Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Santiago

By Nick Nicholson


Throughout his adolescent years, Miguel Valasco dreamed of becoming a famous poet like his hero, Pablo Neruda, but at the age of 22 he realised that he had little facility with the written word so he turned instead to videotape. Valasco purchased his first video camera in May, 1984, and quickly discovered the endless possibilities afforded by the medium. He videotaped everything for which he had no words: the restless feet of pedestrians rushing along Calle Bandera; a game of chess played by old men on the banks of the Mapocho River; the decomposing body of a cat in an alley. On February 25, 1987, Valasco videotaped a fly crawling on his kitchen window for twelve and a half minutes and in the summer of 1992 he recorded 141 hours of his girlfriend, Maria Salazar, sleeping naked in his bed. After Miguel Valasco was killed in a car accident on March 5, 1994, a collection of 1,217 videotapes, hidden in boxes and organised by date, was discovered in his apartment. Maria Salazar brought the tapes to the attention of a curator who subsequently mounted an exhibition that toured the Americas. The exhibition was entitled: Miguel Valasco, The Poetry of Videotape.


© Nick Nicholson 2010, 2011. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or in part without written permission from the author.

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This is the sixth part of Nick Nicholson's theme-adventurous, eight-part Travelogue. Subsequent segments will be published here in upcoming months.

Next Travelogue story: Sydney

• • •

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Throughout his life, Nick Nicholson has pursued a variety of creative vocations: music, photography, painting and, in recent years, writing. He lives in Australia.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Slipping away

(for Ronnie James Dio, 1942-2010)

The road was our home. Fancying ourselves wolfish gypsies, with our women and sunset Supermen notions, we rode strange highways. Dio’s magical meaningful lyrics and acme animated vibrato had further inspired us to put vivid travel verse to murdered trees, real world rhymes to enchanting themes.

My friends and I had been caught between adolescent heavens and hells, our protective devil’s horns pushing against hormonal confusion, and our mob-rule cannibal families. Coffee, heavy metal and powdered suns fueled our night flights, arrogant clever sentences yelled and penned, pedal to literal metal: the rush-intensity of these recorded experiences were the things we hoped would define us.

I settled down when I met her, a roadside rock n’ roll angel. A waitress, she’d cranked up “Holy Diver” near closing, belting out the lyrics with us. Later, with her hair falling across her sapphire stare she’d entranced me; I knew I’d met a stay-true heaven, a blissful slip-away from road lag, cold coffee, flat tires and crabby car mates.

Two decades passed.

The day Dio died, that girl – my wife – pressed her soft curves against me when she saw me mourning.

“I’m not wearing panties,” she promised. “Grab your Dio CDs and we’ll ride.”


Copyright ©2010, 2011 Steve Isaak. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce in any form, including electronic, without the author’s express permission.

Monday, April 11, 2011

**One of my stories, Parking Area 51: Venus VI Flames, got republished on Leodegraunce

Parking Area 51: Venus VI Flames, one of my older/PG-13-rated science fiction stories, got republished on Leodegraunce.

Leodegraunce publishes 4-5 authors a month, (usually) one a week; the site doesn't archive works, so "Venus VI" will be published there until 4/17/11.

If you're so inclined, check it out and comment on it. =)

Sunday, April 10, 2011

**One of my stories, Periwinkle, got republished on Every Night Erotica

Periwinkle, one of my older science fiction/horror/erotica stories, got republished on Every Night Erotica.

As stated before, this is a sexually-explicit/"for mature audiences only" work.

If you're so inclined, check it out and comment on it. =)

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Rotterdam

By Nick Nicholson


In June, 1939, Dutch surrealist Janek Bruhl finished production of his only film, De Wreedheid van Geboorte (The Cruelty of Birth). He was 31. Bruhl’s lover, the actress Clara Leitz, played the lead role of a young woman who descends into a subconscious world of psychosexual madness and perversity, depicted in a series of nightmarishly bizarre scenes that at times bordered on the pornographic. The experience was so grueling for Leitz, physically and mentally, that upon completion of filming, her doctor dispatched her to a sanitarium in Switzerland. Three weeks later, Leitz returned home to Rotterdam but she was never the same. She’d become fragile and prone to uncontrollable bouts of weeping. In March, 1940, Bruhl made some preliminary notes for his next film, Het Ei (The Egg), but not a single frame was ever shot. As fate would have it, Janek Bruhl and Clara Leitz were both killed on May 14, 1940, during the German blitz on their beloved city. In 1947, after a private viewing of De Wreedheid van Geboorte, Spanish director Luis Buñuel is reputed to have said, “After Bruhl, there is nothing.” The last surviving print of Bruhl’s cinematic masterpiece was destroyed by fire in 1961.


© Nick Nicholson 2010, 2011. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or in part without written permission from the author.

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This is the fifth part of Nick Nicholson's theme-adventurous, eight-part Travelogue. Subsequent segments will be published here in upcoming months.

Next Travelogue story: Santiago

• • •

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Throughout his life, Nick Nicholson has pursued a variety of creative vocations: music, photography, painting and, in recent years, writing. He lives in Australia.