Forbiddencolors

Time Management

Axel, at Damekow

Well, right now I'm here writing in my blog when I should be upstairs on the roof with my wife. I guess I feel guilty about it. it's not that this is oh so important, or anything. I mean if I miss another day, I don't think any of you will lose sleep over it.

But at the same time this is my work. I really feel that I have to do it. I made a commitment to myself to try and write and to try and share my photographs. And to play music and create and live art. I hope this little entry goes by quickly so I can spend some time with her. I really want to be there for Evee and let her know how important she is to me and how much she inspires me. But I really want to create really good art. And that takes time. And when i am working and paying bills its an extraodinatry effort to make time to create as well. Actually its not an extraordinary effort, it's really a pleasure. Its a big part of what makes me... me.

Lately I tried to shift over to a schedule where I spend time with Evee while she is awake, and then go back to work after she falls asleep, but she is apparently resenting that to some extent. Feeling like she is a task in my day.

I don't know. I feel like there should be some way to make everything work out and have the time to do everything thats important to you, and everything that you need to do. And still be a happy person, and still make the people around you happy. Thats the next Art that I want to learn.

Trent Reznor is Whining about wanting something he can never have in the background. That guy can make any day seem hopeless.

Alright thats it, Im out of here.
peace
kirk

Back of a Bus

Heading Towards the Beach, Former East Germany

This will HAve to wait a few minutes because Im running to meet Evee as we speak. She's not so long on patience sometimes. Well, I can't say that, she is kind of patient. Just not really patient. Maybe i'm just slow, or really patient.

I made a lot of models when I was a kid. The minature pieces combined with the glue really chill you out. Anyway, Ms. Evee tends to move really fast.

Currently she threatening me with bodily harm because i haven't uploaded all of my pictures from East Germany for everyone to see. I'm actually quite underway though.

I guess theres just different philosophies on that. Theres certainly the put up 533 photos the night after philosophy. That certainly has its bonuses in that there people may scroll through to find themselves, and they'll definitely get in touch with you when they need some images fast.

However, i seem to find myself falling over into some snobbish or eletist camp. For some reason, I think that my images are worth waiting for. Hense the photoblog. Sorry you are all having such anxious nights waiting for me to release the next update. But it seems that the anticipation challenges both some. It challenges me to find something that's compelling, and you to find what I saw in the image. Maybe its not interesting to you at all. But as I am considering myself an artist, and occasionally a photographer, I have to learn how to edit.

I think that editing is one of the real keys to photography. Just as much as to video and to literature. (sorry no one edits this bunk you're reading now) If I see something beautiful I may try to capture it three different ways... five different ways if i am using digital. Now If I show you five pictures of a boy siitting on his fathers lap, you know way too much. You know that his mother was right neear by, you know that we were in the back of a van, you know that we were headed to the beach... If I show you one picture of a boy on his fathers lap, you say, hmm, who is this child, who is he with, what is he thinking, what's going on, you begin to look for the story contained in this slice of life.

After I edit for content I also edit a lot for style. I think I have a photographic style. Its still a bit hidden in the steps I use to bring my images forward. So the more images that I try to really develop the more you'll have a scence of my aesthetic. Anyway, when the pictures come out of my digital camera they look really beautiful. But they look beautiful the way the camera sees them, and there is a strong difference between the way that I see the world and the way that my camera does. Photoshop is the bridge between these two worlds.

As Thiele once said, "When I get 533 pictures I probably don't even look at one of them."

Anyway, I hope to finish editing that set of pictures soon.

The Nearer Your Destination

KOE at the Angel Orensanz Foundation

Whats up with that. My days keep slippin away from me. I have friends I care about and I would love to spend time with them, and i can't work all the time, but every time I step away a day goes by. What is that. Is it just because Im in NYC that I think that I need to do more more more more.

I don't relly feel like Im missing much. Certainly I am no doubt, but theres always stuff, always stuff to do. Thats not what Im missing anyway. Im missing the accomplishment part of it. I put in a lot of hours doing stuff for other people and then another lot of hours doing stuff for myself. But theres so much that i have to do. I have stories and plays, letters and music to write, images to display, interactions to design. I have to create something, to affect someone.

Maybe I just create for myself. It certainly feels good for me to create. More like I get asome respite from the demons yelling at me to do the more more more more. But then again I like to think that I create for the random guy in Singapore surfing the web looking for some inspiration on a tuesday night.

Maybe I just need to set better goals. Without goals you can work and work and work, and without ever knowing its time to chill out and be finished for a while. I don't know, I guess I could try that. See if having an end in mind when I start enables me to feel better about what I accomplish.

I always feel like Im still looking up at a huge boulder, just getting ready to lift it. For all I know I could just as easily be dancing around on top of it. Thiele was up on top of a bolder in Arizona I think. Maybe he'll scan the picture for me sometime. I'll show it to you if he does.

Im off I think to go skate with Eric, who just got new skates, for a little this evening, and then to spend time with Evee. Eric a little anxious abot the fact that he no longer has two breaks on the back of his feet. Honestly I have never seen another human being skating with two abs breaks on their skates before. He seems to think that he goes way too fast for 1 break to curb his momentum. Anyway, we'll soon see.

Neither of these two activities really accomplishes anything, so no sense setting goals for them. But spending time with good friends is equally special, and rewarding in a different way.

Painted Ribbons

KOE at La Plaza garden

Yep my eyes are definitely freaking out some. Pinhole sunglasses and and an LCD monitor are both required. CRT is for the birds. Sameers in town from Germany this evening. Until tomorrow apparently. He was planning on taking the train unless he caught the Chinatown express shuttle. Great deal if you can fgure out the times.

I saw and photographed the KOE butoh performance twice this week. One took place in LaPlaza garden and the other in the Angel Orensanz Synagogue. The two performances were actually very different.

In the first show the groups emotional intensity and cohesion was electrifying, it felt like a focussed emotional laserbeam. I felt a wash of anger, and channelled anxiety. The piece however suffered from an unfocussed center. A strong strong beginning and a beautiful ending, the center however almost floated away.

In the second show, the spectacle held together really well, the pitch was really consistent. And the performances were really stellar. Every movement seemed an extension of a feeling. The thing was that the group didn't come together as well as previously.

I wish the group would have an opportunity to do this a couple more times. I am sure they could really stir souls.

Anyway, I only go on about this because it is so difficult to create good art. I really want to create works that have both power and subtlety, the rhythm and the dynamics of this really require a lot of consideration and practice or a really good intuition.

I saw a piece written by Sarah Kane a few months back, that was directed with an amazingly deft understanding of rhythm and structure. During a really quick though absract theater piece there was one dancer doing a tangential dance slowly. The dancer offered an amazing counterpoint to the rising and falling action of the piece. This is something I would like to explore.

Pinhole Sunglasses

Sunrise, Damekow, East Germany

My eye has been acting up for about a week. Its pretty odd, it feels as if one of them may not be focussing as well as the other. So far my plan is to get a pair of pinhole sunglasses. Why pinhole sunglasses you ask? Well it seems like regular glasses make your eyes lazy like crutches while pinhole glasses are more like eye-exercisers.

I have had ridiculously good vision for my first 29 years and Im not sure Im ready to just roll over and get bad eyes. I have been staying up ridiculously late, straining my eyes on a flickery crt monitor, and that could be the problem right there. The last time i felt my eyes were going bad from looking at aa computer screen 24/7 was when I was working at ACR. Matt and I were putting in pretty long hours and then coming home and programming all night. (Me on a Dual-Scan NEC laptop monitor no less. After I moved to new york I found that my eyes recovered really well when I went rollerblading. It probably has something to do with the fact fact that you have to constantly watch four or five or twelve cars and a bunch of pedestrians all travelling at different velocities, trying to knock you over. (Once a woman with groceries just bolted out into the street and kamikazeed me. I caught her bags though.)

Ive tried paying a lot more attention this week to make sure that I am using both of my eyes when I am walking around.

Then this morning when I looked in the mirror Eye noted that some of my eyelashes in the outer corners of my eyes had become intertwined a little. I wonder if this was a cause or a result of my eye agitation. I untangled them although they seem to be bending towards each other still. Maybe I need a bit of mascara. But they do feel better... Regardless I think the pinhole glasses are a good idea anyway.

I remember we met a guy dressed as a fly once. I think I was with Dorigen maybe Ben Glenn. They were dressed up as Hanson, it was Halloween, and they were getting roughed up by some crazy butch English soccer punk women for wearing the wrong colors and lip synching at the Black Bar. Somehow the big bald bopuncer with the tatoos on his head was no help whatsoever. And I was sure exactly how to defend dry humored friends from belligerent, spiky-haired, thriller-rejected, anti-halloween, druken, soccer groupie, punk, lesbian expats. (the only thing I had a problem with in that adjective list was belligerent) Anyway the fly-guy stood up for the Hanson impersonators, despite the fact that none of us had ever met him before or knew what he would look like if he took off the fly glasses. Maybe if I get a pair of pinhole glasses I can go around doing good deeds and wearing a cape. .

Shout out to Dorigen Horlivy. She's somewhere in my neighborhood, these days and we haven't had a chance to catch up in a while, but I miss you.

peace
kirk

Separate Entities

Kathi and Laura "Dancing Life" Butoh Workshop, Adirondacks

Im especially defocussed today. Or maybe its just the time. I defintiely fade in and out in the early evening. Perhaps hungry, perhaps broke, perhaps tired. My mind feels active but yet jumbled and discombobulated. Ive been reading the latest issue of Zoetrope: All Story which is absolutely fantastic by the way.

Previous issues I have read have had some gems but were over all a bit to academic for my tastes. Every piece in the current issue, transports me to the world of another.

I have to run and meet Avishay in a few minutes. Im still at the office for some reason. I think I may have found a new host where I can host this blog along with the rest of my forbiddencolors extraneousness. Hope to give them a try in the next few weeks. Evees probably staying on an extra day in the residency before KOE, who can blame her really. Its a dancers paradise once you get used to the mosquitoes.

Matt called from Jamaica today. Can't wait to see what that bill will be. He wanted tto know what the definition of bumba clot was. Apparently it comes from bottom and cloth, hearkening to days before toilet paper, and means something about being taken advantage of. I had always found enough meaning from the context to understand what was being said. Anyway reggae movement has a thought out definition as follows:

"As in any language, Rastas also have words to express anger that are considered curses. An interesting point to make about the Rasta talk curses are that they are very natural in origin which coincides with the beliefs of the Rastafarian people. The worst possible way to insult a Jamaican is to refer to them as an excretion from the human body. What seems to be the most dominant curse is to refer to someone as a "Ras clot" "bongo clot," or "bumba clot." In some contexts, the term "clot" does mean cloth but, in this context, calling someone one of these words is like saying they came from a blood clot and not an ovum, from their mother's womb."

Sounds fairly accurate to me, although I more often hear it used as a generic expletive although more colorful due to its nature. Gary Grey from ACR said his Rasta neighbors were always saying that about everything. I miss that crazy banshi tattooed Harley Davidson guy.

The Surface

Alia "Dancing Life" Butoh

This weekend I made it up to the Adirondacks and had the opportunity to learn from the Spirit Dancer myself.

After a 7 hour ride in the back of a flatbed truck with Danny, I reached the camp, had a quick round of introductions and immediately began dancing with the trees.

Atsushi practices and teaches butoh that is a physical manifestation of natures internal struggles. So for him physicality is a key component for both the dancer and the dance, but the dance is still based upon internal movement. The physicality is just an expression of this. The body is merely the medium for the internal movement to express itself through. The external movement can be small or large, but without the center it is superflous.

Also the dance is obout opening all and giving all, regardless of what the audience recieves from it. It is not closed, or withdrawn. To express withdrawness, one must withdraw further farther deeper until you reach the redzone of withdrawnness, until every molecule in your body is at the brink of disappearing. When you reach that space then you begin your dance of withdrawness.

Night of the Living BassHeads

From Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn NY

Last night the whole city had a weird energy to it. I guess just a lot of people are in town to ring in the new year. I went uptown with Eric to check ou a MotherF*cker Glam party in the flatiron district. But I honestly didn't have much desire to be especially glammy last night. I went along for the journey anyway and just kept walking when we got to the door.

About 50 meters later I saw Doug Pierson who has been existing in an alternate reality from me for the past few years. Hopefully we'll catch up soon. Matt's off to Jamaica today, I'm going to head upstate in the back of a pickup and learn some Butoh.

Happy 4th