http://www.artmediacontent.com michael marisi ornstein | art media content Thu, 10 May 2012 01:53:57 +0000 http://www.artmediacontent.com en http://artmediacontent.com/hand-painted-radio-imagined-realities http://artmediacontent.com/following/artmediacontent.com/hand-painted-radio-imagined-realities Thu, 10 May 2012 01:53:57 +0000 michael marisi ornstein | art media content 3159323 Hand Painted Radio | Imagined Realities A collection of interrelated stories, set to music and painted by Michael Marisi Ornstein ________ written in the stars Before there was any sense of loss or neglect, there was a hint of loving in a way that was too deep and bright to cope with. It's about losing hold on something to live for and not being able to find it again. About what happens to a well meaning fear-driven runaway when blind fate is asked to take the reins. music: ken rubenstein ________ bride love is a vessel you vessel of mine love is a vessel you vessel of mine fill me with sincerity leave me die love is a vessel you vessel of mine listen to heartbeats until hearts explode listen to raindrops breaking hard on the road love is a raindrop you vessel of mine love is a heartbreak you vessel of mine fill me with deep red and pump me like blood love is a young man gone drowned in a flood love is a vessel my vessel of mine love is a vessel you vessel of mine love is my dinner cold there on the plate love is my dinner cold on the plate music: ken rubenstein ________ ivy Traveling through Shonyville, Maryland. I stopped into an old department store where they still had a luncheonette counter in full functionality. I sat down at the counter and ordered a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, just for the hell of it. I looked down the counter and this woman caught my eye. She was dressed beautifully in perfect period style, like 1947, as if she were caught in time, like stuck in a photograph. We struck up a conversation and I told her I was traveling cross country, collecting stories on my tape recorder. She invited me for berry pie, said she had a story for me. Many years ago, Ivy told me she received a letter from an old love who was sent overseas during World War II. She's kept the letter folded in a cloth ever since the day it was delivered to her. She handed me the letter and she sat down in the chair with her hands on her lap. She closed her eyes and nodded and I took that as my signal to start reading the letter. When I was finished reading the letter, a glass vase fell off the shelf behind me and crashed to the floor into a million pieces. I pretty near jumped out of my clothes, but Ivy didn't even flinch. She didn't open her eyes either. She just sat there with her eyes closed and her hands clasped on her lap. After several minutes of wondering what I should do, I gently folded the letter, put it on the table, and I left. February 21, 1945 Ivy Baby, I miss you baby, miss you so very much, I love you, baby, I love you so very much. I wrote a Valentine poem to you. Sorry it's late. I have been awful busy and I can't say how. Well, here it is. I ain't got nothin but you got me I ain't got nothin but you got me We got each other, ain't that some thing We got us, and that's a heartbeat Us is you and me, and that's a truth Tellin you a story about a true thing A lover thing, a love bird song Holding hands and kissing Catching lightning bugs And what not on Crescent Lake Catfish swimming Swishing in the water below the trees Let it be me and I'll let it be you Glance at me once and I'll blow through the roof I'll wear your smile, give you a wedding ring I'm walking with you, baby. Holding hands and smelling the summer trees. Walking through the clicity-clack. Naming stars and making babies. It's loud here and I'm scared, but not too scared, cause I'm thinking of your berry pie. The night is lit up like daytime and the daytime is darker than any nighttime I ever seen. But, I'm here with good pals, and we safe, cause we are United States Marines. They can't touch me, I am a American Marine Soldier. I wish you could dream me out of here and home tonight, baby, just for a minute or two. You stay safe and be careful crossing the street, because people drive crazy sometimes. Smile every chance you get and keep watching the trains. You will see me stepping off looking sharp as a broke legged dog, some day soon. Your Lovin Loverboy, Lester Parks Montford Point Marines 28 First Lieutenant, Cannon Company, 366th Infantry Regiment 92nd Infantry Division ________ seatime You sail through my mind like an endless summer train. 

I remember driving through dark streets, with cold air, swimming in cold air, with enough of a beard to brush your cheek.

 I remember feeling sick as autumn turned cold, when the leaves cracked under my feet, when the hard layer of snow couldn't support my weight.

 I remember running so fast I was afraid I wouldn't be able to stop. 

I remember sleeping hard all alone under the sand of all age and when you'd appear it was not out of the rubble and you would appear. 

I remember never leaving your side. Thought I heard you calling my name just now, it startled me. 

I remember you each time my eyes close, it never fails. So what if I dream of walking places with you in dreams, of whispers tattooed on angel's wings.

 I've found no place that is home, no place but you. 

I’d like to say I’ll stay, but as soon as I do, I know I’ll leave again, so I won’t say nothing. I'll tattoo you on my heart. On my heart. music: BIĞØTE ________ mindless Mindless, loveless, corroded Blankless, faultless, on fire Burning back up the narrow Left footfalls on the pavement Rich sleepless on cotton Blood torches over desert Random wishes for hire Dream soundless toward hollow Drink empty the bottle Sleep never the sailor Rambling over the darkness Lay on down, curly black Sleep never the sailor Dream only of one love She watches from above Damn straight if the silence Blue silence exploded Blood torches on desert Can't count on the weather Tears fill all the creases No lips can remember No pillow can surrender No words can summon No vision can recapture No taste can charge full Lips grind you forever Man, she exploded Inside the gray meadow The horses scream moonlight Through Arabian years lost Your footfalls surround them Deep into the mud go Dark traces in mud go Absolute fearless you step go Never to look back go Not to glance back behind go All ahead asleep soundless Don't mind weather changing Or fever bones breaking Or light of day quaking Rain fills all the quarries The boots are still walking Over stones children throwing The time is still passing All following you All time is just passing Dragging, following you Clattering and dragging Forever I'm still following you music: amelodic ________ sailor's dream Deck of aces Peck of places Lead worried men to heaven Place your hips Jake my lips To send this worried man to heaven Dance the bugle Do your floorshow Giggles heard by all of heaven Bars of wood Beer on tap Drinking my worried eyes to heaven Thought I had All I needed I lost the keys to enter heaven So I came back home And I saw my girl And promptly I did enter heaven. music: michael ornstein ________ river I went to the river to try and find some cool shady tree to sit under, cause I'd been riding all morning, up and down the street on my new red bike my brother bought me, and I was all sweaty. Well, I just found myself at the river. I had a real empty feeling when I saw the police pull my brother away from that man he was beating up on. The man was pretty well beat up by the time the police got there. His briefcase was opened up, and there were papers all over the street, just getting blown around by the breeze. And the man's suit was all ripped up. It was the kind of suit my brother called a "tissue suit", cause every time my brother bought one, they always ripped so easy. But this man looked to me like he worked real hard to look good, worked real hard to get that suit and that briefcase, and it didn't matter if the suit was a tissue suit or a suit worth a million dollars, he looked to me like he worked real hard for it, anyhow. See, my brother was a Marine, and a boxer, a boxing Marine, and his hands were all broken up, like his nose, four times it was broken, his hands too, all callous they were, with no knuckles, and big, he had the biggest hands i've ever seen, before or since, he stood exactly six foot two inches tall, and weighed a lot, I always thought about what he'd weigh as much as, like this: he weighed as much as a big old armchair, or a motorcycle, or an anvil, or a big, mean looking bull...my brother weighed as much as a dump truck. He was solid muscle, not an inch of fat on him. And his face was lumpy, like wet clay plopped onto wet clay. Especially his ears and his nose, and his eyes were wild, like two big bumble bees caught inside a couple of shot glasses, his eyes were wild. And gray. After the Marines, he went all over fighting wherever he could, he was a journeyman, he'd fight for any amount of money, wherever he could find a fight, and he always went for the body, never the head, he'd work on the body, crack a rib or two, then work on that spot, work on the organs, on the lungs, he knew how to kill someone with just one well-placed punch. Once, he proved it to me. He drove me into this section of town where there were lots of drunken hobo men, and he found one that was all alone, and he stood him up and hit him. Only once, real sharp and sudden, real quick, the man never saw it coming, it was like my brother's arm just twitched or something, and the man's body just tensed all up, stiffened up, then fell to the ground like a wet towel falling off the shower rod. My brother bent down and lifted the man's head by his hair, to show me what he'd done. It seems that he knocked the man's nose straight up into his brain, killing him instantly. The "bone" part of his nose. Then my brother said, "do you believe me now?" and I tried to talk, tried to say "yes", but it came out like "yaok" or something like that, and he laughed and messed up my hair and picked me up and took me for cheese steaks with everything on them. Everybody in the cheese steak place knew his name, but nobody looked him in the eye. Anyway, this man came to the door in the morning, wearing his suit, carrying his briefcase, and I stopped my bike. My brother answered the door, and the man handed him a piece of paper, and my brother read it for awhile, cause he reads real slow, and all of a sudden, the man seemed to fly up in the air, cause my brother got him with a real good uppercut to the lower belly, and then another, and the man wouldn't let go of the briefcase, even though he was being tossed around my front lawn by my brother, the mean old bull, tossing him into the street, right in front of me and my bike, and sounds coming from this man's body, sounds like popping sounds, the air sounds, and cracking sounds, and little baby crying sounds, real high pitched sounds, then my brother stomped down on the man's briefcase hand, crushing the hand and kicking the briefcase away, into the street, and that's when all the papers started to fly around, my bull brother started to rip the man's suit clean off his body, like they do with a deer's hide, it looked like he was skinning him alive, and the man fell to the ground, just like the hobo man, except this man was bleeding more than the hobo man. He was still moving around, so my bother picked him up, and yelled into his face, he showed his teeth and growled, like a wild dog, right into the man's face, he did it for fun, I know that cause he stopped for a second and smiled to me, and winked, and I tried to wink back at him, but I think I shook my head back and forth, real quick. And he laughed and just started beating again. By this time, people were coming outside to watch, and they were yelling and crowding around, and I had to get off my bike to see what was going on, and that's when the police came from all over the place, from all different directions, and it took five of them hanging on him, swinging off him, falling down, trying to get him onto the ground, with him just laughing all the while, talking to the briefcase man, yelling "you still want my house?!, you still want my house?!" and laughing, and then he, all of a sudden, he got real quiet and just stopped, the bumble bees flew away and his eyes shut down and his mouth fell open and had tears running down, popping out all over his face. He just froze up and then he went limp. The only thing holding him up were the muscles in his legs and instinct to "stand, stay standing, no matter what", like he always said, but he was far away by that point, it didn't matter. He went somewhere nobody was gonna ever find him again. The police cuffed him up and they all walked in slow motion to one of the police cars. He got inside, and the car drove away. I ran up to where the man was lying and watched the police trying to help him, cause there was no ambulance or nothing coming yet. Nobody was saying anything, they were just trying to cover him up, but there was nothing to cover him up with, cause his clothes were torn to shreds and soaking wet, and they didn't have those plastic gloves or nothing. There was nothing I could do, so I didn't say anything to anybody, I just got on my bike and headed for the river, cause . . . When I saw that man's nose, I knew nothing in the world was coming to save him ... Or me ... Or my brother ... Ever again. I mean. Not ever again. music: pedruz ________ angel And where is she at And why isn't she here Who was she anyway She came and went so quick So quick, like an angel I wish I was in an angel head I wish I had the time for angels But... Ain't it just like an angel To show up at a time like this Too many tricks It seems like somebody up there Is playing with the two of us Too many mean tricks I wish I had my head I wish I was sleeping in a solid place bed With my own head I wish on an angel Could be she was a test Could be she was a real, real angel Could be Ain't it just like an angel To show up at a time like this Well she gave me a nod With her little angel head And motioned me Softly, to her angel bed Ain't it just like an angel To show up at a time like this Where is she at And why ain't she here Who was she anyway She came and went so quick So quick, like an angel. music: ken rubenstein ________ catfish One night my cousin Ben fixed his car and made us all get dressed up to take a ride in it. It was Uncle Simm and ben and me. Ben's car was riding smooth, but he forgot to put gasoline into it, so we had to stop over Hr. Horace's pumps. The collar of my shirt was scratching my neck up something awful and on top of that, Mr. Horace had to go and hit me on the back of my nine year old head with a red painted baseball bat. That's how come I can’t move my right arm. It don't make sense, but somehow when he hit me on the head, my arm went numb, all the way down my neck, around my shoulder, and down my arm. Mr. Horace didn't have no reason to do nothing like that. He always seemed to me to be a kindhearted man. He used to give me sodas for free when I didn't even ask for them. Must've been something on his mind that night, cause he was my friend. They say he wasn't right in the head and that I shouldn't talk to him, but I always went and talked to him anyhow, sometimes for hours at a time. I spent most of my life with him as a matter of fact. Helped him pump his gas for the cars coming by, he taught me how. Taught me how to shoot dice, too, he taught me how to smoke reefer, and he taught me how to catch catfish. How to cook em, too, along with a whole lot of other things he taught me how to cook. And from what he told me, I found my trade. Mr. Horace taught me how to work myself through life. Mr. Horace, he spent most of the time he was in the army in the stockade, story goes. And I use the word "story" that when he was overseas, he charged the enemy all by himself like a hero, you understand, would do. And he killed a good deal of men in a very unconventional manner. Story goes, he threw his gun and he charged them with just his knife. Guess the enemy, they thought he was crazy. But he charged after them and, one by one, he killed them all. Story goes that after he did that, everybody was afraid of him. Even his own company men who watched him do what he did. Another man, they would have called him a hero, but Mr. Horace, they put him in the stockade. Guess they didn't know what to do with him. Maybe a hospital would have been more in order, but. Well, after the army, they just sent him to Ramsey One Work Camp, after years of hard labor, they just let him go. He couldn't remember why they put him in the stockade in the first place, he couldn't remember a damn thing, he just kept hearing the story and I guess he just kept repeating it. And he spent more than half his life chopping and digging and doing whatever anybody needed done. He ended up at the gas station, working, and he lived in the back. They paid him in food and board. Anyhow, that one night, while Ben's car was filling up, I wandered in the back and was playing with Mr. Horace's kittens when he hit me. He must've thought I was going to hurt them or steal one of them. He was protecting them, he didn't mean me no harm. Them little rattyassed kittens were the last things I saw in Woodville, Mississippi. We moved on out as soon as I got up on my feet. We didn't say goodbye to nothing or nobody, we just left. Never again seen my Uncle Simm, never seen my cousin Ben or Rolly or Mr. Horace. All I took away from Woodville, I guess are catfish. Cook them up in a pan with garlic and butter and hot chili peppers. Spices all rubbed into a mix. Stale bread crumbled into crumbs, eggs and white flour. Lemon and hot sauce. Yep. ________ weary one am i Battlefields beating over trenches Waves piling up all the fences Landlady”s trying to give me Italian lessons Oh, what a weary one am I Bath water fueling engines, rusty Shelves long and wide, all dusty My own mother swears she won”t ever trust me Oh, what a weary one am I i was hoping she was buying, but she only leases Flying sand cutting my flesh to pieces All the worries getting stuck inside the creases Oh, what a weary one am I Training wheels on all their motorcycles Strong white horses stolen by my rivals They”re taking bets on my survival Oh, what a weary one am I Drinking clear white tequila They get you all tanked up so”s they can steal you Blisters on my memory, I can't even feel you Oh, what a weary one am I There”s more taking place than we know, love Look up in that tree there, a crucified dove Years since I found something i could be sure of Oh, what a weary one am I Whoever gets there first gonna be the winner I'm through playing these games for my dinner She said she was no shark, but I saw a fin, yeah Oh, what a weary one am I My children are gathering water from the sea In plastic cups, they run by me How in their memories will they perceive me Oh, what a weary one am I Soft wind blowing up from mexico Someday with that wind I will surely go When I'm asked if I'm ready, i'm just gonna say no Oh, what a weary one am I Sleeping in your arms, let me stay I've been waiting all my life for this day I can see the cashier coming for his pay Oh, what a weary one am I Home is so very far away I lost track of absolutely everything, yesterday This floor will do for a few more days Oh, what a weary one am I I don't want to leave anything outside I just want to pack it all right behind my eyes Travel with a solid and a peaceful mind Oh, what a weary one am I Don”t call the operator for my number I'm walking on alone, I'm just fumbling I'll come around again, but now I'm just tumbling Oh, what weary one am I Clothes all smell like roses since you left Had a feeling last night to call you Even though i know I'm not the one you love best Oh, what a weary one am I Watch out for the tide, It'll bring you way down Drown you in the darkness without any sound You can find what you lost on your way back down Oh, what a weary one am I Watch out for the tide, it'll bring you way down Drag you in the darkness without any sound You'll be picking up your heart on your way back down Oh, what a weary one am I music: amelodic ________ gone He was a sailor and his wife was a tailor And she left one day in his brand new sailor suit She made it from scratch to sail on the ocean And went and left him, went away, sure as hell I could see the ships from here And I don't know where the hell you are I guess you're out there on one of them ships You always said you wanted to see the world I can see the bed empty I can see your satchel is gone I can see you cut off you hair It's on the floor underneath my bare feet I can see the stars from here I can see the water line in the moonlight I can hear the sea from here I can hear it if I close my eyes I’m walking street to street My clothes are falling off my bones My beard is tangled and frozen And you stole my fucking pistol and boots I can't walk up the stairs Because our bedroom is up there Your form is indented on the bed Your breath is still on your pillow In my heart is an iron ball and chain In my gut is an emptiness like the rain When you're out in it and your five years old And you forgot your galoshes and your rain coat The wide world doesn't interest me anymore I can't think of what interests me, nothing will Not until you come walking back up the path I’m a man in trouble My ring is still on my finger My clothes are still hanging on the line My pipe is still sitting there on the table And you stole my fucking boots music: pedruz ________ hi forget Three thirty am. Late. Hey. You there? Across the Arizona State line toward the ocean. You leave the West. You enter something, but it ain't the West. It's nothing. It's foolish. Here, I go out for days at a time. I see turtles the size of cows. We landed in the morning. Cold water off the transport and onto the sand, and when we hit, slow motion moving running, but then a flash and a. Thick wet concrete sand down my throat. Bloody sand. Your blood in my throat. Broke you up. You was a rag doll. Carried you on my back. Both got off the island, don't ask me how. Ticky-ticky talk. Ticka-talk. Night so black up there I can't see the hand in front of my. Stars. Look at all those stars. When I was a kid, I did acting work for the movies. They needed cowboys, I'd show up. Me and my friends. Plenty of friends. We did it, cause we enjoyed it. That, and cause we got to keep the cowboy clothes. Cool tonight. I was just sitting there, minding my own business, drinking my coffee. I ain't lying. I'm on good speaking terms with the buzzards and the coyotes. There's some things 'go on out here. I'll sure. Things you just have to believe. Can't doubt some things, it's bad luck to doubt certain things. Desert goings-ons. I've heard stories. Like what. Like pointing fingers lending a hand to lost wanderers, showing them the way home to safety. Some folks think they're shooting stars. Comets. I've heard some explanations. They even call the em "Dry Lightning", but they don't know nothing. But, I do. Let's see. Treasure stories. Gonna tell a treasure story. You see a man perched on a rock, in the distance. You walk to him and he's gone. That's an invitation of welcome from the desert. That treasure could come in many forms, it don't have to be coin or gold. It seldom is. Could come to you during the night, in sleep. Once that happens to a man that man is never alone in the West. Once he leaves the West, he's on his own, but. Shit, I am in the middle of nowhere, absolutely no where, and I am used of being in the middle of no where, but this no where feels different from any no where I've ever been to. I am in the middle of some other kind of no where. The Philippines, even that seemed like somewhere. this here is just no where. I think I might have left myself back there in the sand, along with. That is no small thing. Not a small thing. nope. Remember the? gotdamn. If you could see these stars. Billy Bonney. William Bonney. Billy the Kid. Henry Antrim. Names, what's a name? Hi Forget. My name's Hi Forget. Got it written in the sand. And here I am with the buzzards and the succulents, cacti, cactus. Hi Forget. I don't need no name no more, cause I live in the West. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six, Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Got it written in the sand. music: dj ds alias ________ careful The steam whistles dead The smoke is exploding The trains in the ditch Be careful what you do. The nights on the stove The moons in the spoon The sun's breaking hard Be careful what you do. The seas banging hard The rains shooting bullets Dogs dead in the yard Be careful what you do. And in the valley, the seamstress is weeping She says her lover abandoned her, sleeping Her black eyes echo into distance Be careful what to do. Man, I used to love sleeping outside Blind silence in the trees Coffee pot hanging over the fire Be careful what you do. They'll give you advice Take you for a ride Leave you babbling and bleeding on the roadside Be careful what you do. music: dj ds alias ________ lester parks What I am, I am a dying breed. My life exists in a photograph taken in 1945, frozen. There was a bright flash and from that point forward, everything outside of that photograph, that was somebody else. Somebody with one less ear and a very unique way of walking. I'm lucky to be alive, I'm lucky for a friend. Can't remember his name. My best friend in the world and I forgot his name. I say a prayer for him every night, I pray to the stars for him, because he loved stars. What happened before the flash, I carried with me as I was moving fast, just memories behind me like falling rain. From the morning I left for Montford Point, berry pies were baking in the oven and everyone was nineteen and as far as I'm concerned, it will remain that way until the day I die. After the service, I just took to traveling. Trains. Battalions of men who rode with me, we criss-crossed here to everywhere and we saw it all and no one saw us seeing it. We were ghosts. We carried our medals in our pockets but we were invisible and we liked it that way. It was a brotherhood, just the same as it was in the Service, only after the Service everything looked different to us. We didn't talk about it, but it was understood. A leaf in the water was no longer just a leaf in the water, it meant something different. dog was no longer just a dog, it was something different. None of us wanted anymore trouble after the Service, all we wanted was to survive and work any quick job we could find. A painted fence would buy us a meal and as long as we moved fast and kept our minds busy, all was well. When the heavy artillery was ripping us up, I dreamed myself to where I wanted to be. Home. It was the same, moving fast on a train. It was the closest I could get to moving home. A man's mind is capable of anything. Always liked kids. Thought of what I'd name em, how I'd dress em up in little boots and hats. What they might say to me when they woke me up in the middle of the . . . Give em milk and cookies. Play with em. Watch em grow up and learn to fix cars. There was a woman and she was ... I can still smell her hair, but. Too many years ago. Gone. It would have been a mistake to ask her to wait, considering the position I found myself in, I was tore up. I saw her face in my mind during the flash and I cut her loose, right then and there. I knew what I had to do and I did it. I've lived my life being more than careful to avoid making mistakes that involved damaging the lives of others, at whatever cost. Whatever the price was for me, personally, it was not me that I was considering at the time. A man's mind is capable of coping with anything. You move fast enough and your mind don't ask questions. I've come through whatever I've come through and that's life, I understand that. And I know that people got it worse than me, people got it better than me, well, I got my own and that's me. That's all I got, and I know what I got. There's rain falling on a far away field where I am not buried. Silent honor is a strong kind of honor that don't need no flag. I came home, ain't gonna lie, I did. I stepped off the train in my brand new uniform, sharp as a broke legged dog, just like I said I would. I tried to come home. I stepped off the train in the nighttime and I was invisible. I walked through the streets and all the doors were closed and the windows shut tight. I stood outside Ivy's house. I didn't want to disturb what wasn't mine anymore. I waited the night out in the park across the street from her house and in the morning, I slipped back on the train and from that point on, I just kept moving. The years wash away what time disregards. I sent her a letter off from overseas, chances are it never got through. A little song about "Walking through the clickity-clack / Naming stars and making babies." I still dream myself to her, I close my eyes and I try to conjure her. Been moving very slow these late years and a man's mind is capable of many things but the slower I move, the more questions my mind keeps asking me. Ivy and her husband own a shoe repair shop in town. His name is Gabriel. They have two children and five grandchildren. She still lives in the same house and she still bakes berry pies every day. And I live in the park across the street from Ivy's house. And I am invisible. Under the falling rain. And she is a rose. music: mythaga ________ matador i know you heard it In many stories i know you've seen it On many street corners i know you've heard it From lips before mine But there ain't nobody who would chase you there ain't nobody who would care there ain't nobody who can love you like i do And if a few bad days is worth Killing some fifty years If some hellfire nightmares Is worth raking us all to the floor Then i don't know what to live for anymore Cause there ain't nobody Who can love you There ain't nobody Who can hold you There ain't nobody Who can fold you into his heart There ain't nobody who can love you like I do There ain't nobody who can love you like I do There ain't nobody who can love you Cause I love you And I love you And there ain't nobody Who can love you like I do music: michael ornstein --------------------------------------------------------- images, audio and text © 2012, art media content music by permission / various artists. do not use without permission. http://artmediacontent.com/time-away-film-circa-1996 http://artmediacontent.com/following/artmediacontent.com/time-away-film-circa-1996 Thu, 10 May 2012 01:41:32 +0000 michael marisi ornstein | art media content 1531344 Time Away | Wine Dark Sea this film was filmed and completed in 1996. it is one of the first, if not the first, digital video features ever made. the original version was edited by anne mccabe and i re-edited this version from scratch in early 2009. "time away" written, produced, directed, edited by michael marisi ornstein filmed in nyc and passaic, n.j. crewed by entire cast st. christopher footage crew: lisa reardon | tony settel cast: map man 1 ... bruce barnes (my uncle) english girl 1, astor ... blakely brannif pond woman ... mary louise burke hi forget ... bob elliott gunman ... robert fuhrmann kutty boy slim ... leland gantt johnny mcgee ... bob krakauer father .. david margulies stage manager ... kate mccamy lisa ... julia mueller lauren ... giselle libertore belt man ... richard mover dennis ... randy noojin mott ... michael marisi ornstein cole ... michael ryan map man 2 ... attilio santimone (my uncle) mother ... frances santimone (my aunt) grandmother ... angelena savasta (my grandmother) mary, english girl 2 ... leslie scammell and mick weber as st. christopher music: eric stiff blind willie johnson mance libscomb rosalie hill waltor jacobs spence moore miles pracher geeshie wiley mississippi fred mcdowell tommy mcclennan john davis frank jenkins estil c. ball lonnie carter peg leg howell fannie davis frank jenkins housten page and group at ramsey one camp willie "cowboy" craig and group at ellis unit one thanks to alan lomax for allowing me the use of this music "Digital Video Served Before Its Time" iFilm, 1998 by Steve Goldstein Sometimes it doesn't pay to be on the cutting edge. Look at the career of Orson Welles. The former wunderkind who made "Citizen Kane" at age 25 was reduced to peddling cheap wine in the 1970s; now Hollywood filmmakers are battling over his unproduced screenplays and making movies about him--just as he predicted before his death. Jean Renoir's "Rules of the Game" fell with a thud on international audiences in 1939, causing the master to doubt himself; now it's universally recognized as one of the greatest movies ever made. Of course, the price of being ahead of your time was considerably higher in the pre-cinema era: John the Baptist lost his head for talking about the Messiah before anyone was ready to listen. Artists, inventors and religious visionaries frequently face this problem. They innovate, and those who follow in their wake profit from these innovations. Michael Ornstein knows what it's like to be too far ahead of his time for his own good. The New York-based filmmaker-actor-painter shot his feature "Time Away" on digital video back in 1996, way, way back when putting the word "digital" in front of "video" still spelled video, when anything that looked like video wouldn't be considered a legitimate feature film. So when Ornstein showed "Time Away" to a film-savvy audience of 400 at the Tribeca Film Center in downtown Manhattan, it was patronizingly tagged a video, not a film. "This was seriously before it was fashionable," Ornstein says. "Back then, people would say if you can't make a film with film, you shouldn't make it." He received positive feedback for "Time Away," but no one wanted to distribute it. A screenplay written by Ornstein was optioned by a Los Angeles producer, who kept him in just enough meal money to get him through the dozen or so rewrites. "It got to the point where I was taking advice on the script from people on street corners," Ornstein says. Realizing he was running on a treadmill, Ornstein resettled in New York and turned to painting and acting. Like a lot of frustrated screenwriters, he decided the only way to get a movie made was to make it himself. Once he came up with the idea for "Time Away" he set about writing and shooting it immediately. "I wanted to make the film while I still had the original notion of what I wanted to do, instead of trying to raise money and then losing that notion," Ornstein says. That left him with one choice: shooting on video. First he tried Hi8 video. "I hated the way it looked," Ornstein says of these test scenes. "So I went to B&H Photo in Manhattan and spoke to some guy named Winston--this was the fall of 1996. He showed me two digital cameras: a Panasonic and a Sony. I liked the Panasonic because it was more compact and had a large viewfinder. It seemed more solid." Ornstein ponied up $2,995 for the Panasonic AG-EZ1U miniDV camera. That same day he also bought a Sennheiser ME66 shotgun microphone, a Gitzo G556 weekend fishpole, a Bogen 3011 tripod, a Bogen 3063 mini-fluid head, four batteries for the camera and a pile of hourlong miniDV tapes. Later that day he began shooting "Time Away." A road movie that is essentially an anti-road movie, "Time Away" tells the story of Mott (Ornstein), a youngish New York painter who, on the verge of asking his live-in girlfriend to marry him, takes off on the road to get some so-called space between himself and his imminent future. He meets a guide in the form of a goofy, subtly mocking vagabond named Chris and encounters apparitions, archetypes and sirens in Memphis, Texas, Los Angeles and, finally, San Francisco. Along the way it dawns on him that rather than traveling, he is, in fact, stalling for time. "Time Away" is far from being a polished Hollywood product, and its microscopic budget often works against its intention to function as a fable. However, Ornstein’s performance rings true. The real meaning of Mott's quest for time and space is etched in his expressions. Getting married means having children and growing old, and we all know where growing old gets you. "There is no question of his love for this woman," says Ornstein. "Fear of death is driving him." Without realizing it, and certainly before it could land him a front-page story in the New York Observer, as it did Harmony Korine, or on the front page of the New York Times, as it did Mike Figgis, Ornstein was following several of the precepts of Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg's Dogma 95 Vow of Chastity. He used only natural light in naturalistic locations, although, being both the director and star without the benefit of a director of photography, Ornstein had to use a tripod. He would set up a shot and step into the frame, turning the camera on and off with a remote clicker. The other member of his crew was his then girlfriend Julia Mueller, who functioned as the sound recordist. Ornstein quickly became an acolyte of digital video, and began spreading the gospel to his friends in the New York art and film world, among them writer-director Hal Hartley. "I had an art opening, and Hal dropped by," Ornstein says. "I was telling him about DV. He's into new technology. I was telling him, 'You don't need money, you don't need lights.' He's very experimental, and the concept of low overhead appealed to him. He ended up teaching a course in DV." Hartley has done more than merely teach a class in digital video--he shot his most recent project, "The Book of Life," on DV. He also paid back his pal marisi by giving him a role in the movie, which tells of Jesus' arrival at JFK airport on December 31, 1999. Unfortunately, in terms of "Time Away" one good listener was not enough. "I would say I was shooting a film on digital video, and no one had heard of it," Ornstein says. "I was begging people to shoot on it. I felt like I was working for Panasonic." Things have certainly changed since that barbaric era. Movies shot on 35mm film are now regarded in some quarters as passé, hopelessly corrupted and compromised by the soiled strings attached to studio dollars--or attached even to a rich uncle's dollars. Ornstein has resumed sending his film to festivals, but it's obvious that he'd rather think of the next one. "It hurt me when I first finished 'Time Away,'" he says. "No one wanted to take it seriously. When I was trying to get the picture moving there was a load of resistance. But I'm happy that DV has caught on. We don't need a lot of permission now to make films." Perhaps it wasn't specifically the look of DV or the notion of shooting on video that prevented people from looking at "Time Away." The problem may have been that Ornstein had not been granted official permission--or approval--in the form of studio backing, and official permission is what, in the eyes of some, makes a film real. Nowadays filmmakers glory in the concept of DV as a repudiation of Hollywood. http://artmediacontent.com/love-travel-blood-audio-film http://artmediacontent.com/following/artmediacontent.com/love-travel-blood-audio-film Fri, 27 Apr 2012 02:35:12 +0000 michael marisi ornstein | art media content 2836286 Love Travel Blood Volume No. 1 | "Epistles from the Road" Michael Marisi Ornstein Listen <img src="http://payload26.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/2836286/mott.jpg" width="670" height="788" width_o="1087" height_o="1280" src_o="http://payload26.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/2836286/mott_o.jpg" data-mid="16129541" border="0" align="left"/> http://artmediacontent.com/lupetown-an-urban-bedtime-story http://artmediacontent.com/following/artmediacontent.com/lupetown-an-urban-bedtime-story Fri, 06 Apr 2012 21:18:59 +0000 michael marisi ornstein | art media content 3155988 Lupetown Michael Marisi Ornstein (printed version coming soon) <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312N.jpg" width="670" height="467" width_o="1280" height_o="893" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312N_o.jpg" data-mid="16129979" border="0" align="left"/>beezer chained himself down under a full moon <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312A1.jpg" width="670" height="1014" width_o="845" height_o="1280" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312A1_o.jpg" data-mid="16129676" border="0" align="left"/>rudolph watched the flies gather around a bare bulb <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312B.jpg" width="670" height="1011" width_o="756" height_o="1141" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312B_o.jpg" data-mid="16129685" border="0" align="left"/>neala stirred her soup with a wire hair brush <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312C.jpg" width="670" height="1035" width_o="710" height_o="1097" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312C_o.jpg" data-mid="16129702" border="0" align="left"/>king ate the very last of the last bit of food <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312D1.jpg" width="670" height="1049" width_o="696" height_o="1090" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312D1_o.jpg" data-mid="16129722" border="0" align="left"/>fleck trained his attention to the sky <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312E.jpg" width="670" height="1038" width_o="774" height_o="1200" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312E_o.jpg" data-mid="16129780" border="0" align="left"/>batelo sat naked on the tiled hallway floor <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312H.jpg" width="670" height="1030" width_o="832" height_o="1280" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312H_o.jpg" data-mid="16129834" border="0" align="left"/>motrice dreamed of fay <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312I.jpg" width="670" height="1030" width_o="832" height_o="1280" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312I_o.jpg" data-mid="16129876" border="0" align="left"/>fay dreamed of betty <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312J.jpg" width="670" height="1038" width_o="826" height_o="1280" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312J_o.jpg" data-mid="16129894" border="0" align="left"/>betty dreamed of her sister and lit a candle <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312K2.jpg" width="670" height="1030" width_o="832" height_o="1280" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312K2_o.jpg" data-mid="16129920" border="0" align="left"/>gafey swept the money under the claw foot tub <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312L.jpg" width="670" height="1034" width_o="829" height_o="1280" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312L_o.jpg" data-mid="16129933" border="0" align="left"/>ray walked through the rain wishing he was home <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312M.jpg" width="670" height="1029" width_o="833" height_o="1280" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312M_o.jpg" data-mid="16129943" border="0" align="left"/>sila watched lights glistening off the street <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312O.jpg" width="670" height="1017" width_o="843" height_o="1280" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312O_o.jpg" data-mid="16129983" border="0" align="left"/>nate took his medication and chewed his collar <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312P.jpg" width="670" height="1040" width_o="824" height_o="1280" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312P_o.jpg" data-mid="16129994" border="0" align="left"/>gurdy made a wish on a hand painted star <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312Q.jpg" width="670" height="1000" width_o="857" height_o="1280" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312Q_o.jpg" data-mid="16130000" border="0" align="left"/>cadas said a prayer for her son <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312R.jpg" width="670" height="1025" width_o="833" height_o="1275" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312R_o.jpg" data-mid="16130005" border="0" align="left"/>diko drew a toothpaste heart on the mirror <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312S.jpg" width="670" height="1000" width_o="857" height_o="1280" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312S_o.jpg" data-mid="16130015" border="0" align="left"/>jupe cracked the cap on another bottle and poured <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312T.jpg" width="670" height="1028" width_o="834" height_o="1280" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312T_o.jpg" data-mid="16130031" border="0" align="left"/>sally took her pistol and locked her bedroom door <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312U.jpg" width="670" height="1039" width_o="825" height_o="1280" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312U_o.jpg" data-mid="16130045" border="0" align="left"/>buck repeated his name over again not to forget <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312V.jpg" width="670" height="897" width_o="956" height_o="1280" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312V_o.jpg" data-mid="16130071" border="0" align="left"/>lady pie danced in swirls over the floor <img src="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312PD1.jpg" width="670" height="458" width_o="1280" height_o="875" src_o="http://payload42.cargocollective.com/1/2/88411/3155988/312PD1_o.jpg" data-mid="16129995" border="0" align="left"/>attic girl sharpened her buck knife through the night till the morning --------------------------------------------------------- images and text © 2012, art media content