When he came back this summer there wasn't a huge welcome. He didn't want there to be. He didn't want any party or gathering of any kind. Now that I have been gone and know what it's like to come home I must say that making an ocasion out of seeing someone might not be the best welcome. It's better to come home to people living their lives and doing what they do, so your still apart of it. Only seeing people on holidays just emphasizes the distance. So when we stood there waiting for his bag to come around the conveyer belt there was only the calming sense of home seeping in.
He stayed with us for a few days. We watched b horror movies as we had always done. My dad didn't go out as much. Infact I don't think he touched a bottle. There was dynamic in our household once again. It actually felt like a household. I felt like there was something to take care of. We agreed upon things to do instead of all running our seperate ways. So before I knew it things were back to normal. It felt like living on Main Street all over again. At a time when I felt comepletely alone and distant from all my friends I suddenly was back to where it all started. Sleep overs with Calvet. He told me how he wanted to come back and find a steady job, a girl he can live and be happy with, and a confortable place to live.
When he left a few weeks later I felt dizzy. I snaped out of it. I was back in the present with college, and hard feelings. Things were going cold again all around me. But deep down in my gut I felt warmth every time I thought of the last time I saw Calvet. He came in to grab his stuff. He was only here for about 20 minutes at the most. There was a general gratitude in the air between us and my father. I didn't expect him to leave so quickly so I had to think what can I say what can I say I can't just sit here and let him go without opening up. I've missed chances to tell people how much I care in the past and I knew I couldn't let it go. So as he walked out the front door of our apartment I yelled Calvet I'm going to miss you. He turned and said I love you too. We have been friends for at least a decade now and that was the first time I ever heard him say that. I thought about playing soccar together when we were little. I thought about going to cloverleaf mall to see movies and how the theater is no longer open. Countless orders of chinese food, pizza, and runs to blockbuster. One of my favorite memories is riding down the street on my bike with him siting on the handle bars, going to byrd park, and just siting on the bench together.
Now Calvet is in Iraq and none of us have heard a word from him. It's been months. People keep coming to me expecting me to know how to reach him. I don't know anything. Every time I think about the reality of him being over there, I just hope he's with good people, friends who understand and care about him. I don't want him to be lonely. When I think about him being alone, how young he is, and how innocent, I feel ill. My dad and I talk about how home just isn't home, Richmond aint even Richmond, without him in it. But we'll manage. I just feel like I don't know who I am sometimes thinking about life without him. He's my best friend and with him there is a part of me that outshines all the things that ultimately don't matter. Part of me that's always been there. Sometimes I wish I could be 12 again. I want Calvet to be safe. I want him to be happy. I want him to be home.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Apology
I feel bad about calling him a nihilist 2 years ago. I realized the error in it a while back. He brought up how we kind of hated one another at the end of senior year. I never hated him. I must say though I am flattered that he hated me. For him to have been so upset at my misunderstanding him, after knowing him for so long, it shows a degree of longing or better desparation on his part that contradicts the apathy I have grown acustomed to associating with him. All his inexplicable actions and moods like a pissed off girlfriend who won't tell you what's wrong until you finaly have to question if they are even a person. I wish he said something sooner, maybe that's a lot to ask, and looking back he was right all along, I agree with him now, and I like his stance. I feel victorious though in witnessing a bit of his humanity. I also take confort in knowing that I am not the only one who is overwhelmed and infuriated by his inability to make his friends see him for who he is. Hell just earlier today I admited defeat in front of my mother in my "futile attempts" to get her to understand the people, the lifestyles, the ideas, and the passions I align myself with. It is what I have come to call the invisible culture. It's not that she doesn't understand me though, it's that she only cares because I care, and that does little in geting her to see why I care. So how upset can I be, being guilty of someting I dispise when done to me, well...very upset. So I say to my friend, I apologise. I am glad my eyes are open again.
Portrait
I started a portrait of Margaret. It is so difficult. I've come over her house twice now to work on it. I wonder if Sergent ever had as hard a time working on his paintings, and how long it took, how many paintings did he have to do, before he could make it all seem so easy. Sergent is miles ahead of me right now, but I won't lie. I want to get there.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Cultivating Humanity
To best sum up my present situation is to begin with one of the final response papers I wrote in my philosophy class this semester. It is a response to a chapter titled Nietzsche's Theory of Excellence in my Dr. den Ouden's (my professor) book. The book is titled "Are Freedom and Dignity Possible".
Miguel Carter-Fisher
Hon 172
den Ouden
Nietzsche's Theory of Excellence
Reading this chapter has resolved in my mind a debate I had going on for quite some time about whether everything is connected or not with some friends of mine. I couldn't think of an argument in favor of things being interconnected that was strong enough too beat the argument that were all separate and alone. Everyone involved in this debate loathed postmodernism and I think we were so afraid that there was truth to it that we doubted our own inclinations that its false by writing it off as "nostalgia" as Camus would put it. One thing this class has taught me is that there is a definite balance. I feel at ease and comforted that I do not have to accept either extreme. We are isolated in our perceptions on some levels but still overwhelmingly connected to one another through our actions. This resolution became apparent to me when I read that Nietzsche "does not contend that there cannot be any connection between the fragments, or particularity, of meanings."
I probably have stated this in a past response but I have to bring it up again because I feel it is so appropriate to the issues we have been covering lately. My friend sean wrote that we are like snowflakes, each different and unrepeatable. He then continued by saying that snowflakes are all made out of snow and that was enough. At the time I took that was enough as in okay that is enough to get along or tolerate someone, but now I realize that enough could also mean a moral ground and mutually beneficial relationship. Sean would get depressed saying that we are only happy to help others because we get their gratitude which makes us feel good about ourselves. It seems selfish, but when I think of what you said about rejoicing in others achievements I have to wonder about whether it is really that simple. I'm starting to feel that the human condition might be what we would choose if given the choice. We are individuals and we are communities. I feel more and more that it is simply our lifestyle that blinds us from just how well balanced and good our condition can be. How can I speak truthfully about the limitations of humans ability to communicate when I myself along with many others are very guilty of not trying.
In trying I feel I can "cultivate humanity." I realize now that for so long that's what I really have been leaning towards in art. Often I told a very nihilistic friend of mine that I do not wish to do work about social change as much as I want the existence of my work to be the social change. I feel that by pursuing excellence in my crafts I can take on a responsible role in my individuality and hopefully inspire others. I know I have inspired some classmates of mine and have been pushed and inspired by them as well. It's in a way going to others to find yourself. I hope that I can continue this trend. I think from now on I will call it cultivating humanity.
I feel that one example of this is when I would come over to my dad's old high school friend Kenny's to play music every thursday night this past summer. We would all bring music and each take turns picking a song we either wrote our selves or wanted to share. They were patient and open to variety and all strived to bring their own little par to the whole. It was so rewarding emotionally and culturally. I felt that I had commonality and place. I want to be with the openly passionate and creative so badly. After playing music with them I would just wonder why none of my peers could ever get together and work hard enough together to accomplish something like this. Often I think that it is because we are just too unwillingly to go along with things that don't fit our persona, we don't want to give up anything towards the whole. This could easily be written off as youthful arrogance but I know for a fact that these guys I was playing with had been playing together since high school. More than anything I think it is the inexperience of putting yourself out there. Making music means being vulnerable and open to criticism. I must say I have been impressed by how creatively my friends have used philosophical arguments like the fragmentation of reality to hide simple cowardice from trying. My friend Sean's arguments was sincerity and that no matter how much we tried to emulate older forms of music they were from "others" and not worth our time to try and do. He also stated that, "some people can play music and some can't." Kumkum Sangari claim that postmodernism is obsessed with epistemology and self-consciousness applies to this situation.
My whole life I have annoyed people with my hypothetical questioning. I always get the same response. It didn't happen that way so what does it matter. I just want to scream what matters is your internal feelings on the matter. They act as if being reactionary is the only way one can be moral. They might as well just say, "I'd care if it was me but it's not." This way of thinking, void of compassion, is detrimental socially. I feel that this not only ties into postmodernism and the disbelief in relating to others but also Nietzcsche's critique of morality. I think through hypothetical questioning we test ourselves to create a more solid moral ground. As Camus said, we would just play it all in order of nostalgia instead of trying to find a constant. It is how people can live with contradictory ideas. Ironically enough I have been recently told that my logic always favors myself by a friend who is most unwilling to accept any form of hypothetical questioning. All I have to say to him is at-least I'm questioning.
I agree that creativity as a means of changing culture and meaning is central to humanity, but I disagree that it is something of the elite. I feel that it is only the few who try to change things but that it is not how it has to be. I think about all the people I know who do not expose themselves to culture and ask the big questions and try to understand the meanings of things and wonder what do they think about while they are alone. I feel that there is nothing elite about anyone I know other than their will to do good and this is something that can not be limited to certain individuals.
I feel so good when I find myself surrounded by people who can discuss Miles Davis or Mark Rothko along with various other parts of our culture. I feel so in my element and that is too rare, particularly with people my age. We are in desperate need of commonality. I know that when I listen to great music with company that also appreciates and is moved by it that I take much greater enjoyment than listening alone. The coming together of cultures is what made American culture so revolutionary and now thanks to the capitalist market postmodernism has given them an open door in taking advantage of people. If we all were active members of our community we'd have a truer sense of individuality because we would create importance in our lives. As long as we accept this notion of being isolated from one another we will never know any purpose other than to attempt to fit into preconceived notions of how a black person, or a white person, or an asian, or native, and so on, is supposed to act. With more emphasis on the community we can all be individuals.
Another problem is the copies of copies in our society. When someone has success the market sends out the clones and they do the same thing over and over until it is no longer profitable. I think of all the classic rock bands of the 60s and early 70s and how the music they learned was not rock and roll but classical, blues, and jazz along with other forms of traditional music. By the next generation people went to take guitar lessons and learned what they did without the foundation in older, broader, styles of music. A sense of historical context and cultural roots is lost. Now in my generation we learn a copy of those copies. An example of this would be my friends who are taught to simply and indiscriminately learn from tablature instead of standard notation. In doing this they can go through the motions of playing a song but don't learn how it was composed. Without this how can we possibly get musicians to build upon our cultural heritage. They are never taught to think musically for themselves. Individuality is lost at the convenience of lazy educators and a new criteria has been added along with the quality of music. This criteria is newness. If it is old, it is unfashionable to listen to it. It is all rooted in that open minded bull about how learning theory will limit ones creativity and confine you to limitations of dead white men (along with the idea that someone damaging your mind with drugs will open you creatively). When did people decide that hurting themselves was helping themselves? Education frees us and again and again I'm met by artist and musicians who accuse it of confining them. Culture has a hard time being cultivated now. It is like a crop that takes longer to grow than the time the passing seasons provide.
One thing I have learned from American art and music is the fact that you have to accept some lack of control. This is all from abstract expressionism and jazz, two areas often trivialized and oversimplified, dumbed down beyond recognition to the audience. One of my successes is achieving some comfort when I work with the fact that I am discovering as I work and with discovery things will happen that I have not foreseen. As my first semester rlc teacher told me, "why write a paper on things you already know?" I was completely dumbfounded. I for the first time realized that even writing involved a common method with art and science in posing questions and searching for meanings. This all came to mind when I read, "The courage and discipline to have conversations in terms and processes that demand discomfort and lack of control on everyone's part may provide an ontological, epistemological or ethical shock. this constructive unsettling could possibly assist us to think anew ethics and morals and it may contribute to the ability to recreate worlds of discourse and meanings.
So in continuing my analogies about music, perhaps what the world needs is for the various nations to simply get together and play around with ideas and give up a little to give a little to make a whole. And just like in any creative process, that lack of control may lead to self discovery and results far greater than any one individual could fathom. I can't count the number of times I've heard artist and musicians praise the reworking and expansion of their own ideas. It is a necessary humility.
(This is one of many response essays I wrote for den Ouden's class. These responses gradualy became like a journal to me over the past semester and the material covered along with den Ouden's teaching have been deeply inspiring and provided a great deal of clarity and moral obligation in me. I am considering double majoring in painting and philosophy now.)
Last Day of Class
On the last day of classes I had both a review in painting and a critique in photo. It was one of the most stressful days I have ever endured. I had a paper to finish in math and in philosophy (along with a presentation). The painting review came first. I was siting in the hallway on the same lap top I am using to write this now hamering out my paper when Julie (my painting teacher) asked me to come in for my review. I laid out all my paintings in chronological order. The last one being what I will call Sarah and the Rabit. It is my greatest achievement as a painter yet. The dimentions are 3 by 4 feet and the image is of my friend Sarah Martin siting in a chair with a window over her right shoulder exposing a snowy landscape. I wish to add a picture of this painting to the blog when I have a chance. The painting had an atmosphere that I have wanted to express for ages. I'll just say I had George Inness, Vermeer, and Balthus' late work in mind. I also had the aid of Stephen Brown and Jeremiah Paterson along with Julie in solving the problems I can across in the process. My review went very well. What Julie told me made me very confident in my potential as a painter. She said that my maturity, sincerity, and self motivation was aparent. For my philosophy presentation I compared Sandra Harding and Kant which furthered my understanding of my own moral obligation to myself and an escape from the dead end post modernism has led us. From Harding I learned that when observing someone you should do it thing that they are observing you as well and reflect upon yourself in the process. On that note Kant states that you should never treat anyone as a means, and that ultimately you are your end. I like this. I feel it all ties into my photo critique. I hadn't even mated my pictures when the critique began. It was humiliating to be that far behind. When I did finaly get my work up though I could breathe easier. I still felt odd and detached from the class. I was cursing photography and swearing I'd give it up in my head. When we finaly got to my work though I was shocked at how well recieved it was by my classmates. I had no aim I could express in words but the words came through the mouths of my classmates. I knew they could see just the beauty I know in my life and wish I could give to others. It felt good to just watch something that started with my intuition and see how universal it could become. They stated that the pictures were about quiet moments, Mary (my teacher) said that it was as if they were going "shhh". And for the second time in my life I have been described as Romantic. I have described my life as Romantic but never myself. It felt good.
If you look back to earlier entires you'll see "the tree." In short I'll say that for the first time I really felt like their were others looking at the tree with me.
Sydney's House
After coming home my friend Fran and I visited Sydney. It was so much fun. No awkward tention or bad feelings. Just this overwhelming sense of confort to be yourself that always seems to exist in Sydney's home. It's so well balanced. Not rigid like many homes where you feel scared to move around, and not so loose it stops existing at times like my own. It really is like being little again. Sydney and I even reminised about geting into a play fight upstairs and having her mom yell at us. For a good long while it was just Sydney, Fran and I but Ronda showed up and picked up her guitar. It was in Open G and she bagan playing and singing "That's the Way" by Led Zeppelin. She followed that up with "Bron-y-aur Stomp". By the time she got that through I was siting next to Sydney and for the first time in a long time openly affectionate towards one another. Not in a boyfriend girlfriend kind of way but in a hey I care about you kind of way. It was so conforting, closest to an internal sense of home as I'll ever get at this point in my life. Ronda then began playing a song she learned off of a feminist album. She didn't know who wrote it or the name. She kenw every lyric though. It was all "when I was a boy." It was about how were riped from things we care about and who we are to fit into our gender roles. It was a sad song. Fran looked like she was about to cry.
Later while driving Fran home I asked her why and she said it wasn't the sad lyrics that were making her cry so much as how right everything was. How none of us were being who we were suposed to be, just ourselves. I recalled how I got sick of pretending that I am any less interested in all the "silly" things I liked when I was 13 like video games and fantasy movies. We discussed how cool it was that Ronda just sat there and sang for us. It felt so sentimental and so sincere. These are two things people seem to cower from now. It was exactly what I wanted. I told Fran how it is what I have always wanted. For us all to do things, to enjoy life, to be passionate, to create. All my efforts to do so only provoked mockery. But no matter I feel that what Ronda did was cultivation of humanity.
It isn't enough to simply have the radio, and mtv, and all the other garbage. For us to have a true culture we need to take a step back. Do like people used to do. Dance to music and sing and play for one another. If there is one thing I love about my dad's generation is that their music is theirs. They don't have that fragmented perception that someone elses work can't be their own. We just walk around with headphones on when we could be playing music together. We'll I've expressed all this earlier. I just can't stress it enough. What I experienced sharing my photos to my class, and what I experienced when Ronda shared her music with us, it needs to flourish. It needs to breathe. What the hell are we. We are always picking instead of choosing. When did people become so damn afraid of sincerity? When did people start saying only they can do that? and only they can do this? When did people start saying I am just a young person who can't do anything.
Miguel Carter-Fisher
Hon 172
den Ouden
Nietzsche's Theory of Excellence
Reading this chapter has resolved in my mind a debate I had going on for quite some time about whether everything is connected or not with some friends of mine. I couldn't think of an argument in favor of things being interconnected that was strong enough too beat the argument that were all separate and alone. Everyone involved in this debate loathed postmodernism and I think we were so afraid that there was truth to it that we doubted our own inclinations that its false by writing it off as "nostalgia" as Camus would put it. One thing this class has taught me is that there is a definite balance. I feel at ease and comforted that I do not have to accept either extreme. We are isolated in our perceptions on some levels but still overwhelmingly connected to one another through our actions. This resolution became apparent to me when I read that Nietzsche "does not contend that there cannot be any connection between the fragments, or particularity, of meanings."
I probably have stated this in a past response but I have to bring it up again because I feel it is so appropriate to the issues we have been covering lately. My friend sean wrote that we are like snowflakes, each different and unrepeatable. He then continued by saying that snowflakes are all made out of snow and that was enough. At the time I took that was enough as in okay that is enough to get along or tolerate someone, but now I realize that enough could also mean a moral ground and mutually beneficial relationship. Sean would get depressed saying that we are only happy to help others because we get their gratitude which makes us feel good about ourselves. It seems selfish, but when I think of what you said about rejoicing in others achievements I have to wonder about whether it is really that simple. I'm starting to feel that the human condition might be what we would choose if given the choice. We are individuals and we are communities. I feel more and more that it is simply our lifestyle that blinds us from just how well balanced and good our condition can be. How can I speak truthfully about the limitations of humans ability to communicate when I myself along with many others are very guilty of not trying.
In trying I feel I can "cultivate humanity." I realize now that for so long that's what I really have been leaning towards in art. Often I told a very nihilistic friend of mine that I do not wish to do work about social change as much as I want the existence of my work to be the social change. I feel that by pursuing excellence in my crafts I can take on a responsible role in my individuality and hopefully inspire others. I know I have inspired some classmates of mine and have been pushed and inspired by them as well. It's in a way going to others to find yourself. I hope that I can continue this trend. I think from now on I will call it cultivating humanity.
I feel that one example of this is when I would come over to my dad's old high school friend Kenny's to play music every thursday night this past summer. We would all bring music and each take turns picking a song we either wrote our selves or wanted to share. They were patient and open to variety and all strived to bring their own little par to the whole. It was so rewarding emotionally and culturally. I felt that I had commonality and place. I want to be with the openly passionate and creative so badly. After playing music with them I would just wonder why none of my peers could ever get together and work hard enough together to accomplish something like this. Often I think that it is because we are just too unwillingly to go along with things that don't fit our persona, we don't want to give up anything towards the whole. This could easily be written off as youthful arrogance but I know for a fact that these guys I was playing with had been playing together since high school. More than anything I think it is the inexperience of putting yourself out there. Making music means being vulnerable and open to criticism. I must say I have been impressed by how creatively my friends have used philosophical arguments like the fragmentation of reality to hide simple cowardice from trying. My friend Sean's arguments was sincerity and that no matter how much we tried to emulate older forms of music they were from "others" and not worth our time to try and do. He also stated that, "some people can play music and some can't." Kumkum Sangari claim that postmodernism is obsessed with epistemology and self-consciousness applies to this situation.
My whole life I have annoyed people with my hypothetical questioning. I always get the same response. It didn't happen that way so what does it matter. I just want to scream what matters is your internal feelings on the matter. They act as if being reactionary is the only way one can be moral. They might as well just say, "I'd care if it was me but it's not." This way of thinking, void of compassion, is detrimental socially. I feel that this not only ties into postmodernism and the disbelief in relating to others but also Nietzcsche's critique of morality. I think through hypothetical questioning we test ourselves to create a more solid moral ground. As Camus said, we would just play it all in order of nostalgia instead of trying to find a constant. It is how people can live with contradictory ideas. Ironically enough I have been recently told that my logic always favors myself by a friend who is most unwilling to accept any form of hypothetical questioning. All I have to say to him is at-least I'm questioning.
I agree that creativity as a means of changing culture and meaning is central to humanity, but I disagree that it is something of the elite. I feel that it is only the few who try to change things but that it is not how it has to be. I think about all the people I know who do not expose themselves to culture and ask the big questions and try to understand the meanings of things and wonder what do they think about while they are alone. I feel that there is nothing elite about anyone I know other than their will to do good and this is something that can not be limited to certain individuals.
I feel so good when I find myself surrounded by people who can discuss Miles Davis or Mark Rothko along with various other parts of our culture. I feel so in my element and that is too rare, particularly with people my age. We are in desperate need of commonality. I know that when I listen to great music with company that also appreciates and is moved by it that I take much greater enjoyment than listening alone. The coming together of cultures is what made American culture so revolutionary and now thanks to the capitalist market postmodernism has given them an open door in taking advantage of people. If we all were active members of our community we'd have a truer sense of individuality because we would create importance in our lives. As long as we accept this notion of being isolated from one another we will never know any purpose other than to attempt to fit into preconceived notions of how a black person, or a white person, or an asian, or native, and so on, is supposed to act. With more emphasis on the community we can all be individuals.
Another problem is the copies of copies in our society. When someone has success the market sends out the clones and they do the same thing over and over until it is no longer profitable. I think of all the classic rock bands of the 60s and early 70s and how the music they learned was not rock and roll but classical, blues, and jazz along with other forms of traditional music. By the next generation people went to take guitar lessons and learned what they did without the foundation in older, broader, styles of music. A sense of historical context and cultural roots is lost. Now in my generation we learn a copy of those copies. An example of this would be my friends who are taught to simply and indiscriminately learn from tablature instead of standard notation. In doing this they can go through the motions of playing a song but don't learn how it was composed. Without this how can we possibly get musicians to build upon our cultural heritage. They are never taught to think musically for themselves. Individuality is lost at the convenience of lazy educators and a new criteria has been added along with the quality of music. This criteria is newness. If it is old, it is unfashionable to listen to it. It is all rooted in that open minded bull about how learning theory will limit ones creativity and confine you to limitations of dead white men (along with the idea that someone damaging your mind with drugs will open you creatively). When did people decide that hurting themselves was helping themselves? Education frees us and again and again I'm met by artist and musicians who accuse it of confining them. Culture has a hard time being cultivated now. It is like a crop that takes longer to grow than the time the passing seasons provide.
One thing I have learned from American art and music is the fact that you have to accept some lack of control. This is all from abstract expressionism and jazz, two areas often trivialized and oversimplified, dumbed down beyond recognition to the audience. One of my successes is achieving some comfort when I work with the fact that I am discovering as I work and with discovery things will happen that I have not foreseen. As my first semester rlc teacher told me, "why write a paper on things you already know?" I was completely dumbfounded. I for the first time realized that even writing involved a common method with art and science in posing questions and searching for meanings. This all came to mind when I read, "The courage and discipline to have conversations in terms and processes that demand discomfort and lack of control on everyone's part may provide an ontological, epistemological or ethical shock. this constructive unsettling could possibly assist us to think anew ethics and morals and it may contribute to the ability to recreate worlds of discourse and meanings.
So in continuing my analogies about music, perhaps what the world needs is for the various nations to simply get together and play around with ideas and give up a little to give a little to make a whole. And just like in any creative process, that lack of control may lead to self discovery and results far greater than any one individual could fathom. I can't count the number of times I've heard artist and musicians praise the reworking and expansion of their own ideas. It is a necessary humility.
(This is one of many response essays I wrote for den Ouden's class. These responses gradualy became like a journal to me over the past semester and the material covered along with den Ouden's teaching have been deeply inspiring and provided a great deal of clarity and moral obligation in me. I am considering double majoring in painting and philosophy now.)
Last Day of Class
On the last day of classes I had both a review in painting and a critique in photo. It was one of the most stressful days I have ever endured. I had a paper to finish in math and in philosophy (along with a presentation). The painting review came first. I was siting in the hallway on the same lap top I am using to write this now hamering out my paper when Julie (my painting teacher) asked me to come in for my review. I laid out all my paintings in chronological order. The last one being what I will call Sarah and the Rabit. It is my greatest achievement as a painter yet. The dimentions are 3 by 4 feet and the image is of my friend Sarah Martin siting in a chair with a window over her right shoulder exposing a snowy landscape. I wish to add a picture of this painting to the blog when I have a chance. The painting had an atmosphere that I have wanted to express for ages. I'll just say I had George Inness, Vermeer, and Balthus' late work in mind. I also had the aid of Stephen Brown and Jeremiah Paterson along with Julie in solving the problems I can across in the process. My review went very well. What Julie told me made me very confident in my potential as a painter. She said that my maturity, sincerity, and self motivation was aparent. For my philosophy presentation I compared Sandra Harding and Kant which furthered my understanding of my own moral obligation to myself and an escape from the dead end post modernism has led us. From Harding I learned that when observing someone you should do it thing that they are observing you as well and reflect upon yourself in the process. On that note Kant states that you should never treat anyone as a means, and that ultimately you are your end. I like this. I feel it all ties into my photo critique. I hadn't even mated my pictures when the critique began. It was humiliating to be that far behind. When I did finaly get my work up though I could breathe easier. I still felt odd and detached from the class. I was cursing photography and swearing I'd give it up in my head. When we finaly got to my work though I was shocked at how well recieved it was by my classmates. I had no aim I could express in words but the words came through the mouths of my classmates. I knew they could see just the beauty I know in my life and wish I could give to others. It felt good to just watch something that started with my intuition and see how universal it could become. They stated that the pictures were about quiet moments, Mary (my teacher) said that it was as if they were going "shhh". And for the second time in my life I have been described as Romantic. I have described my life as Romantic but never myself. It felt good.
If you look back to earlier entires you'll see "the tree." In short I'll say that for the first time I really felt like their were others looking at the tree with me.
Sydney's House
After coming home my friend Fran and I visited Sydney. It was so much fun. No awkward tention or bad feelings. Just this overwhelming sense of confort to be yourself that always seems to exist in Sydney's home. It's so well balanced. Not rigid like many homes where you feel scared to move around, and not so loose it stops existing at times like my own. It really is like being little again. Sydney and I even reminised about geting into a play fight upstairs and having her mom yell at us. For a good long while it was just Sydney, Fran and I but Ronda showed up and picked up her guitar. It was in Open G and she bagan playing and singing "That's the Way" by Led Zeppelin. She followed that up with "Bron-y-aur Stomp". By the time she got that through I was siting next to Sydney and for the first time in a long time openly affectionate towards one another. Not in a boyfriend girlfriend kind of way but in a hey I care about you kind of way. It was so conforting, closest to an internal sense of home as I'll ever get at this point in my life. Ronda then began playing a song she learned off of a feminist album. She didn't know who wrote it or the name. She kenw every lyric though. It was all "when I was a boy." It was about how were riped from things we care about and who we are to fit into our gender roles. It was a sad song. Fran looked like she was about to cry.
Later while driving Fran home I asked her why and she said it wasn't the sad lyrics that were making her cry so much as how right everything was. How none of us were being who we were suposed to be, just ourselves. I recalled how I got sick of pretending that I am any less interested in all the "silly" things I liked when I was 13 like video games and fantasy movies. We discussed how cool it was that Ronda just sat there and sang for us. It felt so sentimental and so sincere. These are two things people seem to cower from now. It was exactly what I wanted. I told Fran how it is what I have always wanted. For us all to do things, to enjoy life, to be passionate, to create. All my efforts to do so only provoked mockery. But no matter I feel that what Ronda did was cultivation of humanity.
It isn't enough to simply have the radio, and mtv, and all the other garbage. For us to have a true culture we need to take a step back. Do like people used to do. Dance to music and sing and play for one another. If there is one thing I love about my dad's generation is that their music is theirs. They don't have that fragmented perception that someone elses work can't be their own. We just walk around with headphones on when we could be playing music together. We'll I've expressed all this earlier. I just can't stress it enough. What I experienced sharing my photos to my class, and what I experienced when Ronda shared her music with us, it needs to flourish. It needs to breathe. What the hell are we. We are always picking instead of choosing. When did people become so damn afraid of sincerity? When did people start saying only they can do that? and only they can do this? When did people start saying I am just a young person who can't do anything.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Have Not Updated For A While
I have not updated in ages. I have decided that it's time I went through and finished some of these past blogs I have not yet posted about what has happend thtis past summer, and added in some blogs talking about what has happend this semester. It won't be easy and I won't spend much time doing this. I don't like trying to backtrack too much. It is just frustrating. I don't have the time to do every little bit of life justice. I can't talk about all the little sensory details when doing a quick overview. It's a bit frustrating. I'll do what I can though.
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