Gardner Mounce Photography

Hermes......................................................................

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:53:02 PDT

The blue light of the girl's cell phone is all that reveals her face as it beeps for the last time. She flips it shut. Hermes is already in the room, as if he has just received the long awaited signal, slippers clattering across the stone floor as he crosses and opens the curtains. The darkness cracks to reveal a setting sun over a ruined city. "What errands have they been sending you on, Hermes?" she asks. He puts his finger to his lips. Then takes that finger and draws a long line in the dust on the floor. Sitting at the end of the line he removes his feet, sandals and all, and throws them to one side of it. He removes his ears, eyes, nose and mouth and throws them on the same side. To remove his skin he stands to take off his clothes and piles them all neatly next to the rest. He pauses for breath before his bony fingers plunge for his heart. It rests in his hand, glistening in the last light like an hourglass. It's as if the situation itself were studying it. Its slowing pumps, its symbolic appeal. He drops it. In silence he crosses over the line, draws a small circle, and walks back. He empties his head of his brain and collapses.

The girl walks around Hermes' diagram and stops at the empty circle,

wondering what about it is so still. And so full.

Resources

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 13:36:30 PDT

Since learning of the world before
the printing press and
processed pulp
I feel ashamed to slap
down these ugly notes in
my respectless handwriting.

I'm imagining the monk
who with hiked habit
treaded swiftly through trees
only to see the runaway lamb
slip away through stacks of
unrealized treasure.

A Blind Man

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 23:34:00 PDT

I have never traveled the world,
never even traveled outside America,
except in Seattle when we drove
to the edge of the continent
and for a silent hour became the night
we found there. The far-off lights of the city
haloed the horizon in a soundless explosion.

I have never traveled the world,
but I have traveled inside my own.
Through the ups and downs of the thread of experience
sewing my soul into the tight hem of white skin,
the boulevards of blood filled with the echoing
complicated inner-workings of organs,
processes rising and falling in calculated progression,
oxygen peering over the precipice of my throat
into darkness swallowing darkness; pinching perspective.

I have never traveled the world,
but I have seen dark rooms of men using space as an ashtray,
using time as their ashtray,
using women as ashtrays.
I have seen those women blowing smoke in my face,
blowing hello, how are you, nice to see you, goodbye.

A mystic said, The sky is blue. The world is a blind man
squatting on the road.
I have never traveled the world,
but I have traveled that road,
squatting down, picking through footprints that go this way,
that way, going both ways in boastful conviction.

I travel that road,
but make frequent stops to ask the footprints,
Are you sure this is right?

Three Waves

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:51:11 PDT

The new website is coming along slowly, so I went ahead and uploaded the old one again and will continue the posting until the new one is ready.

Of Music

You said of Joni Mitchell's Blue that it was music you
had always been looking for. Like the way our first look
at the ocean isn't surprising because we always knew
what it would look like and it just waits for our attention.
You quote a composer that helped you through the divorce
as the waves try to drown us in sound,
"Music is like white light which contains all colors," you say.
At the mention of light we look at the moon
which pushes waves at us one after another, tugging at us,
asking for us�what is it you're asking?

And then we see it: not one man in the moon, but two:
A woman howling at the edge of her white halo, a man stuffed in a box,
and where their ears meet is the bleak negative space of violence like
a hole revealing what lies beyond the side we don't see, like
a keyhole through which light pours, or like a lens which brings
everything beyond us into focus, gathering the light of stars,
pinching it at the middle, and pouring it out onto the ocean in a cone.

For a small time we see it: stacks of moisture, the tug of matter,
the weight of all water. And there through the thieving moon�
the universe's prodding finger.

Beach Boy

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:48:37 PDT

s.o.s

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 23:18:18 PDT

Accompanying music: Eluvium- Under the Water it Glowed

A Landmark, A Gathering Storm

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 15:50:50 PDT

Playlist for the beach:
Robin Guthrie
Hammock
Milosh
Sigur Ros
Stars of the Lid
Explosions in the Sky

Goodnight

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 23:31:42 PDT

Crab Hunting

We invent new methods every year
for the capture, the confinement, (and before we knew better)
the kill. This year my sister traps them with a net,
and we pile them into a bucket without sand.
Every time a new one drops in we ornament their
frantic dancing with a flickering flashlight and techno beat:
uhn, tss, uhn, tss, uhn, tss, uhn, tss!

Perhaps this is what marks the gradual defeat of childhood:
the need for variety, the constant act of reinvention.
My brother still cackles, Do it again! Do it again! Do it again!
But the older kids are bored, always retreating farther into shells.
I act like I don't hear it when someone calls for the flashlight
when I'm only a few yards away. Perhaps this is reinvention,
a variation of a personal theme: dodging the light, slipping
beneath the waves, waiting for it to pass.

Total Savage

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:44:37 PDT

Promo of Memphis-based hip hop artist Total Savage. Check out his stuff here
If you'd like promos done contact me here
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A Neon Ampersand

If I could see my time in this city
like a time-lapse photograph of my life
trailing behind me and building up in light

A white halo around the lake with you,
A neon ampersand curling through neighborhoods,
in my car, golden time machine, that paces

in white troughs around town, rising in frequency
to blinding moments of catharsis
which peak every time like a pulse
in my chest
(our lives lived out secretly

burned�dodged�into the past's
otherwise dark photograph)

A picture of my head, light pouring from
my eyes and ears and mouth from all
my constant thinking of you

A green and gold streak of tranquil thought
and planning, but never seen in practice
or trailing behind me, a confident red.

My Brother Plays the Guitar in His Head

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:23:23 PDT

Destiny, Destiny protect me from the world
Destiny, hold my hand protect me from the world

Here we are, with our running and confusion
And I don't see no confusion anywhere

And if the world does turn, and if London burns
I'll be standing on the beach with my guitar
I want to be in a band, when I get to heaven
Anyone can play guitar
And they won't be a nothing anymore

Grow my hair, Grow my hair I am Jim Morrison
Grow my hair, I wannabe wannabe wannabe Jim Morrison

Here we are with our running and confusion
And I don't see no confusion anywhere

And if the world does turn, and if London burns
I'll be standing on a beach with my guitar
I want to be in a band, when I get to heaven
Anyone can play guitar
And they won't be a nothing anymore

-Radiohead