Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Total Chaos Forevermonth: Matthew Zapruder

  
When I think very hard
about my thoughts they seem
to me to be very small horses
attached to invisible reins
attached to facts.

--Matthew Zapruder, "This Handwriting"
from Come on All You Ghosts 



All four hooves leave the ground at once, FACT. Eadweard Muybridge (cry, plain Edwards, cry) proved this in the country of the past, 1878. Sallie Gardner at a Gallop proved it! So if you didn't have a horse in your head you have one now, and if you didn't have a fact in your head you have one now, and the one pulls the other, according to the poem above which is also a fact.

PERSPECTIVE LESSON: a horse has too many parts to fit on a single sheet of paper so you must use "perspective" when you draw one. "Perspective" means just put the horse parts wherever you want, and leave out some of the thighs entirely. It's a marvelous Tool of the Trade!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I choose to believe the erotic horse is wearing weight-lifting gloves, which would explain its beautifully developed body and also why it has emptied the jar of steroid cream the facts are riding on.

wv: sillyawe

Patricia Lockwood said...

Its muscles ARE very defined

I think a bit of centaur-influence got loose in my hand somehow

Valerie Loveland said...

I am reading Zapruder's book The Pajamaist right now. That poem you posted makes me want to check out the other book too.

And wow, I had no idea the horse flip photo had an actual name! I've been calling it "the horse flip photo thing!"

Patricia Lockwood said...

You should definitely check out Come on All You Ghosts, it's terrific

I love that there was a "gallop controversy" that needed to be settled by extraordinary means

Anonymous said...

Ooh, a very trivial coincidence! I went to a Muybridge exhibition at the Tate last week. This one is my favourite.

Patricia Lockwood said...

I'm jealous! I love Eadweard deeply, I like to see leaps in all their stages