a short(and slightly disorganised) newsletter this week amidst a busy week for me. So in lieu of regular planned updates, a bit of spring cleaning - five quick notes from the spring.
anseo: a reflection from county clare
a new favourite book
a fun classic album
an update on last week’s mystery!
a note on upcoming newsletters
I spent the first weekend of May with friends out on the west coast of Ireland. I took mornings outside in fresh air listening to the birds(one day we successfully rescued a bird that got trapped in our sunroom!) and stargazed at night, the skies clear and unpolluted. During our stay we saw a really cool rock(the 5-6,000ish year old neolithic dolmen Poulnabrone), learned to love the big factory we could see out beyond the fields behind our rented house, watched the cows, and got to see the Atlantic ocean and beautiful landscapes everywhere we went. It was wonderful to take this time away from the city, to have these experiences, but most of all to be surrounded by comfortable, genuine community in a way that I haven’t felt in a really long time!
My favourite book this spring
I recently read Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Dispossessed”, an incredible novel about society on a distant planet and its utopian socialist lunar colony that really effectively uses its science fiction elements and a sense of alienation to engage with and confront sociopolitical norms and structures from our own world. This is a book I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since I read it, and there is so much to explore and make sense of in its story, characters, and rich universe, all of which deal with relationships and conflict, labour, science and academia, justice, capitalism, communism, socialism, and other themes in really fascinating ways. From the text’s fictional philosophy:
“For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.”
Songs I can’t stop listening to
I’ve had the 1971 Marvin Gaye record “What’s Going On?” on repeat for a few weeks now. I had heard most of these songs growing up, but I only recently listened to the entire album as a single unit, and I’ve developed a newfound love for it. I find only now listening to classic songs like the titular track(“What’s Going On?”) that I realise how interesting, varied, and deeply political the messages of this album are, and the way it balances discussion of real world issues from police violence to environmental crises with lush instrumentals and great rhythms.
In “What’s Happening, Brother?” Gaye struggles to reconcile the weight of dark news headlines, economic instability, and war, while reconnecting with community and searching for lightness in a troubled world, a feeling that feels incredibly familiar today.
War is hell, when will it end? When will people start getting together again?
My favourite track is definitely “Mercy Mercy Me(The Ecology)”, where Gaye’s gentle voice really shines alongside a piano and percussion backing as he mourns the effects of pollution and climate change(“poison is the wind that blows”, “fish full of mercury”) already prevalent in 1971- “things ain’t what they used to be”.
This album has such a lovely quality of both nostalgia and presence, a mellow, groovy sound, and plenty to say about the world. And really, what else can we say, sometimes, than what Gaye has already perfectly asked in this album:
what’s going on?? what’s happening???
Updates on last week’s Palaeoart mystery!
So, last week in “On Paleoart”,3I talked about my recent fascination with paleontological illustrations, and in particular my exploration of the work of Nobu Tamura, who frequently uses a unique figure for scale in his images, which after a lot of searching, I discovered was actually… an image of Catherine Zeta-Jones?
At the end of that investigation, I had only been able to find one singular post on his blog identifying the figure, but since then I’ve found further references elsewhere on the internet, which has finally brought me to the origin of the image! It turns out that CZJ for scale is not just a quirk of Tamura’s illustrations, but is something of an inside joke among the paleoart community. Here is a blog post from another artist, Matt Martyniuk, from 2010, where he discusses recent trends in the for-scale images being used in the community.4 In this post, he talks about the introduction of CZJ as a somewhat controversial inside joke, as well as his own contribution of the waving guy I mentioned in my own findings last week, but who he calls “The Pioneer Dork”. Thanks to this post, I now know the origins of waving guy - his silhouette comes from a plaque that was designed for the Pioneer 10 Spacecraft back in 1972 by Linda Salzman Sagan.5 And, I had a new lead on the CZJ mystery - the first ever use of the image, and the discussion around it on the talk page on Wikipedia, which goes back to June 2007. While at the time, the conversation was dismissive of the new trend(and honestly, pretty misogynistic in how they talk about the scale figures, CZJ especially), but I can now confirm the origins of this palaeoart icon, and in spite of the odds, CZJ for scale is still slaying in new paleoart all these years later!
And soon,
This newsletter might be taking a hiatus for a few weeks(although it is also entirely possible that you’ll get a new one next week as usual, we’ll see! I really don’t know!) as I am recovering from surgery. Thanks for your patience, and for being a cloudtopia reader. It absolutely means the world <3
until we meet again,
isobel
Anseo by Denise Chaila = a perfect song for irish road trips
This is a joke for absolutely no one but I think it’s funny
Matt Martyniuk, “Dinogoss: Trendsetting.” April 2 2010
Yes, that Sagan! Linda and her husband Carl collaborated on aspects of the design for the Pioneer Plaque.