The Playground:

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

The large playground stood tall in the back yard, shaded by an expansive oak tree.  It was for me whatever I desired.  It was at times a ship, and I the captain of the voyage. Or a clubhouse in which the operations and members were dictated by myself.  It was all but what it was intended to be.  In it I was far from the reality I knew.  I had responsibilities, but of a different kind, taking root in that of basic survival.  Just me and the land. My goals were clear and the means by which to complete them were as well.  In my shape shifting vessel, I could escape the clouded ambiguity of “ the daily grind”

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, … himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.

transformation is key……In body and mind.  A degeneration of sorts in body can mean epiphany of mind.  When you remove the human form, and such responsibilities expected of one in possession of this form, what is left?

change is not a handicap after all……..

Default Moods

He was always slow moving, calculated.  An admirable quality.  He made few mistakes, and when he made them, he would come up with a logical solution, but worry and anxiety found a way to flood into his thoughts because of the large discrepancy in the time it took him to put into action what he had been contemplating.

I kissed him and he gathered his thoughts.  I’d thrown his balance out of whack.  He had to understand his feelings for me.

He always had to understand, never impulsive.  We spoke on the phone and he searched, always searched for something to say.

One day I told him I loved him, I think I did, or maybe thought I did….he put so much on this phrase….I don’t know that I did.  To him it was a magical presence to thrust you from reality into perfection…perhaps it was, but he spent so long trying to measure what we had against this criteria.

A perfect moment to murmur the words, an unmistakable assurance of its presence, an absolute…….So long he waited for these things, and even if they came, they would never occur simultaneously.

He was a talented musician.  He would spend hours perfectly crafting his songs, the wrong note, wrong sound practically pained him.  he applied this logic to all.  Why couldn’t the depth of human emotion be as easily understood as the perfect combination of sounds to his musically inclined ears?

When finally he acknowledged his love for me, my love for him was already fading.  As much as I wanted it back, grasped for it, pleaded with myself to feel what I had felt for him.  I could not.

Life is short.  A phrase we have all heard at one point or another rings especially true for me. Illness brought me my greatest reminder of this, and I have been living by it in ever aspect of my life ever since. I am not condoning blind or reckless impulsiveness and I am not downplaying the tremendous benefits of logical and calculated behavior. I choose only to live by this phrase and exude it in my every action.

Part I

The song Jacques Lamure by of Montreal is one that particularly stood out to me in exploring what particular atmosphere the song brings about through both lyrics and sound because I think it presents a sort of discrepancy in the two.  The lyrics present Jacques Lamure in multiple scenarios in which he is a volunteer fireman one in which he is a foreman at a clock factory, he presents their surface goals, aspirations, desires.  He alludes to their infatuation with surface value and monotony as their goals are targeted at rather trivial things.  It is evident that he views this in a negative light.  He is presenting in the song a sort of archetype for male impotency.  What is interesting to me is the upbeat sound which is paired with the lyrics, they are sort of mocking the ideas presented within the song.  They are blissful and almost sickeningly optimistic, they act as a sort of commentary on the content within the lyrics.

Part II

Battling cancer provided me with a rather distinct collection of experiences and thus steered my communication in a distinct direction as well.  I used to call it apathy, but I prefer now to view it as something different.  There is a negative connotation paired with apathy so I prefer to see it in a more positive manner. I seem to have the ability to see things in a light not entirely clouded by he value systems relied on daily.  I tend to get past what is most commonly dwelled on or contemplated to something raw.  Something that often makes all else feel trivial.  I feel that we are all capable of doing this and I am sure I did this before my disease as well, but I find it to be a more natural inclination for me afterwards.  I called this apathy at first because I found myself caring less for what I used to care about whether it used to elicit negative or positive feelings, but in a sense this was almost the opposite of apathy, because what I did experience was powerful, an immense force which drives me.  Because I find myself less mindful of the constructs which once guided me, I sometimes find the direction of this “immense force” within me difficult to discern. I know though that it takes the form of passion.  I was often told that My words were “ wise beyond their years.” I have spoken at a number of charity events and family events and in this sense I often act as the representative voice of my particular community.  I offer new perspectives and outlook that continues to help myself and others keep focus on the true derivatives of passion and meaning.

In my education and career direction, this ability takes its form in my writing.   At first this insight was overwhelming to me, too raw to incorporate into my writing.  So for a time I stopped writing, but now it works its way into my writing allowing my passion to seep into my every word.  Because as I said early, the direction of the passion is rather ambiguous, this form is often evident in my writing, it is often sporadic and emotion packed. I view it as an art form, expressing without the conversion that oral communication takes, emotion and insight in its purest forms.  Its structure, its wording all tools in the message I convey.

In the entertainment sector, I often see this uninterrupted means conveying emotion or experience. I’ve always had an immense love for music.  A beautiful song can make me cry more than anything else.  I have found my emotions dulled in many areas, but music is certainly not one of them.  This to me is the closest equivalent to raw passion.

Another reoccurring concept that I noticed was drawing a sort of order or balance from chaos.  This is evident through the formatting as well as the writing within both projects.  As far as the formatting goes, my inclusion of multiple forms of media as well as a series of pages( this predominantly true of the second project) shows my tendency towards this particular chaos, but how a cohesive story still emerges from it.  I think of balance when I look at the two projects, often what I write and express through these documentations is the concept of balance, a coming together of asymmetric parts.

frequently occurring words or ideas: permanence, caution, balance-these are concepts which I noticed visited in both projects, I notice often my tendency to view caution/reluctance or an over reliance on rational to be a shortcoming.  It is perhaps for this reason that I tend to rely more on fragmented or chaotic logic.

The concept of quilting is one which stuck with me from recent class readings.  I think it imperative as a writing tactic in the form of high concept and I think it a perfect metaphor for how what we gather from four dimensions of our pop cycle come together in a poignant manner.

The stitching of the quilt is what brings it all together.  This would be our attunement our particular state of mind.  The schemas we hold.  The discourses are held in tact by such and reinterpreted and applied in the form of values and rational thinking.  All aspects of this quilt are nonsensical apart, useless, but come together as a cohesive whole.    These seemingly disconnected parts have only their connection to me in common and with these parts I weave together a being and create a significance through interconnection and chora.

The quilt is an important visual for me because it highlights terms such as syncratism, interface metaphor, and conductive logic.  Coming back to my virtual quilt I can see the root of thought development for myself, much of which comes back to the images in the quilt. The aspects come together to create something greater than its individual parts (experience). and their synthesis embodies all that works to create my perception of the world I encounter.

I chose this music video, because I believe the idea of a house of cards parallels the idea of my fathers value or belief system, and the idea of forgetting about it when convenient, or in the case of the song, for the keys in the bowl party demonstrates the hypocrisy of the belief system.

This video kind of reminded me of the second presentation today and the idea of the function of reading being separate from that of literacy.

This is a good excuse to use photoshop and not feel like I am wasting my time! I like to use image overlay especially for the sake of our project because I think it does a good job to set the atmosphere or tone of the picture.  So I thought I would share these two.

jus playing around with my camera and decided hey, why not put this up on my blog.

This is the trailer for ODDSAC, A visual album which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26.  It is a collaboration of Danny Perez who directed and music by Animal collective.  I am interested to see the final product.