Ben Balcom

“I often wonder how you manage to invent yourself.”

stepping into 2026 like (befuddled)

“I pause to record that I feel in extraordinary form. Delirium perhaps.”

last thoughts before the long dark

“In the wink of an eye my soul is turning in your hand in your hand”

“It’s the yellow dust inside the tulips. / It’s the shape of a tulip. / It’s the water in the drinking glass the tulips are in. / It’s a day like any other.”

“In defense of false endings.” - MG

Delighted to announce the world premiere of my newest film 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑷𝒉𝒂𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒙 at First Look 2025 @movingimagenyc . Screening on Sunday, March 16, 2025 @ 1:00pm in the Illuminations program. To my friends in the area, I hope you see you there <3 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑷𝒉𝒂𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒙 | 13 minutes | 16mm>digital | 2025 Letters from the Ceresco community trace the fragility of harmony, the dream of life in association, the frictions that give way to fracture. Members of the phalanx drift apart, lingering in private corners, suspended in speculative time. So grateful to @bitterstranger for supporting the film.

“I’m interested in associative logic, in daisy chains of thinking.” - Carl Bogner When I was a graduate student, Carl taught a class called Writing Irresponsibly. He opened that class by sharing with us these copied notecards of ideas that had been lingering while he conceptualized the class. Fantasy/fixity to me feels like the most Bognerian dichotomy, a tension between two equally seductive, equally imperfect or incomplete poles, establishing a spectrum of possibility and play. At Von Trier the other night, we talked about some of Carl’s phrases that worked their way so deeply into the vocabulary here at UWM: to meet, to further, to trouble…to name only a few. Carl offered us so much language, so many ideas…in generous, nimble introductions, in the pages and pages of notes he’d take during critiques, in the margins of so many books. I imagine all of this language gathered together in a single space would be the loveliest essay poem of all time. But the magic of his marginal writing is that it radiates out from him and is with us in our books on our scraps of paper and we hold onto it in this elegantly distributed way, in a constellation. It’s impossible to name just how much Carl transformed the way I think, see, look, listen, and feel my way through the world. The associative “daisy chains of thinking” being one of the most essential things that I learned while learning from him. As a mentor he gave me such creative permission. His generosity is beyond compare. I’ve been truly unmoored since the news of his passing, but this week has offered so many incredible testaments to his brilliance. I miss you, Carl. Rest in peace my friend. Slide 2: self portrait by Carl (date unknown)

“I am. We are. That is enough. Now we have to begin. Life has been put in our hands.”

“A rotating eternity may seem atrocious to an observer, but it is quite acceptable to those who dwell there.”

“What is it, the heart, is it the sound of the pine trees blowing in the painting?”