5 Sams

I had a realization today.

I'd been having a really hard time finding the turning point in the play, as there isn't a very clear change written in. After reading some more about Ulysses, and looking at Sam and Jewel much closer, I realized that Sam's arch is during the 5 Sams part, where she is able to finally bare her soul to another human being, even if just a small fraction of it. Today I realized that we see the manifestation of Sam's soul through Jewel, and thus in her words. It is her poem that we hear of Sam's soul - and finally her artistic block (which has been her epic flaw since a young girl) is broken through. This is able to happen because she finally has found some kind of compassionate maternal figure she can listen to and be inspired by. (And if anyone knows about Ulysses, this whole idea should match up to some extent.)

So basically, the 5 Sams part is really important. And I'm really glad all of the actors are a part of it.

As Promised on Sunday

So I've been attempting to make this into a Youtube video, but after a number of processing run-ins, I finally was able to upload it.

And an hour later it was taken down for being too long. What the fuck.

So here it is, on Vimeo. Because they're cool and don't have ridiculous content restrictions.

This was done for the 48-hour film festival in the summer of 2009 with a group led by Nivan, who directed, as well as a number of characters that some of you will know.

The first 4 minutes is just a kind of warm-up, which is usually how I begin things, noodling around and seeing what notes and intervals I'm liking. If you're getting bored with that, feel free to skip to the loud parts. But this will get people to know what to expect if I am to come in and improvise during a rehearsal or two.

Enjoy, and feedback is always appreciated. Even if you hate it.


P.S. - I really want to be able to play during a rehearsal. Just making sure you know.

rhythm and hope

First off let me say wow, what a great design meeting we had today. Thanks y'all for being so present and absolutely inspiring!

I just watched Jónsi's newest video for his sharp, happily rhythmic "Animal Arithmetic". I never really liked this song before, but the video put a completely different perspective on not only the essence of the song, but the rhythm and quality of the music. And what is a great music video if it doesn't challenge our understanding and increase our appreciation of the music.

Anyway, here it is:

animal arithmetic from Jónsi on Vimeo.

I love the use of perspective in this video. It creates such an intimate feel, not only with the people in the video, but also with the instruments, and thus the music.

Jónsi always does such a wonderful job with rhythm, and that continues over into his videos. I found while watching this video that even when the rhythm slows in the middle of this song, the energy still holds the same intensity, just waiting to be released. I can't remember what kind of energy that is, scientifically (kinetic is which kind?) and I'm too on a roll right now to look it up, but it is a concept that is very important in theatre as well as music. I stress this concept in rehearsals, especially with the Viewpoints work.


This idea of intimacy specifically applies when discussing how we can create the club scene. Specifically, what will the projection of the bodies look like (I would think using the rear projector, if we have one). Another possibility is to use silhouettes, maybe even in addition to the projectors.

It would be very helpful if, eventually, we could see sketches from somebody of how all of these projections will work on the set. That might be something we want to put into the model, possibly?


Sometimes I wonder why I am so absolutely in love with these Icelanders. Then today I saw a quote about Jónsi from the New York Times that described his voice as "a messenger of ecstatic hope." And that is what this music does for me -- it can travel to the deep dark places of the soul, express the heartbreak of tragic love, and in every other way find a way to match my energy, no matter how dark, but it always has hope. Making that realization now is so completely full circle, because the one tattoo I have is of the last line from "Viðrar vel til loftárása" (a Sigur Rós song off of their album Ágætis byrjun):

the best thing god has created is the new day.



Hope.

Truth lies behind every window

CLAREMONT by Lewis Baltz, 1973

1. Riding on the brown line towards home, the sun set into darkness. A high rise apartment passed by; my reflection in the window. Dead City... dead city... The train rolled on. Then my reflection in a more distant window described a smaller 'me'. An even further window set me back to nearly tiny. I was enticed by my self's alteration because of the moving train.

It led me to sketch an image of the receding window; considering the great variation in scale that is, consequently, based on where one is situated... to the massive expansion of a city GRID. Look at one from where the clouds float, and see how slight they do seem.

- creating depth by layers of flat surfaces.

2. I'm working on a project currently for my Puppetry class in which I have taken an old window frame, sans the glass, stretched a paper across, and painted a sea-scape. In the corner of the canvas, a smaller metal frame contains a silhouette of a sailboat that is held 'afloat' by a magnet on the other side of the paper. The magnet can then be moved from the back of the paper to move the sail boat across the 'ocean'.

I like the image of something defined entirely by it's contour, but also captured in a constructed box, that can travel within a larger plane. People seem to be doing that every day just by walking around. All the trials and memories and thoughts come along the the body, wherever it may go.

- pane inside a pane. box in a box.

3. From looking at the places that Sam finds herself throughout the day, I began to explore the arc of this play.

sc. 1 - "apartment" is home.
sc. 2 - "street corner" is a traffic place.
sc. 3 - "spa" is a relaxing place.
sc. 4 - "cemetery" is a reverent place.
sc. 5 - "office" is a busy place.
sc. 6 - "eating establishment" is a fancy place, as well as a replenishing place.
sc. 7 - "library" is a quiet place + exploratory place.
sc. 8 - collision of all places : a turning point.
sc. 9 - "internet cafe" is a virtual place.
sc. 10 - "subway" is a traveling place.
sc. 11 - "basement bar" is a dark place.
sc. 12 - "nearby Hudson" is the closest we come to a nature place.
sc. 13 - "maternity ward" is a birth/creation place.
sc. 14 - "night club" is a chaos place.
sc. 15 - "taxi" is a homeward bound place.
sc. 16 - "apartment" once again.
sc. 17 - "bed" is a safe place.

In the beginning, the places she visits have clearer definitions of accepted social interaction, but as the day progresses, we move into more abstraction of the certainties. Sam leaves her home and moves through her day externally to find understanding of her self internally.

- exterior search for clarity within.

We live behind windows that can reflect light from the outside, and radiate light from the inside. As the sun sets, the illumination of the inner grows brighter and stronger.


Questions:
What is in between? Where is the portal that leads us from one flat plane to another? Is there something more 3-dimensional by the end of this play? Maybe we travel from flatness to greater depth.

Words:
journey. unreal. numbness. blur. books. rows. real. refound. surrounded.
libraries are a lot like cities. books get lost like people: mis-ordered, mis-shelved but eventually rediscovered.

a link to some beautiful natural photography : M.F. Wolik
The sand images seem somehow fitting -

We should make a trailer

I would really love to explore the idea of making a promotional trailer. I don't think any directing project has ever done that before, and I think it would just be a really cool thing to do, and something that I would love to have in my portfolio. We could use the music Kevin will have composed, and use some of the video Nivan has taken, as well as some of the videos I took while in New York City. I know Nivan doesn't want to be the one making it, but I would be willing to do it, and would love if anyone else wanted to help out. I might also talk to one of my film friends. I want to not show any kind of scene, but more the setting and overall feel of the play. Maybe have some lines recorded and put in with the music. I'm thinking it would start with a sunrise. Maybe I'll go out and film the sun rising over Lake Michigan. Let me know what y'all think.

If you have 30 minutes of downtime

So I originally wrote this really long post on Friday/Saturday which I figured I did not want you all to suffer through. I had no clue how to concisely show what kind of music I like to make or how my mind operates...and then it came to me! I already did this once, about 2 years ago for a class (Reviewing the Arts). It was actually more of an artistic philosophy than a catalog of influences, potato tomato. But I'll splice in some concrete things for your listening and viewing enjoyment.

Here goes:
I create to challenge. I create music to fill and displace the stale basement air. In my best moments, I dig to find the truth that eludes conventional and, in some cases, sane thought processes. I was raised to be a devil’s advocate, a trait that drives my creative impulses and takes both serious and playful forms.

Art should be improvised—a moment of self-documentation and unbridled truth. Whatever the medium, the art exists as much (or even more) in the creation as the finished product. And as a performance artist, I find the greatest reward in the constant search. I stay nomadic, finding a new path every time I walk towards at an instrument. Improvisation is an experiment of metaphysical scientists being carried out in filthy laboratories. The goal of these experiments is therapy, indicating that the performance or creation of an object provides relief and greater meaning for the creator; an external meditation, a fermenting howl. Only after the artist finds a greater satisfaction should the audience even be recognized.

Music remains my expression of choice, although I have heard the more polarizing words ‘sound’ and ‘noise’ used to describe my work. I do not always agree with, but fully understand, these epithets, as I strive to erase many of the assumed limitations and rules of music while I am playing an instrument. The presumed ‘correct’ way to treat a guitar, proper technique on piano, and commonalities of Western music—they all choke the purity of raw creativity.

Instruments are only imperfect interfaces that musicians use to communicate their idealistic visions of sound. As the tool is inherently imperfect, everything I hear will always come up short. Knowing this, I search for new ways to fail, hopefully corrupting sound into something completely detached from my preconceptions.

So, thats something. I took out two paragraphs of that because I don't completely agree with them, so, excuse the choppiness. But concrete influences...I guess there's this paragraph, which I changed in the final version.

I would love to claim these ideas as my own, but it must be obvious that these ideas come from a very recognizable selection of artists that came before me. My curiosity about the realm of chance was undoubtedly inspired by 20^th-century visionary John Cage. He, more than any other artist, pushed to challenge the social assumptions of what ‘music’ is. I find the never-at-rest and aptly named band Sonic Youth and minimalist composer Steve Reich to be some of the most forward-thinking musical artists of our times. Not only do they create beautiful and fulfilling soundscapes, they do so by turning the meaning of limitation on its head. Outside of music, I have been a followed and believed in George Carlin since my teenage years. After my parents showed me Carlin on Campus, I have found courage to never take my consciousness for granted. Most of the musical product of punk usually disappoints me, but the immediacy and the energetic masochism of the creative process is a force I can connect with. But, more than all of these, I am driven by the search for one pure experience.

So yeah, I'm fueled by confusion and anger and restrictions and paradoxes and noise and societal rebellion and all that. It's all therapy, as I said in the writing. Basically, I begin to go crazy when I don't play music or use my creativity.

Here are some listening/viewing favorites

This first one is a clip of the first time I ever heard Sonic Youth, which became my favorite band almost instantly:

On Friday, I saw a show at the Empty Bottle, the artist was a guy who goes by his last name, Fennesz. He is an ambient/minimalist musician who uses technology as his slave. I've seen enough people with laptops on stage (zzzzzz...), clicking away and processing samples, but I've never seen anyone show a level of complete mastery like I saw Friday. It was a seamless 75-minute set that built slowly to an explosive climax--an extremely sexual performance. Twists and turns and beauty and passion and tension. And then, complete immersion. I'm having a really hard time choosing clips that do the sound quality justice, but here's one that seems passable:

This became pretty long anyways, but that's usually how I do things. GET USED TO IT

Inspire

What i find inspiring in all this is the way light in all of these various places differs from each other. I get inspired by realistic things that can play with each other. Light is a living thing that can be explored as much or as little as we choose. These places offer light of all different shapes and sizes. Soft and sweet as well as rigid strict and focused. Different light can give different feeling to a show and this difference can add or take away from the show. Playing with the realism and surrealism looks in this show makes it so that our options are endless and i look forward to playing with them.