the tastebuds of bees

I am still avoiding writing the horrid non-fiction article for children's mag (pardon, magazine) (that's a newsstand type magazine, otherwise known as a periodical, not the arsenal and pas le magazine français). They say to write what you're an expert in/what you're confident about/interested/what you know/blah blah blah blah blah....so that leaves me with....avant-garde film? Stan Brakhage? Who's my audience? There must be some way I can cleverly serve anti-conventionalism to children. I mean, it's in their nature anyway, they just aren't quite self-aware about it yet. Technically I'm allowed to nack out a niche into the teens, but can we be more blasé? Let teens find Velvet Underground on their own, seven year olds are so much fun. Not that teens aren't great, but it's always rewarding to find youngers who are becoming aware of existentialism before the average sum of their peers. Note how much you will enjoy Julien if you watch Au revoir les enfants (1987). And writing for the youngers is so much more of a challenge. I, Marge Bjork, will combine Brakhage and puns and it will be terrific.

No words are coming out yet, though. So I've been reading food blogs. And Smitten-Kitchen keeps adding flaky salt to her recipes, to which I say, I need flaky salt. Why don't I have any?

Maybe I should be writing about salt instead?

photo courtesy of B.M. and that Spiral Jetty trip

No. I just know that salt tastes good. Not enough. So, my paltry readership (in number only, I'd hardly dare insult you to your eyes), how do I charm and pun youngers into a greater understanding of Brakhage? He believes cinema is a treasure trove of unrealized magic, the magic to see things in new ways. From birth we've been programed to view the world a certain way, not just ideologically, but in what registers as important in our brains, what we focus on. Film has the capability to break through our humdrum visions and find something fresh through it's ability to manipulate time and space and any other number of things. Shackles will be broken, possibility awaits, we can see as a baby or a bee.

Brakhage, himself, often painted directly onto celluloid sometimes including "found" objects (Mothlight 1963) or photo stills (The Dante Quartet 1987).


Well, now I lay me down to sleep to dream about flaky salt. Hopefully.

p.s. is it ethical to write about brakhage who potentially has an easily discoverable not children appropriate portion of his oeuvre?