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I have not posted for some time. I've started a lot of posts, but then haven't brought them to any sort of finish.
You know how this goes.
Since NYC, Z and I have been going at full speed. His speed continues this weekend as he makes his way up to Seattle. I am sitting my ass down in our apartment and nesting like a polar bear before winter. I've started cleaning my studio and I can see my work table for the first time in months. It's so exciting I can't believe it.
Cleaning is just the first step. Then I'll need to really begin *organizing* it. Different beast same general path. Theoretically cleaning and writing are the two activities I'm doing at home although a wee bit of crafting and movie watching has creeped in as well. I just have to stay away from Hulu and I'll be fine. (Oh Hulu.)
But yeah, amid all the chaos that seems to be circling the globe right now I feel very lucky to live in a beautiful place and be surrounded by really beautiful people.
More blogs will ensue. Probably in the form of lists :)
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Age
I was at the local craft store tonight (GET OUT GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN) buying some tiles and it was a particularly slow night in the store. It's acting like July outside so I imagine everyone is at BBQs. The result was employee down time and two women were helping me at check out. One of the women was talking about how she's having her 50th wedding anniversary next month. You can tell by the polite nods of her co-workers that she's been talking about this a lot. But I'm new, so she tells me and then goes on to explain that that is next month, THIS month is her birthday. She's 71. I look up at her and say, "Really?" And before I've had time to process the pros and cons of another statement I blurt out, "You've got good genes." She's halfway through her, "I know" before I begin to really wonder if I've said something offensive. I've paid so now my trajectory is out the door and I can feel half of my body kind of turning back to try and make sure I haven't said something terrible but the other half of my body is wrenching myself forward. The latter strong armed the former and I sit in my car awhile wondering if I should go back and apologize.
Finally I just drive away.
I don't like that I said that though. I don't think it was offensive but the very fact I said anything bothers me. It's not the first time I've told someone they have good genes. A lady who worked on Chicago with us is 40 and she's living inside a late 20s early 30s body. Now SHE has good genes.
But then what does it mean to have good genes? Does your good genes rating go up depending on your looks-close-to-a-pre-teen vs actual-age ratio? At one point in our lives we wanted to look older. And then somewhere in our 20s it switches to want to look younger. Because that's what I'm saying to the woman in the craft store: good job not looking old. And that's what I'm telling the 40 year old: Hey, nice one looking like a 20/30 year old. It means that they are getting points for not being what they are. That looking 40 and 71 (whatever the hell that means) isn't OK. And that if you don't look 24 you might as well be dead. What crap. What total crap.
I think the larger lesson here is stay the hell out of craft stores. Somewhere Zach agrees.
Finally I just drive away.
I don't like that I said that though. I don't think it was offensive but the very fact I said anything bothers me. It's not the first time I've told someone they have good genes. A lady who worked on Chicago with us is 40 and she's living inside a late 20s early 30s body. Now SHE has good genes.
But then what does it mean to have good genes? Does your good genes rating go up depending on your looks-close-to-a-pre-teen vs actual-age ratio? At one point in our lives we wanted to look older. And then somewhere in our 20s it switches to want to look younger. Because that's what I'm saying to the woman in the craft store: good job not looking old. And that's what I'm telling the 40 year old: Hey, nice one looking like a 20/30 year old. It means that they are getting points for not being what they are. That looking 40 and 71 (whatever the hell that means) isn't OK. And that if you don't look 24 you might as well be dead. What crap. What total crap.
I think the larger lesson here is stay the hell out of craft stores. Somewhere Zach agrees.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
NYC.2
So we're back. Nine days of walking, eating and inundation of all kinds. Kind of awesome. Kind of great to be home.
There are two main components to my trip. The facts: what, where, when. And then what it all *means.* I'm torn between the two yet one can't exist without the other. I had this great plan of really sectioning off ideas but a lot of my posts this week will be big blurs.
New York was different than I expected partially because I expected it to be so different. This is what's interesting about New York. Little is surprising. Awe inspiring, overwhelming, frustrating, yes, but if you watch TV or movies you've seen New York. You know New York. You may not realize you do but you do.
What New York has is scale. There is just more of everything. More Portland Hipsters. More black people. More Thai restaurants. I feel like the culture that New York has is Portland culture...just with 8 million people. New York's originality isn't built on some uniqueness bread from the city itself. It's just the result of being...bigger.
My favorite parts of New York (beyond like the museums and galleries) were the parts that most reminded me of gentrified Portland. I hate to say it but I like the places that are probably the worst on poor people. Then on the other side of this, I liked the parts of NYC that I haven't seen a million times on every television show ever. I liked Queens (OK Ugly Betty, whatever Andrea :) I liked Brighten Beach.
Brighten Beach is one express metro stop from Coney Island and is full of Russians. It's like stepping off a plane. Signs are in Cyrillic. Everything in the little grocery stores are labeled in Cyrillic. Don't read Cyrillic? Well then you guess. And guess we did. When we were ordering from a deli counter and trying to ask what didn't have meat in it the lady helping us actually called over another employee who spoke better English. Finally I said "w/o meat" in Slovak and it was close enough to Russian to cause them to look first surprised, then laugh, then shake their heads "no." But holy hell, they made poppy seed cake like my host moms in Slovakia. What a treat.
Queens was the only place in NYC where we saw a mixing of race. Manhattan has people of all colors, but those people all fall down particular slots like those coin machines we had as children. Drop in a dime and it slides into the dime column. Drop in a nickel and it goes to a different, nickel, column. Once Zach pointed out that it was only young black men who stood on guard for camera flashes inside the museums did that become radiantly clear. And it was everywhere. Although even in Queens Zach said all the dish washers in the Thai restaurant were Latinos. But it felt different somehow. In Manhattan, black people and white people ride the elevator together but all the black people might as well get off at one floor of the building while the white people continue on up. To continue the analogies: Queens felt like tossed salad. Much of NYC felt like people lived parallel lives never to touch.
This was in part why Queens was amazing. There were little neighborhoods of influence (Indians above a certain street number, central americans below a certain street number) but people seemed to be actually living together. Whether or not there are racial tensions, that may be a whole different issue. But it felt different than Manhattan.
Also what I loved about Queens and Brighten Beach is that people actually LIVED there. Williamsburg (birth place of the dark rimmed classes and the hipster) and parts of the Lower East Side had an average age of probably 24. A whole micro civilization of 24 year olds. But in Brighten Beach and Queens there were people, gasp, in their 40s and 50s and 60s. (Hell in Brighten Beach the average age was probably 60 and that's just because I saw a few babies that pull the scale from all the 70 year olds.) People grocery shopping. People going to and from work. Not that people don't go to and from work in Manhattan or Williamsburg or Prospect Park but it wasn't like you'd think there must be a college 2 blocks away.
I think the fact that real people with real families made those areas not only interesting but accessible. A lot of New York wasn't accessible to me. Like a piece of art work you don't connect with. You can look at it and break it down technically but that thing that connects you with it emotionally isn't there. I think this would change if I lived there. I know a lot of my perspective comes from making snap judgments on first impressions.
There are two main components to my trip. The facts: what, where, when. And then what it all *means.* I'm torn between the two yet one can't exist without the other. I had this great plan of really sectioning off ideas but a lot of my posts this week will be big blurs.
New York was different than I expected partially because I expected it to be so different. This is what's interesting about New York. Little is surprising. Awe inspiring, overwhelming, frustrating, yes, but if you watch TV or movies you've seen New York. You know New York. You may not realize you do but you do.
What New York has is scale. There is just more of everything. More Portland Hipsters. More black people. More Thai restaurants. I feel like the culture that New York has is Portland culture...just with 8 million people. New York's originality isn't built on some uniqueness bread from the city itself. It's just the result of being...bigger.
My favorite parts of New York (beyond like the museums and galleries) were the parts that most reminded me of gentrified Portland. I hate to say it but I like the places that are probably the worst on poor people. Then on the other side of this, I liked the parts of NYC that I haven't seen a million times on every television show ever. I liked Queens (OK Ugly Betty, whatever Andrea :) I liked Brighten Beach.
Brighten Beach is one express metro stop from Coney Island and is full of Russians. It's like stepping off a plane. Signs are in Cyrillic. Everything in the little grocery stores are labeled in Cyrillic. Don't read Cyrillic? Well then you guess. And guess we did. When we were ordering from a deli counter and trying to ask what didn't have meat in it the lady helping us actually called over another employee who spoke better English. Finally I said "w/o meat" in Slovak and it was close enough to Russian to cause them to look first surprised, then laugh, then shake their heads "no." But holy hell, they made poppy seed cake like my host moms in Slovakia. What a treat.
Queens was the only place in NYC where we saw a mixing of race. Manhattan has people of all colors, but those people all fall down particular slots like those coin machines we had as children. Drop in a dime and it slides into the dime column. Drop in a nickel and it goes to a different, nickel, column. Once Zach pointed out that it was only young black men who stood on guard for camera flashes inside the museums did that become radiantly clear. And it was everywhere. Although even in Queens Zach said all the dish washers in the Thai restaurant were Latinos. But it felt different somehow. In Manhattan, black people and white people ride the elevator together but all the black people might as well get off at one floor of the building while the white people continue on up. To continue the analogies: Queens felt like tossed salad. Much of NYC felt like people lived parallel lives never to touch.
This was in part why Queens was amazing. There were little neighborhoods of influence (Indians above a certain street number, central americans below a certain street number) but people seemed to be actually living together. Whether or not there are racial tensions, that may be a whole different issue. But it felt different than Manhattan.
Also what I loved about Queens and Brighten Beach is that people actually LIVED there. Williamsburg (birth place of the dark rimmed classes and the hipster) and parts of the Lower East Side had an average age of probably 24. A whole micro civilization of 24 year olds. But in Brighten Beach and Queens there were people, gasp, in their 40s and 50s and 60s. (Hell in Brighten Beach the average age was probably 60 and that's just because I saw a few babies that pull the scale from all the 70 year olds.) People grocery shopping. People going to and from work. Not that people don't go to and from work in Manhattan or Williamsburg or Prospect Park but it wasn't like you'd think there must be a college 2 blocks away.
I think the fact that real people with real families made those areas not only interesting but accessible. A lot of New York wasn't accessible to me. Like a piece of art work you don't connect with. You can look at it and break it down technically but that thing that connects you with it emotionally isn't there. I think this would change if I lived there. I know a lot of my perspective comes from making snap judgments on first impressions.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
NYC.1
I just finished watching an episode on Hulu. This could be any Sunday night. But it isn't...because I'm in Brooklyn.
Zach's and my host, Lin, are currently at an Eat the Easter Bunny dinner party. I love the sentiment and in that they are Lin's friends you know they are going to be great people, but there is only so much New York City that the brain can handle some days. And so tonight I am staying in with the comfort of internet TV and thinking.
I can admit to this: I wanted to fall in love with New York. Part of me still fights this idea that I should be somewhere big. New York. Los Angeles. It doesn't matter what you do in NYC, just the fact that you are in NYC gives you a credibility. Since whenever I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker I've thought of myself on some level in New York. And perhaps that has been the most fascinating part of my time here. NYC hasn't swept me off my feet like people say she will. I find her fascinating in ways I never expected but on some level I feel she is overhyped. Not that she doesn't deserve awe, but awe with a footnote.
So first a few brief details. Zach and I are staying with our friend Lin and his boyfriend Mark. They have a beautiful apartment in Prospect Park Brooklyn. Lin informs me that Mark is responsible for the incredible design inside their apartment, and we've bonded a wee bit over vintage wallpaper. They are marvelous people and we couldn't ask for better hosts. I seriously can't say enough positive things about these two.
We have been moving at high speeds since we landed on Friday afternoon. The weather rushes between beautiful but windy as fuck to Oregon style rain. Yesterday was downright miserable weather wise. Today was spectacularly clear but cold. Another NY friend gave us good advice when he said that the weather is always colder than it says on weather.com because it never accounts for the wind. That was 100% true today.
I have a lot of thoughts and they will come out in bits and pieces here. There will be overlap. They will be both short and long. But I find NY over stimulating. I know I've only been here a few days but I don't find that it's inspiring creativity within me. There is so much hitting the senses all the time that there are times in the day when literally my depth perception dims. I mentioned this to Lin and he knew exactly what I was talking about. At some point you reach sensory overload and your brain says, "No more."
I think I'd love being here for design and art, but not for story telling. Not for film. That part of my creativity hates this place. Bristles defensively at it. The design part of me explodes with joy at every piece of lovely iron work and every new boutique shop. There is so much I could learn here with the museums and the galleries and all of that. But I really just don't feel that way instinctually about filmmaking here. (I'm saying this all for me personally. Different people react creativity to different circumstances.) I feel like New York tells the same stories. Not that there aren't other stories to tell but that the same ones get told here. Whereas I feel that new art can be created here. I still need to think on this and maybe my opinion will change but right now, that's my impression.
I could go on here for hours but I need to spend the bit of time I have left alone here tonight reorganizing my suitcase. It's no big surprise that I've taken over the corner in which I planted.
Tomorrow Zach and I have to say goodbye to Lin and Mark (who apparently have jobs during the week) and take a boat ride around Manhattan (thank you Mom and Dad) and then hopefully explore the museums that close Tuesday and Wednesday. Good lord we will have seen a lot of museums. That will be a post in and of itself.
Zach's and my host, Lin, are currently at an Eat the Easter Bunny dinner party. I love the sentiment and in that they are Lin's friends you know they are going to be great people, but there is only so much New York City that the brain can handle some days. And so tonight I am staying in with the comfort of internet TV and thinking.
I can admit to this: I wanted to fall in love with New York. Part of me still fights this idea that I should be somewhere big. New York. Los Angeles. It doesn't matter what you do in NYC, just the fact that you are in NYC gives you a credibility. Since whenever I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker I've thought of myself on some level in New York. And perhaps that has been the most fascinating part of my time here. NYC hasn't swept me off my feet like people say she will. I find her fascinating in ways I never expected but on some level I feel she is overhyped. Not that she doesn't deserve awe, but awe with a footnote.
So first a few brief details. Zach and I are staying with our friend Lin and his boyfriend Mark. They have a beautiful apartment in Prospect Park Brooklyn. Lin informs me that Mark is responsible for the incredible design inside their apartment, and we've bonded a wee bit over vintage wallpaper. They are marvelous people and we couldn't ask for better hosts. I seriously can't say enough positive things about these two.
We have been moving at high speeds since we landed on Friday afternoon. The weather rushes between beautiful but windy as fuck to Oregon style rain. Yesterday was downright miserable weather wise. Today was spectacularly clear but cold. Another NY friend gave us good advice when he said that the weather is always colder than it says on weather.com because it never accounts for the wind. That was 100% true today.
I have a lot of thoughts and they will come out in bits and pieces here. There will be overlap. They will be both short and long. But I find NY over stimulating. I know I've only been here a few days but I don't find that it's inspiring creativity within me. There is so much hitting the senses all the time that there are times in the day when literally my depth perception dims. I mentioned this to Lin and he knew exactly what I was talking about. At some point you reach sensory overload and your brain says, "No more."
I think I'd love being here for design and art, but not for story telling. Not for film. That part of my creativity hates this place. Bristles defensively at it. The design part of me explodes with joy at every piece of lovely iron work and every new boutique shop. There is so much I could learn here with the museums and the galleries and all of that. But I really just don't feel that way instinctually about filmmaking here. (I'm saying this all for me personally. Different people react creativity to different circumstances.) I feel like New York tells the same stories. Not that there aren't other stories to tell but that the same ones get told here. Whereas I feel that new art can be created here. I still need to think on this and maybe my opinion will change but right now, that's my impression.
I could go on here for hours but I need to spend the bit of time I have left alone here tonight reorganizing my suitcase. It's no big surprise that I've taken over the corner in which I planted.
Tomorrow Zach and I have to say goodbye to Lin and Mark (who apparently have jobs during the week) and take a boat ride around Manhattan (thank you Mom and Dad) and then hopefully explore the museums that close Tuesday and Wednesday. Good lord we will have seen a lot of museums. That will be a post in and of itself.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Peanuts, Pretzels and Time on Your Hands
I've got to think of things to do on the plane. Zach has been scouring over the regulations and we've determined that while theoretically it's OK for me to bring my great pair of craft scissors (b/c while they are metal tips they are still under 4") we both know that inevitably, they'd be taken away. And then I'm out a great pair of scissors.
But imagine the stuff I could get done if I had them!
*sigh* Damn you rules that don't actually do anything! Also my entire life is going to be squeezed into 3oz bottles. We, and everyone else who wants to avoid the $15 price tag, are doing strictly carry on. I know, this makes some of you who have seen my room laugh but I'm confident I can do it. I may be cold, wet and terribly ridiculous looking the entire week but what's great about a city of x million? No one knows me.
OK, I take that back. There are approximately 5 people who know me and inevitably I will run into every one of them looking cold, wet and ridiculous but damn it, I'll just throw the $15 in diet coke I've spent that day at them and run away.
(Or gives hugs...whatever.)
But imagine the stuff I could get done if I had them!
*sigh* Damn you rules that don't actually do anything! Also my entire life is going to be squeezed into 3oz bottles. We, and everyone else who wants to avoid the $15 price tag, are doing strictly carry on. I know, this makes some of you who have seen my room laugh but I'm confident I can do it. I may be cold, wet and terribly ridiculous looking the entire week but what's great about a city of x million? No one knows me.
OK, I take that back. There are approximately 5 people who know me and inevitably I will run into every one of them looking cold, wet and ridiculous but damn it, I'll just throw the $15 in diet coke I've spent that day at them and run away.
(Or gives hugs...whatever.)
Sunday, April 5, 2009
NYC
I have been looking forward to our trip but there were so many piles (actual and brain wise) between us and it that I hadn't yet gotten excited. Well, it's amazing what finding a museum with a wallcoverings exhibit can do to you. WALLCOVERINGS!!!! Holy crap. Get me on that plane and fly me east. NOW! This same museum has textile and graphic design exhibits as well.
Seriously.
SERIOUSLY.
OK, I'm embarrassing myself.
In other news, today is the last performance of Chicago. I've had a great time doing it and am happy to have met such cool people. I will also revel in having our evenings and weekends again.
WALLCOVERINGS!
Seriously.
SERIOUSLY.
OK, I'm embarrassing myself.
In other news, today is the last performance of Chicago. I've had a great time doing it and am happy to have met such cool people. I will also revel in having our evenings and weekends again.
WALLCOVERINGS!
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