I can't get over

these videos:





Been writin' to these songs a lot.

A 30 ans

http://gemssty.com/2008/11/22/age-10-to-60-through-make-up-photography

Thanks, Vogue Paris, for this amazing shoot. And thanks more to whomever translated the 30 yr old look.

You are living.

The other day a friend of mine was saying that the veil of everyday living was kind of lifting off him & he was really raw to the experience of being alive (he didn't say this directly, but I'm trying to sum up the conversation). If you've had this feeling you'll know what I mean. As he was talking I was looking around his room & repeating the word alive in my head, but everything I was looking at was not alive. There was just him & me in that room. Not life, I thought to the wine & the wine glass. Not life, to the table with the lamp on it. Not life to the sweater & the other sweater too.

I'd never defined objects that way. What if I judged everything around me as life & not life? I've got a lot of not life. I'm attached to a lot of things that are not life. Would it make things easier to give up? Would it make decisions easier to make? I mean, if I see things in those terms, I might be able to choose the awake alive a lot more.

And then, today, an email with the subject "You are living." Thank you for reminding me.

Makes me glad it's raining.

Don't sell yrself short

I have a friend who doubts himself tremendously. We had a conversation recently that was painfully like a conversation we had 2 years ago. He was just as paralyzed as he used to be & it was really sad for me.

I have been making little magnetic sayings out of Scrabble tiles for friends & decided I would make one for him that said Don't sell yourself short. Then I read an article about negative language & habits & realized I am one of those people that pretty solidly defines things in negative terms.

I thought I might help us both out by changing the language into something positive. While thinking about this I came across an art project titled You can have it all & thought I would send him that saying instead. Uplifting!

Maybe there is a limit to my own positivity, or maybe I knew that, like me, he desires something a little dark. After hearing Johnny Cash's rendition of Dirt in a coffeeshop & changed it to You could have it all.

But that seemed long &, well, not right. Like I was offering him something, when it had nothing to do with me. So I changed it to Risk it. A positive command.

But telling someone to risk something is different from calling attention to the fact that they consistently underestimate themselves.

So I am back to don't sell yourself short, which is dissatisfying for 3 reasons. 1) It remains negative. 2) It contains an apostrophe, which is a Scrabble impossibility (also, I generally find contractions distasteful) (really? totally). 3) In no other casual situation would I use yourself over yrself.

So what's the accurate but postive way to say don't sell yrself short?

A series is the sum of a sequence.

Went to a lecture tonight on (roughly) the curator as artist, & in the middle of taking what I like to call emotive notes (whatever pops into my head while someone's talking, whether it relates at all to what they're saying or not) I had great ideas for not one but two photobooth projects. They're both angsty & melodramatic & full of existential longing -- super typical, but, you know, where I feel comfortable. I'm hoping to gather a bunch of dollars & a big sharpie & a pal who will draw on me & do this soon. Or at least sometime.

I love photobooths anyway, but my use of them so far has been mostly standard. Sometimes I've taken pictures that move along through time, losing clothes or acting out words along the way. Those are always the most fun for me -- they have an energy & a forward motion that a regular "we make a difference face in each shot" sheet doesn't have. Photobooths are a weird & static mode of photography (& outdated as I love all my photography to be). I've been trying to think of what could be done with it. I've been trying to think of those shots less as a sequence of photos & more as a mini-series, a chance to have a narrative, a four frame movie reel. There's a message I could get across with these little strips & I'm thrilled to try.

I know this isn't that self-reflexive or revealing, but I feel cautious still.

I'm getting over it.

Be Kind: Everyone is Suffering

I saw this on a sign on my way home from the airport. I'd like to remember this all the time.

I'm not doing a very good job of winning you back.

If I could sing I would sing myself out of myself, sing myself impossibly small.