Thursday, October 28, 2010

Dream 3: Cruisin'

4/14/2009


This dream I actually had on a couch in a passageway in my school library, actually in the midst of writing a Lit paper. 

It was a very late, awfully late, night in the library, where time usually disappears from me and weary restlessness sets in. I didn’t want to be there, writing a six page paper for my Lit class the next day, but I had to be. And I knew it would not be long before I desired to sleep.

The library, believe it or not, is the worst place to work at night. Well, it’s the best place for people who actually want to work, because you feel so uncomfortable at those high tables, in those stiff chairs, in that stiff white light, that sleep does not come easy, and work is the next best option. But for people like me, who prefer comfort, the library is the worst place to work at night. And I was tired, but most of all Bored with what I was doing. It wasn’t easy.

After some time, I had given up on trying to convince myself that what I was doing was worth doing, at least at that hour, so I thought I’d treat myself to a nap on the couch in the Library’s lounge. It was uncomfortable, loud with the noises of people traffic, and not at all as dark as a room should be for sleeping. Crashing on the couch was symbolic of my giving up, of admitting weakness and poor focus.

But eventually I was woken up by the unlikeliest of people, and the night was saved…

"The Rescue"

Dan, my best friend, came and picked me up, he picked me up and out of the library, and we left the library. He put me into the passenger seat of his gold Cadillac and said we should go for a ride...so we did. He turned his headlights off and sped down the dark, midnight strip of shopping malls and restaurants, bowling alleys and gas stations, flying past auto dealerships in the streetlights like distant galaxies.

But the most stunning thing was that it was completely silent, and cool. I got excited for ourselves, and the fact that we had escaped. Leaning forward in my seat, Dan at the wheel, I stared out into the deep brown sky ahead, while it was still dark and round with mystery. Dan said little as he drove, looking ahead into the dark and rushing highway, and his peace affirmed my peace. We followed the low stream of lights embroidering the two-lane road, riding the middle.

It was take-off. Easing back, my tense body released itself into the seat, and

I could laugh!

Idea: Immersion Series: Prayer Positions

"We resemble martyrs
or trees, crooked and proud,
joined by our branches,
a strong forest of soul...
...And our faces our peaceful and
often thoughtful. Our eyes are
closed, but not shut."


Background: I had this idea at a leadership training orientation in the Bronx, as we, the congregants, stood holding hands in a circle and in unison recited the closing prayer for the day. I decided to study just one single person at a time out of the group; one of those moments when everyone's eyes are closed except yours, when you're peeking. And I was amazed at how serene this person's face had become. Hands linked  both left and right, palms outward, he quietly prayed. His posture, chest sticking out and arms hanging, head forward, made him look somewhat vulnerable, as if he were surrendering himself before a firing wall.
Then I realized that each person has his or her unique way of standing while praying, but that their body language always emulates the self-sacrificial pose of Christ on the cross.

Execution: This is the first installment of what I deem an "Immersion Series." The intention is, that a multitude of portraits with the same theme, arranged in a gallery or room with specific dimensions or topography, will produce the effect that the viewer feels as if he is part of the scene in the portrait, or a component of the subject's environment. You shall soon realize what I mean.

The idea is simple: A rather large, maybe 2' x 3' vertically-oriented photo of a lower-middle class, preferably minority individual, any age, standing in a prayer circle, reverent and focused in prayer. Really, it could be a candid photo. Just catch them praying, as they naturally would. But allow your subjects to be in particularly awkward or unnatural bodily poses, like with their chest sticking out, or their arms at certain angles from their sides, their heads cocked back or forward too much. These are subjective characteristics, but in every subject raw reverence should radiate through their clothing, like they were literally being grounded to the floor by the holy spirit.

Other Specs: The subject's full body must be within the frame, from head to toe. On both right and left extremes, you can see the ambiguous hands our subject is holding, but nothing past the wrist. The background can be any number of things, but some obvious ones are: A church basement (because no one really stands in prayer CIRCLES in a traditional cathedral...they sit in rows), a Park, a parking lot. Here's where you can get creative. Obviously if the background emphasized a humble, non-glitzy, working-class environment, that would go along with the theme. But I imagine you can throw a lot of interesting things in the background to make some sort of alternate statement, generate irony... Throw some crosses and religious icons on the walls, behind the subject!

The "Immersion" Effect: Arrange lots (20+?) of these portraits around the perimeter of a room (gallery), making sure to not "break the circle" by including any other type of work in the room. You want to give the illusion that these subjects are actually standing around the room holding hands and praying. I suppose, ideally, the backgrounds of all the photos should be consistent, to preserve the effect. Again, I'd be interested to see how one creative mind can modify or break this criteria to say something new!

Now here's the creative sweetener! As the audience / viewers / onlookers perceive these paintings in succession, or even as a whole unit, they will imagine one of two scenarios:

(1) that they are part of the circle themselves, engaged in worship with the fellow congregants. But what are they praying for? Who are they praying to?

(2) That the viewer is actually in the CENTER of the prayer circle, being prayed to! Like some sort of sacrifice, or object of sympathy, compassion, love. Maybe the audience is sick, and these praying folk are asking for the power of God to restore health. Maybe the audience is actually a religious idol, like golden statue, for some strange cult. I personally like this idea better, for the weirder implications it can draw. The artist can certainly embellish somehow to strengthen this innuendo in the picture.

------

So, there's my first idea. Comments?


Sunday, October 17, 2010

Art for the World

I will be posting my first "idea" later tomorrow, but to preface this I'd like to elaborate on my intent for this blog.

There are many ways to interpret a situation, and likewise there are many ways to present a situation...or an idea. I'd like to see any one of my ideas/concepts/themes visited (not by me, but by real, artists who have the time and talent)...visited by a variety (multitude) of different artists, each of whom will approach the project from a different angle, and produce a unique, organic work. Undoubtedly, no two executions of the same concept will be alike, and thus the artistic world will be doubly, or triply, quadruply, etc. enriched if a single idea spawns itself into a family.

I do not even require that anyone rigidly follow the structure I establish in my creative musings. They can do whatever they want, obviously. But I hope that at least one person reading this will attempt to espouse my vision in its completeness, following the criteria I apply. That person, I acknowledge, will have to fully agree with and be invested in this vision, lest the final product lack luster.

Because I am not an artist, I cannot speak from experience. But I imagine that at times, one lacks inspiration or creativity. Use this blog as a resource, even a hurdle. Anyone can use these ideas n times over, and by doing so we will be contributing to the great, universal body of art that is of infinite dimension and always expanding.

If someone does use an idea I post here on this blog, please feel free to connect with me via email, or this blog itself, with information about where one can view this art. Send me pictures, links to websites, gallery exhibition information, and I'll post it, thus promoting you!

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Dream 2: No Skates

4/02/09

My cousins, or possibly Alex Dadras and Erik Stumpf, were visiting, and we were prepared to go out and enjoy ourselves for the day, as it was generally sunny and nice out, but first my mom insisted on buying me roller skates. So we wound up in front of a skate shop, on a steep and narrow commercial hill that reminded me of San Francisco, and my friends and I waited outside as my mom went in to purchase the skates. We had been standing out there a long time, and it grew dark out. I remember peeking my head in the store to see what the hell was taking so long, and just saw my mom bullshitting with the clerk, holding a box in her hand, so I assumed the transaction was almost done.

Music started to pump all around me, and soon enough my surrounding environment more resembled a dance hall than a sidewalk and street. There were teenage kids all around us, just dancing and mingling like some social event or college party! So, acclimating to the radically new scene, I started to dance as well. At that point, I had forgotten that I had been waiting for hours to get the goddamn skates so that my friends and I could be on our merry way. On a parenthetical note, now I understand why shops play music – to keep their patrons entertained, but more importantly, patient. Because waiting sucks.

But I was enjoying myself, dancing as I usually do to Gwen Stefani’s “Cool,” when the music turned off abruptly. Everyone around us got real silent and awkward again…it really was  like a college party! I popped back into the skate shop, where my mother was now at the cashier desk, and I screamed like a drunkard, “Hey! Can you put Gwen Stefani back on?!” So he did, and I started dancing again, until I realized that it was getting light out again, and we must have been hanging out like assholes in front of that skate shop all night, and I decided it was time to ditch.

Coincidentally, it was at that moment that my mother walked out of the shop with my brand-new pair of roller skates that I never wanted. However, she no longer resembled my mother, but rather a balding, middle-aged man, with glasses who dressed like a computer programmer. He insisted that we three – Alex, Erik, and I – sit down so that he may explain to us the significance of the roller skates before we use them. I stood up and started to walk out in disgust – through the tunnel in the side of the nearest building. He-Mom called me back in haste, still in a woman’s voice, pleading with me to stay “just one minute!” Realizing she meant well, and that she was, after all, doing this out of her own selfless sense of generosity, I cooled off and sat back down, still itching to leave.

Then he began to explain how to use the skates properly, going into excruciating detail and expounding on the useless features and mechanisms of the skates, how lucky I was, how appreciative I should be, what to do and what not to do in my skates… and I finally exploded in the most aggressive vitriol I ever thought I could harvest.

Shooting out of my seat, arms tensed and fists swollen with rage, head cocked forward, I ranted,

“FUCK your STUPID skates, if I ever had to go ANYWHERE I’d FUCKING RUN ON MY FUCKING TWO LEGS, I NEVER wanted those FUCKING STUPID SKATES, you wasted my FUCKING TIME buying those FUCKING things, if I needed to GO somewhere I’d FUCKING RUN OR FUCKING RIDE A SCOOTER THERE, If YOU think I’m putting THOSE FUCKING THINGS ON MY FUCKING FEET, YOU’RE FUCKING MISTAKEN, this is the STUPIDEST GIFT you’ve EVER BOUGHT!!”

Purpose

At the moment, I have two goals for this blog.

One is to regularly post narrative transcriptions of the dreams I have. I dream almost every night, and vividly remember most scenes and their emotional gravity as I was involved in them, in my dreams. Most often, I am the protagonist of my dreams.

For years I have been writing down my dreams in journals, but paper and virtual, but lately I've been nervous, that, should I god forbid lose a journal or my computer crashes, there would be no record of the innumerable chronicles of love, strangeness, savagery, magic, that graced me in my sleep. 

Also, more significantly, I hope that these dreams are of interest to someone, even if only one person. I imagine that, for example, a psych grad student needs some material for a case study on the subconscious, and wants to explore into my detail-rich and often cyclic and bizarre subconscious landscapes for something to analyze or dissect. I one day plan to release / publish a book of hundreds of my dreams (I don't have even one hundred cataloged yet) to the world, as a psychic atlas of poetry and short stories, avant-garde and very raw.

Just to clarify, nothing I write in these dream entries is intentionally fabricated for entertainment value; all of it I have experienced as a dreamer. When one recounts a story to another, however, there is always some license taken with the minor details, through nobody's fault -- it's in our oral tradition to embellish, and I am not exempt from this tradition. Usually, though, when I am reflecting on the sequence of events, or the particular features of a character or location, I must make a conscious decision to choose between two conflicting details. Like, did this happen first, or this? I will then try to weave my story so that it does not ignore or corrupt its inspiration, while simultaneously going with the version that makes the "most sense" thematically. Because there are definite themes that recur, and explode, and surrender, and there are morals alongside the drama, and so I suppose that at the heart of it all I simply enjoy telling stories.

Secondly, this blog will be a repository, a wellspring, for free ideas. Ideas, free to the public. And I don't intend to sound arrogant when I say that I want my ideas public.

Everyone has ideas....most people have ideas. Who hears them? Where do they go when people die? If you have a "million dollar idea," and you fail to pursue it, no one benefits. You remain as you were, and the world is no more enriched. I myself am extremely busy right now; I am a college student pursuing a double degree, and my parents are pushing me to get a job. But I have artistic/creative inclinations, and I'd like to "see" certain things, art exhibits that don't yet exist but in my mind, hear songs that weren't written but are already pretty cool concepts (in my opinion). And I don't have the time, yet, to take a painting class; or the money to buy a moog; or the capital and business savvy to start my own business. So I'm giving my ideas away, freely, to anyone that wants them, to anyone who will find something they like, or are intrigued by, and will execute.

I am humble...I think anyone could do what I am doing, maybe many are, and that is exciting to me. Good ideas are everywhere, and I am not in the position to cling to my own, keeping them in the dark until the day it's convenient to give them life. So I'll leave my babies on a doorstep and hope the good ones grow up.

Also, I don't expect royalties or payment if one gets used; at most, it'd be nice to see just one little line offering ambiguous thanks to me, Yeti Hunting. If not, then whatever, because I still benefit from the artistic produce that newly graces the world, and what's good for the artistic world is good for me.

Is there any confusion as to my motives? 

If not, then enjoy my blog :D. More commentary and posts to follow soon.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Dream 1: Me and My Skateboard

6/26/09

Part 1.

In the brick amigo streets of central Queens, New York, I was riding a skateboard around. Latino men in white tank tops were walking about with their small flocks of children, who rode primary-colored plastic tricycles. I was fleeing urgently from Felicia A-’s mother, cannoning for me in her maroon Subaru Outback. As I raced around corners and down streets, criss-crossing and otherwise trying to lose the vehicle and its raging lesbian pilot, I recall looking over my shoulder frequently, only to see the Outback careening around a corner. Luckily I was always able to outskate the goddamn evil thing! A general feeling of terror and anxiety.

To better streamline myself and increase my speed, I sat down on the board and rode it like a toboggan. Then, the flat, drab suburbs of central Queens snapped into a commercial district that resembled a baroque hybrid of Dickensian London and Disneyland. The streets were winding, rolling, lined with cobblestone and flanked by quaint shoppes with colorful, dimensional signs. Like, the signs weren’t just flat billboards with words, but instead had depth and personality of their own: words with carnivalesque, curlicue fonts -- candy canes and rainbows, everything nice.

I continue to cruise, to luge down side streets and darker foreboding alleys, until I duck into an FAO-Schwarz toy store. One of the first things I notice in the store is a gigantic spiral slide, reaching from the top of the store to the main level. Smooth and silver and sparkling, it consumes most of the store in its immensity. Otherwise, the individual floors of the store have uncomfortably low ceilings, and as I step into an elevator to ascend to the top, I meet Tom O’Connell and his mother in the elevator. 

At some point I mount the Wonka-esque silver slide, surfing down in an affected slowness, observing that the store is far smaller than I imagined, and that there are no toys on the shelves! Just a glitzy slide to the empty bottom.

I keep riding down on my skateboard, making an elaborate and slow show with flirtatious hand gestures and looks to no one in particular. I was playing the male nymphet, possibly . Somehow I capture the attention of Rufus Wainwright, who afterwards comes on to me in a most vulgar and suggestive manner, although I cannot recall any particular thing. I confess to him that I am neither gay nor attracted to him, and apologize for teasing; it was a cruel misuse of my alluring power.

Outside, behind a 7-11, I meet my sister Kim and tell her what I've been through so far. I spit vigorously on the near wall for some reason, probably in disgust with the whole experience.

Part 2.

Will Smith - as the Fresh Prince - and Carlton are having a conversation. If you have ever seen the movie Watchmen (re: Doctor Manhattan materializing out of the atmosphere), or the uncut music video for Robbie William’s “Rock DJ,” you know what I mean when I say that Carlton starts out as a mere skeleton, and the fibers of his organs and skin gradually materialize until he is a full, flesh and blood human. Notably, I see much of his face during this construction process, the sinews of his muscles twitching as he talks until he grows some layers of skin. The composition of his face, however, skin tone and facial hair, never stops shifting in both color and consistency. The two jabber on about something, of which Carlton has a vested interest in making his case.


<to see what I am talking about, watch the music vid @ 2:53
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGelsMOIJZY>


< or this should give you an idea of what I mean:
except happening in reverse, from bones to skin>



At the end, Will Smith talks about fate, and how all events and circumstances work to come together under some grand design. I wonder if he was referring to the process by which I reunited with my sister.

The scene changes to a black screen with a white, cartoon sheep falling down a short set of stairs with a blue banister, and when he finally makes his final tumble onto the floor, he emits an excited word bubble saying "eek!" It must have been an allegory for fate, though I have not yet considered how.