September’s walks through Ithaca reveal earthworms on asphalt, butterflies, changing light, and unexpected echoes between living creatures and machinery. In *Blessing of the Animals*, AOC’s testimony enters the film as I confront the loss of Chloe. The accompanying Smackdown contrasts official promises of protection and energy abundance with journalism about Ukraine, wildlife, and climate.
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“Control Your Concrete” is an experimental August 2026 film and essay made from walks through Ithaca. Following Thoreau’s idea that “the most alive is the wildest,” the film notices the living world pushing into the systems we build and asks how much of it can really be controlled. The page also compares federal government statements with journalism about climate and environmental change, showing how the language of control and management plays out beyond the local walk—in forests, rivers, energy systems and public policy.
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July begins with things changing form: fireworks become rain, a great tree disappears from Washington Park, and small lives continue around what remains. As smoke crosses borders and heat travels beyond where it begins, the walk becomes a way of paying attention—and attention itself becomes a demand for a vibrant, healthful world.
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What brings me joy is gathered in signs and wonders.
The slower video lets me study the vines on a wooden fence transforming into a flower head. Flies alight like fireflies by the stream. The flowers of summer open around me, and even the red painted fire hydrant appears to belong in a garden.
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Some things I found because they were signs. Some were flowers, raindrops, animals, clouds, painted lines, arrows, a cat sleeping in sunlight, a dead bird, an empty discarded drawer, a painting of birds, and the sky opening again and again. Sometimes I had time to stop down and frame the shot. Sometimes I reached for the camera as fast as I could.
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First shown as a two-channel, three monitor video piece on three large boxed blonde Oak black-and-white Setchell-Carlson monitors set on the stage floor. I was inspired by The Vasulkas Machine Vision series (1975-1977) to work in video that way.
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In recent months, I’ve been spending more time walking through Ithaca. Most days, I leave from North Plain Street, cross Buffalo Street, past the Children’s Garden, and follow the inlet trail toward Treman Marina and Cayuga Lake before circling back home.
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Neil’s Mellow Pad aligns with the intention of Earthstage: to attend to the living world as active presence—complex, fragile, and ongoing. These fragments are not arguments. They are acts of attention.
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I combine naturalism, history, diary, always in motion.
March may be my key piece. It is the longest video, and it feels iconic to me — the right time and place. This month seems to contain the full grammar: weather, politics, friends, music, gallery light, water, mud, protest, spring, death, food, thunder, and the body walking through it all.
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The realtime source follows February as a sequence of winter fragments: snow, bridge, art window, ice, warning, screen, moon, water. In the slowed version, the fragments dissolve into one another until danger and play begin to share the same surface.
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A gloved hand traces the curve of an icy orb, snow and ice held in suspension. It reminds me of a control bar for the frozen land. What looks frozen is not motionless. January holds movement inside the pause.
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December gathers snow, moon, gas globe, holidays, animals, and lights into one field of attention. What is civic and what is domestic begin to trade places. The gas globe becomes snowmen. Steam becomes the moon. A patch panel becomes birds by the lake. Holiday lights, brass light, snow light, and household light all begin speaking to one another.
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October is made from texture, wind, insects, water, shadow, protest, and sound. The walk stays close to the ground, then opens suddenly into public language: an Earth flag, no kings, no crowns for clowns, a national anthem played through drum roll and pennywhistle. My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness!
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Walking through Ithaca, I watch streets torn open and repaired, trees pruned, workers tending the ordinary machinery of a city. This is not a war zone. Neither are other American cities made into battlefields because the government describes them as dangerous or proposes using them as military “training grounds.” September asks what happens when the language of climate, dissent, and public life is changed to obscure what is plainly before us. Reality does not yield to the words used against it.
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August becomes a playground of coincidence: random music, cicadas, a Model T, a changing mural, a fish on the path, grief, and a lake turning briefly into stars. The camera lets things exist beside one another before deciding what they mean—while beyond the walk, the government and scientists argue over what constitutes harm.
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In July I move through flowers, storms, friends, recordings, murals, machines and a tree’s last dance, while the public record turns toward Texas floods, weather forecasting, EPA science and the Endangerment Finding. Slowing the film does not make the world simpler. It lets me see more of its complexity.
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Walking gives me the material and also gives me the order. *Our Town* follows June as it happened—water, flowers, machinery, music, political signs, insects, shadows, protest and pavement—allowing ordinary things to overlap without forcing them into a single explanation.
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I walk alone, looking at water, light and whatever enters the frame, while the larger world arrives through war, politics, climate and memory. The work begins in solitude but is meant for others: an offering, perhaps knowingly inadequate, made in the hope that looking closely can still help us live together.
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April 2025 does not resolve. It thickens. Protest, spring rain, flowers, insects, public records, climate policy and a truck marked SPILL RESPONSE occupy the same days. Looking back, I ask what it means to pay attention while the machinery of government is being rapidly remade.
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March 2025 unfolds in blue and yellow: Ukrainian flags, thawing water, a spinning pinwheel, and bread marked “STAND WITH UKRAINE.” My walking film absorbs Trump’s televised address and the unease of the moment, while the accompanying Smackdown contrasts official promises of peace and energy dominance with journalism on Ukraine and environmental consequences.
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This video requires deeper listening.
Soothing, melodic, projecting fairness to the generally unseen.
