Poetic

LR1 – geometry and fire burned again and again

December 17, 2022 By Tim Aten 1 Comment

geometry and fire burned again and again

now. late night.
in black legacy owned tuxedo 
with white formal crisp purchased from the Orthodox in Oak Park
glossy loafers from amazon the day before
walked downtown spoke streets of new Detroit with my daughter
shuffling back after surveying the disintegration of the Detroit auto show
she did well in heels
carrying it off
reminders of a decade when we walked for college football causing blisters and slow shuffle pain where she voiced no complaint
she wants nothing more than to be back in the car on the way home to Ferndale 

now
new Detroit she looked beautiful, mature, something new not known to me in a gaze
instantly elegant, classy, and pulling off an orange gown
signifiers of Nepalese Buddhist monks, 1960s burlap tapestries and 76 orange ball gas station signs that sprinkled i-75 into 1980s Ohio

the haunting of the French colonization
the centuries of an Indigenous layout of the main streets from wampum paths
conquered by steel and plow 
mowed down for the map spokes of Paris
covered over by Cobo
geometry and fire burned again and again
floods of Detroit river
importing and exporting guns and butter for the dawn of world wars 
the blueprints to take over and liberate paris
and cascade and create the glory of a 57 Chevy

workers of the World had bled on the streets we walked that night followed by a blind pig rebellion
Detroit on the verge of rekindling the incandescence of a purple Parisian art deco fairy fantasy
in my tux bowing while the red curtain Detroit auto show fades to black for Las Vegas laser lights and mathematical markets of Beijing 
the arsenal of democracy in the rearview
back to Ferndale

Endorphin Prose

June 12, 2022 By Tim Aten Leave a Comment

Endorphin Prose

Run

Materials and objects

built, studied, used, destroyed, stolen, coveted, divided into categories, split

given meaning like the Madonna of my youth

like relatives who ascribe emotions to china figurines, miniature cottages, chotchkies, thanksgiving plates, and objects of devotion

Are these Saucony Endorphin Pros an object ascribed meaning? Is that why after 400 miles I throw them away?

These Saucony’s called “old skool” in my Strava running app.

They looked and reminisced like my DJ friends’, who rocked a pair of maroon and navy sauconys when belt drive turntables were the method

They reflect back to B Boy style roots of Harlem Summer of Soul that Quest Love chronicled and preserved

that summer of soul I was 3 and rocked in the arms of an Ohio whicker rocking chair. A relative. A mother.

When I ran the New York City Marathon last year my carboard was a pink yoga mat I took out of the trash. These Saucony’s did not make that trip. They only trained me

To go there.

I share the Saucony Endorphin Pros reversely placed

right shoe on left side

left shoe on right side.

A religion I encountered in Brooklyn decades ago senses a pair of shoes laid out publicly

standardly right on right and left on left invites mystics and mediums

to travel in one’s shoes and travel your same journeys. Life.

My first day in the Borough I saw a headless chicken carcass splayed across the sidewalk. And when I left the Brooklyn journey someone said it was metaphorical suicide.

I went back to New York many times to follow in the footsteps of firemen who made the September sacrifice and I thought hard about the paths I’ve stumbled.

These Saucony Endorphin Pros have been my therapist and priestess. My extension. My trainers for the big medal runs. All these Sacouny’s accomplished was a coconut medal with stickers on it and a plastic Hawaian lai for a Michigan Maybury State Park 5K. Achilles were acting up then and my Saucony’s nursed me through the marathon escalation .

Goodbye my Saucony Endorphin Pros from my Saturday Island Lake State Park asphalt cathedral cadences. A material. An object. That resurrected me to

Run

For Charlie From Ferndale 2067

January 11, 2021 By Tim Aten 2 Comments

My greatest teacher in 2020 was the two year old kid down the street.

I made a film for him.

In the spirit of community (an instance where social media can be an enabling and empowering platform) I need to thank Ryan Maffesoli for collaborating with his incredible footage of Ferndale, Michigan last summer and of the Black Lives Matter marches in the spring.

I splurged and purchased a Yeti Blue Microphone. It made a huge improvement in mixing from previous projects. I like the effects from MotionVFX which I used to try and enforce the vibrant and warmth felt last summer on my block. I also discovered the vast catalog of collaborators on So undCloud who so readily share music via Creative Commons.

While the piece is inspired by King’s conception of the beloved community I do find there are workplace forces at play here. I’m so fortunate I work with a company that has been so serious in the safety of its workers and families. It provided an environment for this film to happen. Even with the very unsettling recent events in DC, I sense a coming together not only in my neighbors but in my co-workers. There is a profound closeness that has happened this year with them.

And….Thank You Charlie.

Below is the text of the piece, some have asked to have it.

For Charlie From Ferndale 2067

Charlie.

This is for you when you’re 47.

You were 2 in 2020.

The number 45 induced passion this year and if you add 45 to your age you get mine.

47.

When you’re 47 2020 may be talked in terms

like 1968, 1917, 1776, or the induced passion around 1619. Or maybe it’s the years to come.

The singers, bards, and MCs of my era broadcasted

93 to Infinity

3000 and

1999 from the purple prince in Minneapolis, the city you just moved to.

A historic city in 2020.

You’re 2 and moved away. I won’t see you learning to ride a bike and go to elementary school. Won’t see you get your driver’s license. Won’t see you become a teen and then a man in this world from the sidewalk in front of our house.

I create this fast forward- to reciprocate through your next 45.

That you learn the teaching earlier than I, when I was 47.

The lesson from you.

The summer of 2020 in the Detroit suburb Ferndale.

We met on my doorstep with you dressed as Winnie the Pooh on a crisp Halloween. Through codes and signifiers your parents felt like we would be friends.

The pierce of your eyes in the bundled brown and red costume. No shyness, just acknowledgement “I’m looking at you”. Don’t lose that.

You’re cute Charlie. Cuteness fades in age.

I’d see your mother mostly when I was mowing my lawn and pulling weeds in the spring, especially when the pandemic first hit and the lockdowns started. Yard work feels like one of the more human things I do and connects me to my past. It’s what my father did and what my grandfathers did.

The smell of grass clippings.

Cleaning up a flower bed by pulling weeds and seeing and feeling the obvious metaphors.

Taking in psychedelic colors when the flowers finally bloom.

Your mother and I would make the meek hellos and smiles neighbors did in this era. Smiles and hellos that are different from previous generations. Somewhere, sometime, somehow the human connection changed and I’ll leave that to other formats, other academics, other discourses. I was one of the many ones that did not see

2016

coming.

Which maybe historians will write as the year the decades long schemes came to a head. In 2016 I saw the year through they eyes of my 14 year old daughter and the words men said. And the way the talking heads talked with toxic tone.

And the fix.

The conspiracy. The tension. The division. I saw the surveillance for what it was the first time. I saw manipulation and realized for over a decade I had been only thinking in winner loser monetary mindsets and that we had all been divided by design.

Alone.

Mowing a lawn. Pulling weeds. More meaning than the conference rooms.

In 2020 conference rooms flipped to home conference calls and virtual laptop meetings. I’d take calls barefoot pulling my weeds contemplating the global tension and the domestic division.

And then came your interrupting inquisitive look from the chariot of your stroller pushed by your Mom and Dad. Interrupting my continuous conference calls from the headphones stuck to my mobile phone. Quickly our families’ smiles and hellos were no longer meek and were filled with understanding, solidarity, uncertainty, vulnerability.

Authenticity.

Locked in our rooms and houses, the conversation quickly pivoted to both your parents glued to their corporate screens and conference calls. The babysitting offer for my daughter and wife had presented itself back in that Halloween months before. In May 2020 your folks came over one late afternoon to come in the house, meet the cats, meet the dog, and discuss how it would all work out. The first time you came over and the stroller was left in the driveway and your mother walked back up the sidewalk I learned the teaching of the beloved community.

In 2020 neighbors formed trust bubbles inward to isolate from the infection spread. And for late spring and summer of 2020 you came over Charlie. When I was 47.

I saw my wife instinctually revert to the nurturing mother she was with my daughter some 15 years before. I saw my daughter begin to realize the significance of her age and her generation. Through seeing your innocence she began to face that hers had begun to fade in 2020 when it first started in 2016.

They began to paint your nails red and purple which you loved and flaunted. I questioned because I wondered what my grandfathers mowing their lawn would have thought.

We all had unfiltered conversations with neighbors and friends in 2020 and the 8 minute and 46 second violent transition in Minneapolis in May took uncertainty and vulnerability into all our streets. In Ferndale the signs came out and the marches started. Statues 100s of years old came down all over the globe. On our televisions and our doom scrolling mobile phones the division was becoming clearer but everything I saw in Ferndale was that it was coming together. You were the lens.

Lots of conversations on privilege and bias deep into the night. I’ve heard more people cry than any year in my life.

Out my second floor room where I’d been grounded like a 15 year old on conference calls I’d see you in our backyard with my wife in the decade old duct taped kiddie pool. Pitter patting the water getting in and later shocking your mother that you loved to frolic in the water.

Other times I’d come down for the late morning coffee and see your big smile when I descended and see the picture books, blocks, paints, mini-basketballs and the trucks.

Trucks. Garbage day was a special day. The garbage men knew you and that was the most excited I’d seen anyone in 2020. My wife, daughter, and I would wave back at the garbage men. Smiles of authenticity and beloved community.

Charlie.

This is for you when you’re 47.

For Frank. For Kazuko.

July 2, 2020 By Tim Aten 3 Comments

In December 2018 and into the New Year of 2019 I visited my cousin Rich and his wife Joan in Hadano, a city in Kanagawa Prefecture outside of Tokyo. As college professors and professional writers (Baileywriters.com) their knowledge and passion for Japan took my family’s journey to a poignant and deep level.

I went with an open and excited mind, the trip had a lot of personal meaning to me going in. While there, I was surprised how I often thought of World War II and my Great Uncle Frank who died in the war.

Every day since I’ve been back, almost a year and a half, I remember Mt. Fuji.

On a 2019 New Year’s day run with Joan I looked at Mt. Fuji and made the determination to run the Detroit Marathon that November. I did.

I also decided to pick up the cello which is something I’d been musing about for years. When I came back I met up with Harrison Dean Saunders who is now my cello teacher. It is an honor to have Harrison improvise on cello on this film. I shot it on my Samsung Galaxy S9 using a Zhiyun gimbal and edited on Final Cut Pro X.

Harrison Dean Saunders at Bandcamp and Soundcloud.

Watch on Youtube below.

Detroit’s Warrior Artist Goddess

May 24, 2015 By Tim Aten 5 Comments

I can’t stop thinking about it.

Or her.

Haunted.

Ever since then when I’m at a landmark now I wikipedia the building or place. Look at the date it was created. If it was before 1933 I think maybe she’d been here, seen this, was affected by it in someway. Maybe walked the same street, sat down at a bench or looked out on the river I walk every morning.

The Guardian Building with it’s golden Pewabic tile was completed in 1929. She had to have made a point to see it. My eyes have seen what she saw!

The Detroit Zoo in it’s suburban location opened in 1928. She liked animals. Painted them in her pictures. Maybe she made the trek out there on some type of trolley car and came within a mile of my house that I lay down and dream.

Or my memories from late 1990s of late nights hanging out at my friend’s Park Shelton apartment with a commanding view of Woodward facing downtown. The very place she lived! I had no idea at the time. I lost the opportunity to take it all in. The night I stayed up till dawn philosophizing with artists at the Scarab Club under her husband’s signature in the rafters. I vividly remember walking home across Woodward minutes before sunrise and thinking the city I found myself was bolder, larger, and grander than it appeared while at the same time utterly confusing and hidden. I always sensed something significant had happened here. And sometimes it felt that on top of all the people leaving so did all the ghosts.

Whether they fully left I don’t know, but somehow the warrior artist goddess who was able to transcend and immortalize herself gave me a solid dose of my own Detroit soul and insights into what the hell happened here.

What “It” was.

When I entered the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts last week and was greeted by the initial marriage portrait painted by Kahlo something quickly and unexpectedly stirred inside me. I felt I was about to embark into a very deep story and somehow I was a part of the narrative. Part of my past was. Maybe my future. I felt appreciation and understanding what was about to unfold. It did. Confusing, haunting, contemplative, looking up build dates in Wikipedia of Detroit landmarks.

There’s so much commentary and chatter about how much Detroit is now changing. It’s a different city than the 1990s, even different than 4 years ago. This exhibit goes right to the heart of the century long transformation and reveals the story’s meaning from the ghosts that when alive changed the fabric of Detroit, civilization, and the planet. For a museum on the verge of liquidation last year because of bankruptcy I have one thing to say – thank you. With this show it’s clear the DIA has their act together.

One of the surprising players uncovered for me was the Edsel Ford painting. I knew Diego Rivera as a painter of the “labor movement” and figured him to have socialist tendencies. For decades I’d been to the DIA to take in “the mural” but never knew the story behind it. The fact the Fords were the ones who funded the mural was a profound revelation of irony. On the surface “the mural” shows the awesome destiny of man and industry, the worker, it’s hope and growth along with an undertone of warning and fear. It’s like something or someone is making this thing go and we’re actors not necessarily the directors. As time went on it sounds like Rivera and Kahlo became disillusioned with their wealthy benefactors and were eventually run out of town in New York City when Rivera’s proposed mural had Stalin. My generation grew up with the communist threat as the current generation wrestles with terrorism. The Detroit Industry fresco tackles these concepts before World War II, before The Cold War, and before Reagan and Gorbachev. The exhibit gives you the untold story behind the scenes of the dialectical drama so simply explained as black and white in schools and the media. These forces comingled at one time. Comingled in Detroit. The mural means this to me now and Kahlo was a hidden force.

The exhibit’s sketch studies for The Detroit Industry Fresco (the mural) have so much passion and energy. You sense these two forces coming alive for eternity and perhaps, because of the subject matter, you feel the presence of Ford and the auto industry that was changing Detroit forever. My generation in suburban Detroit grew up in the close shadows of “The Riot”. It’s what is used to explain all of Detroit’s issues and problems. This exhibit, this mural, goes back further and shows the beginning of an awesome journey that was so powerful and beyond our control like the blue jean workers moving engine blocks.

Which takes me to her. Frida. It’s clear she was Diego’s tempestuous muse and soul. There’s a room in the exhibit with one of Kahlo’s paintings with Ford’s name, like Diego’s portrait, but this painting titled “Henry Ford Hospital” is a deeply personal depiction of a traumatic miscarriage. Critics call it surrealist. Others call it groundbreaking for feminism and a woman owning and sharing her pain, maybe oppression. I felt pain and passion and saw Kahlo’s blood all over those white sheets on a cold unforgiving desert of industrialization. Deepening the experience for me was my twelve year old daughter under the headphones of the guided tour processing it all next to me. She’s at the age when life begins to be larger with the loss of innocence coming from heavy concepts, ideas, and experiences popping up in strange places. As I sensed the heaviness of all this I turned to my left and saw Diego’s sketch concept of the fetus that radiates today over The Detroit Industry Fresco. Whoa…is that the fetus and being that could have been? That is looking for birth today in this exhibit and in the thought processes of twelve year old girls?

So much has happened in Detroit since Kahlo was at Henry Ford Hospital. Detroit became all-powerful, fell into rage, and then cried and became abandoned. Much like Frida’s life. Now she’s a force in our culture with fashionistas emulating her style and her “selfies” monogrammed on all types of surfaces like t-shirts and tote bags.

She cracked the code, broke through the matrix for immortality and became a goddess alive today.

Belle Isle Conservatory – 1904.

Fox Theatre – 1928.

Detroit Public Library – 1921.

Footnote

Our times are just as transformative. One could argue the internet is just as disruptive as new economic philosophies coming into play like they did 100 years ago. Our threats of terrorism and global climate change are real. Elon Musk’s vision for sustainable energy with the Power Wall and Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to connect the entire globe to the internet through Internet.org are lofty and ambitious projects which have the ability to take humanity into new realms.

I need to get educated- Who are the artist’s today wrestling with these concepts and working with these type of people and institutions to document, inspire, build hope, and critique?

Aural Archiving

January 4, 2015 By Tim Aten Leave a Comment

Recently some bard colleagues of old have called me out about not writing the poetic.

I need to maintain and continue that facet. Need to document voice. Need to come to grips with identity as I did in last year’s post “What’s in a Name“.

Two years ago I posted this video on hogpath.com. Aural Archiving. Kicking off and moving on with timaten.com. Stay tuned.

From the original post in November 2012.

A few nights ago I dusted off from the shelf what we used to call a Chap Book. It contained words written by me from an era in my life shared with many, Headz as they were known. In reminiscing with those Headz I’ve often heard it referred to as “magic times”.

Hope. Revolution. Innocence. Change. Premonition. Turntables. Saxophones. Microphones. Basement House Parties.

A few nights ago those words tucked and hidden in my bookshelf for over a decade were discovered by my 10 year old daughter. Children are different this generation. Their aura is Indigo.

She had me read the words from that era. It clicked. I was good. It came back. It rolled. She laughed. She shook her head in the inevitable way alluding to the upcoming teenage bafflement. But her brown eyes communicated an understanding she didn’t realize the extent of those magic times.

So here it is. An aural archiving for her and descendants. My fear is to record these is to appear to be washed up and reliving a time that can’t come back.

Poetry took a backseat to the realities of life. I will try and change that.

one last one – a10

November 16, 2013 By Tim Aten Leave a Comment

one last one

one minute the places one minute the faces one minute the spaces
one minute sunday’s sunrise after blurred kaleidoscope night atop city sky of fog and illuminated light
one minute sitting across a subway aisle purse in hand she’s gone
one ride one journey one life one shot one trip one last one
one minute living room and midnight tube staring into walls of
teenage lips legs high school jocks drank into the morning one minute gone
one minute a long island home
a minute to think a minute to wake a minute to realize
a minute in another’s minutes of anxiety
instances of interstates connecting to minutes in
the driver seat, subway seat, movie seat, park bench, couch
one minute look at smooth shoes and music
minutes of brush strokes and simple sweeps like the bus boy’s broom in a 24 hour diner
one minute seeing the sitting blacknesses of being with a zen priest sculpture sitting behind a museum glass window
one minute the pacific one minute the atlantic
tick tock it never stop and minutes are there
flashed and frozen
trapped in the brain

now