Five Things
Feb. 25th, 2009 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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jonquil: Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with (if you're lucky). Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.
My five: movies - art - true love - travel - poetry
movies My parents' video camera was older than I was, a monstrous metal blob that attached to the VCR and which was too heavy to use without a tripod. I was not allowed to touch the camera, although my Dad was sometimes a good sport about filming my occasional tele-play about unicorns and sorceresses. I was more interested in radio, honestly. Radio dramas, puppet shows, and graphic adventure games. I had some favorite movies, and I watched them over and over again, but I could take or leave the rest of film. Anyway, I never had control over the TV, which was somehow the province of my younger sister, who used it as part of a long and hostile occupation of the family room, possibly out of resentment for my freedom of access to Dad's computer (which neither Mom nor my sister was allowed).
As with so many things, I got into film because I was annoyed to see somebody else doing it wrong. I had a friend in college (who before long was not my friend anymore) who was a communications major, and she had to do a number of film exercises, and I could see immediately that she was doing everything badly, from subject selection to shot composition to styles of interaction with cast and crew. I figured if all this stuff was so obvious to me, to the extent that other people were constantly asking me to work on their films, I should probably take a class and find out whether I actually had potential. Turns out I do okay, but in a kind of awkward non-mainstream way that freaks some people out and makes other people a little obsessed. I'm also really bad at guessing what a script panel will go for, because if I think something's workable, everybody tells me I should write it as a book instead, and if I think something is really out there, everyone goes for it. I don't really understand movies. I'm trying to watch more of them instead of reading so much. Also, when I say I don't understand movies, I'm sort of lying, even though I am also telling the truth. Other filmmakers sometimes get angry at me for not being passionate enough and say that if I can't live without film, I shouldn't do it, but I think this is because they know I think that they shouldn't do it if they aren't good enough, no matter how much they love it. There's a reason amateur sounds so much like amor.
art I just finished reading Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut, and on page 189 of my copy, he says:
"I think -- I think -- it is somehow very useful, and maybe even essential, for a fine artist to have to somehow make his peace on the canvas with all the things he cannot do. That is what attracts us to serious paintings, I think: that shortfall, which we might call 'personality,' or maybe even 'pain'."
This seems pretty true to me, although I disagree with the book in other places where it takes potshots at abstract expressionism and glorifies paintings that look like photographs. I love abstract expressionism, and I say that if I want to look at a photograph, I should look at a photograph. If I want to move a lamp post, I can just photoshop it.
I'm teaching a film course for the Dallas Museum of Art right now, and I'm about to ask the students to write manifestos so I can get a better sense of them, and also as a sneaky way of getting them to write interesting artists' statements. I figured I better do it first, although I won't show them mine until they show theirs. Here it is:
true love Two quotes have been in my head a lot lately. The first is Shakespeare: the course of true love never did run smooth (lysander, midsummer, act 1 scene i). The second is Judith Butler:
"Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact."
If Ciro and I weren't unshakably convinced of our rightness for each other, I don't think it's likely we'd be a couple right now. Even when we were just friends - and not particularly close friends - we occasionally got into verbal battles that terrified anyone nearby; the differences in our communication styles make it extremely difficult for us to resolve disputes, or to figure out whether we agree when we suspect it is possible we don't.
Life itself hasn't made things easy, either. We've spent a lot of time on different continents, and some of that fighting with three different governments. When we've been together, it's been with other family members under the roof, either because we were staying with my parents in Boston or because his father was staying with us. We've never really had a stable income or a stable future. We're both under a lot of stress to prove ourselves as artists, and although we are not competitors, we can be rivals. We've never had the money or the time to get out much. We didn't have the luxury of integrating households slowly; we have had to depend on each other for the beginning, and have had to weigh the advantages of getting him a new razor blade versus getting me new shampoo. We knew each other too well from the beginning to have a honeymoon period, and had already fallen out with several of each other's friends.
I can't do my work without him as an audience and support. When we are not tearing each other up, we have a very good time, because we are more amused and fascinated by each other than we are by anyone else. Stuff just isn't as fun without Ciro to share it with.
travel When I was little, my dad was an internal auditor, which meant he was on the road 70% of some years. Sometimes we went with him, and sometimes we went on vacations with his frequent flier miles. We moved frequently. I used to be more comfortable in airports than just about anywhere; that only changed with the new airline cost-cutting and security procedures. I still don't have much attachment to buildings, which I kind of assume won't last; I just look for places where I have access to a library and the internet. I like museums and publicly-owned spaces. When I go to a new place, the thing that makes me happiest is amassing new information and new sense impressions, so I love trying new foods, new dances, new instruments, and new ceremonies. I like visiting historical sites. I like walking around and looking at architecture. I generally adopt some parts of the local culture and try to be respectful of their rhythms and preferences. It gives me a clearer picture of how I've been thinking. I have been to four of the seven continents, but never to the southern hemisphere. I think two weeks is a good amount of time to go somewhere if you have money. I think three days is a good amount of time to go if you don't have money, because after that you will have exhausted the free and cheap things that interested you. I like being as multi-cultural as I am, and I like the freedom of being able to go where I want to go. At the same time, I hope that someday a country or two will claim me as theirs and see me as a symbol of national pride. That would mean more to me than other awards.
poetry Here is my first published poem, which I wrote when I was four:
I'm a little nutkin
In my hutkin
Eating futkin
In my hutkin
To me, this poem is very clearly about a squirrel who makes a paste of acorns in a tree hole. It also marks the beginning and end of my dada period. Subsequently, I wrote and read a lot of nonsense poetry and doggerel, neither of which I considered poems so much as jokes which rhymed. I hated poetry and poets pretty passionately, mainly because anyone I knew who wrote poetry wrote either maudlin goth stuff, treacly love poems, or angry swearing things that were supposed to shock me but that were pretty boring. Also, the Nutkin poem gives you a clue to my feelings about end rhymes and rigid rhythmic forms: I find them a bit immature and a bit silly. I think internal rhyme and vowel rhyme are great, but I think an obsession with rhyme can cause people to choose words that have less impact and meaning than a non-rhyming alternative. I enjoy following poetic forms in the same way I enjoy sudoku puzzles, but I rarely think they are the best way to express a thought. In fact I love silly childish poems if they're done right, which is why I continued to like nonsense poetry, but for the most part the only way for a form and rhyme scheme to really impress me is if I don't notice it the first time through.
Somehow, nobody noticed that I didn't do poetry, or else they noticed that I did all the time and just wasn't counting it myself because it was something I did playfully and not seriously. Senior year of high school, I got pulled out of class for a poetry masterclass with a visiting lecturer. This came as a complete surprise to me, since I had not signed up for it and did not know it was happening and would not have signed up had I known. In the two minutes I had before everyone else finished sitting down, I very quickly wrote:
Sun off a white shirt
Son of a blue collar
Soon on a tan back
Both creased with wear
The visiting lecturer said: You have been reading a lot of William Carlos Williams. I said: Who?
The librarian copied the poem down without telling me and sent it in to a city-wide contest, which I won. I sort of started to think poetry might be okay and the problem was the self-identified poets I was around, but just to be safe I didn't write much poetry in the next four years and mostly experimented with the visual nature of words, writing poems shaped like ladders and so on. During that time, I wrote maybe three poems total, unless you count rhyming jokes I put in birthday cards, and none of the poems were any good and I knew it.
At that point, I met Chad and immediately afterward Ciro, and they were involved in the Dallas open mic scene and insisted I come along and read my poems despite the fact that I didn't have any poems. The first time around, I just did stand up. The second time around, I figured I had better write something because I was getting tired of almost everyone else's poems, and as a "hallo, we have just met but I think we could get along pretty well" to Ciro, I sat down and wrote "Establishing Shot," which sort of led to a fan base and from then on I needed to keep writing stuff. And because I needed to keep writing stuff, I started reading a lot of stuff, and I found out that a lot of it was really good.
jonquil: Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with (if you're lucky). Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given. My five: movies - art - true love - travel - poetry
movies My parents' video camera was older than I was, a monstrous metal blob that attached to the VCR and which was too heavy to use without a tripod. I was not allowed to touch the camera, although my Dad was sometimes a good sport about filming my occasional tele-play about unicorns and sorceresses. I was more interested in radio, honestly. Radio dramas, puppet shows, and graphic adventure games. I had some favorite movies, and I watched them over and over again, but I could take or leave the rest of film. Anyway, I never had control over the TV, which was somehow the province of my younger sister, who used it as part of a long and hostile occupation of the family room, possibly out of resentment for my freedom of access to Dad's computer (which neither Mom nor my sister was allowed).
As with so many things, I got into film because I was annoyed to see somebody else doing it wrong. I had a friend in college (who before long was not my friend anymore) who was a communications major, and she had to do a number of film exercises, and I could see immediately that she was doing everything badly, from subject selection to shot composition to styles of interaction with cast and crew. I figured if all this stuff was so obvious to me, to the extent that other people were constantly asking me to work on their films, I should probably take a class and find out whether I actually had potential. Turns out I do okay, but in a kind of awkward non-mainstream way that freaks some people out and makes other people a little obsessed. I'm also really bad at guessing what a script panel will go for, because if I think something's workable, everybody tells me I should write it as a book instead, and if I think something is really out there, everyone goes for it. I don't really understand movies. I'm trying to watch more of them instead of reading so much. Also, when I say I don't understand movies, I'm sort of lying, even though I am also telling the truth. Other filmmakers sometimes get angry at me for not being passionate enough and say that if I can't live without film, I shouldn't do it, but I think this is because they know I think that they shouldn't do it if they aren't good enough, no matter how much they love it. There's a reason amateur sounds so much like amor.
art I just finished reading Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut, and on page 189 of my copy, he says:
"I think -- I think -- it is somehow very useful, and maybe even essential, for a fine artist to have to somehow make his peace on the canvas with all the things he cannot do. That is what attracts us to serious paintings, I think: that shortfall, which we might call 'personality,' or maybe even 'pain'."
This seems pretty true to me, although I disagree with the book in other places where it takes potshots at abstract expressionism and glorifies paintings that look like photographs. I love abstract expressionism, and I say that if I want to look at a photograph, I should look at a photograph. If I want to move a lamp post, I can just photoshop it.
I'm teaching a film course for the Dallas Museum of Art right now, and I'm about to ask the students to write manifestos so I can get a better sense of them, and also as a sneaky way of getting them to write interesting artists' statements. I figured I better do it first, although I won't show them mine until they show theirs. Here it is:
I am a filmmaker. I reject the title "video artist," and reject the people who call themselves video artists. I reject the idea that it is easier for painters to make films than for filmmakers to paint. I reject the idea that film is not art in its own right.
I believe that film is the art of our time. I believe that film has a greater sphere of influence than books or newspapers. I believe the right picture is worth more than a thousand words. I believe film affects our dreams and goals as deeply as music. I believe I have a responsibility to my audience. I believe I am obligated to think deeply. I believe I must speak to communicate, but must never speak down. I believe the best film is the film with the best narrative.
I reject auteurism. I reject filmmaking by committee. I reject filmmaking by concept alone. I believe film should be rigorous, focused, and deliberate. I believe the best choices are often accidental, or subconscious. I believe in a mixture of calm and chaos.
I believe in constraint. I believe in inspiration found outside the self. I believe all our stories are about us whether we mean them to be or not. I believe in fighting for what interests me. I believe that when I try to guess what other people want, I always guess wrong. I believe I am not talking to myself.
I believe artists have an obligation to make art.
I believe artists have an obligation to other artists.
I stand for the things I stand for.
true love Two quotes have been in my head a lot lately. The first is Shakespeare: the course of true love never did run smooth (lysander, midsummer, act 1 scene i). The second is Judith Butler:
"Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact."
If Ciro and I weren't unshakably convinced of our rightness for each other, I don't think it's likely we'd be a couple right now. Even when we were just friends - and not particularly close friends - we occasionally got into verbal battles that terrified anyone nearby; the differences in our communication styles make it extremely difficult for us to resolve disputes, or to figure out whether we agree when we suspect it is possible we don't.
Life itself hasn't made things easy, either. We've spent a lot of time on different continents, and some of that fighting with three different governments. When we've been together, it's been with other family members under the roof, either because we were staying with my parents in Boston or because his father was staying with us. We've never really had a stable income or a stable future. We're both under a lot of stress to prove ourselves as artists, and although we are not competitors, we can be rivals. We've never had the money or the time to get out much. We didn't have the luxury of integrating households slowly; we have had to depend on each other for the beginning, and have had to weigh the advantages of getting him a new razor blade versus getting me new shampoo. We knew each other too well from the beginning to have a honeymoon period, and had already fallen out with several of each other's friends.
I can't do my work without him as an audience and support. When we are not tearing each other up, we have a very good time, because we are more amused and fascinated by each other than we are by anyone else. Stuff just isn't as fun without Ciro to share it with.
travel When I was little, my dad was an internal auditor, which meant he was on the road 70% of some years. Sometimes we went with him, and sometimes we went on vacations with his frequent flier miles. We moved frequently. I used to be more comfortable in airports than just about anywhere; that only changed with the new airline cost-cutting and security procedures. I still don't have much attachment to buildings, which I kind of assume won't last; I just look for places where I have access to a library and the internet. I like museums and publicly-owned spaces. When I go to a new place, the thing that makes me happiest is amassing new information and new sense impressions, so I love trying new foods, new dances, new instruments, and new ceremonies. I like visiting historical sites. I like walking around and looking at architecture. I generally adopt some parts of the local culture and try to be respectful of their rhythms and preferences. It gives me a clearer picture of how I've been thinking. I have been to four of the seven continents, but never to the southern hemisphere. I think two weeks is a good amount of time to go somewhere if you have money. I think three days is a good amount of time to go if you don't have money, because after that you will have exhausted the free and cheap things that interested you. I like being as multi-cultural as I am, and I like the freedom of being able to go where I want to go. At the same time, I hope that someday a country or two will claim me as theirs and see me as a symbol of national pride. That would mean more to me than other awards.
poetry Here is my first published poem, which I wrote when I was four:
I'm a little nutkin
In my hutkin
Eating futkin
In my hutkin
To me, this poem is very clearly about a squirrel who makes a paste of acorns in a tree hole. It also marks the beginning and end of my dada period. Subsequently, I wrote and read a lot of nonsense poetry and doggerel, neither of which I considered poems so much as jokes which rhymed. I hated poetry and poets pretty passionately, mainly because anyone I knew who wrote poetry wrote either maudlin goth stuff, treacly love poems, or angry swearing things that were supposed to shock me but that were pretty boring. Also, the Nutkin poem gives you a clue to my feelings about end rhymes and rigid rhythmic forms: I find them a bit immature and a bit silly. I think internal rhyme and vowel rhyme are great, but I think an obsession with rhyme can cause people to choose words that have less impact and meaning than a non-rhyming alternative. I enjoy following poetic forms in the same way I enjoy sudoku puzzles, but I rarely think they are the best way to express a thought. In fact I love silly childish poems if they're done right, which is why I continued to like nonsense poetry, but for the most part the only way for a form and rhyme scheme to really impress me is if I don't notice it the first time through.
Somehow, nobody noticed that I didn't do poetry, or else they noticed that I did all the time and just wasn't counting it myself because it was something I did playfully and not seriously. Senior year of high school, I got pulled out of class for a poetry masterclass with a visiting lecturer. This came as a complete surprise to me, since I had not signed up for it and did not know it was happening and would not have signed up had I known. In the two minutes I had before everyone else finished sitting down, I very quickly wrote:
Sun off a white shirt
Son of a blue collar
Soon on a tan back
Both creased with wear
The visiting lecturer said: You have been reading a lot of William Carlos Williams. I said: Who?
The librarian copied the poem down without telling me and sent it in to a city-wide contest, which I won. I sort of started to think poetry might be okay and the problem was the self-identified poets I was around, but just to be safe I didn't write much poetry in the next four years and mostly experimented with the visual nature of words, writing poems shaped like ladders and so on. During that time, I wrote maybe three poems total, unless you count rhyming jokes I put in birthday cards, and none of the poems were any good and I knew it.
At that point, I met Chad and immediately afterward Ciro, and they were involved in the Dallas open mic scene and insisted I come along and read my poems despite the fact that I didn't have any poems. The first time around, I just did stand up. The second time around, I figured I had better write something because I was getting tired of almost everyone else's poems, and as a "hallo, we have just met but I think we could get along pretty well" to Ciro, I sat down and wrote "Establishing Shot," which sort of led to a fan base and from then on I needed to keep writing stuff. And because I needed to keep writing stuff, I started reading a lot of stuff, and I found out that a lot of it was really good.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-26 01:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-26 05:54 am (UTC)also, and you will understand immediately why I am not including this as one of the five, but I always think of you while washing my hands after having a poo because of an old entry in which you talked about how you can smell whether someone's washed their hands. The way you talked about it was so tender, like you had this special intimacy with people, and it makes me feel sort of warm and happy to think about it even though it is a very odd thing to feel that way about.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-01 06:32 pm (UTC)You have insulted my profession, madame! BATTLE ROYALE!
Also, peaches rotting and fortuitous bladders were perhaps my first inkling of your artistic genius.