Cooper Union Digital (The Final Days)

The last assignment was to pick 8 photos from our class assignments and have 8x10s printed for a sort of class exhibition. We will be showing them tomorrow. I ordered mine from adoramapix online. By the time I realized I had to get this done I didn't have time to go into the actual store lab. Picking out my eight photos was pretty difficult because honestly, I don't remember loving any of the pics I took on assignment. But going through them all I discovered that I liked more of them than I thought I did.

I did some photo editing on iPhoto, Picnic on Flikr and the free trial of Photoshop Elements on my laptop at home. I picked from about four or five papers that were described on the website, chose white borders and cropping for all. In our last session we will all have individual conferences with Marget Long to talk about what we to do next or what the next step should be for each of us. We are also encouraged to bring in any other pictures that we would like to show her. My plan is to put together a list of questions I've been dying to ask about lenses, other photographic formats, Polaroids, etc.I'm pretty sure I'd like to take another photography class, maybe in black in white photography, maybe in photoshop. We'll see.

Fun on Photofunia

Photofunia

The Journalers

The closeness you share with someone whose journal you read regularly is a very deep one. In high school I read and shared my own journal with at least four different people. At that age, at that time we shared things with each other we might not ever share now. We expressed rawness and vulnerability devoid of the ability to understand that one day these things would no longer seem so immediate, so urgent or so precious in quite the same way. The sharing of these things solidified our bond at a time when were perhaps not yet fully aware of all the things that lay ahead which would shape us, change us forever and drive a wedge between us which is inevitable and as it should be when people grow and evolve.

One day, maybe many years from now, maybe we’ll share our journals again if we still have them. Mine are in about two or so large boxes collecting dust in Francis’ basement. Occasionally when I’m upstate at his house I will journey down there in the early morning, sit in the subterranean air and pour randomly over whatever is closest at hand. Sometimes it’s like reading a novel about someone else’s life, and often it makes me laugh out loud. Sometimes I come upon something profoundly compelling and other times I just can’t deal but those moments have lessened with time. And when I leave those boxes of journals I leave that time behind with a vague lingering of nostalgia and thankfulness for the way in which journal keeping allows me to see the connection between events in my life.

After Photography

"The digital photographer and all those who come after her-potentially plays a postmodern visual disc jockey.

Once the world has been photographed it is never again the same. (This is where Eve and the apple come in) Once the images begin to replace the world, photography loses much of it's reason for being. Into the vortex, then, comes the digital."
-Fred Ritchin "After Photography"

I walked into B&N this Saturday with the intent to kill some time until Vanessa's bus got into the city from Philly. I've been studying photo essays there, thinking about some of the experiments I want to do with my own picture taking. Last week, I'd spent almost an hour looking at a Taschen Collection of Polaroids. They were amazing, nothing like the dark, yellowy pictures I used to get when I used the family Polaroid in the early 90s. On Saturday though I walked into the photo essay isle and picked up a book of critique on digital photography. Some words on the subject that were not purely instructional were way overdue. And I expected the first thing I read to be about how wonderful and expansive digital was, how it gave so many more people so many more possibilities. But instead I was given this totally legitimate if a bit morbid view of the way in which digital photography is like this monster of technology which will eventually consume itself because of it's overwhelming accessibility and tendency towards endless post production manipulation. Of course people have been manipulating photographic images for centuries, since the advent of photography but the difference then was that only a select few had access to this capability and even then, they never manipulated images on the same scale that people do now. Who had the time?

When I went to go see the orchid show, I have to admit I had to block out the sheer number of people and children running around with digital devices, clicking and recording and basically experiencing everything through a lens! Including me of course. I noticed it at the presidential inauguration in D.C. as well. But it was at the orchid show that I realized in an unavoidable way that something slightly disturbing was happening and that I was a part if it. I think it was because when I was little and my mom used to take my brother and I to the botanical garden in Brooklyn, we were able to have this very present experience of everything. Sure, my dad was the designated photographer but he didn't take pictures all the time. He couldn't. With film, there is always an inherent finality. The roll will be done. You have to wait to see the images. You put the camera down and get on with life. But with digital you can conceivable take hundreds of photos a day, even thousands if you carry around extra memory cards. I bought two extra memory cards myself recently. 2 gigs each. In this way, the documenting and recording never stops. You could go all day never connecting with anything, merely capturing and collecting moments but never really being apart of them. It's addictive in this myspace, facebook age of connecting as peripherally as we do but only rarely ever checking in fully. It certainly appeals to me but at the same time when I see this same sort of lifestyle replicated so massively everywhere I go I get a little nervous. That's why I still try to shoot film as well as digital. Thank God I was born in the 70s.

WHAT THE FUK!!!! IS GOING ON??

I'm a bit flustered. It's a Friday. It's not even 12:00 yet and already I'm on the verge of a total freaking meltdown! Francis says it's because of the planetary retrograde. I used to subscribe to that kind of theory a lot more when I lived with my mom. But I'm a little wary of it now. I guess I'm starting to feel like maybe I did something wrong, like maybe I'm being punished. But I don't fully believe that either. However without any explanation, I start to feel a bit crazy about the reasons for this set of circumstances.

I need to calm down. I may never get this out coherently if I don't.

I try to be careful with people, males in particular, but I can also be very blunt and I try to be honest which rubs certain males the wrong way. I have broken hearts in the past and those hearts have come back to haunt me with varied measures of resentment but all hoping to salvage something of our relationship which I am not certain they even understand. That's a bit awkward for me at present being in a committed relationship with someone I plan to marry, someone who is not only a lover but one of my closest dearest friends. It is hard to know what place an old intimate friend can now play in my life. Tougher still, is that former male friend who is perpetually stuck in time and cannot let go of what we used to be or who I used to be. Needless to say I have had horrible results with this, bordering on traumatically surreal. Myspace and facebook have helped to facilitate the search for me by such individuals who wish to shall we say "reconnect" and in two out of at least four cases it has and is proving to be fairly disastrous.

In the past, I have tried to put myself into the mind of a person who goes out seeking someone with whom they shared a singularly profound relationship such as has never been replicated again. I have tried to understand what could be happening in the life of someone for whom it seems a virtual impossibility to find someone with whom they could trust or share their souls with the way they once did 20 or so years ago with someone in high school. Mid-life crisis? Bad social skills? I mean I'm no social butterfly. When I was single I fixated on celebrity stalking like a normal person! Gosh! I guess I'm also better at being alone than most people I know. But it's not all as simple as that.

The one guy from my HS days who I've been in correspondence with through the years who has not stalked, threatened or made me uncomfortable is...you guessed it MARRIED!
I met with him shortly before he tied the knot. We had a nice lunch together and talked a lot about marriage, possessiveness, relationships and things of that nature which concerned him. It was fine. Haven't seen him since but we do email occasionally. Oh Christ! I don't wanna do this. I don't wanna tally people or list them. It's a cold and impersonal thing to do. I just wanna know why they can't leave me alone. What is going on in their lives that they can't just chalk our past up to fond memories and move on? I'm not that important.

I have sought out the guy who broke my heart online as well. I have. I admit that, more out of curiosity than anything else. And Anne Naughton, a wonderful woman who I worked with at City College. She literally made me happy every time I saw her and she was one of the only females I actually trusted in that office. When she left she used to write me letters from wherever she was. At some point the letters just stopped, and neither I nor my other friend who used to work in that office ever heard from her again. I may think about people for years but at some point other things start to take priority. I still think about Anne. She was a maverick and I would love her even of she didn't want to speak to me. The same cannot be said, I'm afraid for these guys from my past. I define real love as a thing that doesn't turn on a dime. A guy who pledges his love forever and then calls you a bitch the minute they can't get what they want is not, in my humble opinion someone who knows how to love. It's tougher than just loving someone when things are good. I don't really believe in people changing. I believe in learning and evolving. I don't have room for time machines in my life right now. And I would never demand that someone I haven't communicated with in years drop everything and take a trip down memory lane with me!

ARRRRRRRGHHH!!!

Okay, I have a long day ahead of me and I really can't address these things directly right now. Retrograde, will you please stop messing with the order???

The Secret Life of Plants

I can't conceive the nucleus of all
Begins inside a tiny seed
And what we think as insignificant
Provides the purest air we breathe

But who am I to doubt or question the inevitable being
For these are but a few discoveries
We find inside the Secret Life of Plants

-Stevie Wonder


The Orchid Show at the New York Botanical Garden was like another world. Anything that can catch my mind off guard and pull me into the present is welcome. I practically grew up in the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and did at least three seasons of gardening in their childrens' gardening program as a child. I idolize the Brooklyn Garden and didn't believe I would ever see anything as beautiful anywhere else, least of all the Bronx! But there it is. I hope to go back again before it's done in April.

A poem from my past (close your eyes Amanda!)

Casablanca

Came to a screeching halt that year
At the edge of your rabbit hole.
No way I was going down there again.
I’ve grown accustomed to some sense of control.
I strayed for a moment that year,
stared down the abyss of your soul
At the familiar bones in your closet
which none but me had come to know.
I wanted to hold on to something that hurt
a sweet little souvenir of pain.
But no piece could be taken
without feeling the whole
And that monster in me
has been slain.

I Watched The Watchmen

"All we ever see of the stars are their old photographs."
-Dr. Manhattan

Just saw “The Watchmen” which I think was great by the way and noticed in a few of the preceding film previews the following categories: Gangster Violence and Pervasive Language. I couldn't imagine for the life of me what these categories meant. What happened to just plain old Violence or Swearing? I mean are there people who are not offended by all violence in particular and need to know exactly what kind of violence they will be viewing? MPAA is such a fucking crock of shit organization. I don’t even know where to begin. They really bug me. Maybe these categories have been around for a while and I just haven’t noticed them. If that’s the case then I apologize for my lateness it expressing how ridiculous I think it is.

As for the Watchmen, I will try to be simple in my review. I never did finish the graphic novel but I did read enough of it to see that that the movie followed it almost to the letter and I am really proud of that. I have to admit that while reading it I was hyper aware of the total lack of any Watchmen of color but what can you expect from characters who outwardly admit to having virtually Nazi like mentalities? I find that the movie dodged these issues way more overtly than the novel did. The novel, I am told, included a larger narrative of one of the only characters of color in the story, the shrink who sees Rorschach as a patient. But naturally that story was completely omitted from the movie. That pisses me off but rather than go on a tangent I will stick to what I really loved about the movie. Mostly that I felt it did not compromise (until the end of course) the novel’s sense of ironic darkness and pervasive global doom for easy, fluffy resolutions. Again I did not finish the novel and understand as an avid reader that a book, graphic novel or more traditional literature has a life of it’s own which cannot be replicated cinematically at least not often.

What you get from books, the ability to imagine, re-imagine and live within a story is almost always compromised when adapted for the screen. The part of your brain used to simulate actions, feeling, emotions and intellectual and emotional struggle is given over to what a director and cinematographer install for the viewer. The studio replaces your imagination with their own vision, which is fine, as long you still have your own imagination in tact. That takes a daily exercising of your own imagination though. I fear new generations may not be encouraged to do this very often if at all. But more on that later.

Let talk about Dr. Manhattan’s penis. No really, I’m gonna go there and say that I am really proud at how well they pulled that off. I mean I watched the movie in my favorite theater in Chelsea, Manhattan’s great gay Mecca and not one oooh or awe whenever the blue phallus was exposed. Dr. Manhattan was that well rounded, that classy, and with a character so grounded in intellect and logic that he drew virtually no attention to his dick when he was naked which was about 80% of the movie. Was that Billy Cruddup's actual penis? One may never know. Maybe it's entirely CGI. Technology has come so far. No pun intended. Okay lemme get off the dick.

The opening credits alone were amazing, disturbing and beautiful. The fact that they opened with Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a Changing” didn’t hurt at all. I was delighted to hear, Simon & Garfunkel, Jimi Hendrix and Leonard Cohen as well although the use of “Hallelujah” during the obligatory sex scene was the least subtle segue of all the musical score use throughout the movie. Listening to “Unforgettable” sung by Nat King Cole while watching “The Comedian” get his ass handed to him was in a word, unforgettable. I will save the rest for those who wish to see the movie themselves. The moral and political discussions were satisfyingly handled although I don’t wish to discuss at length here what I feel might have been glossed over, simplified or omitted entirely.

It is unfortunate that we have come to accept the usual pattern in movies over the years that require exceptional scripts to wrap themselves up in the last thirty or so minutes like some 80’s episode of a “Murder She Wrote” mystery and “The Watchmen” is no exception to that. But I think there is more to “The Watchmen” to see than can be gathered in one viewing. And I will say this, and I haven’t said this about a movie in a long time: I can’t wait to watch it again and again. The writing, the cinematography and the performance were compelling and held me really tightly. It was poetically brutal. That’s hard to pull off.

Dance me to the end of love with a burning violin

In case you wondering, I have been getting some work done. I have. And I was just about to start a response paper for my Urban Poverty & Affluence class. But I decided to play Leonard Cohen's concert at Beacon Theater from the NPR podcast on my ipod again. This is only the second time so I don't think that officially counts as overdoing it. The first time I played it this afternoon as I got ready to wash my hair. I swayed to "Take this Waltz" under the water.

I had this wierd dream this morning that Idris Elba was trimming my hair while I listened to L.C. on my earphones. I sat between his legs the way I used to sit with my mom when she did my hair. Idris was using scissors and I prefer clippers but for some reason, I trusted him completely, although I very firmly stated before I sat down that I wanted "A trim, not a haircut." I'm really obsessed about my hair care. Like a woman who desperately wants to have a child who's fucking her brains out and can't get pregnant, I watch it a little to0 carefully for signs of health and strength and growth. I pretend it doesn't matter much to me but I have dreams about it all the time. It's ridiculous. Anyway, I never did get a chance to see exactly what Idris had done to my hair. He leaned forward in front of me from behind and gave me an upside down kiss on the forehead. I kissed him back and woke up shortly. Leonard or the Beatles? Which was I listening to while Idris did my hair. Ah! I did fall asleep listening to L.C. on my ipod so it had to be him.

Why does a 74 year old French Canadian Jewish poet/songwriter get me so excited? It's a long story. Ben introduced him to me years ago for the first time while we attended Bard College. I was instantly seduced by his deep dark scratchy voice and haunting lyrics. It's not the kind of music you want to listen to if you're depressed though. It is profoundly raw and romantic at the same time. He was a pretty sexy looking guy in his youth. He looked a bit like Dustin Hoffman. He's kind of shrunken like now but his voice could still get it. LOL!!