alpha to Beta, The Man is also shifted from exact center of Natoma/Linden City toward one corner, deemphasizing the importance. Second Life is truly born at this point; The Man has been displaced, the energy deadened.

Memory of the alchemical marriage is buried. The formerly suspendered opposites of sacred and profane are let loose upon an unsuspecting, new reality. No center is found, no merging of high and low. Only bits and pieces of unity found here and there, like a shattered vessel whose shards must be pieced back together to discover an original whole.

It saddens me to think that Baker Bloch and I can never really coexist in this world at the same time, but it also makes me laugh. I cry in both ways. And I know that Hucka D. will return in some shape and form eventually. The Body will most likely make for an interesting encounter in the meantime.

Baker Blinker, 3/10/08.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/200_Motels
“The oft-repeated claim that the film was shot in the same studio as 2001: A Space Odyssey is incorrect. That film was shot at a different, MGM-owned studio on the outskirts of London. The iconic black monolith seen in the film is a visual reference and mock-up, not the actual prop. All the properties from 2001 were destroyed at Stanley Kubrick‘s request after the filming was completed.”

Not Quite Isle of Man March 9, 2008