gai ris profile picture

gai ris

...there is an absolute, and that must be in the heart.

About Me


I am the last of my species.

"Avoid contact with all people in whom there is no possibe resonance with what touches you most deeply and toward whom you have obligations of 'kindness', of politeness. There are certain people who end up frequenting and even calling FRIENDS those they denigrate constantly." | Laure (Collette Peignot) | 1937

"There is a time to stop reading, there is a time to STOP trying to WRITE, there is a time to kick the whole bloated sensation of ART out on its whore-ass." | Charles Bukowski

"We must give up trying to know those to whom we are linked by something essential; by this I mean we must greet them in the relation with the unknown in which they greet us as well, in our estrangement." | Maurice Blanchot, Friendship

My Interests

Solitude. Cats. Playing the banjo. Cats playing the banjo. Ukulele. Moana and Melancholia. Stone circles and landscape temples. The Daily Coyote. Choya plum wine. Cherry blossom. Visits to Prague and Ljubljana. Wolves and their ecology. Dormancy. Acéphale. Thresholds. Dérives. Lacanian psychoanalysis. The Fire of the Mind. Tarot readings. Magick. Lucid dreaming. Erotobotany. Eyes. Clavicles. The nape of the neck. Red-headed strangers. Occasional charms. Secret pacts. Mare's nests. Hare-brained schemes. Abandoned seaside resorts. Dusty old seven inch singles. Santos and Retablos. Religious icons. Dissolution of self. Das Unheimliche. International telephone calls. Jukeboxes. Blue afternoons. Dark angels. Karsts. Baroque architecture. Adriatic ports. American vernacular. Ponderosa pine. Forest floors. Thunderstorms. Serendipity. Psychic research. Haunted houses. Gnosticism. Dogon ghost dances. Magic lanterns. Le rayon vert. Song of the sirens. Beach detritus. Animal skulls. Portmeirion. Topiary mazes. Vodoun. Écriture féminine. Paris. Musee National du Moyen-Age. Postcards. Found objects . Music boxes. Hurdy-gurdys. Margays. Civets. Dragonflies. Glowworms and fireflies. Corvids. Unicorns. Goats. Beehives. Obsidian mirrors. Plant allies. Feeding wild birds. Getting lost. Counting fish. Garden centres. Bento boxes. Kimchi. Wasabi peas. Italian cakes. Melon ice cream. The smell of coriander. Chiles rellenos de queso. Chocolate y chile. Skeins of loveliness. High and low jinks...

I'd like to meet:


The one who is a clearing in the deep forest of my life, the golden sliver of sun peeking through the leaves.

Music:



"... the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly, beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song..." - Nick Tosches, Where Dead Voices Gather.

Currently playing:
"The Excellent Sides Of Swamp Dogg"
Joan As Police Woman - To Survive
CocoRosie - God Has a Voice, She Speaks Through Me
Coil - The New Backwards
"Garden Of Forking Paths" compilation
Bonnie Prince Billy - Easy Does It
Sublime Frequencies - Radio Morocco
Crystal Castles - Courtship Dating

Otherwise I like to play "In The Pines" and "Ramblin' Man" on my banjo and sing. And this year I want to learn "Sea Of Love" on ukulele. And I like to sit in the yard and listen to birdsong and windchimes with my one remaining half-decent ear.

Movies:

Celine And Julie Go Boating | Mouchette | Au Hasard, Balthazar | Last Life In The Universe | Claire Denis | Wong-Kar Wai | Pedro Almodovar | Maya Deren | Kenneth Anger | Harry Smith | Rainer Werner Fassbinder +++ Berlin Alexanderplatz | Nicolas Roeg | Jean-Pierre Melville | Les Enfants Terribles | La Belle Et La Bête | Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid | Head-On | Magnolia | Punch Drunk Love | Twin Peaks : Fire Walk With Me | The Parallax View | The Colour Of Pomegranates | Masculin Feminin | Prenom Carmen | Badlands | Under The Skin | Night Of The Hunter | Night Of The Demon | The Haunting | Chopper | The Last Seduction | Morvern Callar | The Truth About Cats And Dogs | The Green Ray | The Conversation | Thieves Like Us | I Know Where I'm Going | Black Narcissus | Tales Of Ordinary Madness | Jan Svankmajer | Catherine Breillat | Chris Marker | The Marx Brothers | W.C. Fields | Touch Of Evil | The Apartment | The Wizard Of Oz | Broken English | Lie With Me | Old Joy | Joe Versus The Volcano | The Science Of Sleep | 2 Days In Paris | Winged Migration | Grey Gardens | Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus | Tex Avery cartoons | the hand-made short films of Naomi Uman | et cetera...

Television:

I can't remember the last time I turned on the TV (as J.B. once said, "Switch the evil fucking thing off before it switches you off for good!"), it was certainly last year, but in the past I have loved The Sopranos, My Name Is Earl, Six Feet Under (first series), Ideal, I'm With Stupid, Two Pints of Lager, Pulling, Peep Show, Deadwood, Bad Girls, The Book Group, The IT Crowd, The Hits/MTV, The Simpsons, Futurama, classic Tex Avery and Chuck Jones cartoons, Casper The Friendly Ghost, Dastardly And Muttley, Deputy Dawg, Pixie & Dixie, Jacques Lacan's "Television", Berlin Alexanderplatz, Twin Peaks, Father Ted, Bilko, The Rockford Files, Northern Exposure, Homicide : Life On The Streets, Oz, M.A.S.H., The Prisoner, Fawlty Towers, The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin, The Stone Tape, MR James adaptations.

Books:

Georges Bataille - Story of the Eye, Maurice Blanchot, Fernando Pessoa, Paul Bowles, Jane Bowles, Charles Bukowski, Jacques Derrida, Michael Ondaatje, Gaston Bachelard, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean Rhys, Anna Kavan, Thomas Bernhard, Thomas McGuane, Cynthia Ozick, Annie Dillard, José Saramago, Mariarosa Sclauzero - Narcissism and Death, Raul Nunez - The Lonely Hearts Club, Marc Behm - The Eye of the Beholder, Walter Benjamin, William T Vollmann, the science fiction of Philip K Dick and Richard Morgan, Muriel Spark - The Driver's Seat, Graham Greene - The Heart Of The Matter, Marina Warner - Phantasmagoria, Peter Lamborn Wilson - Sacred Drift, the short stories of Bruno Schulz and Katherine Mansfield, Pierre Klossowski, Francis Ponge, Henri Michaux, Lacan, William S Burroughs, Paracelsus, Silva: The Tree In Britain, The Botany of Desire, The Modern Antiqarian, Alan Moore graphic novels (esp. Promethea), arcane religious and magickal texts...et cetera

Heroes:

Jhonn Balance | John Dee | 2D | Laure | Austin Osman Spare | whoever invented cotton candy

My Blog

Callanish

Callanish standing stones, Isle of Lewis, Summer 2006...
Posted by gai ris on Thu, 31 May 2007 03:05:00 PST

wonderful moi

How to make a gairisIngredients:5 parts intelligence3 parts crazyiness5 parts empathyMethod:Blend at a low speed for 30 seconds. Add a little lustfulness if desired!Username:Personality cocktailFrom G...
Posted by gai ris on Wed, 30 May 2007 07:38:00 PST

Dance of the bees

The western honeybee, misnamed Apis mellifera ("honey-carrier") by Linnaeus who mistakenly believed that bees simply cull honey produced by flowers, is probably the most loved of all insects. And as o...
Posted by gai ris on Sat, 26 May 2007 12:51:00 PST

Does anyone else hate? (slight return)

The vastly overated and insufferably smug and in fact not very radical at all Michael Moore?Check out Amy Goodman / Democracy Now instead for real independent, dissenting media.Democracy Now! can be h...
Posted by gai ris on Thu, 24 May 2007 03:10:00 PST

Form Grows Rampant

A review of Sleazy's first substantial post-Coil project, The Threshold HouseBoys Choir, has just been put up on BrainwashedSamples galore!The CD and DVD can be bought here...
Posted by gai ris on Wed, 23 May 2007 03:56:00 PST

ornithology corner

Steller's Jay...
Posted by gai ris on Mon, 21 May 2007 09:11:00 PST

waiting

Waiting,when time is in excessbut time is still short of time,an overabundant lack of time.The time that allows him to waitis lostso that it can better resond to waiting.Waiting that takes place in ti...
Posted by gai ris on Wed, 02 May 2007 08:21:00 PST

Where I'd like to be...part 2

The garden I'd like to rest in this week:Ian Hamilton Finlay's Little Sparta, Pentland Hills, Scotland. "Certain gardens are described as retreats when they really are attacks."Linkmore photographs h...
Posted by gai ris on Mon, 21 May 2007 07:31:00 PST

the language of flowers

Apparantly in his youth Freud developed an adolescent language of flowers, a symbolic language of love and lust and longing, which was influential on his later theory of sexuality. But he transformed ...
Posted by gai ris on Sun, 20 May 2007 12:38:00 PST

Seeing For A Moment

Seeing For A Moment I thought I was growing wings it was a cocoon. I thought, now is the time to step into the fire it was deep water. ...
Posted by gai ris on Sat, 19 May 2007 11:16:00 PST