This is an OOOOOLD poem. Crazy, crazy in my head for such a long time.
There are around 53 lines in this thing still needing to be rearranged.
Rough draft for the first few lines.
<start>
Melancholic inspiration
coming, going… going, coming
my mind’s eye
a fountain
quench my soul’s thirst
lay on shards and nails
you lie on petals
tossing, turning, dreaming
of you
Life in a gilded cage
trapped, in a filigree embrace
your voice
Awaiting judgement
<end> for now
Something said on Castle kicked my ass.
Rick Castle: “The key to a good jack o’ lantern is understanding negative space.”
Alexis: “It’s not what’s there; it’s what’s NOT there.”
Hmmm, it got me thinking.
I’ve always wanted to try a set of silhouette photos. The subject being unseen is a story just waiting to be told. I’ve written about negative space at length and this is interesting. What happens when your subject is totally in the dark?
Putting the background in focus and keeping the subject in black and out of focus is the plan. A photograph is like a captured memory and creating a hole in a memory seems interesting to me.
Every good writer knows and remembers one simple rule, “Remove unnecessary words.”
I think that it’s just the same for any art form.
Keeping a photo as simple and clean as possible is one of the hardest skills to work on. I’ve been taking photos since I was 5 and it’s still one of my biggest shortcomings.
I’m not an expert on composition but I want to discuss positive and negative space. It’s all about what is and isn’t your subject. I’ve found that in most of my photos it’s the positive space that makes the photos but it’s the negative space that breaks the photo.
Most of my rejects have this problem, I have a great subject but I also put a distracting element into the frame. Sometimes it’s so distracting that the people who look at my photos can’t tell what the subject is anymore.
It all boils down to exclusion, keeping the stuff that doesn’t need to be there out.
So I’m torrenting two things
Humans + Gears: Xenogears ReMixed
and
Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream
Try ‘em, you may just like ‘em
Percs against the world.
simple enough, recordings of impromptu percussion performances by yours truly using whatever is at hand.
It’s been a rough draft in my head for a while, the main thing holding it back was the loss of my hand held recorder. No matter, I’ve found a suitable replacement. Hopefully I can start on this project soon. My hands are a bit itchy.
Anyways, watch out for the first one, Hands vs the Ikea chair. Probably sometime next week.
My stash of film is getting low.
It’ll probably get even lower if I have anything to say about it since I plan on getting out of the house these next few days.
I’m probably going to be using 120 format film for the first time in almost a year. This is great news for me because my Holga will be coming out of hiatus.
I’ve admittedly been enjoying using my D-SLR TOO MUCH lately and it’s kinda getting me down.
I’ve also been kinda lost on the whole “I do percs” thing that I used to do since I lost my music recorder, kinda hard to show the world you do percs when you can’t upload it…
So here’s what I’m going to do.
Get a digital recording medium for my percs.
Go out and take some photos with my Holga.
No procrastination this time.
Always looking to the night sky, searching
for a sign, I grow weary, impatient
and yet here I am, once again reaching
unattainable, that to me salient
crowds, rooms empty but for the two of us
everything is silent, better this way
avoiding speaking out, of the obvious
in your bottomless eyes, drifting away
once again, you leave me, I wake alone
craving connection, not this disengage
as I pick up, I hear only a drone
more isolation, as I turn the page
I am simply found, all alone, waiting
I am now a slave to this, this wanting
October 1, 2009
That is how I describe Haiku.
You can find the dictionary definition of Haiku HERE, knock yourself out.
Haiku are descriptive poems based simply on the observations of the writer. I sort of snicker at the people who say haiku don’t make sense or that they don’t feel them because the very IDEA of this form of writing IS senses and feelings articulated.
Raindrops fall lightly
I walk briskly, carefully
afraid that I slip
Imagine seeing a person trying to get out of the rain, can you maybe imagine him thinking these very lines as he navigates the sidewalk to find shelter under an awning?
Sometimes I think of Haiku as the literary equivalent of snapshots, like the following.
Drinking my warm tea
I look past the parking lot
Music Museum
I thought of this Haiku when I was drinking tea with a friend on the smoking balcony of Figaro in promenade. Across from promenade and beyond the parking lot is Music Museum.
Haiku may seem silly but I take it seriously because I believe that the “rigidity” of its “rules” forces the writer to distil his thoughts into the simplest, purest form that can be written while at the same time revealing the intrinsic complexities of his thought process.
I’ve started something new.
It’s something to keep me interested in photography. I guess you could call it a project but it’s something personal to a degree.
I take photos of things I see on the street. It’s the stuff I normally see but think about a lot.
It comes with a sort of commentary what with all the opinions I have. I guess it’s just in me to voice out.
It’s admittedly exploitative since I sort of feel strongly about certain issues like the Sampaguita vendors and the beggars but I’m going for a balance soon.
Wish me luck.
I’ve been watching some of my favorite old movies lately. The breakfast club, Mallrats, 10 things I hate about you, Toy Soldiers, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
I’m still drawing inspiration from these movies. I don’t know, the cinematography keeps giving me ideas.
I want to do a few shoots based on some of my favorite movies. I should ask some friends for help, they’re all hotter than me, and a lot more compliant.
An exercise gone weird
