Yearly Archives: 2007

A Chance To Create

Good news. Wait no. Great fuck­ing news.

I met with Frédéric, the own­er of the Salon, and after show­ing him a port­fo­lio of my pic­tures, he agreed to let me have an exhib­it in the next show in February.

As this was­n’t only his art gallery but his house as well, I offered to let him make the deci­sion after see­ing my com­plet­ed work. He told me there was no need, as he trust­ed me based on what he had seen in my port­fo­lio, which I felt was a very nice com­pli­ment.

As artists (and I use this in the loos­est sense of the word to describe myself), we’re very dif­fer­ent. I told him that I like to study pho­to­graph­ic tech­niques, espe­cial­ly in pho­tos that I like, and apply those tech­niques to what I want to express or show. When I look at a piece of visu­al art, I look at mean­ing and intent. When I cre­ate, I keep the same thing in mind. Frédéric, on the oth­er hand, is more of a gut-feel­ing type of artist. He does what he feels is right, and does­n’t wor­ry as much about the under­ly­ing mes­sage.

He asked if I was sin­gle, and I told him I was. “Good”, he said, “That’ll help you focus”. It made me think of a quote by Alexander Dumas:

Woman inspires us to great things, and pre­vents us from achiev­ing them.

I made a remark about how I’d have a forum to devel­op my ideas now, projects I nev­er pur­sued because I did­n’t have a way to get them to a wider audi­ence. He told me that I should­n’t wor­ry about an audi­ence, and gave me an exam­ple to demon­strate his point: if you cre­ate the most beau­ti­ful thing you’ve ever done and you keep it in your base­ment, it isn’t art because no one sees it1, but to get caught up in that dilem­ma, and to not cre­ate sim­ply because of that, is a tragedy.

So now I can pur­sue and devel­op one of my pho­to project ideas. I have to decide on a theme. I have see how much enlarge­ment I can do to my pho­tos with­out too much loss of qual­i­ty. I have to decide on the size of the final prints. I have to decide on the frame size and shape. I have to get the final prints framed.

I’ve always want­ed to cre­ate acces­si­ble art2.

Perhaps this will be my chance.

  1. An inter­pre­tive answer to the Zen kōan of the sound a tree makes falling down in the for­est, I’m sure [↩]
  2. As opposed to some­thing such as poet­ry, which is less acces­si­ble to the com­mon per­son. As a medi­um, film, pho­tog­ra­phy, and music (with lyrics) are more eas­i­ly digestible. [↩]

Recording My Dreams

Note: Dreams are fun­ny things. As the cre­ator of the world you’re in, you have an omni­scient knowl­edge of every­thing, includ­ing what oth­er peo­ple in the dream are think­ing. Things that are lyser­gic and ran­dom make per­fect sense in a dream. Every now and then, espe­cial­ly when they’re very vivid, a dream will seem fas­ci­nat­ing, so I’ll write it down and post it. Then I read it over again, and think “This is the stu­pid­est, least coher­ent thing I’ve ever writ­ten”. Then I delete it. I’ve done this about a half dozen times, and they’re the only entries I’ve ever delet­ed from this blog.

This is an exam­ple from last night. I’ll try not to delete it.

There was also a part about play­ing table ten­nis that pre­cedes the begin­ning, like the scene between Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in Match Point, which, eeri­ly enough, is some­what sim­i­lar to this dream. However, the mem­o­ry has been lost in the haze of con­scious­ness.

P.S. If you ever read this, Alex, please don’t beat me up. KTHX.

Dreamt Sophia and I were in love.

Continue read­ing “Recording My Dreams”…

A New Winter Ritual

Snow col­lect­ed on the grass last night.

This makes me dream of week­end morn­ings in my liv­ing room, tea and a lap­top, look­ing out to a blan­ket of white. Dolly curled up on the arm­rest next to me, as she always is. No oth­er con­trast feels as cozy.

Ritual dic­tates that I watch Onegin or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind on the day of the first snow­fall, a trib­ute to win­ter scenes and warm romance.

This year, I’ll buy myself some skates. I’ll pack a snack and some water. Maybe my cam­era in case an image catch­es my fan­cy.

As the strings shud­der and the beats go on, I’ll carve a lit­tle path for myself on the canal, and burn beneath the orange sky.

And this will be my new rit­u­al.

She Doesn't Know How Beautiful

The art of long­ing’s over, and it’s nev­er com­ing back.

—Leonard Cohen, Death of a Ladies’ Man

They ask me why I’m cry­ing. I tell them the song is too good, not to cry.

They ask me why there’s a bounce in my step. I tell them I’m in love, and I don’t care.

They ask me if she’s tak­en. I tell them she is.

They ask me if she knows. I tell them it does­n’t mat­ter as long as I feel this way, and I’m nev­er let­ting go.

They ask me, “Why her?”.

I tell them she makes me hap­py with­out try­ing.

Emergence Exposition Opus 01

A few days before the show, I found out that Krista and Shane were play­ing a small venue in town. Usually I make it a point to see an artist just once in my life, but last time was dif­fer­ent; I was expect­ing Lederhosen Lucil, but was treat­ed to an entire­ly dif­fer­ent and unfa­mil­iar sound. This time, it was my chance to see Krista and Shane per­form after becom­ing famil­iar with the songs. Turns out the venue was in un petit salon des arts. This place boast­ed a mix­ture of dif­fer­ent art­forms; music, met­al sculp­tures, pho­tographs, paint­ings, and graph­ic poems.

I did­n’t real­ly feel like going out that night, but I forced myself to go, remind­ing myself that I could say the same thing any oth­er night and I’d nev­er get any­where.

Thumbnail: Entrance of the Emergence Exposition

When I arrived, the Salon was to capac­i­ty. I could­n’t even get in the entrance; there were peo­ple phys­i­cal­ly block­ing the door. My chance to get in came after a few had made room by leav­ing, then I saw a path up the stairs and took it.

Enter six degrees of sep­a­ra­tion.

Continue read­ing “Emergence Exposition Opus 01”…