Violet Moon

The Buried Life Poem

2010-04-09T19:24:00.000-07:00

The Buried Life Poem by Matthew Arnold is partly the inspiration of the TV series The Buried Life. Friends Jonnie and Duncan Penn, Ben Nemtin and Dave Lingwood to come up with The Buried Life concept after being inspired by the poem. Here is the poem:

The Buried Life Poem

Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there's a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne.
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,
And turn those limpid eyes on mine,
And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.

Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal'd
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reproved;
I knew they lived and moved
Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men, and alien to themselves--and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast!

But we, my love!--doth a like spell benumb
Our hearts, our voices?--must we too be dumb?

Ah! well for us, if even we,
Even for a moment, can get free
Our heart, and have our lips unchain'd;
For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain'd!

Fate, which foresaw
How frivolous a baby man would be--
By what distractions he would be possess'd,
How he would pour himself in every strife,
And well-nigh change his own identity--
That it might keep from his capricious play
His genuine self, and force him to obey
Even in his own despite his being's law,
Bade through the deep recesses of our breast
The unregarded river of our life
Pursue with indiscernible flow its way;
And that we should not see
The buried stream, and seem to be
Eddying at large in blind uncertainty,
Though driving on with it eternally.

But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us--to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.
And many a man in his own breast then delves,
But deep enough, alas! none ever mines.
And we have been on many thousand lines,
And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;
But hardly have we, for one little hour,
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves--
Hardly had skill to utter one of all
The nameless feelings that course through our breast,
But they course on for ever unexpress'd.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well--but 't#is not true!
And then we will no more be rack'd
With inward striving, and demand
Of all the thousand nothings of the hour
Their stupefying power;
Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call!
Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,
From the soul's subterranean depth upborne
As from an infinitely distant land,
Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey
A melancholy into all our day.
Only--but this is rare--
When a belov{'e}d hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen'd ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd--
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life's flow,
And hears its winding murmur; and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
That flying and elusive shadow, rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.

Pacquiao vs Clottey Live Stream

2010-03-12T07:45:00.000-08:00

Pacquiao vs Clottey Live Stream. Okay, i know that you are in a frenzy because you want to watch The Event but you do not know where to watch it live online via streaming. As early as now, 2 days before the fight, it is quite impossible to find a real "free live streaming page" of the event, it'll only start getting available a few hours before the actual fight. I will be posting some links here to live streaming pages so just check out this page every now and then to get the live streaming link.

Dash Snow

2009-07-15T00:23:00.000-07:00

Another promising artist has joined Club 27. Dash Snow, who gained prominence after being featured in an article titled “Warhol’s Children” that appeared in New York magazine in 2007, has died in New York from heroine overdose. Snow was quite a mythical hero of an artistic underworld in lower Manhattan. A close friend of Snow, the photographer Ryan McGinley, has this to say about the late artist:

It's funny to me that Dash has become like a rock star, but he's so paranoid," Ryan McGinley, the photographer and a close friend, told New York. "That comes from graffiti culture – like, you want everybody to know who you are and you're going to write your name all over the city, but you can't let anyone know who you really are. It's, like, this idea of being notorious.

Snow was known for his photographs, videos, sculptures and collages. Below is a video compilation of some of his works.

Charlie White

2009-05-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

One of the many artists I admire is Charlie White. Watch the video above and see why i like his works. This video explores the teen female side of nascent sexuality. This video was made by White for Adidas.

My Son's Birthday

2009-04-03T08:59:00.001-07:00

I did a little Photoshoping a while ago for my son's fourth birthday :)

New Domain

2008-12-11T00:32:00.001-08:00

This blog now has a new domain, http://mygraphics.gumerliston.info/

I hope this will get it back to life. It will be Christmas break so I will have time to do some graphics again and post them here. I hope so :)

My random Flash Website

2008-09-10T08:25:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since the last time I fooled around with a Flash authoring software. Early this evening I found my self launching one of my favorite software, KoolMoves. This software, and Adobe Flash, are my main choice when it comes to creating anything that is Flash. I like this software because even if it is quiet small it is powerful enough, you can make little applications and games with it if you are really good with actionscript.

The screen shot above shows an imaginary Flash website. I did not really plan it, I just sort of go directly to the lay-outing and then I look at some available images and then just slapped them all together in the layout. The image of a laughing child in the header is of my son, taken just this afternoon. It took about a couple of hours to finish the small website. It is all flash but it loads quiet fast because I made it light. Some of the buttons do not function yet, but the important one function. Click on the screen shot above to go to the actual Flash website or click here.

Breaking Out

2008-09-06T09:10:00.000-07:00

The electric guitar is a simple musical instrument but when placed in the hands of an accomplished musician it could reach out to you as if it has a magical hand that could go deep into the center of the labyrinth of your heart and touch your soul. At least that's the way I see it. Some people don't see it that way. I remember one very late night many years ago, I laid in bed listening to the strains of the sound of a distant neighbor's radio. I could barely hear the voice of the singer and the sound of other instruments but I could distinctly hear the sound of the guitar, a clean tone floating in the air, wafted into my open window and into my ears by a gentle breeze. The song was Dire Strait's Sultans of Swing. The guitar playing of Mark Knopfler was as powerful as the lyrics. It was only then that I understood fully the meaning of that song.

The above image is the result of a couple of hours of fiddling with Adobe Photoshop. Yes, it took me long two hours to finish it. This image comes from two photos I got from the net shown below.

The Eye

2008-08-26T09:48:00.000-07:00

I was quiet a sucker for surrealism when I was younger (that was ten or so years ago). In 1997 I painted a surrealist desert sunset complete with a violin-playing cactus under a violently swirling clouds. It took me a month to finish that painting.

Now, it only took me about 30 minutes to finish the image above with Adobe Photoshop. It is just random. I just downloaded some free stock images and just let my mood flow. After 30 or so minutes I came up with this one. The original images I used are shown below :

No special effects were used there, just the ever reliable Lasso tool, Move tool, and a simple Render effect to get the right lighting for the windows.

My First Attempt in 3D Modeling

2008-08-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

I discovered Anim8or in 2003. This little free 3D authoring software is small but it can do big things. Only 900 KB but it can do modeling, animating, and rendering. I created the image below the day I stumbled upon Anim8or, that was five years ago. If you are an experienced 3D artist you will see that it only takes a very basic knowledge of 3D modeling to create an image like this. All I used to model the lamp were lathing and this is the easiest method of creating objects. I also rendered this image with Anim8or. I am very thankful to Anim8or because it opened the door to 3D modeling to me. Had it been another 3D authoring software that I discovered I would have been intimidated with the difficulty of creating 3D models and would have dismissed 3D modeling.

Violet Moon

2008-08-24T19:36:00.000-07:00

I like fooling around with graphics software. Among my favorites are Adobe Photoshop, KoolMoves, Anim8or, 3D Studio Max, Cinema 4D, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign. I need a space where I could put my little digital creations so I started this blog. I am also encouraging my wife to fiddle away with graphics so you will also see some of her works here every now and then.

I am also into digital music creation so sometimes I may feel like putting some of my music here. I chose the name Violet Moon because it sounds good to me and suggests a journey to another time or another world. For me digital art creation is a journey to a different time and world, a world that can only live in the mind of the artist. I want to share this world with others.