This weekend I directed and starred in my first short film. It was very exhausting and exciting. Rolling back and forth made me so dizzy I nearly puked up and my stomach hurt for the rest of the day. Stripping down to my underwear over & over when the sun was nearly set was freezing. Realized a lot of things and mistakes after the fact. But it’s ok. I want to do more video projects, so much more. The original idea was scrapped on site when I realized that acting is not easy when you don’t know how to do it. So instead we were able to come up with something even more meaningful informed by the highly personal work of Sophie Calle and Miranda July and Vito Acconci‘s theories of performativity. It’s actually a fragmented voyeuristic narrative that takes place on the York University campus. It was made to be a GPS film, and the different clips will be triggered when the viewer steps into the ‘hot zone.’
My friend and I went to Casa Loma and Spadina House today because it was very sunny. We shot some video to experiment with. He worked in film for many years and I’m really excited to be milking his knowledge. The experiment is a prerequisite for a flourishing film body of work. Below are some stills. There was an earthworm near my foot and I picked it up and flung it around. I have always been disgusted by earthworms and always tried to avoid them for all of my life. And there I was, holding it, like the entire history of me and earthworms never existed. When it’s sunny everything is okay. I dropped a course because I need slowness and I’ve given up feeling guilty about it. I’m working on a VR project inspired by Valdrada, a city in Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino with some people. We are creating a hyper-real s(t)imulated environment of anxiety. J is still on tour and doing things like foraging mushrooms in Brighton, making music with Shitmat and playing crazy parties with displaced genre vinyl. I still haven’t learned how to roll cigarettes. Maybe it’s time to give up.
Dan Charnas knows what’s up, as always. Seems like all of us up here and more engaged in Tina Fey’s impersonations of Sarah Palin, and convincing everyone of Obama’s need to win, than how to get our “total fuck up” Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper out of office.
I don’t feel well at all. I want to hide in a meadow and listen to toads make music, like that night when I made him wander off the main area to the beach in Camber Sands with me, and a symphony of toads provided us with music. But then he made us leave. I wanted to lay among them then, and want to lay among them now. I want to hide hide hide hide. I listen to the below constantly. Every morning since I got back.
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I sometimes post music links. If you want yours taken down let me know. & for the rest of you, if you don't buy music & just d/l links, you should feel like an asshole.
