30 December 2010

the insider scoop

Let me tell you a bit about my family and then you will never ever wonder about my behavior ever again. My mom won a drawing for office supplies so for Christmas we all received paper clips or binder clips. We also all got slide whistles which commenced an odd chorus of swoopy tunes and rattles.

Today I receive the following voicemail from my father who was upstairs in the same house as me: "Well, you may never forget me, but I've already forgotten you. Goodbye."

Tonight, as my sister–who was heading up the stairs to bed and was not discussing musical instruments in any way shape or form with me, her sister, who was becoming frustrated with an on-line job application (aren't they supposed to be simpler?)–says, "P.S. Have I ever told you I own an electric guitar?"
Me: (surprised) Whaaat?
My sister: I own an electric guitar. Good night.

21 December 2010

20 December 2010

year end missive.

I don't ever want to live alone. There we go, a strange thing from frequent recluse that I am, and something that I learned in July and then again, over Thanksgiving vacation. Last Thanksgiving wasn't like this. But I can't take it anymore. Which has led me to the conclusion that my 2010 new years res.–that I haven't told you much about and will continue to tell you nothing about–took on a life of its own. That can join the list of things I'm not sharing. Keeping a stiff upper lip is not a habit I always support, but this year I've got emails I've written to people but never sent. I just can't say things. Are you on that list? I don't know, I can't tell you. What I can tell you is that I'm not sure if I hate this year or if it's been the best year ever. I'm prone to the latter because I like to take charge of my life and enjoy it and some amazing things have happened (I'M AN AUNT!!!!). I am sure that stress will kill you and that God is love and I hate my stomach and I love film. I love film so much that I will take great risks to pursue it when I'm not a very daring child. Graduate school here me roar.

That's my year end report. I'm graduated, I'd rather drink orange juice than eat food, I have the cutest nephew ever, and I love you.

19 December 2010

sans school, I want to...

...make things like this:
(More New York Times. Note: I need to start reading multiple newspapers because I don't understand Republicans at all.)

Literary Underground

from sketchbook by Amy Goldwasser and Peter Arkle
One Sunday afternoon this holiday season, as the literary professionals were putting finishing touches on their year-end lists of best books, citizen critics were busy just reading. On a No. 6 train between Astor Place and 125th Street full of shopping bags and bundled-up passengers lost in books analog and digital, we asked underground readers for their reviews. (continue reading and viewing pleasurely here.)



18 December 2010

don't want to stop looking

After a band reunion at the local joint for the Christmas show, I took the long way home to see a beautiful dead dinosaur. The great old tabernacle burned down. Took them over 20 hours to put the fire out. The brick walls remain, the ceiling doesn't; it looks like it's been bombed. Something so horrific you never want to look away. It was raining all day today like heaven had mercy on the smoldering ruin.

Can we leave the skeleton up forever?

14 December 2010

now I face my cyborg

This is what I study:

"Whose vision is it? It is the vision of a computer, a cyborg, an automatic missile."

Lev Manovitch
"The Synthetic Image and Its Subject"
Film Theory and Criticism 7th edition
ed. by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen
p. 793

13 December 2010

theory of relativity part II

Read Jessica Francis Kane's Where do you find the time?
Here's a preview:

"It's occasionally been found in speeding taxis and Paris hotel rooms. Alpine meadows and mourning doves are rich in it, though can be hard to find. Forget about fountains and rainbows, they're myths. Rarely it falls from geese flying north."

Now go read it here at McSweeney's. I promise, you'll find time.


I also recommend Adele's Rolling in the Deep music vid. Found it on my lovely friend ke's blog.

12 December 2010

theory of relativity part I

December isn't what I thought it was. That's my conclusion these past few months starting in September. The weather kind of changes, I'm swept up in various different activities, I've grown –> everything has changed.

But it hasn't.

Am I not prepared?

Am I holding onto something?

Is time moving faster? (yes.)

In elementary school you have themed calendars. October becomes associated with black cats and the color orange. November is fallen leaves and little pilgrim couples in their black and white period costumes. This is clear: October is not November.

Perhaps it is this lack of distinction between months. They slip out as the next kind of wanders in without announcing itself. The calendar tells me there's something going on. November 30th. December 1st. What's different? Why has the word changed? We just went from Tuesday to Wednesday.

How do months differ?

And why does this matter?

I'm in an ambiguous soup of time. Yesterday I was laying in my hammock writing a paper about Beyonce's If I were a boy and tomorrow I will be in a cafe in Paraguay eating mbeyu. Does anyone else know this feeling? Albert Einstein studied it. Kind of.

 

11 December 2010

trying to direct bees

a preview of what's to come (it's only 21 seconds people. there was this bee in my glasses.)

trying to direct bees from Marge Bjork on Vimeo.

09 December 2010

What do you think about me waking up at 5:30 yesterday morning, laying in bed daydreaming about how I could get my PhD by the time I'm 32?

07 December 2010

some stars don't align but then the academy of motion pictures hits them over the head

and drags them back to the cave.

I don't know either.

Strangely enough, I don't like the way e e cummings reads his own poetry. How do you feel about that? I love his work but would read it entirely differently than the man who's work it is. Art history is alive.

Yes, I have listened to B.o.B's Don't let me fall on repeat since I got home from my last Monty Python class ever. Do you know I now find MP extremely comforting? If I've learned something this year it's how important silliness is. Aich (H), if we don't (a) take ourselves too seriously, (b) see a lot of terrible things, (c) make a lot of mistakes, and (u)mm... I should've stuck with three.


Three more classes, my dears.


Three classes
Some papers
Some ambiguous finals
Editing one documentary



05 December 2010

January is beginning to take shape

There once was a lady named Marge
Whose indirection weighed on her like a barge.
On the cusp of graduation,
waiting patiently for some intimation (of the future),
She inched her way towards being at large.


02 December 2010

humor in scholastic writing

and this quote:

"(Liberty, Equality, Fraternity–represented by a nude woman, since abstract ideas have feminine gender in European languages)"

-William Moritz
"Animation." The Oxford History of World Cinema
ed. by Geoffrey Knowell-Smith
Oxford University Press c. 1996
p. 273

more! so much more!

animalation

a few things I've found as a result of the work I've been doing today:

Cab Calloway dancing

and