Posts in category "Random"

Eagle vs Shark

Eagle vs Shark

Eagle vs Shark is the new Postal Service.

The movie I can’t stop watch­ing. The movie I can’t watch with any­one else.

Not because it’s painful in any way, but because it’s sacred. A movie where no one else would under­stand the way I see it. A reminder that I was adored once too, when some­one loved me beyond lim­it or con­di­tion. (A mem­o­ry that I need right now.)

But I will leave you with this lit­tle song, if only for a short while. You need colours and can­dles in your room when you lis­ten though, and an imag­i­na­tion will serve you well. Having a make­out part­ner and wear­ing a cos­tume of your favourite ani­mal is option­al.

That is all you need to know, for this is all I can say.

Walk It Off

Sometimes, I have to get out, even when it feels like it’s 40°C out­side, because I need my music loud, and I need to fuck­ing strut, and the birds clear the way cause they know it’s seri­ous, cause the pic­tures are fuck­ing killing me, so I’ll just keep skip­ping songs until it hits me then I’ll CRANK IT until it hurts, walk­ing it off like it’s nobody’s busi­ness, danc­ing inside to the bass pound­ing in my ears.

Thinking Of Her

Sometimes, as I’m falling asleep, I think of her.

She’s lying on my stom­ach again, lis­ten­ing to my heart beat, hands tucked neat­ly under my body. Or she’s spoon­ing me, her arm rest­ing on the crook of my waist, with a fin­ger draw­ing dis­tract­ing cir­cu­lar lines on my chest.

Muse in grass

Sometimes we’re in the tall grass, sur­round­ed by colours of life with the warmth of the sun above us. A regres­sion to a time when all I had to think about was the colour of pop­si­cle I would have when I got home from camp. How unfair that our inno­cence is tak­en from us when we need it most.

And I lie there in bed, wait­ing for sleep to take me as the images lead me on.

My body telling me to let go, my mind strug­gling to keep her next to me a moment longer.

Video Love and Hate

I’ve been play­ing around with video all week­end, try­ing to get a bunch of things work­ing to no avail, when real­ly what I want­ed to do was just do some edit­ing and get a project under my belt.

Among the prob­lems:

  • My Canon HF100 shoots in a pseu­do 24p, which does­n’t get import­ed into Final Cut Pro as true 24p. This means I have to con­vert the video from the cam­era to ProRes, then con­vert to 24p, then bring it back into Final Cut Pro, then begin my edit­ing. Too bulky a work­flow for my tastes.
  • Rendering a few min­utes of video will take sev­er­al hours. So I have to leave the ren­der­ing on overnight, occa­sion­al­ly into the next day, which means I can’t use my lap­top until it’s done. Thank god I have two com­put­ers.
  • Clips in the Final Cut time­line become unplayable when using Magic Bullet for colour tints, due to dropped frames.. This means I have to do all my edit­ing, mak­ing sure all the tim­ing is per­fect, then add the colour effects to it, then ren­der. It’s a leap of faith, because I can’t pre­view motion with the colour; if I don’t end up lik­ing the effect, I have to re-ren­der the whole thing again.

I hate giv­ing up these things, but see­ing as how I’ve spent count­less hours research­ing and exper­i­ment­ing for solu­tions with­out any luck, I think I’ll have to for now. Hopefully full-frame sen­sors will become cheap enough that reg­u­lar con­sumers (like me) can afford them, and maybe video stan­dards will actu­al­ly be more stan­dard. Until then, I’ll have to accept this “high­ly-rat­ed” cam­corder that still lacks a man­u­al focus ring, can’t pro­duce any kind of shal­low DOF with bokeh, and has an annoy­ing amount of low-light noise.

On the non-tech­ni­cal end of video, one of the dif­fi­cul­ties is that I’m always torn between telling a sto­ry, and sav­ing a mem­o­ry, both of which seem some­what mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. The for­mer tends to be more con­cise but cold and mechan­i­cal, where­as the lat­ter is filled with all the lit­tle details I enjoy but poten­tial­ly bor­ing.

Video is also less for­giv­ing, as fram­ing is more final with­out the crop­ping func­tion of still pho­tos. Then when you move into high def­i­n­i­tion, things like dirt on a car, blem­ish­es on a face, stray hairs, become much more noticeable…and invari­ably end up dri­ving a per­fec­tion­ist like me crazy.

I still love the com­bi­na­tion of move­ment and sound and dia­logue that video affords though; it’s the medi­um that I find comes clos­est to real life.

Looking Forward to Tai Chi Classes

Knowing the con­sis­ten­cy with which I go, she asked me if I ever felt like not going to my Tai Chi class­es on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

I thought about it, and came to the real­iza­tion that I did­n’t. There have been win­ter nights where the com­bi­na­tion of snow­storm and ail­ing tran­sit sys­tem have sud­den­ly left me with a wel­come free night, but oth­er than that, I always enjoy going to class.

Before Tai Chi was table ten­nis1, and some days, I’d have to force myself to go. But when I was there, in the mid­dle of a good ral­ly, then pant­i­ng, sweat­ing, exhaust­ed after­ward, I’d always remind myself that I was glad I went.

Tai Chi offers me some­thing else though, a way for me to lose myself for an hour or two. Maybe because it takes so much focus, or so much focus to not focus on any­thing, that I’m able to for­get every­thing else. Even when I’m prac­tic­ing the form on my own it’s not the same. Being at the stu­dio with the oth­er stu­dents — learn­ing from and teach­ing each oth­er, apply­ing the prin­ci­ples we can’t prac­tice by our­selves — lets me get away. On top of that, I know that I’m improv­ing, even if I may not notice it in myself.

And that’s enough to make me look for­ward to my next class as soon as I step out of the stu­dio into the cool night air.

  1. Unfortunately, they’re both on the same nights dur­ing the week, which means I have to choose one over the oth­er [↩]