Received: "This is The End My Friend" Mail-Art Book Chapter from Marie Wintzer (Saitama, Japan)

[De Villo Sloan]

Chapter page by IUOMA member Marie Wintzer (Saitama, Japan) for the collaborative "The Crimson Giant" mail-art book project

November 27, 2010 - Marie Wintzer sent me a wonderful mail-art package that includes her chapter created for "The Crimson Giant" mail-art book project and a bonus piece I regard as concept art. Here is Marie's message to me:

Lovely script. The first chapter page is the opening image of this blog. "The Crimson Giant" book project is coordinated by Cheryl Penn (South Africa). A number of the chapters have been posted at the IUOMA, but not all. A tremendous amount of text has already been generated in an attempt to identify the book's theme(s) and possible interpretations of its meanings. I am going to defer offering my views until I've seen all the chapters. One very interesting thing I've noted about Marie Wintzer's chapter is an immediate consensus that it is the final chapter of "The Crimsoned Giant." This might not remain the case when the book is finally assembled. Yet there is a suggestion of closure in Marie's images and text here. I thought I would respond at this point by weaving some lines of verse with the chapter pages:

"Mistah Kurtz - head dead."

T.S. Eliot "The Hollow Men" - referencing Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"

"This is the end

Beautiful friend

This is the end

My only friend, the end...."

- Jim Morrison

"This is the dead land

This is the cactus land

Here the stone images

are raised...

"Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar..."

- T.S. Eliot "The Hollow Men"

Marie's envelopes also make beautiful mail-art:

And this wonderful East-West minimalist construct:

I am starting a new mail-art school that combines failed economics with shoddy reading: It's called Credit Default Swap Poetic Analytics: The basic idea is I can interpret your work any way I could possibly want to and you can do the same with mine. The "bonus" Marie Wintzer sent is, I think, collage scraps, which in truth I treasure. Friends know that when I'm getting low on material I often resort to mailing scraps from collages as mail-art. When I run out of that, I go for the trash can and become a die-hard believer in found art and Trashpo. Here's the collage material Marie sent:

Fantastic frags, yes? My first response was this is a puzzle. I sat there like a monkey trying to put it together; I don't think you can. So I decided it's a "concept puzzle" - you have pieces that aren't really meant to be anything but that shouldn't stop you from making something out of them. Keep combining them into different shapes, give them titles, and document. I heave already put this in a plastic bag, labeled it "Fluxus Puzzle by Marie Wintzer," and put it in my mail-art archive. You probably have not seen the last of these pieces.

Thanks so much, Marie.

More and more of the kids just adore Marie's East-meets-West "Marie's Mailbox" blog where it's getting to the point you just don't know who you'll run into:

http://www.mariesmailbox.blogspot.com/

Mail-art color of the day: orange (TYPM)

Mail-art psychic: "You will receive a mail-art offer you can't refuse."

[cheryl penn]

"What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from".

[De Villo Sloan]

One of mine too, Cheryl. I can't recall the history but it really could be another section of "The Wasteland." That's imagism at it's best - the imagery is stunning, I think, I re-read it for the blog. "This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends..." (last lines). Yip, not surprised you like it so much.

[cheryl penn]

No WAYS
The Hollow Men is one of my all time favorites!! De Villo - mail-art psychic you!

[De Villo Sloan]

Since early on I felt T.S. Eliot was a silent partner in "The Crimsoned Giant." I saw it in chapters by other people. The influence of "The Wasteland" and "The Hollow Men." Not that they were thinking it consciously - but Eliot is so much about spiritual death and redemption.

[Marie Wintzer]

Thanks for such a thoughtful blog post Sloan, I stayed hungry for days to see what you would write :-)
I would love it to be the end chapter of the book. After all that happened in Babel, a feeling of not knowing what is next, a feeling of emptiness, and your choice of "the hollow men" fits beautifully. And the cactus land for the city of Babel, brilliant. I think my chapter came out a bit more melancholic than what I wanted it to be, but it just happened like that, one afternoon I got slightly more distressed about difficulties in understanding each other and that's what came out of it. We do have language to communicate, but we need so much more.
So my puzzle piece gave you a hard time? (it is a puzzle). What a laugh I had when I read this, I'm picturing you trying "like a monkey" to put them together. Priceless!! I could torture you like Bifidus does with his code, but I will put up the piece on the blog in a few days and you'll see what it was supposed to be :-)))
Really enjoyed this blog post, thank you!!!