each day i live to take my little stabs at happiness
saw stan brakhage’s films and got inspired by his titles. his work is downright disturbing. i don’t think i have that sensibility. but i do like this idea of taking things in small sizes and not directly going for the big ones right away because more often than not, you’ll be in for a lot of disappointment. these days, i’m trying to live life day by day, slowly but surely, and not thinking far ahead but ironically still not losing sight of my definite goals to reach in the process.
this is my profile picture for my facebook account. just a daily reminder. 
“Let’s just try to have a marvelous time this weekend. I mean not try to analyze everything to death for once, if possible. Especially me. I love you.”- J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey.
Every morning while sipping my breakfast coffee I always look out my window and stare at the same cityscape. What’s interesting about this view is that it can look different every time I stare at it. One day the clouds might look bigger like a crowd of angry nimbus. The next day they might look like wisps of feathers floating along some white line across a vast blue sky. The building will always be there unless some stupid person would bomb them (god forbid) to oblivion. But every morning they would offer a different look too. They might look intriguing because of how the sun bounces on one of the close windows, or because of how a flock of birds would suddenly roost in a corner of a roof then fly off scattering like confetti against the washed out sky as backdrop.
I guess there is something more to this view outside my window than meets the eye. Which reminds me of what Cezanne said about painting the same subject several times and yielding different interpretations because one can look at the same subject from different angles.
The other day I woke up and sat on the brown couch in my living room sipping my coffee, and as usual, I looked out my window, and saw this sight I wanted to freeze in a picture. I took a good look at it for a good 30 minutes then decided to grab my camera and shot away. After that, I resolved I would take pictures of the view outside my window every day. Like a 365 days project of the same view outside my window. Let’s see how this goes…
Day # 1:
click on image for larger view
I used to romanticize this condition of constantly being in the middle of things, not knowing really where to go, but clearly going somewhere, just moving on and on until exhaustion breaks in. Robert Frost wrote about taking the road less taken but for me it was always about the excitement of perennially catching yourself on some road, it doesn’t matter if it is less taken or not, the exhiliration stems from the awareness that you are on a road and you chose that road. Easy to rely on abstractions I supposed when it comes to these ruminations. What else is there to be direct about because as I am typing this I am actually trying to be direct. Which isn’t really an excuse. But indeed, roads are roads, and we often whether we like it or not, find ourselves in the middle of it or at an intersection or better yet, slumped in some bend or roadside.
Lately, I am pre-occupied with the philosophical exploration of actually stopping at some destination; no longer obsessed with the constant moving and being in between, in the limbo of things. What makes individuals decide that this is the end of a journey? Does this construction of a road that they had to take play a major role in such decision? If the road ends, so it ends? Or is it really a conscious decision, an exercise of a great range of human agency that the individual would single-handedly just decide to stop anywhere but somewhere that matters?
Looking at this picture I took somewhere in a submarine museum in Connecticut last year, I started wondering about the human desire to really discover what is beyond that edge of this picture, the desire to transcend the horizon. We are constantly being told that we do have that curiosity to go beyond what we can see because of the basic reason that we are curious. But what about the desire and curiosity to stay within the boundaries? What of that?
photo by jean claire dy 2009
I took so many street photos last year on my first Fall semester here in Manhattan. Some I had to submit for my concepts class. Most of my pictures I noticed are of people who were unaware that they were being shot. Either I depicted them in pictures as by their lonesome, or they are with someone else. Among my favorite pictures of couples in my collection is this one I took at the Washington Square Park. It can be a cover photo for a music album. Aside from that, it reminds me so much of Cynthia Alexander’s “Daisy Chain,” particularly the lines:
“do you need somebody
do you need a someone
who will make your sunset last forever
who will daisy chain you in the summer”
photo by Jean Claire Dy 2009
and here’s another one from eva cassidy… some songs just either give you the goosebumps or make you fall in love over and over…
One night, a week ago, John and I looked out of my apartment’s window and saw this postcard view of the cityscape with the winter night’s sky as background. We were both delighted at the sight. I took a snapshot of the view for keepsake. The picture below is EXACTLY how it looks. I kept muttering to myself while staring at the view out my window: “just like a postcard!” The sky looked like paper painted by washed out water color blue. It was a sight to remember. At least for me.
photo by Jean Claire Dy 2010
Among the equally interesting and cutting-edge courses offered in the course listing of the MA Media Studies program at the New School where I’m currently a graduate student on my first year, two practice production courses have obsessed me. I look forward in anticipation for the day when I will finally be able to register in these courses because somehow these courses embody what I really wanted to explore passionately for the last 5 years or so, except that I didn’t get the chance to explore these interests further back in Davao because I was so caught up with working for a living. Just recently when I begun to examine my life, forcibly to say the least because I had to for my academic goals plan last semester, did I realize that I have actually begun (at the surface) exploring these media art practices that I am currently wanting to engage in.
When I entered the Media Studies program last August, I was very sure of my plans, my focus: I will follow what I wrote in my study objectives and personal statement as part of my university application, I will follow the proposal I made for IFP when I attended the research training last year. In other words, I was confident that I knew what I wanted to focus on. I wanted to focus on the Documentary and Interactive Multimedia Storytelling. Period.
But as most cautionary tales of graduate school would have warned me, I slowly found myself in the middle of the semester feeling lost and caught in a dilemma. Having Creative Writing as my background by virtue of an undergraduate degree, for years I was caught up with storytelling. I wrote fiction and creative nonfiction, I even went into journalism. And even went into photography that always has to tell a story, such as photojournalistic practice. These experiences influenced my decision to pursue the documentary. But there was something about the documentary that was very limiting to me once I started in the New School. The idea of capturing reality always under the framework of storytelling or constantly framing it within a narrative frame, following almost the literary standards, felt to me like roaming around a cage. I wanted to pursue more of what images and sound bring when taken out of context, outside of the narrative frame, how they distort perception, how they betray/validate expectations. I wanted to transcend the narrative frame, leap out of its limiting fences, and just explore the unknown depths of storytelling. At least those unknown to me.
To some extent, I wanted to efface the trappings of the creative writer in me. Erase the mannered meaning-making, and look beyond the story the way it’s conceived. Because there is more to story than the creative writer. There is more to story than the filmmaker. Despite that storytelling as a cultural practice is still almost/often associated with them.
It even amuses me to have an MFA Creative Writing student (one of Johnnypanic’s classmates) tell me during one of those accidental coffee sessions with J that “wow, we’re still in the process of mastering what we can do on the page!” after I told him about my plans to explore interactive multimedia storytelling. As if the page is only defined within the bounds of the book! I secretly thought how amazingly limited his view is.
I discovered that sound is storytelling too. The noise of the subway train. The people murmuring behind me. The crowd in the Yankee stadium. Those audio experiences can be stories too.
And so despite that it was difficult to let go of the documentary just because it is easy and apparent to connect such practice with social change, development, all the other pre-requisites one must show a passion for in order to be called a social leader in IFP standard, I let go of that track, and completely plunged myself in unknown waters.
(One major factor that made me decide though was the fact that I also have a limited number of credits to take within the 2-year period. I have to make the best of my stay here, pursue something I’ve always wanted to do but never got the chance to do back home.)
But the course that was really responsible for making me decide to explore more of what I know and don’t know has something to do, ironically, with a word I often encounter in Creative Writing especially in Poetry. The word is Synaesthesia, “the cross-wiring of sensory perceptions.” Poetry tries to capture or embody this experience often, as literary critics say, with success.
But it is quite wonderful to know that words fail you too. Truly, synaesthesia is best explored in really dealing with sense perceptions in the different media. This is what the course on Projects in Multi-Sensorial Spaces offered to me–a window crowded with possibilities but not too cramped for me not to be able to breathe.
Here is the description:
Synaesthesia, broadly defined as the cross-wiring of sensory perceptions or a synthesis of the arts, will be the lens through which students will be encouraged to design and produce innovative media works that explore our relationship to the built environment and the urban experience. The course is organized as a theory and production seminar for which students will produce art installations with a heavy emphasis on intersensory experience. Lectures and readings will focus on models of perception, relational aesthetics, and phenomenological thought as they relate to the synaesthetic inquiry. Work reviewed in the lectures will include selections from Neo-Concrete Art, Kinetic Art, Fluxus, and New Media Art, among others. Assignments will include selected readings and group discussions, a series of cumulative digital media projects, and a final installation art piece to be exhibited at the end of the semester. Students will have the opportunity to use different kinds of video, audio, and multimedia production tools for project assignments.
But even then, it is still difficult to shake off the need for story without falling easily on the comfort zone of Creative Writing pillows. Perhaps then I might be able to explore more and be crazily experimental with this other course I am also passionate about called Web Technologies in Media Projects. The sample works are mind-blowing and refreshing that I am very sure I won’t be bored and disappointed. Here is the description:
With the proliferation of Web 2.0 and mobile internet devices, network media technology is increasingly redefining ideas of community, intellectual property, privacy, mapping, the “public sphere”, etc.. In this course, we will engage the shifting digital landscape by creating dynamic web, video, audio, text, image, and installation projects. Students will learn the syntax and application of a variety of advanced web technologies such as Actionscript, PHP, RSS, XML, streaming video, and databases. We will draw inspiration from a range of artists/works, including Cory Arcangel, Siebren Versteeg, Jacqueline Goss, Judd Morrisey’s “The Jew’s Daughter”, Zach Layton’s “Network Sonification”, Cat Mazza’s “Knit Pro”, “The Telegarden”, and Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken.”
Unfortunately, this course isn’t offered this semester and not even last Fall 2009. I have no idea if it will be offered at all throughout my stay here. The other course on Multi-Sensorial Spaces is offered this semester Spring 2010 though BUT it has a pre-requisite which I haven’t taken yet but which I am registered in for this semester. I have tried sending a query if this is a regular offering. Hopefully, it is. Because really, I am so excited to finally be able to pursue something like this for my thesis project. So help me God!
my DIY chicken pesto
When I was a kid, the first time I saw the musical Oliver, the only scene that caught my attention was that part when kids where singing “food, food glorious food..” in chorus after Oliver begged the schoolmaster “please sir, I want some more…” Or at least that’s how I remembered that scene. To this day, that song is stuck in my memory. And there are times when I often catch myself humming the tune on moments when I’m satiated after gorging on a delicious meal.
I may have been a bit “anorexic” or “bulemic” in the past. I have shunned food like it was the most sinful thing in the world. But then that only went on for a short period because while I was on those strict self-imposed famines, I was honestly thinking of food, especially delicious food. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t in a bad psychotic way like that character in Girl Interrupted who kept hiding away chicken under her bed as her mind was pre-occupied every minute with thoughts of food.
In fact, one of the ways by which I was able to help myself get over those “hunger” strikes and crash diets was to really learn how to cook good especially delicious food on my own. The first time I tried to cook, I felt like I was creating something really good just for my body, for myself, and not some other person cooking something good for me. When my friends, especially N told me I cook well, I felt like I have found my salvation in food.
Of course, there were instances when some people would discourage me. Ironically, one of those was my mother who kept complaining about how the food I cooked made her throw up, feel gassy, or have loose bowel movement the next day. I never really understood her at that time. I can only surmise now that maybe she was not used to eating the dishes I cooked. Most of the first few dishes I learned to cook were straight out of gourmet cookbooks. One of those was vegetable pilaf. I was still a vegetarian then (a strict one at that) so N and I usually cooked vegetarian dishes. My mother must have thought I was becoming very pretentiously bourgeouise. She never really bothered to find out if I knew how to cook Pinoy home-cooked food. But that’ water under the bridge.
Cooking for other people is the major thing I miss here in Manhattan. I have always loved cooking for other people. Back in Davao, I would invite friends over to our apartment so I could cook my favorite pasta dishes for them. My regular “eaters” were my sisters and N; always the people willing to be my gastronomic guinea pigs. The other night, I decided to cook my own recipe of penne regatte pasta, and when I ate it, I tried to enjoy every bite because it was hard having to deal with eating by my lonesome. I miss hearing “yums” and “uhms” from people. I miss the communal feeling of sharing food at the dinner table. But once when I was done eating my dish, I realized that it wasn’t so bad after all because I was happy. Food made me feel so happy and nourished; a feeling I couldn’t explain in words without sounding so flakey and cliche!
So tonight, I looked in my fridge and decided to cook my own DIY version of chicken pesto using a few ingredients I have available. It was fun. I never thought that cooking can be largely inventive and instinctive aside from scientific.
At the dinner table by my lonesome, I ate my chicken pesto with gusto, tasted every flavor I can recognize, with a glass of wine, and embraced the solitude that solitariness brings. At some point in my silent ritual, I suddenly caught myself humming, “food, food glorious food,” and I laughed out loud at my memory’s humorous timing. Although, I was never and will be never be like Oliver. God forbid.
BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
