Ryan > 140 Characters

I love technology

2009-12-24T08:53:00.000Z

i want this.

Crayon Physics Deluxe from Petri Purho on Vimeo.

2009-12-19T09:01:00.000Z

the following was posted by a good friend of mine that works at City Hall in Austin. i don't know how to say how terribly sad it makes me.

--------

It's odd how some things get to you.
I closed my office door today and cried for a pretty long time when I heard that Jeniffer Gale had died.

She sang Silent Night to a City Council Sub Committee (Health and Human Services) yesterday, then went out into the streets and froze to death.
She froze. To death.
In Austin, Texas in 2008, Austin's second most well known homeless person and five time mayoral candidate, a "woman" actually quite loved by all who know her, died of exposure on a public street. WTF?

Jennifer had her own numerology system.
No one had a clue what she based it on.
She always said to me, "your a five, that means you will be a great leader."

Not great enough to see to it that you had a three dollar blanket Jennifer.

2009-07-29T23:03:00.001+01:00

the biggest thing i'm struggling with
is what style you'd say the music is.

i like to work in good beats but
i wouldn't say you could dance to it.

the storytelling is too abstract to be folk.

it doesn't hit you hard enough to be rock.

but i dance to it
and it is my story
and i rock the hell out of
this little room
in this little flat
on this little island
making it.

and i suppose that matters more than whatever it will eventually be called.

2009-06-12T23:13:00.000+01:00

aerial rig progress

2009-05-13T11:08:00.006+01:00

it is simply unfair how amazing lance and ava are. lance has been both the brains and the brawn behind building the rig and ava said she can do the welding for it this week. yes! i just posted some photos to satiate the desire that i know you must have for construction/powertool/lance/aerial porn:

full gallery --> http://www.oneflameinthefire.com/rigbuild1

when it's all said and done it should look something like this:

2009-05-05T11:15:00.010+01:00

This is addictively amusing:

As is this one:

Yay for reducing even the intimate medium of singing into something even a machine can do!

Cornwall

2009-04-26T11:25:00.007+01:00

full gallery ---> http://www.oneflameinthefire.com/gallery-cornwall/

2009-04-26T11:24:00.001+01:00

it's times like this
somewhere in the middle of my night
and everyone else's afternoon
that i'm wide open
and i feel all the outliers of your emotions.

i normally can't sleep at night because i feel your excitement.
tonight i can't sleep because i feel your fear.
i can't change anything, but i can be there,
and i will

2009-04-21T11:26:00.000+01:00

it doesn't surprise me how much exploitation there is on the interwebs
but it hurts and disappoints me.

my only comfort is knowing that relevant truth will ultimately win,
and relevant truth will set us free.

hold the line. stay with me.

2009-04-15T01:04:00.002+01:00

i absolutely hate flickr.com
and
i absolutely love flickr.com.

it is the photographer's quintessential siren.

it draws me in
over and over and over and over again

and i want it to love me
as i love it
but it will not

because it does not fancy
my strong suit.

in fact,
it doesn't even see it.

my ego keeps trying to convince my better half to change
but i shake him and raise my voice to assure him that it's better to just be me
just as i am
than to just be loved.

i want to be felt.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

waving across the pond from Land's End

2009-04-11T11:28:00.001+01:00

unsure if there really is justice or if there is only power

2009-03-31T11:29:00.003+01:00

it used to be that the more i read, the sadder i became because it was more and more clear that the world is a painful and unfair place

so i decided i'd just take care of my own and not try to carry the world's problems on my shoulders

but it seems that everyone that had anything worth protecting did the same thing

because those dangerous things have found their way to our doorsteps

and they humor us by knocking.

point is: you and i must be the warm sun for some, or it will always be a cold night for all.

where the wild things are

2009-03-27T11:30:00.000Z

this makes me very happy:

epic sxsw week over

2009-03-23T11:31:00.014Z

just spent the last week doing SXSW for the first time. i should clarify that i did not showcase but was just attending for the panels and to scout out the showcases to get ideas in case i apply to play there in the next couple years. i worried it wouldn't be worth the cost of the badge and the travel but it turned out to be well worth it. the panels were outstanding and i learned a lot from them. one of the most valuable things was just seeing and meeting people that make up the music industry...it's always been such an abstract thing to me before but i have a much better feel for who's who and what they do now. i get back to london on thursday and i'm looking forward to taking the momentum i have coming out of sxsw and putting it into finishing this cd. highlights of the week include:

* arc attack - i'm so proud of parsec and his team. i saw their show twice downtown and was just blown away.

* metallica - got to see them in a barbeque joint! incredible show. and they played mostly OLD OLD songs which is all the stuff that i learned to play guitar on (master of puppets, sanitarium, one, seek and destroy, etc). it was amazing to be there as a musician and get to see the guys that got me started playing guitar 18 years ago.

* tori amos - hot

* amanda palmer (from Dresden Dolls) - even hotter than tori amos!

* MY FIANCE - even hotter than amanda palmer! she had a really really tough week but was incredibly supportive of me traveling for the conference. i can't wait to get back and do what i can to support her.

* monotonix - i got 1) hit by a trash can by the singer, 2) hit by a drumstick by the drummer (who was drumming on TOP of the crowd while they held up his kit) and 3) got trampled as i was leaving by the crowd as the show spilt out into the street (red river). these guys were out of control. the last thing i saw before i took off was the singer scaling an apartment building across from the venue and jumping off into the crowd below.

* le castle vania - this dude can't be more than 15 but he throws down some of the best breaks i've ever heard.

port o'brien - i caught them play the song I Woke Up Today three times because i'm just addicted to it. when i saw them on the top floor of buffalo billiards they handed pots and pans out to everyone in the crowd to play along and i swear i thought the floor would cave in from people jumping up and down and going apesh!t. so awesome.

BUT THE BEST MOMENT OF ALL WAS:

* jarvis cocker (from Pulp) - he lead one of the panels and played an accoustic version of Babies which was my favorite song when i moved to austin in 1996. i was just obsessed with Pulp back then and it was so surreal to see jarvis there playing that song for us. i had one of those smiles on that was so wide it hurt. oh man that made me so happy.

now i'm just looking forward to getting home to be with amy. i get back there on thursday morning.

video for Fall From Grace

2009-03-15T11:37:00.001Z

nothing fancy but i put some public domain clips together to make a video for Fall From Grace:

The Shard

2009-03-11T11:38:00.001Z

Wow... THIS is why the Shunt is closing in June. this building is planned to be built right over where the Shunt stands now so it will closed to use for storage. it'll be the largest building in london by far: a fitting tombstone for what has to be one of the greatest art spaces anywhere ever. it will be weird to look at it on the skyline one day and think 'we used to dance there.'

The Shard, London from Uniform on Vimeo

i have seen the future and it is rad

2009-03-11T11:20:00.001Z

speaking out on the 'financial crisis'

2009-03-03T11:43:00.001Z

at this point i'm fairly convinced that anyone that says they know exactly how the financial crisis occurred and what the correct solution is for it is either lying or delusional.

it's just enormous.

even formulating a very high level picture of the issue takes an intermediate understanding of economics, accounting, real estate, psychology, finance, government, regulations, politics and history. and, at that, it takes understanding all of those things from a global perspective and not just a u.s. one.

a few months ago i would have said that i understood 75% of what was going on...but now, after studying so much more of all those things previously listed, i'd say that i understand about 20% of what is going on, if that. i don't necessarily need to study all of this, god knows i keep plenty busy with all of the other things that interest me, but i think i'm drawn to it more and more as i realize how intertwined everything is; i used to think you could just study defense or government or law or finance or economics or accounting, etc, but i believe now that you have to study all of them if you want to understand any of them.

it's on my mind tonight because i just watched I.O.U.S.A. and i guess it was good at addressing one important piece of the picture (debt) but it makes a lot of assumptions about the big picture using just that one puzzle piece and it's simply more complicated than that. but that brings me back to my point: even this well done documentary takes two hours to explain a *piece* of what's going on in a very high level way so there is simply no possible way that one can draw anything of value on the subject from the media who just alternate ranting for 20 seconds or so at a time on only the parts of the story that have dramatic appeal.

this is far more important than any other specific issue (including the wars we're fighting now which, like most wars, are only subsets of broader economic issues) so we need to understand it so that we can push confidently in the right direction. right now i see an incredible number of people wasting their energy by pushing against each other with equal amounts of passion and ignorance. there are people that dedicate their lives to this (economists) and it concerns me that for some reason few organizations are handing the mics to them. most of the ones i've found seem to agree that spending to stimulate the economy and prop up the financial infrastructure (banks) is crucial but even in the best case scenario the world stabilizes and we're right back to being nearly 60 trillion dollars in the hole when you tally up all the obligations the u.s. has and no one seems to have a pretty picture to paint of how we get out of that. scary stuff. i don't have any answers. i'd love to just forget it and get back to working on my music but a big part of me worries that very very bad things will come from the lifestyles we've collectively enjoyed and they very well may come in our lifetime, and the fear of confronting those things keeps me up at night. it is, btw, 1:30am in london right now on a monday night. amy and the cat are sound asleep. i'm going to try to catch up with them but it's hard because i got all these things and more on my mind. these are most certainly interesting times.

control

2009-02-25T11:49:00.000Z

there were three moments in my life that nudged me into photography. this post is about the first.

u2's achtung baby (still one of the greatest albums ever) changed my life in 1991. it was the brilliant combination of radical: songwriting, production, management and photography. this post is about the last.

in 1991 albums were still about more than music, it was an experience, and an important part of the experience for anyone that listened to u2 or depeche mode was anton corbijn because he created the look and feel of that experience. 1991 was the year i fell in love with music on my own (my mom was in love with music so until 1991 i shared interest in whatever she was listening to) and i fell in love with photography solely because of the incredible photos i stared at in the achtung baby cd insert. 1991 was the year i got my first guitar and wrote my first song. it'd be a few more years before i took my first photos. it'd be even later that i'd learn that my dad had been a songwriter and photographer as well when he was my age.

i was thinking about it tonight because i FINALLY got around to watching Control, the movie about joy division that was directed by anton corbijn. the camera work is good (of course) and the casting is perfect (samantha morton is incredible) but somehow the movie didn't tell me or move me as much as the far better '24 Party People' did (which i just watched a few days ago and LOVED), despite joy division only playing a small role in the latter movie. i think part of it is that anton shot the movie black and white, which is often his style, but it's such a distortion from the real england that it makes what was actually a true story somehow less believable. i guess i expected that a master of imagery, as corbijn is, would find the way to tell the story of how alt-gloom bands like joy division (or the cure, or depeche mode or the smiths, etc) rose from what seems to me to be a relatively colorful england. the movie 'this is england' (one of my favorites) does a much better job of showing and reconciling the dark side of england with its colorful environment. i guess it's an important reminder for myself (and anyone else that considers themselves a photographer): having your own style is fine but if your business is storytelling then don't let your style get in the way of the story.

the following are photos from the brilliant anton corbijn http://www.corbijn.co.uk/
my favs are the depeche mode ones because i appreciate the subtle but consistent theme of putting dave gahan (the frontman) up front but martin gore (the one who writes depeche mode's music) in focus:

photos of the day - 2/23/09 (paris)

2009-02-23T11:53:00.001Z

FULL GALLERY ---> http://www.oneflameinthefire.com/paris

The Forgotten Circus

2009-02-22T13:45:00.000Z

i can't tell you how moved i was by this film last night when amy and i stumbled on a small room deep inside the Shunt that had this projected onto the wall. the combination of that setting with the haunting imagery and the breathtaking music gives me chills again just thinking about it. these are clips from the full length video but they include some of my favorite parts. apparently this was filmed in partnership with the Circus Space group here in london (that's not the same space that Amy does her aerial stuff in, it's the 'other' group in town).

Behold the engagement website!

2009-02-17T12:01:00.001Z

amy and i got engaged over the weekend in paris. we had a great trip and we couldn't be happier. the website below has the related story, photos, video, etc.

http://www.oneflameinthefire.com/ryanandamy

this is my favorite part:
http://www.oneflameinthefire.com/ryanandamy/video

:)

2009-02-11T12:02:00.000Z

it may be the case that i spend too much time
turning the past into poetry
and dreaming about the future.
tonight, however, i only draw on my past
and my dreams of the future
to bring me clarity
in this moment
of this moment
and for this moment.

i have never been so certain of anything as i am of this.

it may be
because i've never had so much past
and so many dreams
to draw upon.

london roller girls

2009-02-09T12:07:00.001Z

HIGHLIGHT GALLERY HERE --> http://www.oneflameinthefire.com/clockworkcarnage-highlights/

full gallery is here --> http://www.oneflameinthefire.com/clockworkcarnage/

2009-02-09T12:03:00.000Z

i highly recommend this video from elizabeth gilbert for anyone that does creative work. i think this will have a significant impact on me and my music and photography work.