Friday, May 13, 2005

So, there I was. Minding my own business.
A postcard came to my newspaper office from Parsons School of Design, a Manhattan school. Suddenly I was applying to said institution. And then I was accepted, a call from Jim Ramer told me so and the night was Mardi Gras and I had been out shooting for hours. Glee. Panic.
Now, years later, about two, I find myself writing another research paper for an online course with a photographer instructor named Brian Moss who lives somewhere near Los Angeles. He's upbeat, savvy, very nurturing in his comments. As is JR, my art mentor and leader of the small and efficient Team Ramer.
I am tossing words about in this nearly-ultimate research paper like nobody's business, pulling out all the grad student stops, if you will.
Why, topology is even used. And scads of others that perhaps a few years ago would never have flown out of me. At that time I was still (sort of) living with a pro academic who was landslided into words and theory and I, throughout those ten or so years, tossed myself into the Real - the real world's images, the real world's happenings and descriptions of those. So now I am balanced between academia and realia which is, in my truly humble grad student opinion, the way to go.
Speaking of go, off I go to finish this burdensome task to proceed along to a small mountain of freelance deadlines and assignments and hell, where's the fun.

Hellacious Love.

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Phones are all off. As are the bets.
Can Yours Truly finish the Pulitzer-worthy research paper of 3K tonight, or by tomorrow at 5PM. That is the question. Writing about Sam Taylor-Wood, Gary Hill, Bill Viola. And me. Aesthetics of Stillness.
So, comedic interlude during tonight's commencement gig was when PhD's were becoming such and as they were being conferred their thesis title was announced. One, Fiona Apple-worthy one had approximately thirty words in its title. Me and an usher glanced at one another in faux understanding of what this biomedical person had achieved behind such a hefty title.
My thesis has three words. Six syllables.
Scott is aiding me in the quest to locate the email address of cello boy, to tell him to tell his bandmate that he owes me $51 due to an international credit card fraud scare, or shitheel international practices of zappos.com - or both. Zappos, lest you wonder, is thee place to buy shoes online. They have the best, the obscure, the pedestrian. And one of the tentet ordered, with assistance from YT, some fine Chuck Taylors for his kid.
A rearch paper is afoot. I am ablaze with ideas.
I am off, as Brucey says, like a turd of hurdles.
At times like these the tough just get coffee chugging.
Or something to that chestnut effect.

Love's Hurdle.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Several days later, braincells misplaced and mis-spent evenings later, the band has split the Middling City. I have the paper topic: The Aesthetics of Stillness.
Was procrastinating productively when it wavered at me in a moment of clarity. Will be writing about the video work of Yours Truly, Sam Taylor Wood, Bill Viola and whomever else fits the goddamned bill.
Besides the gigs the most memorable moment of band stay was taking Peter Brøtzmann and Kennedy to the grain elevators. First the favoured street, Ganson, alongside tracks, Great Northern, several other elevators, mounds of sand, an inlet. Then the foot of Hamburg Street for The View. Then to foot of Smith Street to the odd park, across train bridge then to Concrete Central where we saw, amongst other things, a pack of splatball enthusiasts, a few galloping deer, some birds, some wreckage, some skulls. Picked up a deer skull for the collection. Which leads me to thoughts of the frozen sheep head in my freezer. Probably high time to liberate it. As I did with the pig heart. I can hear the voice of Baumann telling me that plastic outgases, imagine the plastic wrapping the head has maxed-out on outgasing and all the condiments and film in the frigerator are just biohazardic.
Weeks until school. Am I ready. A question, a statement. A ploy, a plan.
Have a place to live and will have to adjust to its new offerings of early morning coffee, hopefully French as in SoHo, its wi-fi molecular structures, its proximity to Parsons School of Degree of Difficulty.
Speaking of such, time to continue on this catching up of days.

Caught Love.