Lost Poem

November 29, 2004 9:55 AM

Lost Poem: This one is a toughie. Several years ago (12+) I saw a poem in a magazine, but it wasn't really "printed" in the magazine -- it appeared on a computer screenshot as a companion graphic to the main article.

The magazine was an old Amiga rag (AmigaWorld or one of the other popular ones) and the poem accompanied (or more like was tangential to) an article that was probably about 3D rendering, and I THINK was written by one of the prolific Amiga 3D artists of the day, Brad W. Schenk or someone similar. What I can remember about the poem was this:

It was called "The Skull, the Dream and the Dancer" and was about the view (or dream) a skull had as it saw a dancer dancing. One of the lines was "...and fairer was the dance than any seen waking..", and the last line of the poem was, "It is something to know that the music is there."

My Google-fu is fairly strong, but this has been one occasion where the intarnets have failed me. I've tried searches, researching BWS's web presence, even tried emailing him a couple of years ago to see if it was something of his, or whether I'm thinking of someone else.

Help me ObiFilter, you're my only hope.

posted by robbie01 to Media & Arts (12 answers total)

After reading this post, I went down the hallway on a whim to talk to the art director at the company where I work - whose name happens to be Bradley W. Schenck. He did write the poem and is flattered that someone remembers it, but he himself has forgotten it after all these years. It seems even the author can't help on this one...
posted by Miss Bitchy Pants at 10:44 AM on November 29, 2004 [19 favorites]

From the author:

"Got no poem, but there's this... http://shop.webomator.com/"

(Link to his website, which I dare say would merit an FPP in its own right.)
posted by Miss Bitchy Pants at 10:51 AM on November 29, 2004 [3 favorites]

Oh...my...god.
posted by omidius at 10:52 AM on November 29, 2004 [2 favorites]

I'm in awe. Truly.
posted by drpynchon at 10:53 AM on November 29, 2004

Response by poster: Holy cow, small world. Thanks for asking (can't ask for a better source than that) but I guess it might be kinda tough to find something that probably only exists on an 3.5" floppy from an obsolete computer system.
posted by robbie01 at 10:54 AM on November 29, 2004

Wow. That's unbelievable.
posted by waxpancake at 10:59 AM on November 29, 2004

Does he know which magazine it ran in, the approximate year, or the name of the article? We might be able to find the issue.
posted by waxpancake at 11:01 AM on November 29, 2004

Response by poster: I could only guess that it was a very early 90s issue of AmigaWorld. There was another more grassroots Amiga pub called Info (or .info) which, as Google reveals, Brad W. Schenck was the Graphics columnist for -- so maybe it was Info magazine, not AmigaWorld.
posted by robbie01 at 11:19 AM on November 29, 2004

that is seriously fucking crazy.
posted by glenwood at 12:34 PM on November 29, 2004

I would bet it was .info.

Here is a list of what is in each issue (not sure how complete) from Amiga University, if that helps tickle your memory a bit. I'm guessing that tapping into the Amiga afficionado groups would be more productive than MeFi in this case.
posted by spock at 6:53 AM on November 30, 2004

This is the best AskMefi ever.
posted by zerolives at 6:58 AM on November 30, 2004

Wow, synchronicity. Just like a guy I know who was looking for an old martial arts instructor with whom he lost touch a while back. Ended up that the instructor was the father in law of one of our good friends in Japan (also in instructor in various other arts).

The power of the internets is undeniable... Just imagine what we could do with a beowulf cluster of... What, this isn't slashdot? Oh...
posted by splice at 9:37 AM on November 30, 2004