Magdalena O!

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i’ve been silent online trying to finish my MA thesis project & documentary / the defense is on august 24 & i move to montreal six days later to start my PhD

I really need to get off the Internet. Moreover, I need to get off Twitter. Getting riled up as usual.

Sometimes I wish I was one of those people that can let anything roll off them and dislike confrontation so much they’d rather turn into spineless jelly beans than let tempers flare up. Sometimes I feel insane because I problematize everything around me. Is it so fucking naive of me to want/strive for justice? Or at least some form of community collaborative conversation? The moment someone decides to use the top down approach to anything, in any situation, I get really fucking hive-y. Prove me wrong, motherfuckers, let me step off my confrontational wheelbarrow.  I take such pleasure in being humbled and having my perspective challenged and despite my stubbornness, if I need to be schooled, I will participate with open arms. I want those blind spots to keep dissipating (although with that comes new blind spots I guess).

But I’m angry right now, really angry because I was witness to a situation that was really fucking lame and used that top down authoritarian approach and I hate that. I get angry a lot, I should stop apologizing for it. But I’m probably apologizing to myself, because I often feel so fucking crazy getting so riled up and then being told, “who cares?” WHO? ME! Maybe even YOU? Or they? Why do I do many things? Because I want to be liked or popular? Sure, it’s nice to have my ego stroked and feel validated, I won’t ever deny that, but I do things because I get riled up and maybe it’s futile and maybe it doesn’t achieve anything (but how do you even measure that?) but OK, I’m probably going to keep trying.

Conversely, sometimes I do feel like I’m disillusioned or maybe confused, misguided? Maybe that’s good, maybe I need to feel uncertain to gain certainty?

Oh hey, after my last post I had several people engage in really meaningful conversations with me! So much so that the conversation with Melanie McBride led me to realize a a blind spot that has been growing inside and around me for most of my life. I have a dissertation’s worth of writing in my head already.

Sometimes I so desperately wish I could be (exist as) an island.

I also wish that hypocrisy would not exist: in others and in me and in each other collectively.

HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH IT? Like, I am a hypocrite all the time, and the more I think I am not, the more I am. The more I try not to be, the more I see it and it’s gross. Ok, sometimes I am respectful and open to a situation and gentle with my own feelings and issues and those around me…and it’s amazing and I want to hold onto it, but then something else happens. Maybe I am not such a hypocrite, maybe it’s more about having undetected blind spots. I can’t stand it, I want this utopian ideal of self-reflexivity and self-awareness, but with that comes self-obsession smothering itself over everything. And with that comes my own judgmental weakness – watching people race past their blind spots. Slavoj Žižek, who appeared at this incredible talk with Julian Assange moderated by Amy Goodman a couple of days ago in London (which I watched twice over since), has this to say: “We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.”

New rule: Do not speak unless spoken to.

Some mundane thoughts right now: I privatized about 99% of my Flickr account. My mother says my energy is more calming than ever before. One of my roommates refuses to compromise & in turn is compromising my cats safety, making me anxious to be away from my flat. I listen to John Maus and Dmitri Shostakovich incessantly. I can’t stop masturbating. The sun has burned my skin straight through. Nothing makes sense: Why do I type with my fingers? How come clipping your nails in public is so offensive? Why don’t people admit they love their own weird body smells? I am an animal. I smell my crotch and it is intoxicating.  I remember the slow progression of starting to have an “odour” to my pussy, becoming pronounced after I became sexually active. I love that every guy I have been with desires to keep my underwear. Don’t you love the coalescing of smells when you have sex a lot and you aren’t sure who smells like who anymore and you wage a war on who is taking over, “I totally smell like you!” “No, I smell like you.” I am going to become a Master in August, or more like I have no choice but finish this documentary or else I will fail and then die. I am moving to Montreal to have  “Dr” next to my name. I wish I could not speak to anyone. I wish no one would speak to me. People mistake my 18 year old brother and I for a couple everywhere we go every time. Less than two months to go.

also: “You give into distraction as if it is a murderer. You lay there, waiting to be killed. Today: fight for your life.” — Miranda July

John Maus’ “Streetlight” is only managing the high ends through my shitty iPhone speaker. It’s late and congested. Probably over 30 degrees. The sticky mountains of white cotton suffocate me. My sheets are crumpled up, and the cover for the duvet is only half on. I forgot to masturbate today, so I make an effort to do it even though I am tired, but not the tired that makes it feel all woozy and better, but the exhausted anxiousness you feel when you have to sleep even though there’s a never-ending list of tasks you haven’t done. The ceiling fan is growling, it’s tired too. I never let it stop. It’s so loud and the high ends make me uncomfortable. I start but nothing is happening. So much to think about, so many people to negotiate, school, project, moving, money, vacuuming, hospital bills, sick best friend, missing lovers. I change it to, Shostakovich’s “Piano Concerto No. 2, Andante,” because it reminds me of Chopin and the strings work to subdue the fan. I can hardly breathe and my legs chafe against the bare mattress. Going back and forth between fantasies and memories, I manage and finally fall asleep.

Another unfamiliar ceiling.

Receiving the unsuccessful doctoral SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) letter in the mail yesterday felt like the first professional 200m race I ran after I just joined the track club. The memory came up instantly. I had been a sprinter for years and had placed top 3, if not 1st in almost every race up to that point. I was the star sprinter, and was “discovered” by a coach in grade 9 who insisted I train with him. I wish I could remember whether the excitement was to be distracted from the angst of teenage-hood or if I really cared about being on the track. Maybe both? I spent most of my days either training in Nike cleats or slitting my wrists in my bedroom listening to Hole and ripping my black pantyhose arm sleeves. Ugh. I had a couple of training sessions with the group before my once-lauded hubris quickly disappeared. The runners were straight-faced and had been trained privately for years. I was the new girl that didn’t fit into their sprinter mold. Although this was probably all in my head because I was just used to being the best without much thought. Running came so naturally to me. I didn’t have to fight my body to get ahead and now my body and its movements didn’t make sense anymore. The first race came upon us really quickly, and I ran my distance – the 200m. This was not a high school track meet, this was a real track meet, with runners and their coaches pouring water into their mouths just like they do on TV. I don’t think I even ran in cleats yet, I was probably one of the few that still ran in running shoes. How embarrassing. Of course, what happened? I came in last. I mean, dead last. Imagine 200 meters is not a lot of distance, and it was noticeable how dead last I stumbled past the finish line. So there I was – a loser. The girl who took her inept relay teams to regional school championships died. Although I did run the 100m and didn’t do too poorly, it didn’t even matter, my distance was the 200m. My coach was ecstatic that my time was so bad, because to him, this meant he had a clean slate to teach me how to be a champion – and as typical as stories go, he did manage quite well. I was ready to learn everything. I think that’s when I started understanding what running was about and what it was doing to me. It’s funny how few people know this about me (…other than those who point out my legs. I’m not trying to to be cocky, but legs get sculpted with sport, especially sprinting). It came up in my therapy session two weeks ago and my therapist was pleasantly surprised because she would have never guessed it knowing me. I don’t really know what that’s supposed to mean, considering I was also a lifeguard and swimming instructor for six years until I bleached my hair and had to give up.

I guess what I wanted to say is that the score I received on my appraisal, which I can’t even mention here or to anyone in hopes of forgetting it, felt like that race. I am a strong student but I was unprepared at that point to take on the race. Even if many say luck has a lot to do with it, because even within the categories you are never really sure how they’re tabulated, there’s still the past you have to learn how to negotiate for the present. It  also doesn’t help that I frequent this obsessive-compulsive graduate student forum in which a disproportionate amount of posters got the SSHRC Grant that, by the way, is either $85,000 or $105,000 over a course of 3/4 years. My supervisor’s terse answer was, “You’ve been lucky enough this year,” which is perhaps akin to the answer my old running coach had. I did at least get passed onto the national competition, whereas some others I know didn’t even pass the university-wide competition to get carried forward to SSHRC. I also got accepted to the school of my choice with a fellowship even though I applied after the deadline and a guaranteed researcher position on an incredible mobile cinema project.

After being in the Lab at Ryerson til about 3:30am editing last night (as has been every night the last while),  I woke up at 7am and met up with J at York, hand-processing my 16mm film for almost eight hours in the darkroom, then I went straight back to my Lab and worked on Final Cut with my other movie until now, and it’s nearly 2am. We didn’t take enough breaks or drink enough water and my head is feeling pretty fried from all the chemical fumes. I can’t wait to see what I shot on Wednesday. A large portion of it was underexposed, so I messed around with the bleach and made crazy streaks, washing out many frames, because I didn’t realize that you have to dip bleached film into water immediately or else it keeps eating away at the frames. Seems obvious! I’m making mistakes all over the place and it’s really helping me learn (like actually take in information and process it into knowledge, not this half-ass skill acquisition that I usually do when learning new tools because I get sidetracked by …. the Internet!!). I love that working with analog there’s nothing to be distracted by like when working on a computer, because you’re in this dark room with lots of chemicals, time constraints and your work on the line & when you get into a groove & the fumes start kicking in, it gets proper meditative. We did listen to a lot of jungle to keep us going though. Next up is in-camera edits and superimposition. I really want to have enough material to incorporate it into our Bangface Weekender performance. I am addicted to the Bolex.

I can’t seem to work on video unless it’s dark out. Do you get that too? I don’t think I’m sleeping until I get to London next month, and then it’s all VJ, documentary shooting and RAVE.