"In response to Claes Oldenburg's I am for an Art (1961)"
I am for the art of terrifying extremes balancing on pins and needles
I am for the art of one good turn on a dime deserving another world turned on its ear
I am for the art of guerilla gardening at the Whitehouse, and sparing change on Wall Street
I am for the art of tertiary ideas, of anvils riding clouds, and the criminally kitsch
I am for the art of hand written double entendres scanned onto your computer
I am for the art of relational investigation, a pat on the shoulder and a pinch to grow an inch
I am for the art of whimsical violence and cherry flavored rum
I am for the art of coin-operated cheetahs eating it's heart out and leaping over tables and chairs in a white linen restaurant
I am for the art of red and white striped profanities, of illegal migration and immigration of philosophy
I am for the art of naptime and the aroma of baking bread, or a well-poured pint
I am for an art beyond the tangles and the confines of your body that rings out into the ether via a transistor radio
I am for art of the notion of voluntary realism pleasuring itself with malicious wounding
I am for the art of releasing, of forgiving, of over-tipping waitresses
I am for the art in the tenacity of storms, of desire, of search and rescue, of honey bees on clover
I am for the art in the surrender of honesty, in the art of authentic living, in a generous orthodoxy
I am for the art with soft tannins of reason with the bite of triple distilled gumption
I am for the art with the disposition to frolic and rampage like a bull moose on amphetamines
I am for the art of the prank, of fantasy in proximity to oily rage diversion tactics
I am for the art called a tease, a seducer, a gambler with the impractical antidote of wanton escapism
I am for the art winking at a buoyancy not to be trifled with cuz it never gave up and has never given in
I am for the art of the vagary and the whimsy of missionaries and punks and nurses and rock n roll bartenders.
I am for the art that paid for your band's recording with a voice that sounds like crying
I am for the art that screws with the nuts and bolts of reconstructed ideas and reclaimed time, of Raggedy Ann sewing Jack's crown onto Jill's broken heart
I am for the art that didn't fall that far from the tree, that went to a picnic when it should have been studying
I am for an art young enough to protect ideals and old enough to practice acceptance
I am for the art of the notion of capricious action like the sneak attack of a rhino
I am for the art that threatens a steeple with a hug
I am for the art of the binge drinking camera and the dirty talk'n microphone who grunts and roars while hiding under beds
I am for the art that canonizes feelings with the bitterness of humor that makes you pick your own switch
I am for the art of the whale-like cry of the unicorn before he's had his coffee in the morning
I am for an art that tells it likes it is, but suggests what could be, that tempts fate with an ice cream cone
I am for the art that incites a riot in your pants and plays patty cake with the "enemy's" children
I am for the art that is edible and that punches and tickles
I am for the art of booze milkshakes and the power of suggestion
I am for an art that is all up in your face, which bounces and giggles and whispers lustfully in your ear
I am for an art that makes eye contact with despair and likes to party, that is pissed off and bleeding
I am for the art of making IT happen, of the life that carries on while you stand there theorizing
I am for the art that you can't fuck with! …an art bigger then this world, and wiser then your history
I am for an art that is like a secret crush, a breath of fresh air in a juke joint or a cool breeze up your skirt
I am for the art that brandishes fire-arms but has never been in a fight in its life
I am for the art that is deafening, that is innocently cuddling, that is in the vulnerability in your eyes, of rain, and of the color red
I am for the art of play
I am for an art that would lay its life down for its friends
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
The Peep This trailer!
This is a trailer I edited as a part of my GTA through Afam at VCU... it is about this really cool community outreach project called Peep This here in Richmond, VA.
This is a trailer I edited as a part of my GTA through Afam at VCU... it is about this really cool community outreach project called Peep This here in Richmond, VA.
Friday, October 03, 2008
Abreviated survey for the bar/wait heros....
Front-o-House Survey and Confessional:
(Please feel free to answer or skip questions if they don’t apply or if you aren’t interested in discussing—please feel free to expand on ANY questions—including how certain examples made you feel… do ‘tell-all’ if you can)
Once you complete the survey, please email it to jen.appleseed@gmail.com
1) Which ‘front-of-the-house’ position(s) do you or have you held?
2) How long have you been or were you in the restaurant industry?
3) What kind of establishment do you or did you work in? (bar, club, fine dinning, family restaurant, chain, buffet…)
4) What do you think of your establishment? What do/did you love/hate?
5) What do you think of your boss/co-workers/clientele?
6) How do you think your co-workers/clientele sees you?
7) How do you pass the time when it’s slow? (please expound!)
8) Have you ever caught the clientele/co-workers doing anything sexual with each other? (got any stories?)
9) Have you ever drank or done drugs on the clock? /Or seen any co-workers doing this? (got any stories?)
10) Have you ever gotten into a disagreement/fight with co-workers/cooks/boss/patrons?
11) Have you ever fantasized about telling anyone (co-workers/boss/patrons) off? /Have you actually done it?
12) Do you ever wonder what it would be like to act out your work fantasies? (care to share what any of them are/were?)
13) What do you think a patron’s fantasy of wait-staff/ restaurant employees would be like?
14) Do you ever vent to co-workers or friends about your job? (what does a typical conversation sound like?)
15) How do you unwind?
16) Have you ever had dreams/nightmares about your job? (care to share?)
17) What do you wish you could do when tipped poorly?
18) What is the most ridiculous/outrageous thing you have ever witnessed a co-worker/patron/yourself do?
19) Have you ever witness total chaos erupt in your establishment? (what was it like?)
20) Have you ever fantasized about total chaos erupting in your establishment? What would that look like?)
21) What is the weirdest request you have ever heard from a patron?
22) What kind of funny/depressing things have you witnessed at work?
23) What is your fondest/worst memory of working in the restaurant industry?
24) What makes this kind of employment worth it to you?
25) Got any great ‘war stories’ to share?
25) What is or was your greatest waitron fantasy?
Front-o-House Survey and Confessional:
(Please feel free to answer or skip questions if they don’t apply or if you aren’t interested in discussing—please feel free to expand on ANY questions—including how certain examples made you feel… do ‘tell-all’ if you can)
Once you complete the survey, please email it to jen.appleseed@gmail.com
1) Which ‘front-of-the-house’ position(s) do you or have you held?
2) How long have you been or were you in the restaurant industry?
3) What kind of establishment do you or did you work in? (bar, club, fine dinning, family restaurant, chain, buffet…)
4) What do you think of your establishment? What do/did you love/hate?
5) What do you think of your boss/co-workers/clientele?
6) How do you think your co-workers/clientele sees you?
7) How do you pass the time when it’s slow? (please expound!)
8) Have you ever caught the clientele/co-workers doing anything sexual with each other? (got any stories?)
9) Have you ever drank or done drugs on the clock? /Or seen any co-workers doing this? (got any stories?)
10) Have you ever gotten into a disagreement/fight with co-workers/cooks/boss/patrons?
11) Have you ever fantasized about telling anyone (co-workers/boss/patrons) off? /Have you actually done it?
12) Do you ever wonder what it would be like to act out your work fantasies? (care to share what any of them are/were?)
13) What do you think a patron’s fantasy of wait-staff/ restaurant employees would be like?
14) Do you ever vent to co-workers or friends about your job? (what does a typical conversation sound like?)
15) How do you unwind?
16) Have you ever had dreams/nightmares about your job? (care to share?)
17) What do you wish you could do when tipped poorly?
18) What is the most ridiculous/outrageous thing you have ever witnessed a co-worker/patron/yourself do?
19) Have you ever witness total chaos erupt in your establishment? (what was it like?)
20) Have you ever fantasized about total chaos erupting in your establishment? What would that look like?)
21) What is the weirdest request you have ever heard from a patron?
22) What kind of funny/depressing things have you witnessed at work?
23) What is your fondest/worst memory of working in the restaurant industry?
24) What makes this kind of employment worth it to you?
25) Got any great ‘war stories’ to share?
25) What is or was your greatest waitron fantasy?
Hi Friends,
As most of you know, I worked in the restaurant industry for well over a decade, and have a lot of fond and not so fond memories of it. During this time, I spent much time daydreaming about what I wish I could do at work… and now I am currently working on a script for a new film, which (you guessed it) is about the industry. (NO it will NOT be like the disappointing film ‘Waiting’) I am exploring waiter/bartender fantasies and hidden identity. It is being vaguely written in the vein of the short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Walter_Mitty meets Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wonderland
I am interested in exploring multiple aspects of the waitron experience—from heartbreak to hallucination, using the surreal power of humor to discuss my personal ideas of how social class structure is addressed in public spaces.
Do to my obsession with social conversation (and its rightful place in the arts) I am constructing the script with a number of open sections. I am circulating a survey among friends and online (on myspace) and through Craig’s List in both Richmond and Norfolk, VA. The open sections of the script are to be filled with information supplied by this survey. In order to allow other people who have been in the same position as me, to see their own fantasies/memories/nightmares depicted in this piece. This idea is based in part on the Japanese film “Afterlife” by: Hirokazu Koreeda http://www.sarudama.com/movies/afterlife.shtml The premise of the film is a group of people submitting 1 memory that in turn is comprised with memories from many others to create a new film.
Join me on this side of the table, where we could be waiting tables with Luke Skywalker and the Mad Hatter…watching entire crowds of red-hat ladies eat lunch nude… as we levitate… and… and… and…
Attached is a word file, simply fill out and return to me...
(if that attachment is crazed-- please just copy and past the survey below)
Front-o-House Survey and Confessional:
(Please feel free to answer or skip questions if they don’t apply or if you aren’t interested in discussing—please feel free to expand on ANY questions—including how certain examples made you feel… do ‘tell-all’ if you can)
Once you complete the survey, please email it to jen.appleseed@gmail.com
1) Which ‘front-of-the-house’ position(s) do you or have you held?
2) How long have you been in the restaurant industry?
3) How old were you when you started?
4) How old are you now?
5) Is this your primary source of income?
6) What is your (ball-park) weekly income?
7) Is this a ‘temporary’ job?
8) Are you in school?
9) What are your aspirations?
10) What kind of establishment do you work in? (bar, club, fine dinning, family restaurant, chain, buffet…)
11) What do you think of your establishment?
12) What do you like best about your establishment?
13) What do you hate the most about your establishment?
14) Do you have a uniform/dress code? What do you think of it?
15) Is the food/product good?
16) What do you think of your boss?
17) What do you think your boss thinks of you?
18) What do you think of your co-workers/do you associate with them outside of work?
19) What do you think your co-workers think of you?
20) Who is your clientele(demographic) and what do you think of your them?
21) How do you think the clientele sees you?
22) Do you ever ‘profile’ your patrons?
23) How busy is your establishment? Are there slow shifts?
24) How do you pass the time when it’s slow? (please expound!)
25) Do you ever get ‘hit on’ by the clientele? Co-workers?
26) Have you ever hit on any clientele or co-workers?
27) Have you ever ‘fooled around’/ had sex at work?
28) Have you ever caught the clientele doing anything sexual with each other? (got any stories?)
29) Have you ever been sexually harassed? (care to talk about it?)
30) Have you ever drank or done drugs on the clock? /Or seen any co-workers doing this? (got any stories?)
31) Have you ever gotten into a disagreement/fight with co-workers/cooks/boss/patrons?
32) Have you ever fantasized about telling anyone (co-workers/boss/patrons) off? /Have you actually done it?
33) What happened/What do you think would have happened if you did?
34) Do you ever wonder what it would be like to act out your work fantasies? (care to share any?)
35) Do you ever vent to co-workers or friends about your job? (what does a typical conversation sound like?)
36) How do you unwind?
37) What do you think about the stereotypes/clichés involving partying that surround bar/wait staff? /How do you think society at large views bar/wait staff? Why?
38) How do you view bar/wait staff?
39) How do you personally wish to be viewed by society?
40) Have you ever had dreams/nightmares about your job? (care to share?)
41) How do you handle bad tips?
42) What do you wish you could do when tipped poorly?
43) Can you do bar/wait tricks?
44) Tell me about an embarrassing scenario you have dealt with at work.
45) What is the most ridiculous/outrageous thing you have ever witnessed a co-worker do?
46) What is the most ridiculous/outrageous thing you have ever witnessed a patron do?
47) What is the most ridiculous/outrageous thing you have ever done?
48) What is the most ridiculous/outrageous thing you DREAM of doing? (list as many as you’d like)
49) What do you wish you could get away with? (list as much as you can)
50) Have you ever been injured on the job?
51) Have you ever spilt anything on a patron? (was it accidental or on purpose?)
52) Have you ever cried at work or felt like it? (why?)
53) Have you ever had to work sick or hung-over?
54) Have you ever walked out on a shift?
55) Have you ever been insulted at work? (by co-worker/boss/patron?)
56) Have you ever been whistled at or had a patron snap their fingers for your attention before?
57) What have you done or wish you could do about insulting treatment?
58) Have you ever witness total chaos erupt in your establishment? (what was it like?)
59) Have you ever fantasized about total chaos erupting in your establishment? What would that look like?)
60) Have you ever served anything ‘questionable’? (like it might have been dropped or out of date or overcooked…)
61) What is the weirdest request you have ever heard from a patron?
62) Do you ever get overly mad at patrons?
63) Do you find it easy to justify your anger and possible resulting behavior or fantasies of retaliation? (please expound as much as you can)
64) What kind of funny things have you witnessed at work?
65) What kind of sad/depressing things have you witnessed at work?
66) What is your fondest memory of working in the restaurant industry?
67) What is your worst memory of working in the restaurant industry?
68) What makes this kind of employment worth it to you?
69) Got any great ‘war stories’ to share?
70) Got any waiter fantasies to share? (like wishing you could punch an evil patron in the face… or what if you could fly… or what if a lion was released in your establishments dinning room… or what if you were secretly a secret service agent… or… or… the sky is the limit…)
71) Is there anything I may have left out? Any questions you feel should be included in this survey?
As most of you know, I worked in the restaurant industry for well over a decade, and have a lot of fond and not so fond memories of it. During this time, I spent much time daydreaming about what I wish I could do at work… and now I am currently working on a script for a new film, which (you guessed it) is about the industry. (NO it will NOT be like the disappointing film ‘Waiting’) I am exploring waiter/bartender fantasies and hidden identity. It is being vaguely written in the vein of the short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Walter_Mitty meets Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wonderland
I am interested in exploring multiple aspects of the waitron experience—from heartbreak to hallucination, using the surreal power of humor to discuss my personal ideas of how social class structure is addressed in public spaces.
Do to my obsession with social conversation (and its rightful place in the arts) I am constructing the script with a number of open sections. I am circulating a survey among friends and online (on myspace) and through Craig’s List in both Richmond and Norfolk, VA. The open sections of the script are to be filled with information supplied by this survey. In order to allow other people who have been in the same position as me, to see their own fantasies/memories/nightmares depicted in this piece. This idea is based in part on the Japanese film “Afterlife” by: Hirokazu Koreeda http://www.sarudama.com/movies/afterlife.shtml The premise of the film is a group of people submitting 1 memory that in turn is comprised with memories from many others to create a new film.
Join me on this side of the table, where we could be waiting tables with Luke Skywalker and the Mad Hatter…watching entire crowds of red-hat ladies eat lunch nude… as we levitate… and… and… and…
Attached is a word file, simply fill out and return to me...
(if that attachment is crazed-- please just copy and past the survey below)
Front-o-House Survey and Confessional:
(Please feel free to answer or skip questions if they don’t apply or if you aren’t interested in discussing—please feel free to expand on ANY questions—including how certain examples made you feel… do ‘tell-all’ if you can)
Once you complete the survey, please email it to jen.appleseed@gmail.com
1) Which ‘front-of-the-house’ position(s) do you or have you held?
2) How long have you been in the restaurant industry?
3) How old were you when you started?
4) How old are you now?
5) Is this your primary source of income?
6) What is your (ball-park) weekly income?
7) Is this a ‘temporary’ job?
8) Are you in school?
9) What are your aspirations?
10) What kind of establishment do you work in? (bar, club, fine dinning, family restaurant, chain, buffet…)
11) What do you think of your establishment?
12) What do you like best about your establishment?
13) What do you hate the most about your establishment?
14) Do you have a uniform/dress code? What do you think of it?
15) Is the food/product good?
16) What do you think of your boss?
17) What do you think your boss thinks of you?
18) What do you think of your co-workers/do you associate with them outside of work?
19) What do you think your co-workers think of you?
20) Who is your clientele(demographic) and what do you think of your them?
21) How do you think the clientele sees you?
22) Do you ever ‘profile’ your patrons?
23) How busy is your establishment? Are there slow shifts?
24) How do you pass the time when it’s slow? (please expound!)
25) Do you ever get ‘hit on’ by the clientele? Co-workers?
26) Have you ever hit on any clientele or co-workers?
27) Have you ever ‘fooled around’/ had sex at work?
28) Have you ever caught the clientele doing anything sexual with each other? (got any stories?)
29) Have you ever been sexually harassed? (care to talk about it?)
30) Have you ever drank or done drugs on the clock? /Or seen any co-workers doing this? (got any stories?)
31) Have you ever gotten into a disagreement/fight with co-workers/cooks/boss/patrons?
32) Have you ever fantasized about telling anyone (co-workers/boss/patrons) off? /Have you actually done it?
33) What happened/What do you think would have happened if you did?
34) Do you ever wonder what it would be like to act out your work fantasies? (care to share any?)
35) Do you ever vent to co-workers or friends about your job? (what does a typical conversation sound like?)
36) How do you unwind?
37) What do you think about the stereotypes/clichés involving partying that surround bar/wait staff? /How do you think society at large views bar/wait staff? Why?
38) How do you view bar/wait staff?
39) How do you personally wish to be viewed by society?
40) Have you ever had dreams/nightmares about your job? (care to share?)
41) How do you handle bad tips?
42) What do you wish you could do when tipped poorly?
43) Can you do bar/wait tricks?
44) Tell me about an embarrassing scenario you have dealt with at work.
45) What is the most ridiculous/outrageous thing you have ever witnessed a co-worker do?
46) What is the most ridiculous/outrageous thing you have ever witnessed a patron do?
47) What is the most ridiculous/outrageous thing you have ever done?
48) What is the most ridiculous/outrageous thing you DREAM of doing? (list as many as you’d like)
49) What do you wish you could get away with? (list as much as you can)
50) Have you ever been injured on the job?
51) Have you ever spilt anything on a patron? (was it accidental or on purpose?)
52) Have you ever cried at work or felt like it? (why?)
53) Have you ever had to work sick or hung-over?
54) Have you ever walked out on a shift?
55) Have you ever been insulted at work? (by co-worker/boss/patron?)
56) Have you ever been whistled at or had a patron snap their fingers for your attention before?
57) What have you done or wish you could do about insulting treatment?
58) Have you ever witness total chaos erupt in your establishment? (what was it like?)
59) Have you ever fantasized about total chaos erupting in your establishment? What would that look like?)
60) Have you ever served anything ‘questionable’? (like it might have been dropped or out of date or overcooked…)
61) What is the weirdest request you have ever heard from a patron?
62) Do you ever get overly mad at patrons?
63) Do you find it easy to justify your anger and possible resulting behavior or fantasies of retaliation? (please expound as much as you can)
64) What kind of funny things have you witnessed at work?
65) What kind of sad/depressing things have you witnessed at work?
66) What is your fondest memory of working in the restaurant industry?
67) What is your worst memory of working in the restaurant industry?
68) What makes this kind of employment worth it to you?
69) Got any great ‘war stories’ to share?
70) Got any waiter fantasies to share? (like wishing you could punch an evil patron in the face… or what if you could fly… or what if a lion was released in your establishments dinning room… or what if you were secretly a secret service agent… or… or… the sky is the limit…)
71) Is there anything I may have left out? Any questions you feel should be included in this survey?
Monday, September 29, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Thursday, September 04, 2008
ok. I think this (might be) is the final edit. The piece needed a title, and I also tried to lightly ground the piece in a location via sound in the opening credit.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
another edit...
I believe this is fast becoming a study.... (sigh/cough/argh!!)
I have received a wide variety of criticism. One instructor, after looking at the original (1st) edit, is concerned that the waiters I am depicting do not nessisarily agree with my idea-- due to the part I initially left in of me directing from beside the camera. I have thought about this for a few days now, and since this is not a documentary and my friends and former co-workers agreed to help me in this work-- which expresses my own personal views (which, many of them do agree with) I don't think cutting the footage of that particular waiter is nessisary at this point. That same instructor felt that I was making fun of the waiters, including myself since I am in there. This is intended to be humorous. I don't feel like it is degrading or disrespectful of any of us. I am playing with footage of us playing!
Another instructor mentioned that she liked the rythm of the 1st edit better (she thinks it could be more raw) then the second, though she did agree with me leaving out the extra information at the end of the original edit.
Another instructor mentioned how many pieces he had seen of clips of stutters etc... which I agree with... there is a fair amount of work in this vein. I was hoping to really think more of the content as being a bit different... etc
Another instructor says he feels that I should leave the guys out... that they come off as to whimsical and joke-ish... and that the rythm is good till they show up...
So, I have a lot to think about, and have being trying to give myself big breaks with lots of thinking between editing... so, I feel like I am loosing the deadline of Friday night... unless I feel (as one of the instructors recomended) like just trying it out as a study and see how it goes on Friday... my only hesitation is that 10,000 people is a lot of eyes to put up a study in front of... (sigh) I need to get my work out there and my ideas... I just don't wanna run out un-prepaired or half baked or whatever. But, I am interested enough in trying to possibly chug a bottle of wine and just throw caution to the wind (I never seem to excercise caution anyways!!)
I believe this is fast becoming a study.... (sigh/cough/argh!!)
I have received a wide variety of criticism. One instructor, after looking at the original (1st) edit, is concerned that the waiters I am depicting do not nessisarily agree with my idea-- due to the part I initially left in of me directing from beside the camera. I have thought about this for a few days now, and since this is not a documentary and my friends and former co-workers agreed to help me in this work-- which expresses my own personal views (which, many of them do agree with) I don't think cutting the footage of that particular waiter is nessisary at this point. That same instructor felt that I was making fun of the waiters, including myself since I am in there. This is intended to be humorous. I don't feel like it is degrading or disrespectful of any of us. I am playing with footage of us playing!
Another instructor mentioned that she liked the rythm of the 1st edit better (she thinks it could be more raw) then the second, though she did agree with me leaving out the extra information at the end of the original edit.
Another instructor mentioned how many pieces he had seen of clips of stutters etc... which I agree with... there is a fair amount of work in this vein. I was hoping to really think more of the content as being a bit different... etc
Another instructor says he feels that I should leave the guys out... that they come off as to whimsical and joke-ish... and that the rythm is good till they show up...
So, I have a lot to think about, and have being trying to give myself big breaks with lots of thinking between editing... so, I feel like I am loosing the deadline of Friday night... unless I feel (as one of the instructors recomended) like just trying it out as a study and see how it goes on Friday... my only hesitation is that 10,000 people is a lot of eyes to put up a study in front of... (sigh) I need to get my work out there and my ideas... I just don't wanna run out un-prepaired or half baked or whatever. But, I am interested enough in trying to possibly chug a bottle of wine and just throw caution to the wind (I never seem to excercise caution anyways!!)
Monday, September 01, 2008
Ok, I gave the piece some space. And thought about it... and thought about questions posed...
I do not consider this to be documentary in nature. These are my own personal views, many waitron share these views. The waitron depicted in this piece are personal aquaintences and friends who agreed to be in my work.
The basic structure for this particular edit is to sculpt an emotional landscape. we start with sighs.... depicting exasperation, moving into coughs representing an attempt, or false starts, we then roll into clearing of throughts-- the holding pattern... into um/ah/arghs-- exasperation and frustration.... then with the laughs we fall into playful absurdity... the kind of thing you wind up into...
Over all, one question I had was-- do I have the right/ability to compose an electronic score for the waitron to be vocalizing to? Does the piece require it? does it deserve it? would that be besides the point and unnessisary?
Thursday, August 28, 2008
The Waitron Opera (EXTREMELY rough cut)
a composition of waitron verbally expressing where they are.... which is to say, waitron generally don't live for the sole purpose of bringing you a side of mayo. Most of them are in this in-between place in their lives... (earning income while in school, between careers... or whatever) so I captured a pack of surly waitron verbally expressing all the pauses, false starts, and in-between sounds that one would traditionally edit out of a traditional piece of film/video...
a composition of waitron verbally expressing where they are.... which is to say, waitron generally don't live for the sole purpose of bringing you a side of mayo. Most of them are in this in-between place in their lives... (earning income while in school, between careers... or whatever) so I captured a pack of surly waitron verbally expressing all the pauses, false starts, and in-between sounds that one would traditionally edit out of a traditional piece of film/video...
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
I just finished uploading a trailer I have been working on for my friend Dale Smith. It is for his one man show "Jesus Phreak"
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
This is one of the only surviving films I shot in VA in the dark times which came between undergrad and grad school...
This fine piece was shot in the Ghent neighborhood of Norfolk, VA
It was shot in super 8
This fine piece was shot in the Ghent neighborhood of Norfolk, VA
It was shot in super 8
This is an old baby....
Just figured I'd air it on my blog for your viewing pleasure!!
This was shot in 16mm
Just figured I'd air it on my blog for your viewing pleasure!!
This was shot in 16mm
very old stuff! (celebrating its 10th year in existance!)
This is one of the 1st films I ever shot! It was shot in 16mm.
YAY!
This is one of the 1st films I ever shot! It was shot in 16mm.
YAY!
Thursday, March 06, 2008
YAY.... this is part of a collaborative video installation Nia and I are referring to as "Call & Response"
(this is the response end of the installation)
:)
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Saturday, March 01, 2008
On airplanes and such....
Last night, I was standing outside-- in a parking lot, about to go into a video screening. I noticed an airplane taking off from Richmond airport, it was low enough still to still see the headlight reflecting off the low hanging clouds it was soon to reach. I had this interesting epiphany....
For so many years I would gaze at the sky-- at airplanes flying above me-- and wish I was on any plane going anywhere other then the place I was stuck. I would have rather been anywhere on earth, then where I was in life. It was part of this wistful escapism I would engage in.
Last night, I found joy in the fact that I realized, I didn't miss a plane this time. I don't need to be anywhere but where I am. I am finally moving in the direction I am made for. There is something to be said about the peace I find in that. The confidence in my now.
Last night, I was standing outside-- in a parking lot, about to go into a video screening. I noticed an airplane taking off from Richmond airport, it was low enough still to still see the headlight reflecting off the low hanging clouds it was soon to reach. I had this interesting epiphany....
For so many years I would gaze at the sky-- at airplanes flying above me-- and wish I was on any plane going anywhere other then the place I was stuck. I would have rather been anywhere on earth, then where I was in life. It was part of this wistful escapism I would engage in.
Last night, I found joy in the fact that I realized, I didn't miss a plane this time. I don't need to be anywhere but where I am. I am finally moving in the direction I am made for. There is something to be said about the peace I find in that. The confidence in my now.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
the WHY CHEAP ART? manifesto
I've been working on this piece for a couple of months now. It is footage from the RVA stop on Bread & Puppet's 2007 tour paired with text from their "the WHY CHEAP ART? manifesto"
It will be screened this winter and spring.
I've been working on this piece for a couple of months now. It is footage from the RVA stop on Bread & Puppet's 2007 tour paired with text from their "the WHY CHEAP ART? manifesto"
It will be screened this winter and spring.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Big Up and a SERIOUS SHOUT OUT TO.....
http://www.myspace.com/lyntales
My super-heroic little sistah.... " Lyn-chan"
Can I just tell you, I miss her.... and stopped by her page just now, and she is rock'n that phat M.I.A. track feature'n The Clash sample with gun shots and cash register... The very track my (hero) sound teacher played in my grad sound seminar class the other day...
In all these years, she has never skipped a beat... Always fresh and inspire'n! A million miles away and on forever on top!
Please refer to her as she is--- "The Refreshing One"
Stop by her profile and remind her again!
Rock the Joy.
http://www.myspace.com/lyntales
http://www.myspace.com/lyntales
My super-heroic little sistah.... " Lyn-chan"
Can I just tell you, I miss her.... and stopped by her page just now, and she is rock'n that phat M.I.A. track feature'n The Clash sample with gun shots and cash register... The very track my (hero) sound teacher played in my grad sound seminar class the other day...
In all these years, she has never skipped a beat... Always fresh and inspire'n! A million miles away and on forever on top!
Please refer to her as she is--- "The Refreshing One"
Stop by her profile and remind her again!
Rock the Joy.
http://www.myspace.com/lyntales
Monday, January 28, 2008
Please come and visit this new sound blog.
(You must join with us... and together we can rule the universe as father and son!)
http://canyoustickitinyourear.blogspot.com/
(You must join with us... and together we can rule the universe as father and son!)
http://canyoustickitinyourear.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Jennida Chase
Kinetic Imaging
Graduate Sound Seminar
Sound Research Paper
12/01/07
It is the purpose of this research to contextually re-examine sound in the light of a readymade. To consider the theory that experimental music based in sound-scape design might be a readymade. In this examination I will apply the theory to the contemporary, electroacoustic duo Matmos.
This paper will map out a historical trajectory creating a conceptual family tree of sorts, where we will consider the similarities between the underlying concepts and note how they are translated between mediums. We will begin with Marcel Duchamp’s readymade Fountain, from which we first discover found art ideas such as appropriation and assemblage. We will examine early Dada and Surreal thinking in terms of the idea of verbal collage or cut-ups as a form of editing, eventually further developed into the cut-up technique by Brion Gysin and William S. Burrough. Furthermore, we shall examine how the influence of Dada and Surrealist thinking also branched out sonically with Pierre Schaeffer’s Musique Concrete and its influence with acousmatic theory. Finally we will take a detailed look at Matmos framed within this historical context.
An online definition of found art articulates:
“Found art derives significance from the designation placed upon it by the artist. The context into which it is placed (e.g a gallery or museum) is usually also a highly relevant factor. The idea of dignifying commonplace objects in this way was originally a shocking challenge to accepted distinction between what was considered art as opposed to not art… modern art’s use of found objects has mostly been of mundane items, which are then deemed to be elevated into a special status.”
According to Andre Breton, readymades are “manufactured objects raised to the dignity of works of art through the choice of the artist.”
Bicycle Wheel, Marcel Duchamp’s first readymade, was assembled in 1913. In 1915, in order to describe his found art, Duchamp coined the term readymade. In 1917, Duchamp’s Fountain shocked the art world when he entered it into the American Society of Independent Artists exhibition, as it was simply a urinal lying on its back with the signature R. Mutt written on it. Theories and conclusions about this piece of art have been discussed and rehashed continuously in the ninety years since it was conceived. It has been stated:
“The urinal appeared to be neither original nor rare, Duchamp’s ‘creativity’ as an artist lies in the gesture of selecting the urinal as an art piece and displaying it in an artistic context… The committee presiding over Britain's prestigious Turner Prize in 2004, for example, called it [Fountain]"the most influential work of modern art."
After creating and submitting the piece Duchamp went on to write in an issue of The Blind Man,
"Now Mr. Mutt's fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a bathtub is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers' show windows. Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view — created a new thought for that object."
Writer Arthur C. Danto concludes:
“It was precisely Duchamp's great effort to make it clear that art is an intellectual activity, a conceptual enterprise and not merely something to which the senses and the feelings come into play. And this must be true of all art, even that most bent upon gratifying the eye or ear, and not just for those works which are regarded as especially ‘philosophical,’”
The idea of the readymade developed out into many subdivisions and classifications as well as varied intellectual intents. Its hybrids have seen the light of appropriation through many means such as found-art and assemblage (just to name a couple) and branched out into many mediums including appropriating footage in film and sound. “Damian Hirst has stated that a painting is an adapted found object (the object being paint), i.e. the whole history of art is based on the found objects.”
In line with the concept that a new line of thinking can be introduced and projected onto an existing product by the choice of an artist Tristan Tzara said: ”Poetry is for everyone,” as he set a precedent for cut-up technique in the 1920s during a Surrealist rally by offering to create a poem on the spot by randomly pulling words out of a hat, this incited a riot which wrecked the theatre and Andre Breton called Tzara a cop and expelled him from the movement.
Interestingly enough, the freeing up of words and new approaches to editing were largely influenced by sonic means, in the form of tape stock. In a 2004 interview, Burroughs stated:
“The first extension of the cut-up method occurred through the use of tape recorders and this extension was introduced by Mr Brion Gysin. The simplest tape recorder cut-up is made by recording some material and them cutting in passages at random—of course the words are wiped off the tape where these cut-ins occur—and you get very interesting juxtapositions.”
Gysin introduced writer William S. Burroughs to the technique at the Beat Hotel. The pair later applied the technique to printed media and audio recordings in an effort to decode the material's implicit content, hypothesizing that such a technique could be used to discover the true meaning of a given text. Burroughs also suggested cut-ups may be effective as a form of divination saying, "When you cut into the present the future leaks out."
The technique of the cut-up is a literary writing style in which the linearity is broken. One would conceivably write or collect a text then cut it into sections of lines, several words or a single word then re-order them randomly. Any, and often found writings can be dissected and reassembled in this manner, creating new meaning, very much in the same vein as found art.
Burroughs once said, “Shakespeare Rimbaud live in their words. Cut the word lines and you will hear their voices…” bringing us to the acousmatic theory of Schaeffer, the father of Musique Concrete who dealt with sound outside of its original meaning.
Born in 1910 in Nancy, France, Pierre Schaeffer was not a classically trained musician. In 1942, while working as a radio engineer for the Radiodiffusion- Television Francaises (RTF), Schaeffer began experimenting with technology available to him. With the discovery of the ability to lock-groove records, he was drawn to the isolation of sounds produced naturally. This early investigation was the groundwork for what would become musique concrete by fragmenting and isolating both found and environmental sound.
His first official composition in 1948 entitled Concert for Locomotives is generally considered to be more of an experimental essay then anything else. It included the sounds of train whistling and accelerating as well as cars passing over track joints. Jason Snyder suggests the work is “significant in 4 ways.
1. An act of musical composition was accomplished by a technological process.
2. The work could be replayed multiple times.
3. Replaying was not dependent on human performers.
4. Elements were ‘concrete’.”
Schaeffer publicly broadcast Concert for Locomotives, which was met with both outrage and comic disbelief by the general public, but attracted interest of a number of artists and composers. Some, like Pierre Henry came to work with and collaborate with Schaeffer. In 1951, Schaeffer and Henry co-founded Groupe de Musique Concrete which was later renamed Groupe de Recherches Musicales or GRM.
Musique Concrete is an experimental approach which seeks to create music with ‘concrete’ sounds; sounds found in the real world and not created by traditional musical instruments, by collecting sounds, abstracting them and arranging them into a musical composition, thus affording a “new way of musical production and expression.” The act of taking a found sound and displaying it with a new intent speaks loudly of the concept of readymades, the medium is simply switched. Taking found sounds and arranging them into a composition also speaks of the cut-up method.
Where found art or assemblage is the three-dimensional brother of the collage, music concrete is the sonic expansion of the family. One ventures out into life and collects sounds and reconstructs them into a new (musical) dialogue.
“Furthermore {Schaeffer} emphasized the importance of play (in his terms, jeu) in the creation of music. Schaeffer’s idea of jeu comes from the French verb jouer, which carries the same double meaning as the English verb play: ‘to enjoy oneself by interaction with one’s surroundings’, as well as to ‘operate a musical instrument’.”
This playfulness is not so unlike the spirit of Dada-ism, and certainly Matmos exemplifies this spirit.
Schaeffer continued his research into sound, and the logical extension conceptually was the idea of acousmatic music. In his book Traite des Objets Musicaux, released in 1966, he coined the term acousmatique sound. According to Michel Chion: “Acousmatic sound is sound one hears without seeing their originating cause- an invisible sound source.” The concept is credited historically to Greek philosopher Pythagoras:
“The term is said to be derived from akusmatikoi, the outer circle of Pythagoras’s disciples who only heard their teacher speaking from behind a veil. In a similar way, one hears acousmatic music from behind the ‘veil’ of loudspeakers without seeing the source of the sound.”
It is on the note of acousmatic theory that we arrive to the contemporary experimental electronic duo Matmos that is comprised of M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel. When working in the realm of sound, it is important to first have the framework to ‘listen’ before one can collect and arrange. In an email interview with Herbert Struyf of Ultra E:Zine, Matmos member Drew Daniels confides that his earliest memories are acousmatic in nature, he recalls that:
“oddly enough, my first memory of having a thought turns out to be my first memory of paying attention to sound, specifically the sound of my parent's voices. I remember at the age of three my parents were cooking in the kitchen and I had been told not to go in there while they were busy, the stove was dangerous, etc. I kept going in, and my father took me into my room to punish me for disobeying, and I remember him shouting "What is your REASON for going in there?" I sat there and thought to myself "'Reason' sounds like 'Raisin'". Treating speech as sound rather than a message or communication has always been one of my favorite defense mechanisms.”
It is from the acousmatic approach to listening, one can then proceed with the collection of ‘concrete’ found sound in the world one interacts with. According to Matmos’ official website, during their nine years of existence, have used sounds including, but not limited to, amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the pages of a bible turning, the sound of a frozen stream thawing, liposuction surgery and much more. With these ‘concrete’ sounds they edit and construct electronic pop songs. They take sounds already existing in life and displaying it in an artistic context acts in the tradition of readymades, and working with concrete sounds to create a musical score as the definition of musique concrete dictates. In her article on Matmos in Artforum in 2004, Jan Tumlir states:
“Matmos… believe[s] that the causal connection of sound to its material source can-- and to an extent, should--be severed, but not in the interest of a kind of ‘pure’ sonic abstraction. For them, this disconnect is a semiotic rather then formalist priority.”
Critic Jan Tumlir continues: Matmos “excel[ed] at conveying difficult ideas in a concise and literally graspable manner, always stressing the profound physicality and direct impact of sonic information.” In their own words at a speech at UC Berkley:
“in her 1973 anthology “Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972” art historian Lucy Lippard charted a radical drift in art-making away from the material construction of objects and towards the conceptual dissemination of ideas. In our own work as Matmos we have attempted to re-consider this tradition, and in particular, to reverse its direction of flow: we start from a concept and move towards an engagement with objects with objects selected or dictated by a conceptual allegiance, in the process of creating a hybrid construction halfway between conceptual origin and pop music outcome.”
The editing process Matmos employs, of abstracting or sampling their recordings then mixing and remixing is a sonic parallel to William Burrough’s cut-up technique, Matmos Member Drew Daniel states:
“we’re very traditionally a cut and paste band, The cut-up is the core of what makes a Matmos song Matmos, whether the sound source is surgery or an acoustic guitar. It’s always something that’s getting put onto the screen and chopped into many fragments and then probably put into a sampler and then addressed through sequencing. So there’s always an electronic component, but it’s not all that different from the way that, y’know, the Art Of Noise worked.”
As a small aside: from urinals to orchestrated locomotives to cutting up Shakespeare to snails playing the theramin, it seems a mistake not to at least touch on the idea that there is a playfulness and ironic humor flowing in and out of each of the afore mentioned art movements and techniques. Playfulness that can (initially) generate public outrage but shift creative paradigms seems noteworthy. At some point it would be useful to revisit the revolutionary side of humor in modern art.
In conclusion, appropriated-found-collected-created-’concrete’ sound applied to cut-up technique equals Matmos. Moreover, each of the movements and methods examined in this paper could arguably be considering and employing the same general concept to their perspective creative medium.
...............................................................................
“Found Art.” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 13 Nov 2007.
ibid
“Appropriation (art)” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 26 Nov 2007.
Duchamp, Marcel, Beatrice Wood, H.P. Roche. “anonymous article.” The Blind Man. “2 May 1917.
Danto, Arthur C. Humanities. National Endowment for the Humanities. Feb 1983.
“Found Art.” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 13 Nov 2007.
Burroughs, William S. The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin. 1 Dec 2007.
ibid
“Cut-up Technique” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 26 Nov 2007.
“Found Art.” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 13 Nov 2007.
Burroughs, William S. The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin. 1 Dec 2007.
Ankeny, Jason. Biography. 2007.
ibid
ibid
“Musique Concrete.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 29 Nov 2007.
“Pierre Schaeffer.” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 26 Oct 2007.
“Acousmatic.” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 28 Aug 2007.
Chion, Michel, Claudia Gorbman, Walter Merch. Audio-Vision. Columbia University Press.19949+2
“Acousmatic.” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 28 Aug 2007.
“Press.” Brainwashed. 1996-2007.
“About.” Brainwashed. 1996-2007.
Tumlir, Jan. “Band Apart.” Artforum. March 2004.
ibid
Matmos, The Re-Dematerialization of the Art Object. Hearst Mining Building, UC Berkley. 12 Feb 2007.
Doyle, Tom. “Matmos: The Art Of Cut & Paste.” Sound On Sound. May 2004.
Kinetic Imaging
Graduate Sound Seminar
Sound Research Paper
12/01/07
It is the purpose of this research to contextually re-examine sound in the light of a readymade. To consider the theory that experimental music based in sound-scape design might be a readymade. In this examination I will apply the theory to the contemporary, electroacoustic duo Matmos.
This paper will map out a historical trajectory creating a conceptual family tree of sorts, where we will consider the similarities between the underlying concepts and note how they are translated between mediums. We will begin with Marcel Duchamp’s readymade Fountain, from which we first discover found art ideas such as appropriation and assemblage. We will examine early Dada and Surreal thinking in terms of the idea of verbal collage or cut-ups as a form of editing, eventually further developed into the cut-up technique by Brion Gysin and William S. Burrough. Furthermore, we shall examine how the influence of Dada and Surrealist thinking also branched out sonically with Pierre Schaeffer’s Musique Concrete and its influence with acousmatic theory. Finally we will take a detailed look at Matmos framed within this historical context.
An online definition of found art articulates:
“Found art derives significance from the designation placed upon it by the artist. The context into which it is placed (e.g a gallery or museum) is usually also a highly relevant factor. The idea of dignifying commonplace objects in this way was originally a shocking challenge to accepted distinction between what was considered art as opposed to not art… modern art’s use of found objects has mostly been of mundane items, which are then deemed to be elevated into a special status.”
According to Andre Breton, readymades are “manufactured objects raised to the dignity of works of art through the choice of the artist.”
Bicycle Wheel, Marcel Duchamp’s first readymade, was assembled in 1913. In 1915, in order to describe his found art, Duchamp coined the term readymade. In 1917, Duchamp’s Fountain shocked the art world when he entered it into the American Society of Independent Artists exhibition, as it was simply a urinal lying on its back with the signature R. Mutt written on it. Theories and conclusions about this piece of art have been discussed and rehashed continuously in the ninety years since it was conceived. It has been stated:
“The urinal appeared to be neither original nor rare, Duchamp’s ‘creativity’ as an artist lies in the gesture of selecting the urinal as an art piece and displaying it in an artistic context… The committee presiding over Britain's prestigious Turner Prize in 2004, for example, called it [Fountain]"the most influential work of modern art."
After creating and submitting the piece Duchamp went on to write in an issue of The Blind Man,
"Now Mr. Mutt's fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a bathtub is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers' show windows. Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view — created a new thought for that object."
Writer Arthur C. Danto concludes:
“It was precisely Duchamp's great effort to make it clear that art is an intellectual activity, a conceptual enterprise and not merely something to which the senses and the feelings come into play. And this must be true of all art, even that most bent upon gratifying the eye or ear, and not just for those works which are regarded as especially ‘philosophical,’”
The idea of the readymade developed out into many subdivisions and classifications as well as varied intellectual intents. Its hybrids have seen the light of appropriation through many means such as found-art and assemblage (just to name a couple) and branched out into many mediums including appropriating footage in film and sound. “Damian Hirst has stated that a painting is an adapted found object (the object being paint), i.e. the whole history of art is based on the found objects.”
In line with the concept that a new line of thinking can be introduced and projected onto an existing product by the choice of an artist Tristan Tzara said: ”Poetry is for everyone,” as he set a precedent for cut-up technique in the 1920s during a Surrealist rally by offering to create a poem on the spot by randomly pulling words out of a hat, this incited a riot which wrecked the theatre and Andre Breton called Tzara a cop and expelled him from the movement.
Interestingly enough, the freeing up of words and new approaches to editing were largely influenced by sonic means, in the form of tape stock. In a 2004 interview, Burroughs stated:
“The first extension of the cut-up method occurred through the use of tape recorders and this extension was introduced by Mr Brion Gysin. The simplest tape recorder cut-up is made by recording some material and them cutting in passages at random—of course the words are wiped off the tape where these cut-ins occur—and you get very interesting juxtapositions.”
Gysin introduced writer William S. Burroughs to the technique at the Beat Hotel. The pair later applied the technique to printed media and audio recordings in an effort to decode the material's implicit content, hypothesizing that such a technique could be used to discover the true meaning of a given text. Burroughs also suggested cut-ups may be effective as a form of divination saying, "When you cut into the present the future leaks out."
The technique of the cut-up is a literary writing style in which the linearity is broken. One would conceivably write or collect a text then cut it into sections of lines, several words or a single word then re-order them randomly. Any, and often found writings can be dissected and reassembled in this manner, creating new meaning, very much in the same vein as found art.
Burroughs once said, “Shakespeare Rimbaud live in their words. Cut the word lines and you will hear their voices…” bringing us to the acousmatic theory of Schaeffer, the father of Musique Concrete who dealt with sound outside of its original meaning.
Born in 1910 in Nancy, France, Pierre Schaeffer was not a classically trained musician. In 1942, while working as a radio engineer for the Radiodiffusion- Television Francaises (RTF), Schaeffer began experimenting with technology available to him. With the discovery of the ability to lock-groove records, he was drawn to the isolation of sounds produced naturally. This early investigation was the groundwork for what would become musique concrete by fragmenting and isolating both found and environmental sound.
His first official composition in 1948 entitled Concert for Locomotives is generally considered to be more of an experimental essay then anything else. It included the sounds of train whistling and accelerating as well as cars passing over track joints. Jason Snyder suggests the work is “significant in 4 ways.
1. An act of musical composition was accomplished by a technological process.
2. The work could be replayed multiple times.
3. Replaying was not dependent on human performers.
4. Elements were ‘concrete’.”
Schaeffer publicly broadcast Concert for Locomotives, which was met with both outrage and comic disbelief by the general public, but attracted interest of a number of artists and composers. Some, like Pierre Henry came to work with and collaborate with Schaeffer. In 1951, Schaeffer and Henry co-founded Groupe de Musique Concrete which was later renamed Groupe de Recherches Musicales or GRM.
Musique Concrete is an experimental approach which seeks to create music with ‘concrete’ sounds; sounds found in the real world and not created by traditional musical instruments, by collecting sounds, abstracting them and arranging them into a musical composition, thus affording a “new way of musical production and expression.” The act of taking a found sound and displaying it with a new intent speaks loudly of the concept of readymades, the medium is simply switched. Taking found sounds and arranging them into a composition also speaks of the cut-up method.
Where found art or assemblage is the three-dimensional brother of the collage, music concrete is the sonic expansion of the family. One ventures out into life and collects sounds and reconstructs them into a new (musical) dialogue.
“Furthermore {Schaeffer} emphasized the importance of play (in his terms, jeu) in the creation of music. Schaeffer’s idea of jeu comes from the French verb jouer, which carries the same double meaning as the English verb play: ‘to enjoy oneself by interaction with one’s surroundings’, as well as to ‘operate a musical instrument’.”
This playfulness is not so unlike the spirit of Dada-ism, and certainly Matmos exemplifies this spirit.
Schaeffer continued his research into sound, and the logical extension conceptually was the idea of acousmatic music. In his book Traite des Objets Musicaux, released in 1966, he coined the term acousmatique sound. According to Michel Chion: “Acousmatic sound is sound one hears without seeing their originating cause- an invisible sound source.” The concept is credited historically to Greek philosopher Pythagoras:
“The term is said to be derived from akusmatikoi, the outer circle of Pythagoras’s disciples who only heard their teacher speaking from behind a veil. In a similar way, one hears acousmatic music from behind the ‘veil’ of loudspeakers without seeing the source of the sound.”
It is on the note of acousmatic theory that we arrive to the contemporary experimental electronic duo Matmos that is comprised of M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel. When working in the realm of sound, it is important to first have the framework to ‘listen’ before one can collect and arrange. In an email interview with Herbert Struyf of Ultra E:Zine, Matmos member Drew Daniels confides that his earliest memories are acousmatic in nature, he recalls that:
“oddly enough, my first memory of having a thought turns out to be my first memory of paying attention to sound, specifically the sound of my parent's voices. I remember at the age of three my parents were cooking in the kitchen and I had been told not to go in there while they were busy, the stove was dangerous, etc. I kept going in, and my father took me into my room to punish me for disobeying, and I remember him shouting "What is your REASON for going in there?" I sat there and thought to myself "'Reason' sounds like 'Raisin'". Treating speech as sound rather than a message or communication has always been one of my favorite defense mechanisms.”
It is from the acousmatic approach to listening, one can then proceed with the collection of ‘concrete’ found sound in the world one interacts with. According to Matmos’ official website, during their nine years of existence, have used sounds including, but not limited to, amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the pages of a bible turning, the sound of a frozen stream thawing, liposuction surgery and much more. With these ‘concrete’ sounds they edit and construct electronic pop songs. They take sounds already existing in life and displaying it in an artistic context acts in the tradition of readymades, and working with concrete sounds to create a musical score as the definition of musique concrete dictates. In her article on Matmos in Artforum in 2004, Jan Tumlir states:
“Matmos… believe[s] that the causal connection of sound to its material source can-- and to an extent, should--be severed, but not in the interest of a kind of ‘pure’ sonic abstraction. For them, this disconnect is a semiotic rather then formalist priority.”
Critic Jan Tumlir continues: Matmos “excel[ed] at conveying difficult ideas in a concise and literally graspable manner, always stressing the profound physicality and direct impact of sonic information.” In their own words at a speech at UC Berkley:
“in her 1973 anthology “Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972” art historian Lucy Lippard charted a radical drift in art-making away from the material construction of objects and towards the conceptual dissemination of ideas. In our own work as Matmos we have attempted to re-consider this tradition, and in particular, to reverse its direction of flow: we start from a concept and move towards an engagement with objects with objects selected or dictated by a conceptual allegiance, in the process of creating a hybrid construction halfway between conceptual origin and pop music outcome.”
The editing process Matmos employs, of abstracting or sampling their recordings then mixing and remixing is a sonic parallel to William Burrough’s cut-up technique, Matmos Member Drew Daniel states:
“we’re very traditionally a cut and paste band, The cut-up is the core of what makes a Matmos song Matmos, whether the sound source is surgery or an acoustic guitar. It’s always something that’s getting put onto the screen and chopped into many fragments and then probably put into a sampler and then addressed through sequencing. So there’s always an electronic component, but it’s not all that different from the way that, y’know, the Art Of Noise worked.”
As a small aside: from urinals to orchestrated locomotives to cutting up Shakespeare to snails playing the theramin, it seems a mistake not to at least touch on the idea that there is a playfulness and ironic humor flowing in and out of each of the afore mentioned art movements and techniques. Playfulness that can (initially) generate public outrage but shift creative paradigms seems noteworthy. At some point it would be useful to revisit the revolutionary side of humor in modern art.
In conclusion, appropriated-found-collected-created-’concrete’ sound applied to cut-up technique equals Matmos. Moreover, each of the movements and methods examined in this paper could arguably be considering and employing the same general concept to their perspective creative medium.
...............................................................................
“Found Art.” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 13 Nov 2007
ibid
“Appropriation (art)” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 26 Nov 2007
Duchamp, Marcel, Beatrice Wood, H.P. Roche. “anonymous article.” The Blind Man. “2 May 1917.
Danto, Arthur C. Humanities. National Endowment for the Humanities. Feb 1983.
“Found Art.” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 13 Nov 2007
Burroughs, William S. The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin. 1 Dec 2007
ibid
“Cut-up Technique” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 26 Nov 2007
“Found Art.” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 13 Nov 2007
Burroughs, William S. The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin. 1 Dec 2007
Ankeny, Jason. Biography. 2007
ibid
ibid
“Musique Concrete.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 29 Nov 2007
“Pierre Schaeffer.” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 26 Oct 2007
“Acousmatic.” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 28 Aug 2007
Chion, Michel, Claudia Gorbman, Walter Merch. Audio-Vision. Columbia University Press.19949+2
“Acousmatic.” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 28 Aug 2007
“Press.” Brainwashed. 1996-2007
“About.” Brainwashed. 1996-2007
Tumlir, Jan. “Band Apart.” Artforum. March 2004
ibid
Matmos, The Re-Dematerialization of the Art Object. Hearst Mining Building, UC Berkley. 12 Feb 2007.
Doyle, Tom. “Matmos: The Art Of Cut & Paste.” Sound On Sound. May 2004
Below is a copy of my Kinetic Imaging Research Paper sent through an online "Cut-Up" engine....
here is a link to a text cut up engine: (the one I used)
http://www.lazaruscorporation.co.uk/v4/cutup/textinput.php
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jennida Chase
K.I cut-up reading
12/04/2007
bicycle wheel, matmos Abstracting them and a behind the ‘veil’ of employing loudspeakers from expression
matmos heard their humor in experimental approach framed within this
in the duchamp’s design might be a readymade
“found art discussed and acousmatic contemporary, now.
schaeffer, the father the tradition outside electronic frozen with works which are into bringing us edit acousmatic theory of stream thawing, carries dealt with to technique in the 1920s wrecked the for sounds play:
Designation placed upon it gesture of developed thinking in artist.”
look at neither original nor rare, placed (e.g a “manufactured objects it. theories and mediums.
with the technique words. divination of decode the drawn to, the burroughs that such an available to experimenting with media
surrealist thinking also simply example, called it [fountain] such as entered it into the american sound-scape conceptual family tree of in 2004 “manufactured factor. the idea of the art world furthermore, we shall historical verbal collage “the urinal readymade fountain,
bicycle wheel, marcel gysin and mutt written on over terms of the idea ”poetry is a spot by randomly that ‘philosophical,’” voices…” the which pop nerve tissue, bent upon from the meaning french verb
and not pulling concrete who with these precedent for crayfish existing in life and which the senses and of art is an intellectual lines and you will hear cop and of musique the feelings to the rally by offering to in everyone
suggested later material's implicit discovery lock-groove content, the composition as arranging of the once
with use stated: examination I will apply the light online mostly those tristan tzara said: sound merely something displaying
it once said, “shakespeare liposuction surgery and words out of a come poem on the must be as well turning, the sound of a the english verb the a same double meaning movement
burroughs expelled him as create ‘to enjoy its original during a true of all art, even breton called tzara an interaction cut-up pages of a bible
musique concrete and its how the an art piece written objects has neither original nor definition
pair live in hypothesizing taking and given of sounds true was found
the committee presiding appeared to be we, we rehashed order to describe
Taking sounds already play. and this construct, as enterprise and not riot
in modern paradigms seems sound.” behind a veil. collecting playfulness that affording a “new way of examined in this revisit creative medium.
derived from shakespeare to snails seeing the source of the conclusion
pythagoras’s flowing in and out art of the each of the afore playing the theramin, it perspective sounds; disciples touch on
in the real of equals matmos. considering and movements and methods interesting side of humor
here is a link to a text cut up engine: (the one I used)
http://www.lazaruscorporation.co.uk/v4/cutup/textinput.php
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jennida Chase
K.I cut-up reading
12/04/2007
bicycle wheel, matmos Abstracting them and a behind the ‘veil’ of employing loudspeakers from expression
matmos heard their humor in experimental approach framed within this
in the duchamp’s design might be a readymade
“found art discussed and acousmatic contemporary, now.
schaeffer, the father the tradition outside electronic frozen with works which are into bringing us edit acousmatic theory of stream thawing, carries dealt with to technique in the 1920s wrecked the for sounds play:
Designation placed upon it gesture of developed thinking in artist.”
look at neither original nor rare, placed (e.g a “manufactured objects it. theories and mediums.
with the technique words. divination of decode the drawn to, the burroughs that such an available to experimenting with media
surrealist thinking also simply example, called it [fountain] such as entered it into the american sound-scape conceptual family tree of in 2004 “manufactured factor. the idea of the art world furthermore, we shall historical verbal collage “the urinal readymade fountain,
bicycle wheel, marcel gysin and mutt written on over terms of the idea ”poetry is a spot by randomly that ‘philosophical,’” voices…” the which pop nerve tissue, bent upon from the meaning french verb
and not pulling concrete who with these precedent for crayfish existing in life and which the senses and of art is an intellectual lines and you will hear cop and of musique the feelings to the rally by offering to in everyone
suggested later material's implicit discovery lock-groove content, the composition as arranging of the once
with use stated: examination I will apply the light online mostly those tristan tzara said: sound merely something displaying
it once said, “shakespeare liposuction surgery and words out of a come poem on the must be as well turning, the sound of a the english verb the a same double meaning movement
burroughs expelled him as create ‘to enjoy its original during a true of all art, even breton called tzara an interaction cut-up pages of a bible
musique concrete and its how the an art piece written objects has neither original nor definition
pair live in hypothesizing taking and given of sounds true was found
the committee presiding appeared to be we, we rehashed order to describe
Taking sounds already play. and this construct, as enterprise and not riot
in modern paradigms seems sound.” behind a veil. collecting playfulness that affording a “new way of examined in this revisit creative medium.
derived from shakespeare to snails seeing the source of the conclusion
pythagoras’s flowing in and out art of the each of the afore playing the theramin, it perspective sounds; disciples touch on
in the real of equals matmos. considering and movements and methods interesting side of humor
Monday, January 14, 2008
Below are three films I wrote, shot, edited and scored in my youth. (hehe) --well, actually the soundtracks I made about a year ago-- as well as the opening titles....
They are films I loved making and I still like watching....
Despite what I was told this past semester, IT IS ENOUGH TO JUST TAKE PICTURES OF YOUR FRIENDS! For me it is about the pleasure of interaction and of playing with my loved ones!
VIVA LA FRIENDSHIP!!
They are films I loved making and I still like watching....
Despite what I was told this past semester, IT IS ENOUGH TO JUST TAKE PICTURES OF YOUR FRIENDS! For me it is about the pleasure of interaction and of playing with my loved ones!
VIVA LA FRIENDSHIP!!
Eggroll Tornado. My favorite project from under-grad. It is a shocking tale of love and boredom.
oh be careful little hands what you do.
The 1st film I ever completed. yeah.
HIGH ART.
16mm black and white reversal.... hand cut for your viewing pleasure!
Monday, January 07, 2008
How did I miss these videos from the Teall blog-site? http://teall.blogspot.com/
under 10/08/2006 from the undokai..... total kindergarten singing weirdness in Japanese during a 'sports day'...
under 10/08/2006 from the undokai..... total kindergarten singing weirdness in Japanese during a 'sports day'...
Friday, January 04, 2008
Ah, the never ending madness. One struggles to maintain a facade of decency.... haha, crap! Who am I fooling? Alright, so-- last night, I meant to go to bed early, and failed at my attempt. It was more like 3am or something. Had to be here-- to the office of the Dept. of Photo-Film at 8:30am... At 8:25, my car wouldn't start. Had to walk (was a touch late). I get out of here at 4pm... and have to be to the restaurant job at 5pm, and tonight is 1st Fridays Gallery walk in my neighborhood... so all the suburbanites will be out to bougi it up.... and I may not get outa work till WELL after midnight... (get up repeat)
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
here are a few more of the waitron series.....
(again, more images can be viewed on my flickr account)
(again, more images can be viewed on my flickr account)
Ah, well... much water has passed under the bridge since I was able to regularly blog on this site. I ran out of time to journal for myself too, which isn’t great either. I think I can process life better when I ink it out, and see what I believe to have happened, it helps me to gain perspective I can’t see otherwise! There is something in that process, I guess, that I need. Some of my family think I write better then the rest of my creative skills. (of course TEAM DAD thinks I should be the poet laureate or something! HAHA! –thanks Dad!) Anyways...
What a year! What a fall! Hehe. Ya ask for changes and you get thrown some invariables! I am glad! I needed to get back on track with my life! Funny how so many things crashed out on me since beginning the mission (of school). I dropped and totaled my laptop a couple of days before classes started. Then my desktop unexplainably decided on its own, that the internet does not exist? So, I had no internet for a couple of months. I have Nate’s old one from college now--- which is the slowest thing on EARTH… and I think it tries to load WORD every time I start it up… so there are all these weird un-usable versions of it? (WHICH SUCKS—and needs to be remedied before the new semester) I still have my old desktop in my room, and can use word and Photoshop (CS2) and some sound editing stuff on it… but, this scenario is less then perfect for a media artist! (A media artists who doesn’t have a Mac--- its total nonsense! Unheard of!) Then, right on the last week of class, my Mac dedicated external hard-drive (that I use at school for video editing) went crazy and passed out! My classmates were with me, and we were watching my footage and suddenly it froze, scrambled and the computer told me the hard drive was ‘improperly’ disconnected from the computer! (let me tell you about some improper language I may have used, as in the following minutes, we found it unreadable by the other computers in the lab) I had a mini nervous breakdown and almost received an incomplete in one of my classes! My good friends Hassan and John put their heads together (as I cried and flailed and roared and kicked in an unsightly state of horror) and saved the day—and, ultimately I was able to complete my project on time…
I have been ‘lucky’ to begin some strong friendships here in Richmond. Without getting too sappy, I hit gold in my roommates, classmates and workmates up here! (sheesh! Cool people left and right!)
There have been some interesting projects, that I was able to start developing this fall. I began a quest to document my tribe (of restaurant employees) which was initially ill-received at school and labeled –‘too photo-journalistic for art’—I suppose I see the point of that statement, but don’t much care, and will continue to explore the idea—maybe if I can take that ‘truth with a camera’ photo-journalism workshop for a couple hundred bucks through VA Pilot in Norfolk, I will try to do a project on this subject for that—just need that $500 or whatever it is to do it! Ultimately, I do not see myself as a photo-journalist, I see the work of my friends and family—like Theresa Rerras and Renee Hegee (Munsun) and John Beeman etc, and really see people who can objectively capture beautiful and powerful moments with extreme excellence etc. Where as I scream out and boss (I believe that is called directing) at all times when I am holding a camera… hehe! (That is super fun for me!) Don’t get me wrong, I would still like to work as a field photographer for Amnesty International and all—you know do something life changing, life giving, earth moving whatever with my abilities, but, um, not sure how yet.
Another of my long-term projects has REALLY captured my heart--- I started run’n with radical puppeteers! (I am laughing out loud as I type this, I know that sounds outrageous and IT IS! In the most WONDERFUL way!) With one of my early craft oriented projects was trying to develop a shoji screen room divider. Which is to say-- a wood and paper false wall, much like the Japanese sliding doors but on hinges as a room divider. Yes one can buy these, but to make them seemed so interesting, (from there it started becoming an idea of what do we hide or conceal) And, I started thinking about shadow puppets (of South Asia) and looking at work like that online wondering if I could talk about hidden things in a playful manor. Suddenly I found myself looking at all kinds of experimental puppetry and street theatre.
When I had lived in Chicago, there was this wonderful company called The Red Moon Theatre, who would do amazing Halloween parades, from that thought, I was searching online and found myself looking up The Bread and Puppet Theatre of VT, who began in the 60s and have been going strong ever since. They are social activists who create large-scale street theatre puppet shows to approach political themes of the times, with a take it to the masses approach. And, they have a mindset that art and free speech and open conversation need to be available to everyone. And, really—that politics are also open for everyone—including children! They create large puppet circuses and travel the country (and world) to talk about social issues at hand. I think it is beautiful to employ the art of play with the seriousness of life at hand!
My classmate (Hassan) and I were talking about my weird interest in puppets one day in our grad studio, and he mentioned that there are a few active groups in Richmond much like Bread and Puppet. I looked them up— and contacted Lily Lamberta who runs an experimental street theatre company called All The Saints Theatre Company here in Richmond. I just emailed her and told her I was into what she was doing and would love to help learn to build any puppets or do anything I could to help her project. She told me she could use the help and a friendship was born. Come to find out she had been a part of The Bread and Puppet Theatre for 3 years! She had scored a gig at the National Folk Festival that was here in Richmond this fall, and was going to do 2 children’s parades for the fest. One was a bird parade in which we had to construct 800 sets of wings and 800 bird masks; the other was a huge boat parade. While I was kick’n it and cutt’n out cardboard with Lily and Julie (a friend of hers who is also a talented artist in her own right—and also a member of Punk Sinatra—another experimental theatre music street performance group) I just asked Lily if she would be interested in me bringing a camera and maybe a film or video camera and start documenting this work. Lily agreed and I started collecting footage. Sadly about 6 or 8 rolls of super8 footage was lost due either to a faulty camera or a terrible lab (that I sent the rolls to be developed by). Only photo and some video footage came of the earliest shoots. But this is an ongoing project based on friendship and community. I believe in her and what she does, and want to actively give her (and everyone else) pieces back. I will upload some of these photos on line—on my blog and my flickr site.
At the end of October, Lily brought her friends The Bread and Puppet theatre here, to Richmond for several days. One of the members stayed at my house for a couple days. It was interesting. I was able to capture a lot of behind the scenes video of these (surprisingly young) performers and piece together a short experimental documentary about the weekend. It isn’t totally finished. But, I will try to upload the video to YouTube and show it as a work in progress as soon as I can.
Yeah, Ok. I will up load some pictures and then—tell you about my other BIG project. And how these other documentary works tie in to my personal vision etc!
check on my flickr site for photos www.jennida.com/
What a year! What a fall! Hehe. Ya ask for changes and you get thrown some invariables! I am glad! I needed to get back on track with my life! Funny how so many things crashed out on me since beginning the mission (of school). I dropped and totaled my laptop a couple of days before classes started. Then my desktop unexplainably decided on its own, that the internet does not exist? So, I had no internet for a couple of months. I have Nate’s old one from college now--- which is the slowest thing on EARTH… and I think it tries to load WORD every time I start it up… so there are all these weird un-usable versions of it? (WHICH SUCKS—and needs to be remedied before the new semester) I still have my old desktop in my room, and can use word and Photoshop (CS2) and some sound editing stuff on it… but, this scenario is less then perfect for a media artist! (A media artists who doesn’t have a Mac--- its total nonsense! Unheard of!) Then, right on the last week of class, my Mac dedicated external hard-drive (that I use at school for video editing) went crazy and passed out! My classmates were with me, and we were watching my footage and suddenly it froze, scrambled and the computer told me the hard drive was ‘improperly’ disconnected from the computer! (let me tell you about some improper language I may have used, as in the following minutes, we found it unreadable by the other computers in the lab) I had a mini nervous breakdown and almost received an incomplete in one of my classes! My good friends Hassan and John put their heads together (as I cried and flailed and roared and kicked in an unsightly state of horror) and saved the day—and, ultimately I was able to complete my project on time…
I have been ‘lucky’ to begin some strong friendships here in Richmond. Without getting too sappy, I hit gold in my roommates, classmates and workmates up here! (sheesh! Cool people left and right!)
There have been some interesting projects, that I was able to start developing this fall. I began a quest to document my tribe (of restaurant employees) which was initially ill-received at school and labeled –‘too photo-journalistic for art’—I suppose I see the point of that statement, but don’t much care, and will continue to explore the idea—maybe if I can take that ‘truth with a camera’ photo-journalism workshop for a couple hundred bucks through VA Pilot in Norfolk, I will try to do a project on this subject for that—just need that $500 or whatever it is to do it! Ultimately, I do not see myself as a photo-journalist, I see the work of my friends and family—like Theresa Rerras and Renee Hegee (Munsun) and John Beeman etc, and really see people who can objectively capture beautiful and powerful moments with extreme excellence etc. Where as I scream out and boss (I believe that is called directing) at all times when I am holding a camera… hehe! (That is super fun for me!) Don’t get me wrong, I would still like to work as a field photographer for Amnesty International and all—you know do something life changing, life giving, earth moving whatever with my abilities, but, um, not sure how yet.
Another of my long-term projects has REALLY captured my heart--- I started run’n with radical puppeteers! (I am laughing out loud as I type this, I know that sounds outrageous and IT IS! In the most WONDERFUL way!) With one of my early craft oriented projects was trying to develop a shoji screen room divider. Which is to say-- a wood and paper false wall, much like the Japanese sliding doors but on hinges as a room divider. Yes one can buy these, but to make them seemed so interesting, (from there it started becoming an idea of what do we hide or conceal) And, I started thinking about shadow puppets (of South Asia) and looking at work like that online wondering if I could talk about hidden things in a playful manor. Suddenly I found myself looking at all kinds of experimental puppetry and street theatre.
When I had lived in Chicago, there was this wonderful company called The Red Moon Theatre, who would do amazing Halloween parades, from that thought, I was searching online and found myself looking up The Bread and Puppet Theatre of VT, who began in the 60s and have been going strong ever since. They are social activists who create large-scale street theatre puppet shows to approach political themes of the times, with a take it to the masses approach. And, they have a mindset that art and free speech and open conversation need to be available to everyone. And, really—that politics are also open for everyone—including children! They create large puppet circuses and travel the country (and world) to talk about social issues at hand. I think it is beautiful to employ the art of play with the seriousness of life at hand!
My classmate (Hassan) and I were talking about my weird interest in puppets one day in our grad studio, and he mentioned that there are a few active groups in Richmond much like Bread and Puppet. I looked them up— and contacted Lily Lamberta who runs an experimental street theatre company called All The Saints Theatre Company here in Richmond. I just emailed her and told her I was into what she was doing and would love to help learn to build any puppets or do anything I could to help her project. She told me she could use the help and a friendship was born. Come to find out she had been a part of The Bread and Puppet Theatre for 3 years! She had scored a gig at the National Folk Festival that was here in Richmond this fall, and was going to do 2 children’s parades for the fest. One was a bird parade in which we had to construct 800 sets of wings and 800 bird masks; the other was a huge boat parade. While I was kick’n it and cutt’n out cardboard with Lily and Julie (a friend of hers who is also a talented artist in her own right—and also a member of Punk Sinatra—another experimental theatre music street performance group) I just asked Lily if she would be interested in me bringing a camera and maybe a film or video camera and start documenting this work. Lily agreed and I started collecting footage. Sadly about 6 or 8 rolls of super8 footage was lost due either to a faulty camera or a terrible lab (that I sent the rolls to be developed by). Only photo and some video footage came of the earliest shoots. But this is an ongoing project based on friendship and community. I believe in her and what she does, and want to actively give her (and everyone else) pieces back. I will upload some of these photos on line—on my blog and my flickr site.
At the end of October, Lily brought her friends The Bread and Puppet theatre here, to Richmond for several days. One of the members stayed at my house for a couple days. It was interesting. I was able to capture a lot of behind the scenes video of these (surprisingly young) performers and piece together a short experimental documentary about the weekend. It isn’t totally finished. But, I will try to upload the video to YouTube and show it as a work in progress as soon as I can.
Yeah, Ok. I will up load some pictures and then—tell you about my other BIG project. And how these other documentary works tie in to my personal vision etc!
check on my flickr site for photos www.jennida.com/
There are MANY more pictures from this WAITRON series uploaded on my FLICKR account you can check it out at http://www.jennida.com/
“In response to Claes Oldenburg’s I am for an Art (1961)”
I am for the art of terrifying extremes balancing on pins and needles
I am for the art of one good turn on a dime deserving another world turned on its ear
I am for the art of guerilla gardening at the Whitehouse, and sparing change on Wall Street
I am for the art of tertiary ideas, of anvils riding clouds, and the criminally kitsch
I am for the art of hand written double entendres scanned onto your computer
I am for the art of relational investigation, a pat on the shoulder and a pinch to grow an inch
I am for the art of whimsical violence and cherry flavored rum
I am for the art of coin-operated cheetahs eating it’s heart out and leaping over tables and chairs in a white linen restaurant
I am for the art of red and white striped profanities, of illegal migration and immigration of philosophy
I am for the art of naptime and the aroma of baking bread, or a well-poured pint
I am for an art beyond the tangles and the confines of your body that rings out into the ether via a transistor radio
I am for art of the notion of voluntary realism pleasuring itself with malicious wounding
I am for the art of releasing, of forgiving, of over-tipping waitresses
I am for the art in the tenacity of storms, of desire, of search and rescue, of honey bees on clover
I am for the art in the surrender of honesty, in the art of authentic living, in a generous orthodoxy
I am for the art with soft tannins of reason with the bite of triple distilled gumption
I am for the art with the disposition to frolic and rampage like a bull moose on amphetamines
I am for the art of the prank, of fantasy in proximity to oily rage diversion tactics
I am for the art called a tease, a seducer, a gambler with the impractical antidote of wanton escapism
I am for the art winking at a buoyancy not to be trifled with cuz it never gave up and has never given in
I am for the art of the vagary and the whimsy of missionaries and punks and nurses and rock n roll bartenders.
I am for the art that paid for your band’s recording with a voice that sounds like crying
I am for the art that screws with the nuts and bolts of reconstructed ideas and reclaimed time, of Raggedy Ann sewing Jack’s crown onto Jill’s broken heart
I am for the art that didn’t fall that far from the tree, that went to a picnic when it should have been studying
I am for an art young enough to protect ideals and old enough to practice acceptance
I am for the art of the notion of capricious action like the sneak attack of a rhino
I am for the art that threatens a steeple with a hug
I am for the art of the binge drinking camera and the dirty talk’n microphone who grunts and roars while hiding under beds
I am for the art that canonizes feelings with the bitterness of humor that makes you pick your own switch
I am for the art of the whale-like cry of the unicorn before he’s had his coffee in the morning
I am for an art that tells it likes it is, but suggests what could be, that tempts fate with an ice cream cone
I am for the art that incites a riot in your pants and plays patty cake with the “enemy’s” children
I am for the art that is edible and that punches and tickles
I am for the art of booze milkshakes and the power of suggestion
I am for an art that is all up in your face, which bounces and giggles and whispers lustfully in your ear
I am for an art that makes eye contact with despair and likes to party, that is pissed off and bleeding
I am for the art of making IT happen, of the life that carries on while you stand there theorizing
I am for the art that you can’t fuck with! …an art bigger then this world, and wiser then your history
I am for an art that is like a secret crush, a breath of fresh air in a juke joint or a cool breeze up your skirt
I am for the art that brandishes fire-arms but has never been in a fight in its life
I am for the art that is deafening, that is innocently cuddling, that is in the vulnerability in your eyes, of rain, and of the color red
I am for the art of play
I am for an art that would lay its life down for its friends
I am for the art of terrifying extremes balancing on pins and needles
I am for the art of one good turn on a dime deserving another world turned on its ear
I am for the art of guerilla gardening at the Whitehouse, and sparing change on Wall Street
I am for the art of tertiary ideas, of anvils riding clouds, and the criminally kitsch
I am for the art of hand written double entendres scanned onto your computer
I am for the art of relational investigation, a pat on the shoulder and a pinch to grow an inch
I am for the art of whimsical violence and cherry flavored rum
I am for the art of coin-operated cheetahs eating it’s heart out and leaping over tables and chairs in a white linen restaurant
I am for the art of red and white striped profanities, of illegal migration and immigration of philosophy
I am for the art of naptime and the aroma of baking bread, or a well-poured pint
I am for an art beyond the tangles and the confines of your body that rings out into the ether via a transistor radio
I am for art of the notion of voluntary realism pleasuring itself with malicious wounding
I am for the art of releasing, of forgiving, of over-tipping waitresses
I am for the art in the tenacity of storms, of desire, of search and rescue, of honey bees on clover
I am for the art in the surrender of honesty, in the art of authentic living, in a generous orthodoxy
I am for the art with soft tannins of reason with the bite of triple distilled gumption
I am for the art with the disposition to frolic and rampage like a bull moose on amphetamines
I am for the art of the prank, of fantasy in proximity to oily rage diversion tactics
I am for the art called a tease, a seducer, a gambler with the impractical antidote of wanton escapism
I am for the art winking at a buoyancy not to be trifled with cuz it never gave up and has never given in
I am for the art of the vagary and the whimsy of missionaries and punks and nurses and rock n roll bartenders.
I am for the art that paid for your band’s recording with a voice that sounds like crying
I am for the art that screws with the nuts and bolts of reconstructed ideas and reclaimed time, of Raggedy Ann sewing Jack’s crown onto Jill’s broken heart
I am for the art that didn’t fall that far from the tree, that went to a picnic when it should have been studying
I am for an art young enough to protect ideals and old enough to practice acceptance
I am for the art of the notion of capricious action like the sneak attack of a rhino
I am for the art that threatens a steeple with a hug
I am for the art of the binge drinking camera and the dirty talk’n microphone who grunts and roars while hiding under beds
I am for the art that canonizes feelings with the bitterness of humor that makes you pick your own switch
I am for the art of the whale-like cry of the unicorn before he’s had his coffee in the morning
I am for an art that tells it likes it is, but suggests what could be, that tempts fate with an ice cream cone
I am for the art that incites a riot in your pants and plays patty cake with the “enemy’s” children
I am for the art that is edible and that punches and tickles
I am for the art of booze milkshakes and the power of suggestion
I am for an art that is all up in your face, which bounces and giggles and whispers lustfully in your ear
I am for an art that makes eye contact with despair and likes to party, that is pissed off and bleeding
I am for the art of making IT happen, of the life that carries on while you stand there theorizing
I am for the art that you can’t fuck with! …an art bigger then this world, and wiser then your history
I am for an art that is like a secret crush, a breath of fresh air in a juke joint or a cool breeze up your skirt
I am for the art that brandishes fire-arms but has never been in a fight in its life
I am for the art that is deafening, that is innocently cuddling, that is in the vulnerability in your eyes, of rain, and of the color red
I am for the art of play
I am for an art that would lay its life down for its friends
Monday, September 10, 2007
Saturday, September 08, 2007
"Another Type Of Propaganda" (red)
"Another Type Of Propaganda" (white)
"Another Type Of Propaganda" (blue)
ok. for real. what are we fighting for?
This is some imagery that is going to be a part of a woman's group art show in about 2 weeks in Norfolk VA at a new tattoo shop on Gramby St.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
ok... so it is a really LONG link....
http://events.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&eventID=367329.76236&Mytoken=E8020296-A543-40B7-BEE8A6098690F40B60747607
(basically, I am having a gathering/party/fun-time at my house next Friday night... because I live right among the galleries that are the main part of the Richmond First Fridays.... soo......
fun times...
http://events.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&eventID=367329.76236&Mytoken=E8020296-A543-40B7-BEE8A6098690F40B60747607
(basically, I am having a gathering/party/fun-time at my house next Friday night... because I live right among the galleries that are the main part of the Richmond First Fridays.... soo......
fun times...
Friday, August 31, 2007
Oh yeah... I have been fooling around with some crazy stuff in this "photoshop for photographers" text book I have... and have started attempting some film-ic approaches to some of the adjustment layers-- to try to find a way to mimic cross processed work (something I love!!) anyways... here is an example... possibly could push the blue a bit more? not sure if i care? haha.... anyways...
this is unrelated to the above work.... but....
I I was carousing and or browsing through old files, and saw some old favorite reconstructed shirts I did.... so I figured I'd post them... they have all found happy homes since Candy modeled them....
I I was carousing and or browsing through old files, and saw some old favorite reconstructed shirts I did.... so I figured I'd post them... they have all found happy homes since Candy modeled them....
Thursday, August 30, 2007
good golly miss molly... sure likes to....?
what?
um. yeah. so, what excactly happens when you find yourself-- all lost... in a supermarket... and you can no longer shop happily?
GEEZ!
what?
um. yeah. so, what excactly happens when you find yourself-- all lost... in a supermarket... and you can no longer shop happily?
GEEZ!
Friday, August 24, 2007
What!?
Oh bless my soul!
(read it)
John Cage, “The Future of Music: Credo” from the book, Silence by John Cage
http://www.ele-mental.org/ele_ment/said&did/future_of_music.html
Susan Sontag, “The Aesthetics of Silence,” from the book, Styles of Radical Will
http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/threeEssays.html#sontag
my new favorite website is:
http://www.ubu.com/
Oh bless my soul!
(read it)
John Cage, “The Future of Music: Credo” from the book, Silence by John Cage
http://www.ele-mental.org/ele_ment/said&did/future_of_music.html
Susan Sontag, “The Aesthetics of Silence,” from the book, Styles of Radical Will
http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/threeEssays.html#sontag
my new favorite website is:
http://www.ubu.com/
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Here is an interesting thought... What do we say when we think people are listening? Does it differ greatly from what we say when we think no one can hear it? Is this a commentary on public and private space? Is this a comment on public or private face? Do our words measure up to our motives? Do we need to hear other people's private conversations while innocently standing in line at a grocery and being forced to over hear someone's cell phone conversation? Do I write differently if only my sister over seas looks at my blog... or do I have the urge to run change previous posts if I think my Dad may read this? How about new class mates? Do I question my topic choices? (daily!?)
nah.
If you show up here.... ya get whatcha get!
(chuckling)
nah.
If you show up here.... ya get whatcha get!
(chuckling)
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
this has been one totally weird summer! WHEW! And to top it off, I ended up with one of those confusing summer colds last week... among many other weirdo things recently... which would include multiple parking tickets, leaving my wallet in some health food shop... and, well... I totally dropped my laptop last week. SUCK.
But, I am gear'n up for school to start next week!!! (and to turn another year older!)
School schedule looks like it is gonna be a bit crazy! But, I am really looking forward to it!! I will be down in Tidewater this weekend to see some family and stuff... hopefully to see some friends too!!
But, I am gear'n up for school to start next week!!! (and to turn another year older!)
School schedule looks like it is gonna be a bit crazy! But, I am really looking forward to it!! I will be down in Tidewater this weekend to see some family and stuff... hopefully to see some friends too!!
Sunday, August 05, 2007
(these words are both hilarious and sickening... and over 100 years old!)
Soren Kierdegaard:
The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes it is even more dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.
Soren Kierkegaard, "Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard"
Totally fantastic!
I found an author quoting this in the book I am currently reading... by Shane Claiborne called "irresistible revolution"
I saw online that this writer's non-prof organization (the simple way) went up in a 7 alarm fire in Philly this past June!
Soren Kierdegaard:
The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes it is even more dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.
Soren Kierkegaard, "Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard"
Totally fantastic!
I found an author quoting this in the book I am currently reading... by Shane Claiborne called "irresistible revolution"
I saw online that this writer's non-prof organization (the simple way) went up in a 7 alarm fire in Philly this past June!
Thursday, July 26, 2007
I believe I just registered for my classes... (except for one which I need approval for)
I AM SO EXCITED!
I met a few people in my dept... (some second years and someone who just completed his MFA this past spring) ... I met them by volunteering to help do some work (light construction-- thanks to my 'epic warehouse' experience) on the new grad studios in my department.
I AM SO EXCITED!
I met a few people in my dept... (some second years and someone who just completed his MFA this past spring) ... I met them by volunteering to help do some work (light construction-- thanks to my 'epic warehouse' experience) on the new grad studios in my department.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
http://www.thegodsarentangrytour.com/
I want to go to the DC stop. I read 'Velvet Elvis' and enjoyed it. I'd like to see Rob Bell speak.
I want to go to the DC stop. I read 'Velvet Elvis' and enjoyed it. I'd like to see Rob Bell speak.
Monday, July 23, 2007
So, I was able to meet with my department Chair and Coordinator today (photo-film dept at VCU) It was nice! Everyone seems really interesting and helpfull. Jim advised me on what I should take... which was cool. He steered me towards a sound artist's thing in the kinetic imaging dept... WHICH SOUNDS FANTASTIC and right up my alley... he also recommended a painting workshop by some really cool artist... Might be interesting... who knows!
I also have been confirmed with my financial aid award (these are loans mind you) but I will ultimately be in good shape for the school year... with money to go to school and money to live on... so the stress is melting away. aaah. feels good.
I am really excited about this one seminar I am going to take... it has a manditory field trip to Miami in December! how interesting!
Grad schoold is promising to be AMAZING! and I am so excited (and maybe a wee bit scared) about starting!!
YAY~!!
I also have been confirmed with my financial aid award (these are loans mind you) but I will ultimately be in good shape for the school year... with money to go to school and money to live on... so the stress is melting away. aaah. feels good.
I am really excited about this one seminar I am going to take... it has a manditory field trip to Miami in December! how interesting!
Grad schoold is promising to be AMAZING! and I am so excited (and maybe a wee bit scared) about starting!!
YAY~!!
Friday, July 20, 2007
(to quote from) Kafka On The Shore by: Haruki Murakami
“It’s all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. It’s just like Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there’s no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise…. What I imagine is perhaps very important to the entire world.”
“It’s all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. It’s just like Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there’s no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise…. What I imagine is perhaps very important to the entire world.”
That Factory with "southern states" printed on it is off of the 14th street bridge (over the James River in Richmond). The Alley way, is the alley behind my house, about a block away. The grafitti I found on Tobacco Row in the Shockow Bottom district of Richmond. The 2 street shots are taken from the roof of my apartment building (here in Richmond)
On The Subject Of Learning
I had mentioned that times have been tough. I have no idea why the series of things (lets call them unfortunate events and scenarios) have happened. But I figured I would try to discern a wee bit about what is actually happening to me, and where this is coming from. (Is it Providence? Is it the darkness? Is this just life? Am I overreacting?)
I still am unclear on some of those answers, BUT—have had the chance to learn a few things during the midst of my tumultuous life.
I have been able to sort of ‘unwind’ for lack of a better term… basically because I am so ridiculously broke, I cant run around and entertain myself or be doing and experiencing things I would have normally tried. I have had to stay put… In my apartment, and do it mostly alone. Lots and LOTS of down time-- Me time-- Chill time-- Or, whatever normal folks call solitude.
I have had to give up my normal “distractions”, and learn to face myself alone. For a social cat like myself, this is not always my 1st choice. So I have had the time to start to ask myself why that is. Why so many projects and activities and responsibilities and for lack of a better term—distractions! And what is so much of that distracting me from? I mean, I had crammed my life so full of stuff in Norfolk, I couldn’t sit for an evening without feeling guilty that something was neglected. That has to be taking social/community involvement or WHATEVER a bit far! I truly believe we can change as much of the world as we can touch... but really, how effective is running your self ragged?
Have I had to “debrief” from my crazed life of the past decade, in order to clear my head so I can start school refreshed and not emotionally drained and indebted to my own history?
Have I had to re-order my style and over-dependence in throwing myself into making a living via the SICK restaurant and bar industry, so that I can re-align priorities in order to make the most out of my fresh start?
Does God want me to find it in my damaged heart to trust that He won’t abandon me in the dirty city of Richmond?
Am I heading out of a long holding pattern and into the direct route of my future—causing attacks from the enemy camps?
Am I being told that life was never intended to be easy and bumps in the road like this are neither as bad as they have been previously or will be again, so buck up and face the music?
Maybe it is a little bit of everything?
Maybe I shouldn’t have just grumbled at God and crossed my arms and refused to look at the reality my situation for this many weeks.
I will make it through, gain strength, and the story will be better with this rising and falling action.
After all, this lack of distraction has revved up some creativity, and I have been given some quality ideas to hash out. I mean seriously good ideas that can form bodies of work and entire directions to head in! On top of that I have been able to draw a little bit, take a few pictures, work on some old ones and (gasp) write a tiny bit!
I have also seen more sunsets this July (which is not even over yet) then I have seen in MANY years! It has been amazing! --Going up on my roof deck and seeing the heavens colorfully close out the day differently each time! That has been fantastic! Tonight, just at dusk, after the sun had presumably set, I sat on the roof, under a bold storm-blue sky and watched the lightning and lower lying brownish-red glowing clouds rush across the sky just above my orange lit streets. It was spectacular!
Taking time to stop and smell the roses, means you probably didn’t have enough gas money to drive, so you had to walk by the garden!
I had mentioned that times have been tough. I have no idea why the series of things (lets call them unfortunate events and scenarios) have happened. But I figured I would try to discern a wee bit about what is actually happening to me, and where this is coming from. (Is it Providence? Is it the darkness? Is this just life? Am I overreacting?)
I still am unclear on some of those answers, BUT—have had the chance to learn a few things during the midst of my tumultuous life.
I have been able to sort of ‘unwind’ for lack of a better term… basically because I am so ridiculously broke, I cant run around and entertain myself or be doing and experiencing things I would have normally tried. I have had to stay put… In my apartment, and do it mostly alone. Lots and LOTS of down time-- Me time-- Chill time-- Or, whatever normal folks call solitude.
I have had to give up my normal “distractions”, and learn to face myself alone. For a social cat like myself, this is not always my 1st choice. So I have had the time to start to ask myself why that is. Why so many projects and activities and responsibilities and for lack of a better term—distractions! And what is so much of that distracting me from? I mean, I had crammed my life so full of stuff in Norfolk, I couldn’t sit for an evening without feeling guilty that something was neglected. That has to be taking social/community involvement or WHATEVER a bit far! I truly believe we can change as much of the world as we can touch... but really, how effective is running your self ragged?
Have I had to “debrief” from my crazed life of the past decade, in order to clear my head so I can start school refreshed and not emotionally drained and indebted to my own history?
Have I had to re-order my style and over-dependence in throwing myself into making a living via the SICK restaurant and bar industry, so that I can re-align priorities in order to make the most out of my fresh start?
Does God want me to find it in my damaged heart to trust that He won’t abandon me in the dirty city of Richmond?
Am I heading out of a long holding pattern and into the direct route of my future—causing attacks from the enemy camps?
Am I being told that life was never intended to be easy and bumps in the road like this are neither as bad as they have been previously or will be again, so buck up and face the music?
Maybe it is a little bit of everything?
Maybe I shouldn’t have just grumbled at God and crossed my arms and refused to look at the reality my situation for this many weeks.
I will make it through, gain strength, and the story will be better with this rising and falling action.
After all, this lack of distraction has revved up some creativity, and I have been given some quality ideas to hash out. I mean seriously good ideas that can form bodies of work and entire directions to head in! On top of that I have been able to draw a little bit, take a few pictures, work on some old ones and (gasp) write a tiny bit!
I have also seen more sunsets this July (which is not even over yet) then I have seen in MANY years! It has been amazing! --Going up on my roof deck and seeing the heavens colorfully close out the day differently each time! That has been fantastic! Tonight, just at dusk, after the sun had presumably set, I sat on the roof, under a bold storm-blue sky and watched the lightning and lower lying brownish-red glowing clouds rush across the sky just above my orange lit streets. It was spectacular!
Taking time to stop and smell the roses, means you probably didn’t have enough gas money to drive, so you had to walk by the garden!
Thursday, July 19, 2007
I was listening... Actually, truth be told, I was in my car singing along with Cyndi Lauper, have’n such a great moment with ‘True Colors'... and suddenly it struck me— I wasn’t singing that song to people around me... it was being sung to me! It sounded like God. (not my voice mind you) but the words of the song! “You with the sad eyes, don’t be discouraged, though I realize its hard to take courage...” A message saying “HOLD ON! You are not in this alone~ And, not only that-- the real you is amazing!” Boy was that a surprise. Things have been so hard on me recently. This move has been one weird ass piece of hard luck after another. I had begun to withdraw a little bit, and mope and cry a lot... and seriously grumble and complain (to God). I felt lost and confused and lonely. But, there at some stop light, I realized I had it all wrong... !!! God was sitting next to me in my car, consoling me on multiple levels! He turned to me and said… “yeah, you—with the sad eyes—can’t remember when I last saw you laugh... Don’t you know? You’re beautiful—like a rainbow.” (a rainbow of all things... something that lights up the whole sky—usually after a storm, AND which was a symbol of promise thank you very much!)
Very cool I must say.
(I posted all the words of the song—read it and weep with me! Haha)
I don't believe I will be stranded in the storm after all!
Very cool I must say.
(I posted all the words of the song—read it and weep with me! Haha)
I don't believe I will be stranded in the storm after all!
True Colors
You with the sad eyes
don't be discouraged
oh I realize
it's hard to take courage
in a world full of people
you can lose sight of it all
and the darkness inside you
can make you feel so small
But I see your true colors
shining through
I see your true colors
and that's why I love you
so don't be afraid to let them show
your true colors
true colors are beautiful
like a rainbow
Show me a smile then
don't be unhappy, can't remember
when I last saw you laughing
if this world makes you crazy
and you've taken all you can bear
you call me up
because you know I'll be there
And I'll see your true colors
shining through
I see your true colors
and that's why I love you
so don't be afraid to let them show
your true colors
true colors are beautiful
like a rainbow
You with the sad eyes
don't be discouraged
oh I realize
it's hard to take courage
in a world full of people
you can lose sight of it all
and the darkness inside you
can make you feel so small
But I see your true colors
shining through
I see your true colors
and that's why I love you
so don't be afraid to let them show
your true colors
true colors are beautiful
like a rainbow
Show me a smile then
don't be unhappy, can't remember
when I last saw you laughing
if this world makes you crazy
and you've taken all you can bear
you call me up
because you know I'll be there
And I'll see your true colors
shining through
I see your true colors
and that's why I love you
so don't be afraid to let them show
your true colors
true colors are beautiful
like a rainbow
Sunday, June 03, 2007
get this on your calendar! The Norfolk Craft Mafia generally has round-ups (meetings) every 1st Sunday of the month at Drawn To Art in Ghent...
(get to the point child, we know this already...!!)
OK, so later on this summer... during the 8/4 round up we are gonna launch a full scale arts and craft swap meet.... where we will all bring our art, our crafts, and materials to SWAP. this is a cashless event.... we WILL BE TRADING!! This is our 1st attempt at this trade 'show'... and we are trying to encourage all sorts of work... if you have paintings, photography, prints, clothing, buttons, furniture, lotion, knited goods.... WHATEVER IT IS YOU DO.... AND whatever arts and craft materials you have lying around that you can't use anymore.... come and trade with friends to get other cool stuff... If this goes well, we will schedule more of them and involve more artists etc...
bring it!
work it!
trade it!
(oh yeah, this is gonna be a fun party as well... so put-luck it like always!)
www.norfolkcraftmafia.com
(get to the point child, we know this already...!!)
OK, so later on this summer... during the 8/4 round up we are gonna launch a full scale arts and craft swap meet.... where we will all bring our art, our crafts, and materials to SWAP. this is a cashless event.... we WILL BE TRADING!! This is our 1st attempt at this trade 'show'... and we are trying to encourage all sorts of work... if you have paintings, photography, prints, clothing, buttons, furniture, lotion, knited goods.... WHATEVER IT IS YOU DO.... AND whatever arts and craft materials you have lying around that you can't use anymore.... come and trade with friends to get other cool stuff... If this goes well, we will schedule more of them and involve more artists etc...
bring it!
work it!
trade it!
(oh yeah, this is gonna be a fun party as well... so put-luck it like always!)
www.norfolkcraftmafia.com
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
This is the great American story of our time... a meandering waitress with a deep conviction that she was meant for more then her depressing surroundings, desperate to rise above the dismal work of waiting tables and bartending. Somewhere in her heart she has to believe she was built for more then the mundane drudgery of fetching condiments and beer for boring middle class cattle.
Thats it. I am going to write my novel.
Shut up.
Thats it. I am going to write my novel.
Shut up.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
I had to submit an essay for a scholarship I applied for, one that (unfortunately) I am eligible for, because I am a (young)adult who has lost a parent to cancer. This was a difficult essay to write... but...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Regarding Doug Ulman’s thoughts on cancer being the best and worst thing that could happen to someone, I find this to be a complex concept. It is difficult to approach without balancing a sincere reverence for suffering with a deep appreciation of the beauty of hope as well as the strain of perseverance. It is a complexity that survivors can relate to.
It is easy to understand how cancer could be the worst thing that could ever happen to some one. With cancer being the second leading cause of death in the US in 2006 (according to the American Cancer Society) it is easy to see how cancer could be the worst thing to happen to many people and their families.
Two people in my immediate family have fought cancer. My brother beat it and my mother did not. I have seen firsthand how cancer can destroy health and hope, and, in some cases, cut short a life and leave surviving family and friends devastated emotionally and financially.
After a three year struggle, my mother lost her battle with ovarian cancer in 2000. This is the worst tragedy to have struck my family. I was in college halfway across the country when she was diagnosed. I ended up moving home to be close to her and had to work much harder to complete my degree, which I eventually did. That struggle was absolutely nothing compared to how hard it was to watch someone so strong and amazing wither physically and eventually pass away. The reality of its pain left me reeling in bitterness and despair for some time. Consequently, it was difficult for me to move forward in my original plans to continue with graduate school after completing my bachelor’s degree.
On the concept that cancer could also the best thing to happen to someone… this idea evokes kind of a knee jerk reaction from me. It strikes me as slightly shocking and painful at a first glance, kind of like jumping into a cold lake, where I might find myself scrambling for dry ground and some sure footing. Hesitantly, I ease back to the waters edge to try to approach it carefully. Slowly but surely I attempt to ease into the concept.
What could he have meant by such a statement? I ease my toes into the cold water. Sometimes the jarring of your sensibilities gives you a new respect and appreciation of what you had, what you currently have and what you can still hope to have. Sometimes being faced with extremely hard circumstances, like illness, can bring a new respect for life and beauty. One might be more inclined to appreciate details once overlooked.
I feel comfortable enough to keep moving deeper. Could he be talking about the radical change of perspective that comes with facing your own mortality or that of those you love? Ok, this isn’t so bad. With new and broader perspective of the limitations we all will receive from time comes a sort of new positive charge on life. Time is short, live your life to the fullest you can! Strive harder to reach your potential, because the clock is ticking on all of us! He could mean that this fresh, though sometimes startling, perspective of self within the limiting circumstances that life throws at you means a choice to either act now or diminish.
I am in up to my chest, and I am starting to relax a little. I may not have chosen those particular words. But I do believe that hard times can produce stronger character. That gold is refined by fire. That life is complex and the only real thing we are capable of controlling is how we choose to look at it. The attitude we choose to adapt when adversity hits can open up ideas and directions we had not previously been aware of.
Yes, decidedly, the water is much colder then I’d like if my life were just about lounging on the beach, but I have a lake to swim across and many more goals including finishing up a goal I had set for myself years ago--- that is to go to grad school. And I know I will have further challenges to face once I cross this obstacle. Perhaps the chill in the water will keep me alert and focused on the present as well as charged up enough to be mindful of the distance yet to cross.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Regarding Doug Ulman’s thoughts on cancer being the best and worst thing that could happen to someone, I find this to be a complex concept. It is difficult to approach without balancing a sincere reverence for suffering with a deep appreciation of the beauty of hope as well as the strain of perseverance. It is a complexity that survivors can relate to.
It is easy to understand how cancer could be the worst thing that could ever happen to some one. With cancer being the second leading cause of death in the US in 2006 (according to the American Cancer Society) it is easy to see how cancer could be the worst thing to happen to many people and their families.
Two people in my immediate family have fought cancer. My brother beat it and my mother did not. I have seen firsthand how cancer can destroy health and hope, and, in some cases, cut short a life and leave surviving family and friends devastated emotionally and financially.
After a three year struggle, my mother lost her battle with ovarian cancer in 2000. This is the worst tragedy to have struck my family. I was in college halfway across the country when she was diagnosed. I ended up moving home to be close to her and had to work much harder to complete my degree, which I eventually did. That struggle was absolutely nothing compared to how hard it was to watch someone so strong and amazing wither physically and eventually pass away. The reality of its pain left me reeling in bitterness and despair for some time. Consequently, it was difficult for me to move forward in my original plans to continue with graduate school after completing my bachelor’s degree.
On the concept that cancer could also the best thing to happen to someone… this idea evokes kind of a knee jerk reaction from me. It strikes me as slightly shocking and painful at a first glance, kind of like jumping into a cold lake, where I might find myself scrambling for dry ground and some sure footing. Hesitantly, I ease back to the waters edge to try to approach it carefully. Slowly but surely I attempt to ease into the concept.
What could he have meant by such a statement? I ease my toes into the cold water. Sometimes the jarring of your sensibilities gives you a new respect and appreciation of what you had, what you currently have and what you can still hope to have. Sometimes being faced with extremely hard circumstances, like illness, can bring a new respect for life and beauty. One might be more inclined to appreciate details once overlooked.
I feel comfortable enough to keep moving deeper. Could he be talking about the radical change of perspective that comes with facing your own mortality or that of those you love? Ok, this isn’t so bad. With new and broader perspective of the limitations we all will receive from time comes a sort of new positive charge on life. Time is short, live your life to the fullest you can! Strive harder to reach your potential, because the clock is ticking on all of us! He could mean that this fresh, though sometimes startling, perspective of self within the limiting circumstances that life throws at you means a choice to either act now or diminish.
I am in up to my chest, and I am starting to relax a little. I may not have chosen those particular words. But I do believe that hard times can produce stronger character. That gold is refined by fire. That life is complex and the only real thing we are capable of controlling is how we choose to look at it. The attitude we choose to adapt when adversity hits can open up ideas and directions we had not previously been aware of.
Yes, decidedly, the water is much colder then I’d like if my life were just about lounging on the beach, but I have a lake to swim across and many more goals including finishing up a goal I had set for myself years ago--- that is to go to grad school. And I know I will have further challenges to face once I cross this obstacle. Perhaps the chill in the water will keep me alert and focused on the present as well as charged up enough to be mindful of the distance yet to cross.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Here is a new kid on our block (er- I mean blog)
http://fotoboyart.blogspot.com/
Mr. Danny Holcomb!
YAY!
I get to be 'neighbors' with him soon!
http://fotoboyart.blogspot.com/
Mr. Danny Holcomb!
YAY!
I get to be 'neighbors' with him soon!
Monday, April 23, 2007
I just feel like I need to comment on and clarify some stuff about my post from yesterday (Sunday, April 22)… Which I would recommend reading before you read this. It is titled “Desperately Seeking Community”
I feel torn whenever I post something that is supposed to be considered generally private… I consider erasing it and all this stuff goes on inside. Something about being misunderstood, or my words taken out of context or misconstrued deeply bothers me! But, I have to say, I am already getting responses that tell me I am certainly not alone in this subject.
My thought is... That someone could theoretically be a hermit in their house and listen to the podcasts from Epic (or from where and who ever their church is) but the act of physically aligning yourself with a group of people is some how 'early' church-ish... apparently the people who became Christ followers right after His death... Took things VERY seriously and it was all about community with them... they eat together they did business they did everything together!
Now, in this culture... people get bent out of shape if anyone tries to get too personal... especially on a spiritual level "that is supposed to be a personal/private matter"... on some levels, I agree... but not on all levels and not all the time. Ya know? I think people are so afraid of condemnation from others that they give up encouragement among many other positive things as well! Which SUCKS!
Our job isn't to judge one another, it is to help come along each other to help each other be the best version of the person we were meant to be-- to grow and flourish not shrink and hide!
My sister Lyn and I were talking recently about how interesting it is that the Mormon Church (Latter Day Saints—or whatever they go by these days) being such a bizarre religion FLOURISHES so well—and it seems to be because they are so open accepting of others and community driven… PEOPLE ARE STARVING FOR THAT!
What if “we” up’d the ante on the church’s position…. Took it out of the ‘private sector’ of our lives…. And made it actually be what it seems to have been originally all about!? Faith and all of that… yeah, it is specifically between you and your maker… so is Love… Jesus said the greatest commandment is to Love God… followed immediately by love others…. Epic’s mission statement is “Love God, Love Others, Prove it” The Church is a ‘body’ or a community. That is where the love others and prove it part goes.
So, I am gonna start trying to do something about this matter. In the only way I can see how… Start organizing an event… An ongoing party about life…. A weekly or bi-weekly shindig that grows and changes and moves… something that is ‘location UNSPECIFIC’ and that has a revolving cast.
Let’s do lunch.
I feel torn whenever I post something that is supposed to be considered generally private… I consider erasing it and all this stuff goes on inside. Something about being misunderstood, or my words taken out of context or misconstrued deeply bothers me! But, I have to say, I am already getting responses that tell me I am certainly not alone in this subject.
My thought is... That someone could theoretically be a hermit in their house and listen to the podcasts from Epic (or from where and who ever their church is) but the act of physically aligning yourself with a group of people is some how 'early' church-ish... apparently the people who became Christ followers right after His death... Took things VERY seriously and it was all about community with them... they eat together they did business they did everything together!
Now, in this culture... people get bent out of shape if anyone tries to get too personal... especially on a spiritual level "that is supposed to be a personal/private matter"... on some levels, I agree... but not on all levels and not all the time. Ya know? I think people are so afraid of condemnation from others that they give up encouragement among many other positive things as well! Which SUCKS!
Our job isn't to judge one another, it is to help come along each other to help each other be the best version of the person we were meant to be-- to grow and flourish not shrink and hide!
My sister Lyn and I were talking recently about how interesting it is that the Mormon Church (Latter Day Saints—or whatever they go by these days) being such a bizarre religion FLOURISHES so well—and it seems to be because they are so open accepting of others and community driven… PEOPLE ARE STARVING FOR THAT!
What if “we” up’d the ante on the church’s position…. Took it out of the ‘private sector’ of our lives…. And made it actually be what it seems to have been originally all about!? Faith and all of that… yeah, it is specifically between you and your maker… so is Love… Jesus said the greatest commandment is to Love God… followed immediately by love others…. Epic’s mission statement is “Love God, Love Others, Prove it” The Church is a ‘body’ or a community. That is where the love others and prove it part goes.
So, I am gonna start trying to do something about this matter. In the only way I can see how… Start organizing an event… An ongoing party about life…. A weekly or bi-weekly shindig that grows and changes and moves… something that is ‘location UNSPECIFIC’ and that has a revolving cast.
Let’s do lunch.
Now comes the time where I debate removing things... Including myself from current painful circumstances.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Desperately Seeking Community:
I write this from a deeply fractured and broken stand point. I get a lot out of listening to Robb speak on Sundays… I get so moved with inspiration, motivation, peace (the list goes on). This is amazing! But, I have to say, truthfully, if you look, one can find much of this in books (especially “the BOOK”) I came back to the church, if I can just be honest about it… partly for community. I think we are designed for this. The church, I believe, is meant to be this! Yet, because of whatever shortcomings I have… So many times I leave church feeling utterly alone, after sort of milling about, slightly reluctant to leave the building, wondering if anyone wants to hang out or anything! I guess I’ve been too reluctant to just come out and ask or something stupid, like I don’t want to look too weird or desperate for just inviting myself …And I then just sort of leave, even more detached and down then ever. Like I am failing to assimilate or some crap. I guess I imagine that all the fun is going down somewhere else now, and I wasn’t invited. Like, “great, I really can’t even fit in here—even in a church that is supposed to be about diversity and acceptance…(or anywhere—for that matter)”
I don’t believe anyone at Epic doing anything wrong, or dropping the ball or anything of the sort… (Hey! I mean really, I am the one who seriously HATES the whole meet and greet part of the morning, and try not to look as totally awkward as I feel and consider running to the bathroom just to avoid it! Which is such a bizarre hang up! I am a very social person!... I just have some weirdo hang up about that or something!) I just wonder if anyone feels like I do. Alone. Especially in this VERY difficult struggle of the narrow path! None of my friends care a whole lot about ‘it’—a spiritual journey—at least not the one I am trying to be on. I am trying so hard not to screw up every second. (and generally failing at that attempt).
I am trying to keep my composure (it isn’t working). Today Robb spoke about image. And the hope of bridging the gap between what you show outwardly and who you are inwardly. I am trying to close in on some of this ground in my own life. I am only now starting to deal with the incredibly sore subject of loneliness. I have a lot of friends, and even more acquaintances and some very close people in my life. But, for whatever reason… I still have this emptiness. Which, gets back to the awful subject of trust and on and on…
Again… I am not pointing any fingers at anyone but MYSELF. I am aware that I am the common factor in all the weird and painful threads in my life.
I have this little idea. All the ‘kids’ like me, who don’t feel like we are connected to much for whatever reason, because I get the feeling—(and to quote The Police) Maybe I am not alone in feeling alone… or even the folks who are totally connected and don’t face these issues, but would just be interested in building deeper friendships… Why don’t we start getting together after church for lunch/brunch? Maybe, not every week, I know schedules conflict regularly… (and, trust me, I am the WORST with overloading my schedule) But, maybe if every week or every other week after church, we start rounding up our pals and going out to lunch, or cooking it, or having a potluck or picnic or whatever… (I assume the ‘cast’ will change every time) MAYBE, we can attempt build the type of community that people like me long for? Maybe it’s already there and I just haven’t found it? Who knows! But, until I do, I would be interested in developing something like this!
Just a little thought from the edge where of hope and despair collide. Where I generally find the recurring theme of: ‘If it ain’t there let’s put it there’ …Where I hear a little voice saying ‘let’s create/develop something positive.’ …I guess it’s the same place where some lost little child inside of me is standing in the yard, calling for friends to come out and play.
I write this from a deeply fractured and broken stand point. I get a lot out of listening to Robb speak on Sundays… I get so moved with inspiration, motivation, peace (the list goes on). This is amazing! But, I have to say, truthfully, if you look, one can find much of this in books (especially “the BOOK”) I came back to the church, if I can just be honest about it… partly for community. I think we are designed for this. The church, I believe, is meant to be this! Yet, because of whatever shortcomings I have… So many times I leave church feeling utterly alone, after sort of milling about, slightly reluctant to leave the building, wondering if anyone wants to hang out or anything! I guess I’ve been too reluctant to just come out and ask or something stupid, like I don’t want to look too weird or desperate for just inviting myself …And I then just sort of leave, even more detached and down then ever. Like I am failing to assimilate or some crap. I guess I imagine that all the fun is going down somewhere else now, and I wasn’t invited. Like, “great, I really can’t even fit in here—even in a church that is supposed to be about diversity and acceptance…(or anywhere—for that matter)”
I don’t believe anyone at Epic doing anything wrong, or dropping the ball or anything of the sort… (Hey! I mean really, I am the one who seriously HATES the whole meet and greet part of the morning, and try not to look as totally awkward as I feel and consider running to the bathroom just to avoid it! Which is such a bizarre hang up! I am a very social person!... I just have some weirdo hang up about that or something!) I just wonder if anyone feels like I do. Alone. Especially in this VERY difficult struggle of the narrow path! None of my friends care a whole lot about ‘it’—a spiritual journey—at least not the one I am trying to be on. I am trying so hard not to screw up every second. (and generally failing at that attempt).
I am trying to keep my composure (it isn’t working). Today Robb spoke about image. And the hope of bridging the gap between what you show outwardly and who you are inwardly. I am trying to close in on some of this ground in my own life. I am only now starting to deal with the incredibly sore subject of loneliness. I have a lot of friends, and even more acquaintances and some very close people in my life. But, for whatever reason… I still have this emptiness. Which, gets back to the awful subject of trust and on and on…
Again… I am not pointing any fingers at anyone but MYSELF. I am aware that I am the common factor in all the weird and painful threads in my life.
I have this little idea. All the ‘kids’ like me, who don’t feel like we are connected to much for whatever reason, because I get the feeling—(and to quote The Police) Maybe I am not alone in feeling alone… or even the folks who are totally connected and don’t face these issues, but would just be interested in building deeper friendships… Why don’t we start getting together after church for lunch/brunch? Maybe, not every week, I know schedules conflict regularly… (and, trust me, I am the WORST with overloading my schedule) But, maybe if every week or every other week after church, we start rounding up our pals and going out to lunch, or cooking it, or having a potluck or picnic or whatever… (I assume the ‘cast’ will change every time) MAYBE, we can attempt build the type of community that people like me long for? Maybe it’s already there and I just haven’t found it? Who knows! But, until I do, I would be interested in developing something like this!
Just a little thought from the edge where of hope and despair collide. Where I generally find the recurring theme of: ‘If it ain’t there let’s put it there’ …Where I hear a little voice saying ‘let’s create/develop something positive.’ …I guess it’s the same place where some lost little child inside of me is standing in the yard, calling for friends to come out and play.
I figured I should start posting works... These are some (among many) peices-- reconstructed and/or embellished t-shirts I have sold. Happily, I had the presence of mind to at least document a few of the peices!
Saturday, April 21, 2007
SPRING BADA-BING!
Hosted By:
Richmond Craft Mafia
When: Sunday Apr 22, 2007
at 10:00 AM
Where:
The Marquee
3015 Cutshaw Avenue
Richmond, VA 23230
United States
Description:
Spring Bada-bing 2007 will feature the Richmond Craft Mafia and over 50 of the hottest independent designers and DIY crafters from across the country. Come join us as we rub out the mass produced!
Free admission! Free parking! Free swag bags to first 200 customers!
Sponsored by:
Richmond Craft Mafia
indiecraftshows.com
Bust Magazine
href='http://events.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&eventID=325892.78964'>Click Here To View Event
some of tidewater's own crafters will be sell'n work at this event!
check her etsy shop out! abelstudio.etsy.com
I am thinking about drive'n up... anyone wanna carpool?
Hosted By:
Richmond Craft Mafia
When: Sunday Apr 22, 2007
at 10:00 AM
Where:
The Marquee
3015 Cutshaw Avenue
Richmond, VA 23230
United States
Description:
Spring Bada-bing 2007 will feature the Richmond Craft Mafia and over 50 of the hottest independent designers and DIY crafters from across the country. Come join us as we rub out the mass produced!
Free admission! Free parking! Free swag bags to first 200 customers!
Sponsored by:
Richmond Craft Mafia
indiecraftshows.com
Bust Magazine
href='http://events.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&eventID=325892.78964'>Click Here To View Event
some of tidewater's own crafters will be sell'n work at this event!
check her etsy shop out! abelstudio.etsy.com
I am thinking about drive'n up... anyone wanna carpool?
think'n I might start post'n more craft and art oriented stuff on this thang... ya know?
I don't have a website, guess I will try to deal with this in some sort of way...
I don't have a website, guess I will try to deal with this in some sort of way...
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
(photo by Amber Naussbaum)
Its been a while since I posted... Because I was so wrapped up-- and every waking moment seemed taken by getting the Renewal Art Show together...! The opening was this past Friday night and it was so worth the blood sweat and tears it took to get this off the ground! Robb Overholt said he estimated about 600--800 people came through from 7 to 11pm. There were more then 35 artists in the show and 8 indie crafters from the 7 Cities Craft Mafia selling stuff and there was all kindsa music... Emma and Carrie did an acoustic set, rev chloe played, Candy-o, Kevin Ferguson and Kid Camero all played... sounds and songs between set was the fellas of Substance... It was truly a community effort. Tom Robotham of Portfolio weekly was our juror and the top 3 prizes went to Tess Amoruso, Cathrine Hodil and Tom Sigmund! several other honorable mentions were given as well! It was quite an event if I do say so myself! We are aim'n at the next big one to be this summer.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
I got a phone call yesterday from the Dean of the Photo-Film Dept. at VCU... and have been accepted into their Grad program for this fall!! I am beside myself with happiness!! I am incredibly excited!! It is time to roll up my sleeves and get busy at working harder then ever and moving into the next phase of my life!!
I wanna send a little shout out and THANK YOU from everybody who helped me get to this point!!
I wanna send a little shout out and THANK YOU from everybody who helped me get to this point!!
Monday, February 26, 2007
WOW! Yay!
I am the featured artist of the week:
http://www.myspace.com/monochromatic7cities
check that link and read my interview and see some work...
I am the featured artist of the week:
http://www.myspace.com/monochromatic7cities
check that link and read my interview and see some work...
Friday, February 23, 2007
I stare at the tiny flame of a candle as per the exercise prescribed to me from some modern author. I am to ask God to show me something in that moment; to ask to be taught something--- in an exercise on relaxing in quiet solitude, and bringing my thoughts into the moment and slow down and listen. (or something) It’s strange how much distraction I require; and sad. My mind wanders and I wonder if typing it out may help me to circle around a thought—work it out like a symbolist. I notice how the little flame dances around and flutters in the nearly still air of my bedroom. It flutters like a whisper. I enjoy the pale orange color of the flame with hints of blue towards the bottom nearest the wick which bends in the heat with a glowing tip standing in a growing pool of hot wax. I think about the tiny fire and remember how I used to ask God to use me like the tiny spark that could ignite a wildfire. I remember thinking about Smokey the Bear telling us that only we could prevent them… But, on a cultural level-- not in some delinquent or neglectful way that unleashes destruction—No, I want to start one—for all the right reasons—(I think) To bring about positive change. I have always felt this idea about myself—that I am a catalyst. Perhaps I believe I have always been one. I used to ache to be in the turn of the tide; painful and dangerous as that could be. To be out on some front lines—“for all the right reasons”… To make positive changes that could bring life to a bleak existence. The concept of one spark erupting into something big. Do I have it backwards? Is my spirit backwards? Will it always be? I look at that little candle, still fluttering—like it is whispering—A voice I long to hear. I am trying to listen. I watch the reflection of the flame in the pool of wax, upside down and wiggling in negative space. I dream of big things I can’t quite put words to—it’s on the tip of my tongue. Can I stay focused? What is fire? Where is God? Is He close? Does this exercise count? Do I? I turn off the lamp next to my bed, the light of the candle is dwarfed by the brightness of my computer screen. I can see pale flickering shadows spasm across my walls and ceiling. Maybe I should turn off my computer? What if He doesn’t tell me anything? What if He already did and I missed it? What if He has been talking about fire to me my whole life? I flip through a mental notepad of biblical style references to fire… There is the Pentecost… The Refiner’s Fire to quote Handle, whom I believe was quoting Isaiah… I don’t know--- burnt offerings? That feels like it is getting out a bit far… Although, a few years ago—I was told that it seemed like I was going through a refiner’s fire with my life… does that leave me like burnt offering to God? Is this considered focusing? …or am I grasping at straws and not really listening? “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine?” ah, good grief! I have so far to go! Let Him light my way—the ole lamp unto my feet idea. To paraphrase this cool guy named John: The Word was the source of life, this life brought light to a people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out. I seriously want to be like that!
Thursday, February 01, 2007
I am reading this book right now… talking about spiritual growth… it give some metaphor for people (particularly Christians) as bonsai trees… or real trees…
And then gives directions on how to garden a bonsai (puny spirit)
1. start with potential
2. pick an attractive pot
3. prepare the soil
4. limit water supply
5. aim for predictability
6. prune excess growth
7. protect the tree from hardship
then the author suggests taking a 180 degree view of this for how to grow a bigger tree (spirit)
1. wake up your potential
2. embrace the power of community
3. enrich the soil of your life
4. feel the full reign of God
5. unleash your God given DNA
6. call forth life and growth in yourself and others
7. learn to embrace pain.
Something interesting to consider.
And then gives directions on how to garden a bonsai (puny spirit)
1. start with potential
2. pick an attractive pot
3. prepare the soil
4. limit water supply
5. aim for predictability
6. prune excess growth
7. protect the tree from hardship
then the author suggests taking a 180 degree view of this for how to grow a bigger tree (spirit)
1. wake up your potential
2. embrace the power of community
3. enrich the soil of your life
4. feel the full reign of God
5. unleash your God given DNA
6. call forth life and growth in yourself and others
7. learn to embrace pain.
Something interesting to consider.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
This is a link to Epic's website(copy and paste it):
http://www.epiccitychurch.com/app/w_page.php?id=1&type=section
This is the link to the podcast(copy and paste it):
http://web.mac.com/epiccity/iWeb/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html
some of the most inspirational things are being said at epic... listen if you can.
This last time, it was moving enough to make me cry. (what? emo?)
http://www.epiccitychurch.com/app/w_page.php?id=1&type=section
This is the link to the podcast(copy and paste it):
http://web.mac.com/epiccity/iWeb/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html
some of the most inspirational things are being said at epic... listen if you can.
This last time, it was moving enough to make me cry. (what? emo?)
Monday, January 29, 2007
There is going to be a fun art show at The Green Onion this Friday night. (02.02.07 at about 7pm) Should be nice! Amanda Stephens and Catherine Hodil will be showing thier work! YAY.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Oh well.... I may not have 87 bands booked... or even a tentative date for "heifer fest" but here is a little something...
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
I just saw.... "2046" by Wong Kar Wai!! (Hongkong) Set in the 60s with Sci-Fi flair... prostitutes and androids Japanese and Chinese... shucks why don't you throw in Singapore!.... This is one of the best visual rides from that director (ChungKing Express)... It was really one of the prettiest films I have seen in forever... it is like Amelie meets Sex and Lucia meets My Sassie Girl meets Crouching Tiger (there is no martial arts although that cute little actress from that and Memoirs of a Geisha is in this!!) i think i liked this (better then the singing in Farwell my Concubine!) HAHA! (that is saying A LOT!)
Sunday, January 14, 2007
ok.
band: Downhere.... song: A Better Way
artist: Matt Redman.... song: Facedown
I am super picky about music.
these two songs make me so happy....
not ordinarily my style.... maybe I am changing.
They (these songs) are all about what I believe.
band: Downhere.... song: A Better Way
artist: Matt Redman.... song: Facedown
I am super picky about music.
these two songs make me so happy....
not ordinarily my style.... maybe I am changing.
They (these songs) are all about what I believe.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
When people do the things they do, especial the negative/evil stuff.... they really should consider the terrible ramifications of their actions!! I cannot apply to one of my top 3 choices for grad school based on the actions of a very selfish little boy I once dated in college... His actions effect my transcripts even now at SAIC. I will likely never be able to touch my official transcripts.... I am really upset about the holds from my past. Ones I never deserved!
So, because of this.... Bard/ICP is out of my target range.
I am pretty depressed. Though not completely about that.... I have a lot going on.
So, because of this.... Bard/ICP is out of my target range.
I am pretty depressed. Though not completely about that.... I have a lot going on.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
A little bit of what I'm thinking about.......
www.risd.edu photography
http://www.risd.edu/graduate_photo_courses.cfm?Department=Photo&Semester=%25
www.bard.edu photography
http://www.icp.org/site/c.dnJGKJNsFqG/b.850305/k.8FF1/ICP_Bard_MFA.htm
school of visual arts http://www.schoolofvisualarts.edu/grad/index.jsp?sid0=2&sid1=35
photography/video
VCU http://www.pubapps.vcu.edu/bulletins/prog_search/?did=20146
Photography/film
www.brooks.edu photography
Columbia college http://www.interarts.colum.edu/home.html interdepartmental/photography…..
U of IL http://www.uic.edu/aa/artd/em_ph_fm.html media arts
School Of The Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston http://www.smfa.edu/Programs_Faculty/Graduate_Degree_Programs/Index.asp
Interdepartmental/photo/video/media
www.risd.edu photography
http://www.risd.edu/graduate_photo_courses.cfm?Department=Photo&Semester=%25
www.bard.edu photography
http://www.icp.org/site/c.dnJGKJNsFqG/b.850305/k.8FF1/ICP_Bard_MFA.htm
school of visual arts http://www.schoolofvisualarts.edu/grad/index.jsp?sid0=2&sid1=35
photography/video
VCU http://www.pubapps.vcu.edu/bulletins/prog_search/?did=20146
Photography/film
www.brooks.edu photography
Columbia college http://www.interarts.colum.edu/home.html interdepartmental/photography…..
U of IL http://www.uic.edu/aa/artd/em_ph_fm.html media arts
School Of The Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston http://www.smfa.edu/Programs_Faculty/Graduate_Degree_Programs/Index.asp
Interdepartmental/photo/video/media
Saturday, October 14, 2006
this blog sucks! i mean, i bore myself with the total drudgery of this piss poor excuse of mouthing off.... i disappoint myself in that i stand around dreaming of millions of things to say... and when it comes right down to exercising my freedom of type.... i wuss out like a chump. chalk it up to drowning.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Monday, October 09, 2006
maybe i will just stay in bed... really! why bother?
i mean i just have to wonder!
because I am tired of supporting the rest of the planet... and getting little if any support in return. (just thought i'd mention that)
i am tired.
i mean i just have to wonder!
because I am tired of supporting the rest of the planet... and getting little if any support in return. (just thought i'd mention that)
i am tired.
Monday, August 21, 2006
another year older and..... alright.
....this will be a good one.
taking what i hope will be some good classes this semester... then I hope to finally apply to grad school this january....
....this will be a good one.
taking what i hope will be some good classes this semester... then I hope to finally apply to grad school this january....
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Sunday, July 23, 2006
I am developing a disgust with men.... (to say the least!) I am seriously through with the idiocy. I mean... what are they thinking? IDIOTS! I am tired of the shit. really! What a lame universe! SHIT!
Thursday, July 20, 2006
i could tell you a sordid story... a story. an affair. but i might run into a an unconsious understanding of my own confusion. a memory that still feels good when remembered. a shudder and a wisper. i wish i had the nerve to tell it.
"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creep in the petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools to dusty death. Out, out brief candle, life is but a walking shadow; a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."Macbeth, Shakespeare
ah, yes... dust and shadows. sound and fury. nothing.
ah, yes... dust and shadows. sound and fury. nothing.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
OK... i am about to start my next veg-show down stuff.... so that looms really large in my future... which i hope to be a benefit for 'learning through photography'-- an incredible non-prof based out of this area.... and-- about to start an incredible social project with my roommate-- putting together an extensive-- super comprehensive community resource guide... which i will tell more about when i have time....
ya
ya
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
ok, i am officially looking into grad school.... and am already overwhelmed!! (Great!)
i need some help with the search... opinions, rumors of departments..... i donno.... (Yikes!)
i need some help with the search... opinions, rumors of departments..... i donno.... (Yikes!)
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
it is crazy how this stone is rolling down the river.... or something. new job... new 'temporary' arrangements.... i don't know... i keep thinking about grad school... as i had really wanted to go once upon a time... and maybe the time is fast approaching. i just feel like there is such a huge amount of time to reclaim.... and justify. i suppose i am being vague... one of these days i will spell things out... or try to make sense of it.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
you know... i just have to vent... for a split second. WHY ARE MEN SO CONFUSED? and really... why do i let them confuse me? as i laze about listen'n to neko case.... feeling melencholy.... and waiting for the night to begin.... i have been reading some really good books lately... but... i can't concentrate on words when my mind is wandering like this. (sigh)
life evolves into something soooo different then you expect.... I have changed employement, and will change my residence and.... still haven't found what I'm looking for... I feel like I am trapped in some U2 song or something. In the meantime, I have been asked to get involved with the youth... basically re-start a youth group at my church... same place I run the food pantry and clothing closet. It is a rather daunting concept to me... and I was shocked to say the least when I was asked.... and am now doing a teenage sunday school... HALARIOUS that I (of all people) am a Sunday School teacher. I am taking it seriously though... don't wanna be just some other messed up adult who tells kids to do things they don't understand or that doesn't make sence.... I am by far the most liberal person in that Church... so... we shall see.... :)
Saturday, April 22, 2006
know my Dad was in a car accident yesterday around 6pm... It was raining and he was pulling into his parent's drive way and some guys who seemed to be speeding down Norview Ave. rear-ended him... and his car was spun up on to the curb (and into Kenny Truitt-- April-- formally Eave's-- husband's truck) and was facing the other direction. The airbags came deployed and got Dad pretty good... (and seemed to have hit one finger particularly good) and his knees hit the dash pretty hard... though thankfully he was wearing his seat-belt... "coz it was raining" he said... he doesn't always wear it... So I am really glad he was this time!! he may have gotten a wee bit of whip lash too... The car is smashed up a good bit!! Dad thinks it may be totalled... An ambulance took him to Sentara Leigh where they checked him out and gave him something for the pain and some muscle relaxers... and told him he'd feel even worse tomorrow... :( but otherwise... thankfully, no broken bones, just strained and bruised muscles etc... He was seen remarkably fast for how busy it was in there too... out by about (or maybe even before) 9pm...! And to top it all off... Today was his birthday! (sigh)
Thursday, April 13, 2006
i expect it to be pretty busy tomorow at the food-army... as it generally is just before a holiday... candy helped me with a pick-up today... so i got a bit of produce and bread (these are free items) and tomorow... i hope i can get some hams to hand out... people dig that around easter.... (they also got a bunch of free candy... which i picked up for camp curious... which they used in an easter egg hunt! yay.)
i had spent a bit of time in the clothing closet last nite... try'n to get something done up there... which is really hard and frustrating.... it looks like crap has been thrown everywhere... because it has... so i draged all the bags out of there and into a sorting room... which ought to help. it will be a slow process... but... slowly but surely...
i had spent a bit of time in the clothing closet last nite... try'n to get something done up there... which is really hard and frustrating.... it looks like crap has been thrown everywhere... because it has... so i draged all the bags out of there and into a sorting room... which ought to help. it will be a slow process... but... slowly but surely...
wow. i have an interview with United Airlines on thurs may 4th... in Chicago... (they will fly me there) i have thought about being a flight attendant for more then 10 years now... but never actually applied... i just want mobility...
if i get offered a position... i will spend 7 weeks in chicago-- in training... (sigh... make'n this really hard on me folks...! hahaha!)
and then i would be working out of DC... as my home domicile (i think that is what they call it... i keep wanting to call it 'port')
if i get offered a position... i will spend 7 weeks in chicago-- in training... (sigh... make'n this really hard on me folks...! hahaha!)
and then i would be working out of DC... as my home domicile (i think that is what they call it... i keep wanting to call it 'port')
Friday, April 07, 2006
what an unbelievable week i have had... i am too tired to even get into the stupid details! In the past 2 weeks its been a series of first amazingly great events... followed by a series of really unfortunate events.... all while having this cold i can't seem to shake! (so that sucks... cough cough...) But though the events as disapointing and insulting as the negative ones have been... I can't help but notice that I have been unexpectedly put into a really positve launching pad... that I can't help but feel is moving me in the real direction I need to be heading in. I do believe all things work together for good..... as it says... I believe. There is an air of expectancy in my world... one that gives me a rush of courage, and a feeling of relief... to know my life is held in the palm of God... someone told me something just before the worst of the weirdly unfortunate events happened... the person who told me this was given a little bit of a prophetic word... that was meant for me... it was startling... she said... she has this vision of me as a little girl who has been doing this huge performance... and I don't think anyone is looking... but God is looking-- he notices.... and likes it... and is like a father who cares and shows up on time and stays for the whole performance and is always there for you. It was a bit of a shock to hear this woman who does not know me... describe the way i feel... like I have constantly had to prove myself... perform... and no-one ever even cares anyways.... I just get trashed for no real reason... over and over... (like this week for instance...) but anyways...
Saturday, April 01, 2006
i am happy to say... i have been up for hours... and gotten some stuff done... looked at a bunch of stuff on line... and never once remembered that this was the anniversary of my looser ex- marriage... (i once accidentally got married on this date)... didn't even remember--- untill a second ago... that was today-- and it still didn't really bother me much... haha... yeah... this is a great sign that i really did not just bury it... that i really did try to deal... and have moved on ENTIRELY.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
i guess i am getting my equal-libriam back from finishing up my massive social experiment of a project... which was the vegetarian showdown... it was a big project for me... i feel like it was successfull... there were things i would have like to have been different, but when you are working with that many other collaborating parties... what can you do... right? (deal!) over-all i hear positive comments... occassional odd-ball comments from some people... (someone told me it was a "cluster-fuck" then looked at my face... and tried to re-phrase that...) I think if some people would have listened to what i was saying we would have been better prepared for the (huge) amount of people--that i was convince would (and did) come.... other then that really most people really enjoyed themselves and we grossed $2010 at the door.... !!! now... on to the next project!
.... which i have the tiny strands working already....
.... which i have the tiny strands working already....
Monday, March 27, 2006
The Vegetarian Showdown went down yesterday... it was so crazy we had to cut the door off... and people were lined up outside and around the corner of the building waiting to get in! I guess you could say it was a success... I was beside myself.... The food looked beautiful... of course. never got to try any of it... People seemed to enjoy themselves. I have pictures I will post hopefuly soon. I am beat. Drained. wiped out. physically, emotionally, spiritually exhuasted... tapped out! literally caught a cold by the end of the showdown! and i think Pete was kid'n when he asked me if I was gonna face post pardum blues... but i go through something like that after these types of huge processes... i hit this low spot... before my next 'obsession' (i think the polite--or true word is actually VISION) kicks in...
Monday, March 20, 2006
well... the smoke cleared... its a month later... the Tealls moved to Asia... I live with Candy and Chuck...
life is continue'n on...
We are 6 days from the Vegetarian ShowDown...!!! The trophy should be here tomorow... it is gonna be halarious! "Culinary BigWig!" makes me chuckle.
St. Patrick's day was supremely busy and so was the Buzzard show at work(busiest and 2nd busiest days on record)... I have had zero sleep... Sat morning I got up and met someone (April) who I hired to help me finish cleaning the house... which is a LONG exhausting story... (which includes me getting 17 stitches in my shin) then that afternoon I went to Cristin's bridal shower (my younger brother's fiance)... the shower was at Mayor Fraime's house (because his daughter is Cristen's friend)... and then I worked rude amounts of hours and got about 10 hours of sleep this weekend... and still had 4 images due for my electronic darkroom class (come to find out in class today it was only 3).... i am so tired i don't think i am even writing coherently... so i need to just stop type'n... hehe...
but... that showdown has been consume'n my life for weeks now... i really expect it be big. (i hope so)
life is continue'n on...
We are 6 days from the Vegetarian ShowDown...!!! The trophy should be here tomorow... it is gonna be halarious! "Culinary BigWig!" makes me chuckle.
St. Patrick's day was supremely busy and so was the Buzzard show at work(busiest and 2nd busiest days on record)... I have had zero sleep... Sat morning I got up and met someone (April) who I hired to help me finish cleaning the house... which is a LONG exhausting story... (which includes me getting 17 stitches in my shin) then that afternoon I went to Cristin's bridal shower (my younger brother's fiance)... the shower was at Mayor Fraime's house (because his daughter is Cristen's friend)... and then I worked rude amounts of hours and got about 10 hours of sleep this weekend... and still had 4 images due for my electronic darkroom class (come to find out in class today it was only 3).... i am so tired i don't think i am even writing coherently... so i need to just stop type'n... hehe...
but... that showdown has been consume'n my life for weeks now... i really expect it be big. (i hope so)
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
I hope I can make this month go as smoothly as possible. WHIRLWIND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
when the dust clears... I hope I will be able to be ok with where things(and I) have landed...
many friends have birthdays this month...
I am broke...
I have the Vegetarian ShowDown to get moving FAST
I have a major photo assignment. (which is the least of my major worries)
I have to move.
and my sister and her family are moving to Japan.
when the dust clears... I hope I will be able to be ok with where things(and I) have landed...
many friends have birthdays this month...
I am broke...
I have the Vegetarian ShowDown to get moving FAST
I have a major photo assignment. (which is the least of my major worries)
I have to move.
and my sister and her family are moving to Japan.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Ok, so.... Pete want's me to give up on the whole "iron chef" name of our event... because of our lack of phycillities.... sigh.... oh well.....
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Ok... I have learned a couple of new tools in photoshop... a little bit... the snapshot feature in history... (I had never heard of till Tom-- my teacher-- showed us in class how to use it) and I feel like a better person for knowing this!
tra-la-la....
tra-la-la....
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
So, I have the style of the invite cards down for the chefs for the vegetarian iron chef benefit... and a rough draft of the letter... and parts of the mock ups put together... I just left the food-army mission statement at the food-closet... and now I cant seem to pull up myspace to email Pete to have him proof the letters... before I assemble everything... dagone it. I would really like him to see the letters and get his approval as Chef/and a taphouse owner before I plung forward.... but CRAP... I can't get it to pull up... so... I am halted...
And I don't have any hair dye to dye my hair with either... so I am double-y pissed. MAN-o-MAN! I might as well go to bed early... (cause I really wanna go to Substanance... but I know were that will lead... and I really don't want to be drag'n all day tomorow... I have SO much to do!!) dagone it!
And I don't have any hair dye to dye my hair with either... so I am double-y pissed. MAN-o-MAN! I might as well go to bed early... (cause I really wanna go to Substanance... but I know were that will lead... and I really don't want to be drag'n all day tomorow... I have SO much to do!!) dagone it!
Monday, January 30, 2006
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
I am so excited about the Vegetarian Iron Chef project. I have spoken with Jason and Eric-- 2 chefs at the Bin and Jared at Taphouse... Jared would be the returning champion, coming back to defend his title... haha.... I have pretty much decided not to compete-- as this would make it less of a serious culinary event for major players... and I am going to focus on doing what I do best-- which is attracting attention. Especially with Sean now interested in being involved-- he is such a good promoter too... we will blow the event out the water... We can make this huge! I know we can get this reviewed by the paper... the portfolio will be easy... I saw Jimmy at the Bin tonight... and he gave me his card... I will email him soon... and give him more details... tonight I just kinda wanted to wet people's palets and drum up intrest and get the sparks fly'n around in pleople's heads... kinda see if lights come on in eyes sorta thing... and yep... they did... Jason (our vegetarian chef...) I know he is interested... and Eric... as soon as I mentioned the press, he was interested... Then I sat down and talked to Richie (Bonner) for a while, I was so greatful he gave me some of his time... and explained to me how he and his friends do the wild game dinner... so I could get a handle on thoughts and directions and a start on brain storming... and I emailed Pete (Pittman) to see if I could come in early tomorow to pick his brain for more ideas... Now, I need to just be carefull enough to not put him off on the project... as I want it to go down at the Taphouse... So, I have to appeal to that-- for him... find his angles... work this to his advantage too... besides what I see as the obvious--- which is great PRESS, being involved with something creative and fresh and the up-and coming and bar sales... this is a fund raiser for the willowwood food closet after all so the profits do go to that... I can't always expect the whole world to care about stuff like that. I just have to go easy on that I suppose... Out of almost any bar owner anywhere though, I would say I respect his opinions about things more then most... He really is a great guy. Very level headed and up beat and creative and nice... I really can't say enough positive stuff about him. I really respect all the guys who were involved with Bodega... (Richie Bonner, Gary McIntyre... Peter Pittman-- though he wasn't an owner... even Lee had his interesting points-- though I can say I knew him the least and haven't worked with him since... the 1st 3 guys I have worked with all of them now at 2 places each... and what I like about them is that they are all the sort of people who want to continue to grow in life... Richie doesn't consider himself creative, he says he surrounds himself with people who are... and he may be right, i don't know... but as for the other 2 they deffinitly are... I have had my differences with Gary in the past... and that nearly broke my heart... (what went down with him and Dave and the coyote/blue-plate) but he is definitly a creative soul none the less...
How weird that I am write'n about my employement history-- and relationship to my current and former employers and why... why i have worked for them and continue to... and would consider it again....
Maybe because I somehow get this idea that i sorta get them in a weird way... like i understand the concept of... needing constant creative stimulus... (and I have seen the dark side of what happens to me without it!!) And they are all older and seem to have gotten past that... at least more then I have... and that is worth respecting. And as mad as I have been and sometimes hurt... (good grief!) I would rather gravitate towards those types of minds then the cold wierd alternatives I have encountered.... as boss's.
ANYWAYS! I can't believe I am discussing my own past like this.... Not that anyone even looks at this or cares, or know about that if they do... oh well...
The Veg-Iron-Chef-Extravaganza will rock! I am convinced! I will convince. This is going to be FUN!
How weird that I am write'n about my employement history-- and relationship to my current and former employers and why... why i have worked for them and continue to... and would consider it again....
Maybe because I somehow get this idea that i sorta get them in a weird way... like i understand the concept of... needing constant creative stimulus... (and I have seen the dark side of what happens to me without it!!) And they are all older and seem to have gotten past that... at least more then I have... and that is worth respecting. And as mad as I have been and sometimes hurt... (good grief!) I would rather gravitate towards those types of minds then the cold wierd alternatives I have encountered.... as boss's.
ANYWAYS! I can't believe I am discussing my own past like this.... Not that anyone even looks at this or cares, or know about that if they do... oh well...
The Veg-Iron-Chef-Extravaganza will rock! I am convinced! I will convince. This is going to be FUN!
Monday, January 23, 2006
I feel very fortunate to know the amount of amazing people that I do... fortunate that I have been able to come into contact with the interesting artists and creative people and interesting people that I have been fortunate enough to have met while in this bizare state over the last 7 or so years... so many of us are in strange places in life... its almost as if we are caught here... (like artists and musicians caught in restaurants and such) though I believe our time is quickly coming-- And I am encouraged. Though it is hard to keep the courage up in this quagmire of a state. I believe we will all get where we hope to be. I trust it will be an amazing thing... when our time comes.
Friday, January 20, 2006
ok... now i know... when i publish creative writing in blogs... it DISRESPECTS MY SENCE OF SPACE!!!!!!!!! the writing below is not how it is ment to appear on the page. oh well.
I found this.... I wrote it years ago... writing is like some little entity that must be incubated.... but anyways....
these precious lines
that once you wrote for me
of us
what can i say?
i can still see your words collect light
on the paper in pools
so many chapters latter
--still there are books you can't reach
and now my world is falling out of order
and out of touch
with your table of contents
in these pages thrown so easily on my desk
till its morning
cold again
this has to be 8 years old or more. (and 3 relationships ago or more) haha... and i love how i relate to my work in time and people.... YIKES!! and the peice can be reapplied!! woah... the peice was actually photocopied onto trasparencies.... and then cut into lines where i developed black and white pictures of lyn when she was pregnant with viv (who turns 8 this year) and layed the writing down over the photo as i developed the picture.... (pre knowing how to use any photoshop!! hahaha!) my teacher was like... this is really hands on sort of design... you know... perhaps you should get into some computer design classes... (as i had actually taken cut and paste design classes prior to transfering to the art inst.... CRAZY)... and the photo class was post art school too... so then i went and took the design class... and then kept writing too... and i like it all... jack of all trades... master of nothing. i guess... and lover of music... and learning guitar now too... i just wanna know.... EXPRESS! hehehe..... cant' help it.
these precious lines
that once you wrote for me
of us
what can i say?
i can still see your words collect light
on the paper in pools
so many chapters latter
--still there are books you can't reach
and now my world is falling out of order
and out of touch
with your table of contents
in these pages thrown so easily on my desk
till its morning
cold again
this has to be 8 years old or more. (and 3 relationships ago or more) haha... and i love how i relate to my work in time and people.... YIKES!! and the peice can be reapplied!! woah... the peice was actually photocopied onto trasparencies.... and then cut into lines where i developed black and white pictures of lyn when she was pregnant with viv (who turns 8 this year) and layed the writing down over the photo as i developed the picture.... (pre knowing how to use any photoshop!! hahaha!) my teacher was like... this is really hands on sort of design... you know... perhaps you should get into some computer design classes... (as i had actually taken cut and paste design classes prior to transfering to the art inst.... CRAZY)... and the photo class was post art school too... so then i went and took the design class... and then kept writing too... and i like it all... jack of all trades... master of nothing. i guess... and lover of music... and learning guitar now too... i just wanna know.... EXPRESS! hehehe..... cant' help it.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
The movers are here. (I'm hide'n in my room for a spell-- supposed to be read'n my photo class read'n matterial...) Butch HATES us now. We had to put him in the laundry room. He cried. I suppose I have to think of this in terms of someone else's cat.... it's easier then relating it to myself I guess...
Monday, January 16, 2006
So, tomorow is the big day... when all of the Teall's things get moved out of this house by the military movers. Butch (the cat I am 'babysitting') couldn't be more upset right now... he can tell something is up and is extremely nervous... running back and forth... he even sprayed something!! We were so ANGRY! He runs right next to us and is constantly under-foot or right next to us when we sit down.... its halarious. He was sitting on Lyn's bed just now tap'n his tail and stare'n at me with this look of bemusement occasionally turning away and huffing... nose upturned in disgust.... tail tapping out his annoyance like the drumming of fingers on a teacher's desk! Too funny for words! Lyn and I were laughing out loud... wich only made Butch squint harder! CRAZY!
Saturday, January 14, 2006
i am hope'n to come up with enough money this weekend to be able to put a deposit down on an apartment should i find one emmidiately..... we shall see....
strange week i've had.
truly strange.
strange week i've had.
truly strange.
Monday, January 09, 2006
butch on drugs.... that insane cat.... we love to drug it wildly with catnip! LOVE it. it is the cats meow i tell you! hehe.... shucks! make it wild we say! give it treats... drug him... hahaha.... BUTCHY butch... the crazy dude that he is. we love him... piggy cat that poops SO much.... and thinks he runs this house! hahaha... bazerk thing. HALARIOUS!
Friday, January 06, 2006
a list of slightly abstract things i hate:
liars.
false starts.
intangable things that hurt.
disapointment.
LIARS.
broken promises.
jump'n the gun.
get'n yer hopes up.
dashed dreams.
let downs.
not doing what you say you will.
no follow threw.
not practice'n whatcha preach.
LIARS.
misleading others.
ARE YOU FOLLOWING MY DRIFT HERE???? (sigh)
liars.
false starts.
intangable things that hurt.
disapointment.
LIARS.
broken promises.
jump'n the gun.
get'n yer hopes up.
dashed dreams.
let downs.
not doing what you say you will.
no follow threw.
not practice'n whatcha preach.
LIARS.
misleading others.
ARE YOU FOLLOWING MY DRIFT HERE???? (sigh)
Thursday, January 05, 2006
So, I finally spoke with Charlie... (my landlord uncle) He wants me out of the house when Lyn and the girls leave for Japan. This sucks. I am lost. I really needed to stay. After all I was here before they came... I needed a place to myself... some time to re-group and get myself together and become me again.... Time to find it. Now I have to shove off into the mist I guess... and break my back and hope for the frick'n best... I was strugle'n as it was!! I think I can stay with Candy for a while... I don't know how long.... who knows. Its just been a hard week... Then I have to face that terrible show on Sunday that I felt like Al wouldn't let me cancel for Bloodshot Bill... (by himself) which just sucks!! total crap.... I seriously felt like we shoulda pulled the plug on the show a couple of weeks ago! now i gotta eat it and deal i guess.... i am so depressed i could cry. -- and have actually.... due to the last blog and this one all rolled into this stupid week..... YIKES!!
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
There is something about the start of the new year...... oh I don't know... that has a feeling of both fresh possibility for some change and a touch of closure for the past. (Is this sounding like a cliqued commercial or idiot card?-- yeah, probably.) Maybe its wishfull thinking. Maybe, I am thinking this because I just visited Michelle up in Delaware yesterday and today with Candy that I pray for fresh possibilities in life.... Maybe its because I just found out my ex-husband Dave is engaged to be married that I look for further closure.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
what a month.... !!! sheesh! AAAAAAHHH!!! blew me away! so.... anyways.... (still ride'n it out) read' a book called "balzac and the little chinese seamstress" by dai sijie which is good. its lyn's she recommended it.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
the kitty is doing much better. finally, butch doesn't want to kill us (or himself)..... so that at least is something...
Friday, December 09, 2005
last nite, the lucero show rocked. good times.... though it sucked that it was an all ages show. that was a bad call. the kids made me crazy.... they acted stupid with shoving and body surfing like it was some kinda grunge show in 92 or some crap. (idiots) oh well. kinda sucked that most of my crew couldn't go for one reason or another.
ok... here are some people we are try'n to help....here are some wish lists.... hook it up people!
1 1/2 yr old little girl
elmo talking dolls
dora explorer toys
any noise making telephones
dress size 2 Tpants size 24 mo. to 2Tshirts size 2 Tshoes size 5.5 or 5
sit down-- scooting toys
coat size 2 t
17 yr old fella--
cologne
shocks
shoes (size 12)pants (size 36)shirt (3X)
CD player
Coat-- flight jacket (size 3x) with hood at scottsman
thermal shirts (size 3x) all colors
4 yr old girldress
(size 6)pants (size 6)shirts (size 6)
barbie dolls
talking elmo
baby dolls
shoe size (girls 9)
play food & dish set
dora explorer toys any kind
sponge bob toys any kind
hulk glovescoat (size 6)
14 yr old
girlmake up kit
boom box (cd)pants size (14/15)shirt size XL
shoe size 9.5 or 10
jewlery-- necklace, peirce earlings, rings
brittany spears perfume (fantacy)j-lo perfume (miami)shower jell/lotionflat iron
17 yr old girl
make up set
body wash set
jewlery (earings)
perfume
pants size 22shirts size 2XL
purse
shoes size 10
it would be wonderfull if we could help this family (and some maybe even some others out!!)
http://www.myspace.com/willowwoodfoodcloset
Check me out!
1 1/2 yr old little girl
elmo talking dolls
dora explorer toys
any noise making telephones
dress size 2 Tpants size 24 mo. to 2Tshirts size 2 Tshoes size 5.5 or 5
sit down-- scooting toys
coat size 2 t
17 yr old fella--
cologne
shocks
shoes (size 12)pants (size 36)shirt (3X)
CD player
Coat-- flight jacket (size 3x) with hood at scottsman
thermal shirts (size 3x) all colors
4 yr old girldress
(size 6)pants (size 6)shirts (size 6)
barbie dolls
talking elmo
baby dolls
shoe size (girls 9)
play food & dish set
dora explorer toys any kind
sponge bob toys any kind
hulk glovescoat (size 6)
14 yr old
girlmake up kit
boom box (cd)pants size (14/15)shirt size XL
shoe size 9.5 or 10
jewlery-- necklace, peirce earlings, rings
brittany spears perfume (fantacy)j-lo perfume (miami)shower jell/lotionflat iron
17 yr old girl
make up set
body wash set
jewlery (earings)
perfume
pants size 22shirts size 2XL
purse
shoes size 10
it would be wonderfull if we could help this family (and some maybe even some others out!!)
http://www.myspace.com/willowwoodfoodcloset
Check me out!
My dad told me Josh Sloan has an inoperable brain tumor. Ralph Cox told him... This is devistating news to me. It is so weird. I haven't seen Josh since the 80s... But... Its hard to verbalize. He and I were friends as children-- overseas. We were M.K.s. Precious few people know me from my childhood in Japan. He is among the very few. He is my age. I will never forget-- his birthday is on July 4th. hehe. I emailed his parents asking if I could get in touch with him. I hope I can.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Thanksgiving was relaxing.... spent it with the Chase side... out at Lee and Cindy's... held April's baby (Caleb) he is so sweet. On the way home Julie told me Charlie will most likely throw me out when Lyn and the girls move to Japan. ---Which I think is FUCKED UP. I lived here before they moved in, and had not really wanted to move!! I don't really have anywhere to go! So, I am pretty pissed off!!
I am also dealing with some heavy issues these days... on multiple levels...
then... I can't tell if I am IDIOT enough to have developed a new crush.... I have serious problems... if I have. AND will DEFINITLY have to ride this STUPID choice of a crush out. I cannot tell... I don't know... its hard to say. maybe I don't have one... maybe. I hope not. That would be really rediculous. JEN! I'm gonna need you to get it together!
I am also dealing with some heavy issues these days... on multiple levels...
then... I can't tell if I am IDIOT enough to have developed a new crush.... I have serious problems... if I have. AND will DEFINITLY have to ride this STUPID choice of a crush out. I cannot tell... I don't know... its hard to say. maybe I don't have one... maybe. I hope not. That would be really rediculous. JEN! I'm gonna need you to get it together!
Monday, November 21, 2005
The Bin opened this weekend.... so... I will be working all the time now. Looks like lots of kinks to iron out but I have faith that they will come around. Last night was really slow. I had one table, a duece, before being cut. Not real thrilled about that. Plus they had gotten paranoid about something (there was an Opera) and added a 4th server to the floor... oh well. I took my $7 and went and watched 'Walk the Line'. Also went up with Lyn and the girls and saw Jer's last home game this Saturday against Temple. Navy won. (of course)
Today I am gonna go over and try and convince Tom to let me into that 'Electronic Darkroom' class that filled as I was trying to register last week... I hope he lets me in!! I have been looking forward to taking that class for 6 months!
I have been feeling weirder and weirder about blogs since the freakish co-worker incident at the taphouse... like I can't feel all that comfortable doing stuff on line... like I am slightly paranoid... even though I think I believe that incident has blown over for the most part... he ruined comfort for me in some ways. Like my exhibitionist attitudes has been reigned in due to his violent lash out(s).... Not that I ever even thought he was even online... (crazy huh?)
One day I should just openly spell it out in great detail... and get it off my chest or something. because it obviously bugged (buggs) me enough to hint at. That he could be that mean to someone he didn't know. NAH...... I need to let it go. End of story.
Today I am gonna go over and try and convince Tom to let me into that 'Electronic Darkroom' class that filled as I was trying to register last week... I hope he lets me in!! I have been looking forward to taking that class for 6 months!
I have been feeling weirder and weirder about blogs since the freakish co-worker incident at the taphouse... like I can't feel all that comfortable doing stuff on line... like I am slightly paranoid... even though I think I believe that incident has blown over for the most part... he ruined comfort for me in some ways. Like my exhibitionist attitudes has been reigned in due to his violent lash out(s).... Not that I ever even thought he was even online... (crazy huh?)
One day I should just openly spell it out in great detail... and get it off my chest or something. because it obviously bugged (buggs) me enough to hint at. That he could be that mean to someone he didn't know. NAH...... I need to let it go. End of story.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
It is becoming difficult to face the sore subject of my sister's family relocating to Japan in February. It will be hard for me.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
the new thrift store opened on little creek road.... i may or may not have gone opening day... and then back the next day and went crazy... um... yeah. the vintage stuff is GREAT. the furniture is great... there was a lot of good stuff... its my new favorite... Candy and i went a little bazerk....
sadly.... expedia descided to honor some people's bookings and not others.... lyn and i were both among some of the ones who's tokyo hilton rates were not honored.... :(
Saturday, November 05, 2005
I booked 2 different weeks worth of hotels in Tokyo. Lyn found CHEEP rooms (a mistake) on the Tokyo Hilton for this next year... and I booked a executive queen with continental breakfast in April during Peach's spring break, and then an executive King in August for my b-day... :)
the price was at $2.75 a nite!!!!!!!! YESSSSSSS!!!!!!!
the price was at $2.75 a nite!!!!!!!! YESSSSSSS!!!!!!!
oh yes, I went to the Wells Theatre and saw a VA Stage Co. play with Rachel tonight. It was a play called 'rounding third' or something... I think... It was really pretty good. It was a play about base ball... and it was well written and well performed and the set was cute. I enjoyed it. I need to see more plays again.
among the extreme pleasures of being an aunt...especially an aunt who has had the unique
experience of living with her neices for the past year!
BLESSINGS!
http://www.walkthelinethemovie.com/ I am so excited, I can hardly stand it! YAY! I love Johnny Cash... and I also do have a little crush on Joaquin Pheonix... (chuckle) so... good gravy! my word! Can't wait for that film to come out!!
Friday, November 04, 2005
Kicked it with Renee and Candy and Lyn at home last night. Candy and Renee both came by after they got off work... chilled and chuckled about all sortsa things... some about the crazy color scheme The Bin has got going on in it... Renee and I are not sure what we think of the art they have going up in there... (not real impressed so far-- but it is not finished... maybe it will get better? haha!) We got on the subject of my issues with work... getting publically verbally assalted by a co-worker recently (tues)... and I am still not real happy about that. He really hurt my feelings. And I am concerned about the whole scenerio. I can choose to not go out with co-workers... I mean really! But, now he is being hostile towards me at times which is really upsetting. I don't know why I am "blogging" about this subject. (Actually, I do. And, I suppose some of it is to alleviate some of my own tension, or even 'concerns'. Yet I find myself being strangly vague... for fear he were to mysteriously happen upon my blog site... ?? SICK isn't it!? The guy doesn't even know me REALLY! That is the weirdest part of all! There is just some oddness to it... I wish it was friendly and light. But it has become really clear that it is not.)
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Today a friend’s boss died. Recently, Walter from the Ghent Inn died. People around me are facing loss. And I am taking a look at mortality again. It’s not an unfamiliar subject for me. I wish I could say I have not seen death introduce itself to my family. Looking at these hard subjects bring perspective and understanding into a life if you can let it. That we have a limit... Here, anyways. (According to my philosophy on existence)
A couple of months ago, I was waiting in between some visiting hours at the Sister’s of Mercy Hospital in Baltimore. Waiting to see Michelle, waiting with her mother. And a family was waiting there with us. I was moved beyond control, because I looked into the eyes of 2 young boys. And I knew that look. I knew them. Children of a dying mother. I have been that child. I started crying. And Michelle’s mother took me down stairs and we waited for about an hour till close till the time we could see Michelle... and went up (about 10 minutes till we could go back in) and I was devastated to find those boys walk back out the doors—on a cell phone with a grandparent—telling them that their mother had died. I almost passed out—I know what they faced, and will face for some time to come. Loss. Pain. Ultra finality. Then end of knowing someone here.
People have asked me—about my take on the after life. Being that I am a Christian. I believe in exactly what you’d expect. And people question me on that. And I expect that. They ask, how can you believe in hell... and all this... and I heard it best put by C.S. Lewis in ‘Mere Christianity’—he explained... why would someone who never wanted to know God, want to spend an eternity with Him? I find that to be a brilliant reasoning. If you reject a concept, why would you want that concept to be your future? It makes no sense! Hell is the absence of God—the one that in life those individuals rejected. It is relatively simple. Isn’t it? Everlasting life is a RELATIONSHIP that begins at the acceptance of the relationship. Point blank. I guess I openly print this because it is of incredible relevance to me. And, because I have been questioned in the past. And, after all—don’t we ultimately live our lives based on our belief systems?
A couple of months ago, I was waiting in between some visiting hours at the Sister’s of Mercy Hospital in Baltimore. Waiting to see Michelle, waiting with her mother. And a family was waiting there with us. I was moved beyond control, because I looked into the eyes of 2 young boys. And I knew that look. I knew them. Children of a dying mother. I have been that child. I started crying. And Michelle’s mother took me down stairs and we waited for about an hour till close till the time we could see Michelle... and went up (about 10 minutes till we could go back in) and I was devastated to find those boys walk back out the doors—on a cell phone with a grandparent—telling them that their mother had died. I almost passed out—I know what they faced, and will face for some time to come. Loss. Pain. Ultra finality. Then end of knowing someone here.
People have asked me—about my take on the after life. Being that I am a Christian. I believe in exactly what you’d expect. And people question me on that. And I expect that. They ask, how can you believe in hell... and all this... and I heard it best put by C.S. Lewis in ‘Mere Christianity’—he explained... why would someone who never wanted to know God, want to spend an eternity with Him? I find that to be a brilliant reasoning. If you reject a concept, why would you want that concept to be your future? It makes no sense! Hell is the absence of God—the one that in life those individuals rejected. It is relatively simple. Isn’t it? Everlasting life is a RELATIONSHIP that begins at the acceptance of the relationship. Point blank. I guess I openly print this because it is of incredible relevance to me. And, because I have been questioned in the past. And, after all—don’t we ultimately live our lives based on our belief systems?
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
i have caught a hell of a lot of heat for stuff i have not been responcible for. and have been lashed out at for weird and crazy stuff that is not my problem. that hurts. i guess because people think they know a thing or two about some personal stuff they can just be rude and just mouth off at me for what ever reason. well. that really is not ok. that really hurts my feelings. i do not need to be verbally assaulted publically... especially over stuff that is relative. ESPECIALLY if it is not really even specific to me! what is going on here! it seriously made me cry. not good. not fair. why would someone do something like that. especially a friend and co-worker. and most especially at WORK~!!!
Friday, October 28, 2005
Things don't always work the way ya mean for them to, ya know? I feel bad. Hopefully things will work themselves out. I donno.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Thats so funny, Candy said she stop'd by the Bin and talked to Shane... about a job... and he was telling her about who he's got hired at this point... he said something to the effect... like well... we have Jen and her girls... (meaning me and Candy and Renee...) HALARIOUS.... Renee goes in tomorrow to speak with him... seems like it will turn out well... Richie obviously knows her as she is ex-Bodega crew... so, its only a matter of Shane's seal of approval... haha. And we all 3 will be working together... but if he did in fact say something to that effect... then we are all cool. hehe. YAY. Good man, Shane-- Glad you trust my oppinion. Love-ya baby! ;)
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
I swung by Bin 257 and got Shane to give me 2 applications today. One for Renee and one for Candy. It was funny, we were both wearing the same color green t-shirt. (I can't help but notice these things) I told him one was for Renee and the other was for Candy... AKA Dulce and he started laughing... It would be fun to all work together. And, I hope to get along and actually become friends with him and the others I haven't met yet.
I just found out my Cobra health insurance is going to be $450 or $475 a month... and that I will not be able to afford and possibly be declined health insurance from a private company.... so I am sad about that.
I just found out my Cobra health insurance is going to be $450 or $475 a month... and that I will not be able to afford and possibly be declined health insurance from a private company.... so I am sad about that.
Do you ever wonder-- if the edges of the page kept you from saying a bit more... on subjects you had been avoiding to begin with? Like a spouting these thoughts out of a drowsy trance could jump start a memory trying to surface? Who was that at any given moment we struggle with a reflection we can no longer recall swirling in the inky past... rushing ever under-- even as you watch a still mirror. I hate to keep you waiting but... the telephone is ringing non-stop... just ring'n and ring'n.... a steady alarm keeping time with my quick breaths.... I can't get it back. Not just yet. It's in route. I can feel it. Like a rowboat weighted down, dragging against the branches in the water.
Friday, October 21, 2005
ok... i just took the nieces to Amanda's art opening at the New Belmont... it was funny-- and sort of exhausting. It would have been easier for them at a gallery I think. Still it was pretty funny. Cynthia gave her personal critique of the work... which is truly amazing to listen to a 3 year old discuss what they like about art. Viv, was more interested in just socializing I think... but hey... it was that sorta atmosphere... haha...
Thursday, October 20, 2005
One lovely sight I had the extreme pleasure of witnessing yesterday was this exquisite roomate of mine on the way to her class... haha...
oh yes... here is a picture of my brother Jer... (Chase #49) being cool and sac'n some QB... haha... I just had to post it. Cuz he is a talanted guy!
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
created a myspace page for the willowwood food closet... it has 27 members...
the fund raiser on Sun was able to raise $231... (not so bad for the 1st try!)
Check me out!
the fund raiser on Sun was able to raise $231... (not so bad for the 1st try!)
Check me out!
This morning I had the pleasure of waking up too early... and Viv had not gone off to school yet... last night while I was at work she lost her front tooth. And the tooth fairy visited her last night. She was feeling pretty good about her status this morning. HAHA! Living with kids in the house is halarious.
Why is it that a crush is the way it is? Why does it feel like it does? Like a rush of cold air up through your chest to your neck when he walks in the room. And, why is it—that the WRONG boy always likes you back? WHY!? What is that all that about! I kinda like just leaving this alone. I won’t ever let on. It would really be a stupid move. (this I know) I enjoy just feeling slightly idiotic and nervous it's been so long since anyone has made me feel like chuckle’n in such a nerdish fashion. I quite think I shall chill. Sit back. Ride it out. The old therapist says “NOT READY” so... might as well listen to her. She must be right. (right?) haha. Anyways... I am beyond a reasonable doubt that I aint his type. Which is all good and fine. He really aint mine either. This is all so silly. I can’t believe I have even written this! (I have issues)...
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
ok.... finally found employment. Start at the taphouse tomorow will work Tues and Saturday Nights there... Which I think will be fun shifts. And, then will work primarily at the new Wonderbar (not gonna be called that) when that opens in about 2 weeks... so I am happy. Gonna be work'n again. YAY!
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Ok, so... I am waiting to find a decent restaurant/bar job. And, while I am doing this... like I said, I went to a different neighborhood to seek a fast chain job to tide me over till the cash flow picks up and what I want rolls around. Well... I have the first one. (dare I even say this out loud?) I got hired on the spot—got to skip the second interview at one the chain joints and got to start the next day. HURRAY right? No! WRONG. I started. Well, I know absolutely nothing about this place, or really any of those joints out there... and well... this one, come to find out, I get to were jeans (oh hell no!) and a belt (what?!) and it gets better really fast... there are theme nights… were we have to come in these fucked up costumes. Like Grease characters... or 70s people or 20s people or what have you and... Mind you we are providing our own costumes (and we MUST do this)... AND it still gets better... AND we have to SING AND DANCE!!... ummm… WHAT THE SHIT!! Its bad enough I am standing in there in some jeans and stuff… now I have to sign some form saying I am into some concept that I will learn dances and sing??? WHAT?? Excuse me French but... %)*!%*)!&$ I was in total shock (and awe!) I mean I thought it was a joke. BUT IT ISN’T!! Its like dinner theatre where you wear rude t-shirts and serve crappy food and feel like some hee-haw idiot and then SING for your fucking tips on top of it! I am running my mouth like a sailor I know… but I can’t help it! I am mesmerized by my own employment status... as a new found up and coming Broadway star! I half chuckle and somewhere inside a six year old version of myself almost thinks it’s funny and remembers wanting to be on the stage... oh what a minute... this aint no stage... this is a $2.13 + tips wait staff job! The money aint that good here either! Not worth the humiliation! I thought Buca Di Beppo was bad in DC where we had to act flamboyant and wear pocket protectors and there were pictures of baby Italian boys pissing in alleys! NO! Comparatively-- This is down right SICK! I don’t know if I can go back… I mean learn that whole idiot menu and seating chart and all the useless info about who owns what and all the bull for a job I totally plan to ditch as quick as possible... HMMM... The only thing that stops me is my total status of unemployment. I did get a call back from Richie’s guy Shane... so that is a plus. But still… that is not totally in the bag or anything... I donno... both Candy and Renee say I oughta march my self strait up to Olive Garden if I want a dime a dozen crap restaurant while wait’n... rather then degrade myself... (SIGH!) this is so INSANE! I WILL BE SINGING FOR THEIR SUPPER? That doesn’t even make sense!
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
not that its worth much either..... but http://blog.myspace.com/jennida this is another little blog of mine that has been up and running for over a year....
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Jeff and Renee got hitched on Saturday. It was great. What a beautiful Wedding. I went out with them to the beach house on Friday and together with some of their friends from out of town, we cooked and got stuff together and drank wine etc and had an excellent time on Friday night and then we worked on the feast all day Saturday until the guests came. The Wedding was really sweet. It was on the beach… and we all celebrated with them on pillows and around the fire drinking wine and smoking the apricot tobacco out of the hooka (I have no idea how that is spelled) some middle eastern or northern African thing that you smoke tobacco out of. Angel and Clara were there with their baby Gabriel. It was great to see them-- hopefully Clara will take that digital darkroom class with Renee and I next spring-- that would be really awesome if she did.
Anyways, I am most likely going to randomly wait tables at some idiot chain restaurant out in the Greenbriar neighborhood while waiting to find a better place to work in Norfolk of Va Beach… (most likely a restaurant) I went to the orientation today. I feel like a chump, but I need the cash. And it’s better then being totally unemployed. And, no one I really know will ever know I work there unless I tell them. (or they read this—hahaha!)
Anyways, I am most likely going to randomly wait tables at some idiot chain restaurant out in the Greenbriar neighborhood while waiting to find a better place to work in Norfolk of Va Beach… (most likely a restaurant) I went to the orientation today. I feel like a chump, but I need the cash. And it’s better then being totally unemployed. And, no one I really know will ever know I work there unless I tell them. (or they read this—hahaha!)
ok... I quit.
yep.
I quit my job.
I figured I might as well get rid of all the dead weight from my past...
and since... last week was the week of the divorce... might as well quit the job I hated too...
so... yeah. I did.
yep.
I quit my job.
I figured I might as well get rid of all the dead weight from my past...
and since... last week was the week of the divorce... might as well quit the job I hated too...
so... yeah. I did.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Ok, so, the hearing was yesterday. I am finally divorced. After exactly a year! Its about frick’n time! My lawyer was such an idiot I could have kicked her ass! Not that she was even the one that came with me to court anyways (is this even normal?) She also didn’t bother to come to my pre-hearing. I tell you, it’s a good thing I choose to go gently. Because I would have had to fire her ass and go with the other council if I had wanted to wreck havoc on his life. I don’t have the interest really! Let it slide away—like trash.
Anyways, this weekend Renee and Jeff are getting married. I am gonna help her get stuff ready all day tomorrow out at the beach house in Pungo. Should be pretty fun and maybe even therapeutic. Should be a really fun wedding. I will stay out there all or maybe much of the weekend bring a mat to sleep on. They will have a bunch of people in from Chicago. It should be a good time. Only thing is, Frank and Chris’s party is on Sunday at the Church, so I feel bad about not helping out with that too. So I may get up early on Sunday and go try to help out and then come back out to the beach house on Sun? I donno. Sounds crazy. Then, there is my work, whom I have not told of my intension to leave. Last night I think I may have been #1 or 2 in the center I had 8 sales! But--
Anyways, this weekend Renee and Jeff are getting married. I am gonna help her get stuff ready all day tomorrow out at the beach house in Pungo. Should be pretty fun and maybe even therapeutic. Should be a really fun wedding. I will stay out there all or maybe much of the weekend bring a mat to sleep on. They will have a bunch of people in from Chicago. It should be a good time. Only thing is, Frank and Chris’s party is on Sunday at the Church, so I feel bad about not helping out with that too. So I may get up early on Sunday and go try to help out and then come back out to the beach house on Sun? I donno. Sounds crazy. Then, there is my work, whom I have not told of my intension to leave. Last night I think I may have been #1 or 2 in the center I had 8 sales! But--
Sunday, September 25, 2005
So, this is a weird emotional day and I feel disoriented and drained at the beginning of everything new. This week is really the week of fresh starts it seems-- as everything will end. The exit rows are clearly marked... and I am smiling... and it is just about time.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
So, we roared up coast on the Tiger Express, then hopped a cruise to nowhere out of New York. The Tiger Express is a bus line that runs daily from Virginia Beach to New York City that only costs $50 round trip… and drops you off in China Town… It was a little crazy but well worth it I’d say considering how broke I am. It dropped us off on Canal Street…
Rachel, this lass from my work, who was going to be my roommate, and I headed out to find a subway… I had already scoped out the route to the NY port authority…. And figured I could handle NY… I was there about a year ago… can’t have changed that much in a year, right?
We got off the subway not far from Time Square and walked to the Port Authority… (a good half mile or so I’d say… not too ridiculous when you have 4 or 5 hours to kill or more… right?...) Poor Rachel hadn’t been to NY since she was about 6 or something and she is 24… so she wasn’t really used to hoof’n it… and was wearing sandals…. Poor thing… oh well… neither of us felt like affording a cab…
We finally boarded the ship… the Norwegian Jewel… which we had been invited to the Inaugural sailing of… we found out latter that half the ship were travel agents and the other half were gamblers~! Awesome! Haha! Of course it was open bar, too so… hahaha… good times…
Rachel and I were interviewed by some crazy modern agent website… about what travel agents actually think of the ship… (we had already had some cocktails by this time, mind you… hahaha) and they put the footage up on the website~! LORDY! Haha!
Several wayward ladies… I mean, several of my co-workers and I hung out together during quite a lot of the cruise…. Running between our favorite international servers and bartenders… flirting like crazed nuts… it was fun… so many Columbians, and Jamaicans, and Philippinos (etc) to choose from hahaha… (scandal)…
I was crassly propositioned by this crazy jersey travel agent who would not take no for an answer… He was like… “Look...You are coming back to my room with me… it will be fun. We are in the middle of the ocean. No one will ever know…” it was such an outrageous line I laughed out loud in his face… repeatedly saying no… and he kept coming back to announce to me that he knew that I was still considering it…. !!! I mean, I am a rude lunatic, but good gravy! That is outa control! craziness!! YUK! I was like… “Listen buddy… will you stop embarrassing me in front of this hot Jamaican waiter? I can’t take it! How am I ever gonna get invited to a crew party? Geez!” and the second nite the Jersey stalker found me again! WHAT?
We ate, drank and danced the night away… and were merry while doing circles in the Atlantic… I loved that I could feel the motion of the ship… and was running sideways (especially the more glasses of wine I had… hahaha)
I had about 3 hours of sleep on Saturday night, and then we got off the ship and Rachel and I hung out with some Columbian bartender, we had so many hours to kill before catching the tiger home… (ha!) He chilled with us and we all relaxed in central park… My little Jamaican waiter had asked for my number… which I was a little surprised by… and I was so smitten… like a little nut I gave it to him… hahaha…. But he never called to hang out with us… (sigh) for the best… hahaha…. I am not one for giving my number out… If I do, it is generally out of confusion or something…. Like it is a friend of a friend… hahaha… anyways… crazy that I felt more comfortable with the international crew then the lunatic travel agents… !! hahaha… anyways… some pictures… not too bad for drunk shooting… ? hahahaha..
Rachel, this lass from my work, who was going to be my roommate, and I headed out to find a subway… I had already scoped out the route to the NY port authority…. And figured I could handle NY… I was there about a year ago… can’t have changed that much in a year, right?
We got off the subway not far from Time Square and walked to the Port Authority… (a good half mile or so I’d say… not too ridiculous when you have 4 or 5 hours to kill or more… right?...) Poor Rachel hadn’t been to NY since she was about 6 or something and she is 24… so she wasn’t really used to hoof’n it… and was wearing sandals…. Poor thing… oh well… neither of us felt like affording a cab…
We finally boarded the ship… the Norwegian Jewel… which we had been invited to the Inaugural sailing of… we found out latter that half the ship were travel agents and the other half were gamblers~! Awesome! Haha! Of course it was open bar, too so… hahaha… good times…
Rachel and I were interviewed by some crazy modern agent website… about what travel agents actually think of the ship… (we had already had some cocktails by this time, mind you… hahaha) and they put the footage up on the website~! LORDY! Haha!
Several wayward ladies… I mean, several of my co-workers and I hung out together during quite a lot of the cruise…. Running between our favorite international servers and bartenders… flirting like crazed nuts… it was fun… so many Columbians, and Jamaicans, and Philippinos (etc) to choose from hahaha… (scandal)…
I was crassly propositioned by this crazy jersey travel agent who would not take no for an answer… He was like… “Look...You are coming back to my room with me… it will be fun. We are in the middle of the ocean. No one will ever know…” it was such an outrageous line I laughed out loud in his face… repeatedly saying no… and he kept coming back to announce to me that he knew that I was still considering it…. !!! I mean, I am a rude lunatic, but good gravy! That is outa control! craziness!! YUK! I was like… “Listen buddy… will you stop embarrassing me in front of this hot Jamaican waiter? I can’t take it! How am I ever gonna get invited to a crew party? Geez!” and the second nite the Jersey stalker found me again! WHAT?
We ate, drank and danced the night away… and were merry while doing circles in the Atlantic… I loved that I could feel the motion of the ship… and was running sideways (especially the more glasses of wine I had… hahaha)
I had about 3 hours of sleep on Saturday night, and then we got off the ship and Rachel and I hung out with some Columbian bartender, we had so many hours to kill before catching the tiger home… (ha!) He chilled with us and we all relaxed in central park… My little Jamaican waiter had asked for my number… which I was a little surprised by… and I was so smitten… like a little nut I gave it to him… hahaha…. But he never called to hang out with us… (sigh) for the best… hahaha…. I am not one for giving my number out… If I do, it is generally out of confusion or something…. Like it is a friend of a friend… hahaha… anyways… crazy that I felt more comfortable with the international crew then the lunatic travel agents… !! hahaha… anyways… some pictures… not too bad for drunk shooting… ? hahahaha..
