I haven’t really been writing lately. Not writing can be either harrowing or comforting, and it seems to be more of a comfort these days. Publishing things always escalates them.
Of course, I must always reiterate that writing gives people power over you.
And I’m not sure if I want to give people that kind of power anymore. I’m not in the mood to talk about what’s been going on the past few months. I don’t think I could really concieve of the kind of reunification of truths that would entail. Reconciling each individual truth into some kind of patchwork pseudotruth seems to be more and more of what I do by writing, and it’s a bit too quixotic of an escapade to take seriously.
All truth is subjective. And my flavor of truth is often unpalatable.
I’m feeling really great about being in school again. It’s so fun to load up my canvases and oils and crap and head down to the school. I went to Utrecht yesterday and ended up spending like $120, but I did get my supplies for like nearly all semester.
I got this HUGE canvas bag so I can take my canvases to school. I just bought this contraption online to keep them from getting messed up (it holds a blank canvas opposite the unfinished one to prevent it getting all smudged and messed up from the inside of my bag rubbing against it).
My teacher puts a really big emphasis on sketching, something that I never really felt motivated to do. But after doing it for a bunch of days, it’s really interesting… using your mind to capture the world around you. In the class, we are going to have to do about seven pages of drawing a week… so that’s going to require me to reallocate my time a little bit to fit in a few hours of drawing a day.
The first volume of my printed blog showed up when I got home, and it looks awesome. The cover design is so-so (I used their tools because I didn’t want to go through the trouble of designing a PDF to their specifications with the book sight-unseen), but the printing inside is just perfection. I’m flipping through it now… on this day in 2003 I was listening to Placebo and Basement Jaxx and talking to this guy named John Matthew from the Philippines about American foreign policy.
It’s odd to know things like that with such certainty.
I’m thinking a lot about the cover designs for at the 2004 editions (which I will devote a lot of time to), and I don’t have a lot of photos from that point in my life. I’ll have to read some articles from that point and get a feeling of what I should include on the cover. Probably something about The Drift, and something about graduating high school.
Last night I watched Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Petit Soldat (The Little Soldier). I absolutely love Anna Karina, the female lead. She was just beyond hot. It said in the director’s commentary that she ended up dating and collaborating with Jean-Luc Godard on a few other movies, which I must immediately add to my queue. Le Petit Soldat was Godard’s first movie after Breathless, and I can see how he in was actively working to not be (for lack of a better word) typecasted into doing the kind of film that Breathless was.
Also, Le Petit Soldat was banned in France for like three years, so he must’ve accomplished something. There’s this incredibly charged scene where the main character is taking photos of the female lead, she’s pretending to be like an actress or a model, and he keeps asking her these probing questions. Towards the end of the shoot, he says “Photography is truth. Cinema is truth 24 times a second.” Hot.
The film sort of lost focus towards the end, but with such a complicated plot it was kind of inevitable.
I finished Camus’ The Fall on the train ride back from San Francisco…I hate to say it, but it was so unremarkable, I almost forgot that I read until I found it in the bottom of my backpack. I felt like it was a third-rate Nausea. I’ll have to pick up The Myth of Sisyphus to renew my faith in Camus.
Wow, I just read that Amy Goodman was arrested… way to go, police state. I can’t wait until I get my bachelor’s and then I am moving to Geneva.
Christen and I have been trying to hatch this plan to go to New York for Christmas, it doesn’t really seem like it’s going to happen. I won’t have the money for like another month, and I have other expenses so would probably be a month and a half at the least and tickets will be much more expensive by then. But we will see. I think I’m mostly feeling apprehensive because I just had to spend a whole bunch of money on art supplies for my class. Once I settle into the swing of things I think I will be able to save up some money.
What I want to do is not tell my mom that I’m coming and then show up on Christmas Day. Wouldn’t that be fucking awesome! She would freak out, it would be awesome.
But yeah…the endless question of money. I need to work 8 hours or more every day that I’m on the clock, and maybe ask about putting in some time from home on days I have class.
I have to reiterate that I am still totally in love with my N95. The built-in Internet calling means that I never have to waste my minutes if I’m near WiFi, which is 99% of the time. Full Internet browsing with YouTube, the 5MP camera w/flash, 8GB of storage…it’s friggin’ awesome.
It’s September, so I get to start refreshing my online portfolio. Parsons wants 8-12 pieces which demonstrate a mastery of design across multiple mediums. I’m hoping some of the things I create in my painting class will give me a few more items for my portfolio.
I’d better get out and jog before I have to head to class.
Categories: Ennui
