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I feel fantastic and I'm still alive
Apr. 9th, 2010 07:13 pmAnother long day yesterday. I'm midway through a six day workweek, thanks to day job plus DMA (plus trying to slog through this script and my steady unofficial role as therapist/producer/pastor to an erratic and widely dispersed flock of friends and artists).
Fortunately, I have quite a lot of people looking out for me -- small back-rub ambushes from Ciro, dinner waiting at the Museum on nights they know I won't have time to get any, an unmpromped offer to mark me as unavailable for programs during several hours last week so that I can work on beta testing without having to fit it around my usual duties or stay overtime.
At the museum, in order to coincide with a lecture on early photographic techniques*, I had visitors sit for "still life" video portraits -- close ups in which they had to sit as still as possible for one minute to make a video that looked like a still image -- a modern simulation of sitting for a daguerrotype of collodion print. Everyone failed, of course, including me (not least because everyone tried to make me laugh, and succeeded). We would have all blurred. It's a very different experience of time; suddenly it feels like you blink and swallow constantly. And of course you look very serious and dazed, as it's terribly difficult to maintain a smile and twinkling eyes. A minute is a very long time.
A good friend from high school, one of the best, (alias Christie Blackeder) is coming through town next month -- an extraordinary pianist and my favorite collaborator when it comes to absurdist humor. I'm tremendously excited and must think of something equally tremendous to mark the occasion.
* by France Scully Osterman, who teaches the old processes as well as applying them to her own artwork; her husband is historian at George Eastman House. She is very charming and looks a good deal like Annette Bening.
Fortunately, I have quite a lot of people looking out for me -- small back-rub ambushes from Ciro, dinner waiting at the Museum on nights they know I won't have time to get any, an unmpromped offer to mark me as unavailable for programs during several hours last week so that I can work on beta testing without having to fit it around my usual duties or stay overtime.
At the museum, in order to coincide with a lecture on early photographic techniques*, I had visitors sit for "still life" video portraits -- close ups in which they had to sit as still as possible for one minute to make a video that looked like a still image -- a modern simulation of sitting for a daguerrotype of collodion print. Everyone failed, of course, including me (not least because everyone tried to make me laugh, and succeeded). We would have all blurred. It's a very different experience of time; suddenly it feels like you blink and swallow constantly. And of course you look very serious and dazed, as it's terribly difficult to maintain a smile and twinkling eyes. A minute is a very long time.
A good friend from high school, one of the best, (alias Christie Blackeder) is coming through town next month -- an extraordinary pianist and my favorite collaborator when it comes to absurdist humor. I'm tremendously excited and must think of something equally tremendous to mark the occasion.
* by France Scully Osterman, who teaches the old processes as well as applying them to her own artwork; her husband is historian at George Eastman House. She is very charming and looks a good deal like Annette Bening.
