I'll Be Back At Noon

A Dream in the Middle of the Summer

2007-03-03T22:13:00.000-08:00

I forget how much I love plays when I don't see them for so long.

I have just finished this version of A Midsummer Night's Dream and reminded myself how charming it can be. Though I have seen it a million times over, Puck never fails to make me smile, Hermia and Lysander always make me feel like true love can survive, and Shakespeare makes me think that somehow, where we're not looking hard enough, fairies, fauns, and other creatures we claim not to exist are partying it up.

Warmness has flooded me. Feels wonderful, actually. I wonder at how the entertainment industry [which is such a nasty word] has become so ugly. Sure, there are still movies and music that inspire awe, but it feels like I am trudging for a tooth in the snow when I go to Blockbuster or to a record store. I feel like the world has become one monstrous, slobbering junkie, addicted to sex and drugs, constantly being kept alive by new technologies coming out every second.

It feels like there are no quiet places left, no families that dine together, no children that aren't taught about everything they shouldn't know by the time they are in the fourth grade.

Sometimes, I feel saddened by it, let down by how degrading the whole world is. But then I feel like I am making a generalized statement and remember that there are still Tibetan monks who sit and mediate for half of their lives in the pursuit of peace and happiness. I think of plains in Africa where air isn't clogged by lung-killing smoke, cottages in Switerzland, or some other exotic snow-covered hill where it seems like sound never existed and all there was and ever will be is white.

I want to travel to these places and feel full.

2007-02-28T16:14:00.001-08:00

Get Happy

I'm Back In the New York Groove

2007-02-24T21:21:00.000-08:00

I forget to get in touch with nature sometimes.

I get so focused on living inside, making sure I stay up-to-date, making sure I am constantly connected to what is going on in the world, that I forget there are individual blades of grass to be examined, leaves to be touched, wind to be enjoyed.

Tonight, I stood outside in a red-watch storm and remembered that I forget how powerful nature and God are. I'm such a tactile person that I have to soak my feet and freeze myself before I can establish in my head that there are giant forces swirling around me, controlling me. Or maybe not concerned with me at all. One of those.

It seems like I have become hypersensitive to anything around me. I want to touch everything, memorize textures and smells and colors. I'm leaving childhood behind me faster than a train, yet I still feel the need to stand outside and soak myself to make sure I'm getting a least a little bit of the message I'm supposed to.

Sometime later, maybe, I'll feel silly about it.

But right now, I'm just feeling relaxed.

Maybe I won't feel silly.

I like being childish. No one ever tells me to grow up though. I think it's because I'm childish in a subtle way. When I see the movie >Amelie, I am reminded of myself, but more like how I would like to be. Life should be as technicolor as I want it to be.

I get scared that I'm not living as much as I should be. Kate Winslet says in Eternal Sunshine, that she is terrified that she's not living enough and I connect with her completely. I guess I'm at a weird age where I'm terrified of growing older, where I want to stay where I am forever. I obsess about how I'm going to be when I'm older. Everytime I jump up and down, I think about how I'm going to be arthritic one day and am I enjoying this as much as I can?

It's morbid, but it helps me to realize that I really should slow down, really shouldn't spend as much time as I do on the computer, lie outside a little more often.

Think about how many reasons there are to smile -- babies, jello, awkward family photos, joke books, mud pies, Yankee candles, sloths!

The world is so depressing no one wants to think about any of these things. No one thinks for themselves, even if they say they do, including myself. Everything is here to guide us, to make our lives easier, and I'm not so sure they do.

I'm tired of complex and futuristic. It's such a big deal.

I want simplicity. Not a silk wrap-around, a cotton sundress, please.

On another note, watched A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints tonight. Shia Lebeaouf surpises me everytime I see him. And I really adored Robert Downey Jr. It was an intensely raw movie, very disjointed, about growing up NYC in the 80's and hating it. Shia plays young Dito, who keeps getting mixed up with the wrong gangs and getting in trouble when all he wants to do is be peaceful. He wants to go to California, but it would kill his father, who is completely opposed to it. Eventually, after his friend gets shot right beside him, he just goes and lives in L.A for twenty years before he has to come back and make peace.

I do this plot no justice. The acting made me plug into this completely.

Made me a little more scared of NYC though. I'm already frightened, but I have to continually give myself reality checks and repeat "You're eighteen years old, do you really want to do this?"

I got accepted to the School of Visual Arts in Manhatten, and also to the Chicago Arts Institute.

Congrats, me.

I got really sad when I read the letters, actually. No one in my house got excited about it. In movies, when you get accepted to colleges, people scream, there are parties. Here, everyone just goes to sleep and I just want to sleep, too. I feel like if I get happy, I'm betraying someone.

Silly.

おやすみ

No One Can Lay A Hand On Our Dreams

2007-01-25T19:28:00.000-08:00

Had another dream the other night, needed to get this one down.

Dreamt I was in a house that was not my own, but was one that felt familar, a little like my house from childhood in St. Joseph. There was a giant set of glass sliding doors and I was sitting on the tile floor next to them. Outside was non-descript flora, quite out of focus, and a small chihuahua staring intently at me from the other side of the glass.

My grandmother was on the floor a few feet away from me, lying on nothing but a towel, with a few other people around her, but they were not important and I do not remember them [they didn't even speak].

I knew my grandmother was exceedingly ill and she looked like death, hollowed cheeks, sunken eyes, etc. I was scared for her. This dog was no normal dog and I began to understand that it was coming for my grandmother.

I knew that this scrawny dog was the Angel of Death and I had to keep it away. Everytime I turned to look at my grandmother, my panic rising, the dog would suddenly be through the glass without a sound. The creepiest thing was that it wasn't moving at all -- no breath, no blinking, no tail-wagging. It just stared at my eyes in a defensive position, like I had some power over it.

As the dog would attempt to "shift" closer, I would pick it up, open the door and try to hurl it out into the green blur of a backyard to keep it away from her. I could hear my grandmother gasping as I picked up the pooch and I knew just from it being inside it was killing her.

The dog moved and latched onto my hand, manuevering its little paws around my wrist and palm and growling while I waved my arm in every direction.

I would eventually throw it and it would land in some far off spot. Worried about grandma on the floor, I would go wipe her brow or give some other doctorly affection for about two seconds and the dog would be back at the door in pop, no sound, no movement -- just there.

This was repeated throughout the dream with just my anxiety increasing. By the end of the dream, I thought I was going to have a heart-attack.

The really strange thing was that I didn't really have any kind of attachment to my grandmother. It's like ... it was her, but there wasn't anything that I loved about her. She was just an object I was trying to protect for some reason. I didn't really feel like I knew her in the slightest. It just wasn't her time to die in my eyes and I tried through the whole night to keep her alive.

In here time, to the best of my knowledge, she's still alive and well, albeit a little lonelier. My grandfather dying has started taking it's toll on her.

I'm sad.

καλή νύχτα

Nite at thee Cinema

2007-01-03T14:47:00.000-08:00

Movie reviewing time!

This past week, I went and saw some movies I want to remember.

First, I saw Will Smith's movie, The Pursuit of Happyness, based on a true story that would soften even the hearts of Nazis.

Pursuit of Happyness

The story is of down-on-his-luck Chris Gardner [Will Smith], a man who is trying to make it for his family with hare-brained gimmicks, such as spending his life savings on x-ray machines to sell to doctors, only to find out no one wants them.

His wife is pulling double shifts, and his five-year-old son, Christopher [played by Smith's son, Jaden], is confused about what's going on his parents' spiraling lives. Walking along the San Francisco streets, Gardner is inspired by all the smiling faces of stock brokers to apply for a job at human resources. There is an offer of an internship, which may possibly lead to a job as a broker, though it is very competitive [six months with 40 other interns; one person gets the job].

Gardner goes out of his way to impress the big-wigs looking at his application, and eventually impresses the C.E.O by completing the then new Rubic's Cube in the span of a taxi ride. He's accepted for the internship, but finds that there is no salary and this will take up most of his time, no spare moments for selling his machine.

Shortening the plot, his wife leaves him, he gets kicked out of his apartment, subsequently moves to a hotel and is booted from there as well, his car gets towed, he is arrested for no payment on his car tickets, and ends up having about $7.00 to his name after the government figures out he has no paid his taxes.

The most heart-rending scene of the entire film, in my opinion, is at a difficult part of the movie, the eve of Gardner's saddest day. After being kicked out of the hotel and with nowhere for him to take his five-year-old that is safe, Gardner finds himself in the subway system, lost and godless. He plays a game with his child to reassure him and they spend the night in 'The Cave', or the men's restroom in the station. Long legs splayed across a toilet paper mattress, Gardner sheds his only tears of the movie when an unknown begins pounding on the locked bathroom door, his son slumbering in his lap.

This movie tore me apart on the inside. Will Smith gives such an engaging peformance that I was sympathizing with him completely after the first ten minutes. At approximately 2 hrs, it is a little longer than I would have expected and as his trials continue to labor him, the movie drags the bottom a little. Other than that, the movie was fantastic, and worth the struggle Smith pulls you through by the end of the film. His son, Jaden, is absolutely adorable and attaches you to their pursuit even more.

This one is definetely worth seeing if you get the chance.

Also,

Night at the Museum

This one was amazing. I thought this was going to be more of children's slapstick film, but turned out it had a little more meat to it.

Ben Stiller plays Larry Daley, another down-trodden hero who can't keep a job and moves all the time, providing instability for his son, according to his ex-wife. She tells him that if he can't find a steady job, she's thinks it's time for him to spend a while apart from their son. With the new husband being a broker and perfect, Larry wants to prove himself and takes the only job human resources can give him -- nightwatchman at the Natural History Museum.

Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, and Bill Cobbs are all old men who have guarded the museum for years, but have to give up their jobs because the museum is downsizing and only needs one, new guard. He's hired on the spot, albeit a little reluctantly and starts work that evening.

Much to his surprise, Dick Van Dyke leaves him a set of instructions that become vital in running the joint at night since EVERYTHING COMES TO LIFE. Genghis Khan is out for his blood, he gets caught in the crossfire of Civil War soliders and he becomes mixed up in a love between Sacagawea and Theodore Roosevelt.

Ben Stiller does a hilarious job and his supporting cast of Owen Wilson, Robin Williams, and Steve Coogan, and the aforementioned elderly gentlemen made this worth the cash I spent for the ticket because of the real, belly laughter I had throughout. Go see it :)

I'll post the movies I'm itching to see later.

Boa Noite~

Some People Have to Say Their Don'ts Before They Say Their Do's

2006-12-30T19:33:00.000-08:00

Had a dream last night.

I woke up in a really dilapidated room made of wood and could see beautiful green trees through the windows with no curtains or glass. I panicked because I was tied to a post in the corner of this room, my mouth gagged with my arms bound behind me. I found a way to get myself loose and realized that I was far above the earth in the midst of these swaying trees and that an entire Japanese-esque abbey/shrine was on these massive stilts. The building was solid enough, but I still felt wary when I left the room. It felt like a shrine or a place where monks would be, but there was no furniture or any other signs of life, just empty rooms, with everything painted this stunning shade of crimson. The paint was chipping, but I still saw the color, and it contrasted perfectly with the green of the trees.

This place seemed to be in perpetual twilight, enough light to see around me, but not pure daylight. It was the light that shows up before a very big storm blows through. As I wandered around through these rooms, I grew more and more enraptured with the beauty of the architecture and the way nature flowed with it, like the builder loved the outdoors and left a lot of open spaces for them to sit in and enjoy the trees.

Soon, though, I recalled I had been tied up and scared, and began to wonder what had captured me to begin with. I remember stopping and looking around me and I knew that someone was watching me and that someone had let me free myself. Whoever they were [they had a male presence], they were amused and I knew I was being kept as a toy. This made all of the hair on the back of my neck stand up and while I knew this person would not harm me, I did not want to stay with them.

Somehow I reached the bottom, but there was no chase scene, no struggle to keep me in the place. The weird thing was is that I was actually half-way regretful to leave the place.

Just wondering what it meant... Typing and writing these things down give me room to analyze them.

Meet Me in the Loo After Tea

2006-12-02T18:27:00.000-08:00

One of the most ridiculous things I've ever read:

Indian Tribe Bans Church Protests at Funeral

An American Indian got killed in Afghanistan and these dipshits want to come to his funeral protesting that the war is going on because America accepts homosexuals. At his funeral. With his family there. When this had nothing to do with him in the slightest.

I've seen these people on the news before and they are absolutely obsessed. They're a church made up of like three families of about 50 or so people and they go to funerals all over the country and protest at these places of grief where people can hear them and most of the time the funerals have nothing to do with homosexuality, especially since the families of the deceased are not going to be focusing on the sexual orintation of their solider when they're about to put him in the ground.

Speaking of death, just got back from my grandfather's funeral, my mom's dad. I didn't cry at this, but I did get to witness his death and I have to say it's the single most odd experience of my life. My family, one of my uncles, a friend of the family and my grandmother came to the hospital where he was heaving on a respirator for most of the day. We got there at 11 something, they gave him morphine and took him off of life support at 12:45 and by 3:30 he was gone. My brother was actually in the room with him when he passed and I'm wondering how much that fucked up his already crazy little head. My mother, father, and myself had stepped out of the room for a minute and were going to pick up his personal belongings at the nursing home, but we got called back. Strange thing is, there really is a death smell. About thirty minutes before he died, there was the most horrendous stench I've ever smelled in my entire life permeating the room, and I guess "death smell" is about the only name I can put to it. It smelled like decay, just not as stale yet. Like liquid decay, if that makes sense -- the smell was wet. Very digusting.

Also something to note, color leaves you fast. Five minutes before he was gone, he was the same color as me, if a little paler cause he hadn't seen sun in a while. When I saw him next when we were taking my grandmother from the room, he was pale as a sheet. Death pale is different than regular pale. It was the oddest, smoothest white, something else that I'm having trouble describing.

I'm sounding morbid, and I am sad he's gone, it was just a weird day.

On a lighter note, found a new genre of music that I'm absolutely infatuated with.

CHIPTUNE

Egads, it's beautiful. It's pure mad techno of the most creative kind - created by Gameboys and lo-fi synthesizers! And it sounds like a full symphony~

I found out about it through bOINGbOING, which linked to Blip Festival, a chiptune festival going on in New York for three days, including today. That page has links to all of the artists who are showing up, people from all over the world. So far my favorite is USK or Portalenz, a Japanese DJ who makes the most amazing music; he has free downloads of some of his stuff, so my personal recommendation is to download "Kill Me Sweetly", a song he wrote for his girlfriend ;)

To end on a funnier note, something else from BB:

Sexual Consent Video

Two kids are about to kick it bunny style, but they pull out legal forms for their lawyers to look through before they consent to anything - it's absolutely hilarious.

Time for the mad cleaning to get Christmas decorations up before the season is out.

Muffin' Luvin'

2006-11-21T13:37:00.000-08:00

Amazing!

These are knitted! Ms Darcy knits all sorts of these things and they look extremely delicious~ *¬*

Laugh on, Laughing Boy!

2006-11-12T12:53:00.000-08:00

Found out my brother is bipolar/depressed/obsessive compulsive the other day. It's going to be a pain in the ass to deal with all this, and it's really hard to keep neutral when he's being super-euphoric high one minute, then punching a hole in the wall the next.

Went to Memphis about two weekends ago and queued up for National Portfoilo Day at Memphis College of Art, like I had hoped to do. It went really well, even though I was so scared, I think I might have caused an earthquake in China with all of my trembling [butterfly effect and all]. I ended up not riding a bus from Jackson to Memphis, cause there was no bus when I was at Target at 6:20 in the morning. So, I waited until 9:30 when my dad got home and we rode up their together [i.e I drove, he slept].

Pratt University in Brooklyn said my portfolio was good enough to pass, and then School of Visual Arts, my top school, said I was passed for their portfolio test and all I had to do was send them an essay for my application. =°∇°=

Found this guy, thought he was pretty cool:

Dan McCarthy

He's got a lot of simplistic, minimalist designs on his site, with great use of color and composition. There are see-through dinosaurs and star-dotted skies that are really fun to look at, give his place a look.

Watching "On the Waterfront" this evening...

Synopsis from IMDB:
1954 - Terry Malloy dreams about being a prize fighter, while tending his pigeons and running errands at the docks for Johnny Friendly, the corrupt boss of the dockers union. Terry witnesses a murder by two of Johnny's thugs, and later meets the dead man's sister and feels responsible for his death. She introduces him to Father Barry, who tries to force him to provide information for the courts that will smash the dock racketeers.

Starring a lovely Marlon Brando~

Hope it's good. Also going to watch "Top Hat" with legendary Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers this weekend.

Also, tentatively going to see Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny [cultured, I know], on my birthday, Wednesday, the 22nd. I'm turning into an adult! Eighteen - the age where I can get tattoos, smoke, pierce anything I want to... Yipee. So much to look forward to, and no, that's not a hint of sarcasm in my voice. I just don't do any of those things, though I'm sure some of my younger friends will ask for me to buy them cigarettes.

Hands are cold, can't type much more.

Au revoir.

My Mother Was A Chinese Trapeze Artist

2006-11-02T17:26:00.000-08:00

I think I'll convert to Catholicism. Or maybe just become one, since I'm not really anything right now. It sounds like a good idea. I like the reverance of it. All the ceremony and pomp and work put into it seems so much grander and respectful than the usual Bible-thumping, matching color t-shirt Baptist Jesus junkies I'm so used to these days. I'm tired of Christianity being so cheapened and I'm at a time in my life where I think I'll be needed a lot of the Man in Charge's help.

Particularly when all of my compatirates seem to be lowering their standards considerably. One is settling for becoming a house-wife when she has the talent of a genius and fashion skills that would knock Vivian Westwood right off of her eccentric shoes. Another, who wanted to go to New York with me, is settling for cesspool New Orleans, which is, indeed, a colorful place, but it's not the place she was aiming for. I went to a financial aid workshop this week and felt the full weight of the provential world on my shoulders. There seems to be absolutely no way ever that I can be in the places that I want to be in and the stubborness that supports my very core still makes me believe that none of my obstacles that block my way and I'll be safely walking my dog in Central Park next year [well, as safe as New York can get].

My teachers are making me absolutely livid, and as they criticize me more [in a negative way], I am becoming completely determined to prove them idiotic by making art work so outstanding, they don't know what hit them. I'm getting some pretty good stuff done, too.

In fact, I'm going to National Portfolio Day on Saturday [hopefully], in Memphis, and will get some satisfactory responses to my work. If I get a negative response from the advisors that are there, I'm going to work harder and get a better answer in January, when I go again. If I get a positive response, I'm going to work harder and get an even better reply.

Bonne nuit.

There's A River In The Valley Made of Melting Snow

2006-10-19T14:49:00.000-07:00

The school took a trip to the art museum today to see a Mr. William Dunlap [website here] and we meandered through his exhibit before listening to him "jaw" [as he said it] for nearly an hour. He had a lot of interesting things to say, and I wasn't bored, but he made me want to get out of Mississippi even more so than I already do. If you look at his website, a good deal of his work has a Southern feel to it -- the landscapes, the love of dogs, just the thoughts you get from looking at them. A phrase he said that I took to heart was that he didn't treasure Mississippi until he got out and saw the world. He loved Mississippi so much because he didn't live here all the time; it's far more exotic when you're just visiting as opposed to being stuck here.

He also cursed frequently, which made me laugh, since Mrs. O'Hara, my main art teacher, was not looking too entirely comfortable with it.

We also got filmed by some camera crew, which was interesting. The only problem is, I have no idea where they were from -- probably the Mississippi branch of PBS. They were pretty annoying, but at least my face is on film in some unknown canister. It's a start.

Found a fun website, Music for Robots, nice to check out new music if you're into electronica, indies stuff. They offer mp3 downloads, reviews, and downloads and such of new artists that are trying to break boundaries somewhere.

Also, something amazing, I think it's absolutely astounding that Sufjan Stevens wants to make an album for all 50 of the states, starting with Illinois. I'm halfway through with downloading Come On Feel the Illinoise! and it's phenomenal that he can manage to make every song sound so good. I'm wondering if he can keep this up for so many albums.

Another album I had the fortune to hear today was Idlewild by Outkast. There were a few songs on the CD that had me scanning through to the next song, but overall, the CD had such a great beat to it. With the bluegrass/jazzy guitars mashed together with super bass, I about drove off the road with the way it wanted to make me move.

Marie Antoinette comes out tomorrow, with Kirsten Dunst, who I have grown a lot more fond of recently. After Eternal Sunshine and Elizabethtown she showed that she has some skills that I didn't think possible coming from her. I expected a Bring It On! performance and was delightfully surprised when she gave a stellar piece of work in both of the mentioned movies. And, of course, I absolutely loved Lost In Translation, so I cannot wait to see what Sofia Coppolla has in store for the world this time, especially if she wrote it herself. Self-made creators mean the world to me, and it brightens my day to see them succeed.

Until later.

So I can, like, get famous doing this, right?

2006-10-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

I've got a livejournal where I drivel, had a myspace for a few days and loathed it... Maybe I'll give this a try, hm?

Hello. My name is B and I'm an alcoho... wait, that's not right :)

I'm a senior at Mississippi School for the Arts in, well, Mississippi. Visual arts major, love the whole paint on my face and clay under my fingers bit. Born in Louisiana, raised in MS, currently, desperately aching to leave the South and all of its heat, charm, fried food, and illiteracy. Of course, like every other humbled country mouse that has scampered before me, I want to live in a big city -- New York, San Francisco, Chicago -- without ever having been there to experience these places myself [excluding San Fran, it was wonderful there]. Knowing that there are tons of scary surprises waiting there for me, I still want to go and no amount of talking has seemed to persuade me otherwise as of yet.

I like to write, draw in ink, revel in music, avoid cigarettes and pot, be conceited, rack up more photography skills, and... basically be a stereotypical bohemian [except my hair is pink and I don't wear a beret that often].

I've taken Latin, one year of French [didn't learn a thing], and a few weeks of Japanese, which I am continuing to study on my own. I hope to visit all of the countries with these languages [Latin would be Italy, I'm supposing, or maybe Spain - the languages are close], especially Japan, which I am more fervernt about learning.

There's a thriving monster inside me who loves music and I devour it every moment that I can to appease him. And of course, since I don't like to eat the same thing everyday, there is no one type of music I listen to. From Miles Davis to traditional Chilean music, to L'Arc~en~Ciel, to Bob Dylan, to Fergie, to Ladytron, to Nat King Cole, to Red Hot Chili Peppers, to Billie Holiday -- I like a lot and my Ipod is my constant companion.

Currently, I'm struggling to complete a satisfactory porfolio that will meet the standards of America's top art schools. The places I'm aiming for are the School of Visual Arts in Manhatten, Pratt in Brooklyn, School of the Arts Institute in Chicago, and several others, and a back-up school, Mississippi State University. Monetary issues are the biggest problem with acheiveing success in these schools, but I'm determined to go anyway. I hope to major in graphic design, computer animation, digital arts, or illustration, I'm still trying to decide which I love more. We'll get back to that later.

I'm probably over-ambitious and crazy, but at least I have a spot away from friends where I can write and not have to worry about social themes as much.

So, until next time.

おやすみなさいおよび…幸運