| "I pity you, who understands nothing. There is nothing that isn't important!" |
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| Hi |
[Feb. 14th, 2006|04:30 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  confused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Matisyahu - King Without A Crown | ] |
This is going to be a quick one, I want to have the rough of my Valentine deadline story to be finished by the time I have to go to school.
I just wanted to say I need to remember to make better notes to myself. I'm staring at my sketchbook and I can't remember for the life of me what I meant when I wrote the single word 'method'. Like that's supposed to spark a whole idea I had.
I have no clue at all what I was talking about.
Oh well, it's still coming along at a decent pace.
Cheers! |
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| Lateness |
[Feb. 9th, 2006|03:48 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  productive | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Hikaru Utada - Passion ~Opening Version~ | ] |
I thought I'd check in and throw an entry on the pile while I remembered to.
I haven't updated in a while, but I'm not sweating it too badly. I guess I feel like if I'm not actively making something or doing something, fleshing out an idea or what have you, then that's when I should be most diligent about writing here.
However, I've been quite productive these past couple of weeks, so I'm feeling pretty aces. My circle series for photography ended up pretty good, and I'm continuing with it, perhaps extending it into a video project, a simple slide show accompanied by music, even (I'm looking at you, Toothman).
Also, progress is coming along with my afterlife story. In another window, I'm presently tapping away at a first draft. I'm finding myself go off on quirky little tangents, but so far, I'm liking it. I think for a first draft, it has a lot of promise, and could be something I'll be proud of when it's edited down nicely.
So, that's about it. I'm finding myself doing a lot of what I want to, the ideas coming to me in the first place, getting fleshed out, and actually executed.
Hell, it's like I'm almost actually doing work.
Also, I'm finding sources, unexpected sources, of inspiration. To these unexpected sources, I can only tip my cap and nod. They're way appreciated.
Back to the writing.
See you, space cowboy. |
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| katabasin' down memory lane |
[Jan. 31st, 2006|06:04 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The Roots - Break You Off (featuring Musiq) | ] |
I was talking to my Thomas Ira Landis tonight.
Hello, livejournal.
Anyway, I was talking to Tom, and the conversation transitioned, quite smoothly, actually, from girl gamers to what a video game based on Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy would be like. After we talked about this for a while,
hang on, I need water, I'm way parched.
Fantastic! Water tastes amazing when you've neglected it for a while.
Yes, so after this conversation with Tom about the Divine Comedy, I was reminded of an idea I had at least a year if not two years ago, regarding a patchwork afterlife. The premise was kind of rooted in the story of Orpheus going into Hades to retrieve his dead love, Eurydice.
The idea I had basically sets a young protagonist in the afterlife, but the way that it works is that when we die, we go to whatever we believe in. So, if you were a Roman Catholic and were convinced you were a hell-bound sinner, then you spent your eternity in the most classical version of hell, fire and woe and all that. If you were a firm atheist, then you'd be in nothing, always. If you had some weird private belief of what happens when you die, then that's what you experienced. That was the point, it was based on the individual. So people who shared relatively similar belief systems also shared afterlives. All those little old ladies who collected angel figurines are undoubtedly sitting with their childhood pets and their young again husbands in their war uniforms sitting with Santa Claus god on top of clouds.
The twist, I suppose it'd be called, is that the protagonist, who's searching for someone in particular who died, is able to move freely between these afterlives. At times he is affected by the rules imposed by the people that have believed these ways into existence, and he has to struggle and adapt to the potentially nonsensical ways that suddenly govern him.
So, having this thought resurface, I felt like taking a swing at it. Not sure of how I wanted exactly to go about it, I hopped onto www.wikipedia.org and poked around to see what it had to say about various afterlife beliefs. It was then that I realized that this is something I'd want to research for a while before finishing. I'm definitely going to try to knock out a plot and a rough draft within the next two weeks.
Oh, weird. So I got up to mark that down on my calender, and two weeks from now falls onto February 14th. What's funny about that is I sort of always considered this to be a kind of valentine story. Serendipitous.
I have to say, this story is almost entirely inspired by Gaiman. I can remember the seed for this being planted when I re-read the Sandman where Dream goes to Hell and talks with Lucifer at length, while the latter is closing Hell and dispelling rumors about himself and Hell. Anyway, cheers to Neil very muchly for writing such amazing stuff. If I could, truly, become a fraction as talented as that man? Well, I would walk proudly, and brag to all of my schoolyard chums.
I have an hour to kill before I need to go back to CVS and try to get my prints developed in a way that don't make me cry.
Arbitrary thought of the hour: Why does my hand smell like pancake powder?
Now I want pancakes.
Fuck this, I'm declaring it St. Pancake's Day.
Later on. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 30th, 2006|07:50 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  blah | ] |
I thought I'd get a post in while I waited for my photographs to upload from my camera. I just wandered around Grandview in the wee hours taking pictures.
All uploaded. Just a second.
>yawn<
Man. All-nighters are nobody's pal.
I've been photographing like a madman in the past 24 hours. I gotta say, I'm starting to really enjoy my digital camera. It's pretty fun, and capable of some decent pictures. The assignment I'm working on is about documenting something, using the photograph as a document. I don't really jive on this assignment, as it tends to lend itself to a lot of snapshot kinds of pictures, which is fine, if you know how to take good pictures already. Which I really don't.
So, I decided I wanted to pear down my document subject to the point where I'm thinking in only the most basic ways, removing as many superfluous choices regarding a shot as possible. Therefore, I ended up documenting a repeating shape (a circle) in as many iterations as I can find. I'm pretty happy with what I've got so far, it's making me wander around looking at everything around me, and I get to sit and decide what kinds of colors I like.
Dick-shrinking moment of the night: Thinking for a split second that I had warped or otherwise damaged my digital camera by holding it too close to a stove burner, not realizing quite how hot it had gotten.
baka |
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| "Fuck." |
[Jan. 29th, 2006|01:48 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  irritated | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Outkast - Outkast - Stankonia - 10 - Cal | ] |
Fuck is the word I think I've said most today. If it isn't, it should be. I took a look at my bank account and it's way lower than I thought it was. Chalk this up to mismanagement of funds on my part, I guess.
So, I need to get on the ball right quickly and get myself paid.
In between periods of me freaking out and saying little else but "fuck!", I sat and thought about how impactful working as much as I'm likely going to need to is going to be on my free time. And an impact on my free time means me choosing between creative expression and people, essentially. I had originally set my life up, financially, in such a way that I wouldn't have to work, so I could concentrate on school. Naturally this is a pretty unrealistic way to live. Weird as it sounds, I figured I was somehow exempt from this requisite of living. In hindsight, that sounds dumber than hammered shit, and a little elitist, but it's true, that's what I thought.
And thusly, I am slowly learning the importance of marrying being creative and work. I want to be creative as a method for paying my bills. I'm a long ways away from that kind of life, but I need to work for it, towards it.
I also have a headache because I didn't have any coffee today. Caffeine withdrawal headaches make any stressful situation just a little more stressful. Oh well. This is nothing I can't handle, but it was definitely out of left field. I suppose I've been living too lavishly anyway. Tightening one's belt is very rarely a bad thing, if you think about it. You walk away more humble and the fat days taste better for it.
On the brighter side, I had a lot of fun with my brothers today, I downloaded Stankonia finally, and it's pretty hot. That 'kast, boy. I tell ya.
I'm also happy I'm sticking to writing in this thing, gotta make sure it lasts.
Not too in the mood to write anything creatively right now. Too caught up in my own shit for that, I think. Instead, I'm gonna pull a modern day houdini and get all escapist artist with the remainder of my evening. Got me a book needs reading, reccomended by a friend.
Cheers.
Oh, if anyone wants to pay me for being cute and charming, I won't object. |
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| >spark |
[Jan. 27th, 2006|01:45 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | ready | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Kanye West - Gone (Feat. Consequence & Cam'Ron) | ] |
Yeah, so, s'been a minute.
Gotta try to drop something down in this journal daily. Seriously. Daily.
So, Mallett has asked me to try my hand at writing some bios for these creature cards he's whipped up as bonuses for the second part of his story. This has been very fun, and surprisingly challenging. This is one of the few, if not the first creative endeavor that I've been charged with that wasn't school. I gotta hand it to Johnny, he's managed to nudge me in just the right way.
Basically, I've been talking myself up, mentally preparing to do what I gotta do, to actually show and try and express. And now, it's finally starting. I set the scene, took position, and I waited, and now,
time to act, I guess.
The best things about these are they serve as pure excercise. I don't get to let myself stew and ponder and dwell on these for too long, which is totally a failing of mine, if not the failing of mine. I'm two bios shy of having these ready for John's input. What he ends up using or not using is his call, but what matters on this side of the table is that I'm writing and getting the ideas out.
And I'm not so sure I'm gonna stop.
Nah. Not gonna. |
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| new livejournal tidings |
[Nov. 5th, 2005|05:03 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  calm | ] |
So, I have two live-journals now. This seems a little unnecessary, but my other LJ was always pretty strictly there to be used for jokes. We'll see if having two becomes weird or what. The biggest thing for this is that I don't write this with the intention of other people necessarily reading it. I'm not saying I won't let them, I just don't want to get into pandering to an audience mode.
I'm not going to discuss school in this post. It's too late in the evening to get into that can of worms, this is hereafter a school-free post.
Furthermore, I want to have it said that the biggest purpose I hope this LJ to serve is to be here for my creative release. Not so much for creative writing, per se (though that's certainly welcome), but more of a place to organize my constant goddamn musings and thoughts. My ADD, now that I've stopped taking medication for it, is once again something of a force to be reckoned with. I plan to keep it in check with method and order (that sounds really dry and anal and non-creative to me, but I'm kind of in zero danger of being that sort of person, balance never hurt nobody).
I feel that I'm definitely in the era of my life where I need to shed off as many distractions as possible, and sharpen my technique. I was about to say something like "sharpen my technique until I'm satisfied..", but that's not gonna be good enough. The whole point is I can't rest on my laurels. I don't even HAVE laurels to rest on. I have a bag of laurel seeds that I bought off of some guy. It's important to me that I am as prepared as possible for whenever I'm presented (either through my design or by serendipity) with a chance to swing, as it were. When I was a kid and played baseball, I always struck out, but only because I never once, almost literally never ONCE swung the bat for fear of striking out.
That's kind of a cute memory, if only because of how relevant it is to my life today. Today, if I'm at bat, and a future career and my dreams are at stake, then I need to be prepared to do what I know I'm capable of; and knock it out of the fucking park.
I'm pretty sure this live-journal is going to be ego-maniacal as all get out, but that's what this is for. The expression of my motivation, my drive, that side of me. Modesty doesn't really apply to my dreams and aspirations. Why should it? I don't want to only half-dream out of propriety. Fuck that! Fuck that RIGHT in its butt, sir.
Kojima-san finally updated his blog today, I thought that the reason he didn't have any entries for October was that there was perhaps a delay and they would just translate the entries to english a month at a time. But no. No October posts, as it turns out. Guy was just that busy. I'm surprised he takes time out of his already insane schedule to blog. Definitely have to keep up with what that guy writes. If for no other reason he talks about taking meals at his desk checking e-mail. If he's that busy, and still finds the time to write posts for the fans, for people like me? That's just cool.
Anyway, I love reading what he has to say. It's so incredibly reassuring. I feel a lot of camaraderie with him, not to get all sunsets and unicorns about it, but he and I seem to be on the same page, ponder similar things, have the same passions for our work. Big difference of course is his work ethic. That should be my late new year's resolution. I'll sneak this one in just in time for 2006. I will establish a solid work ethic before the year is through. It will be very hard, I'm sure. But important and eventually fun (maybe?)
Hell, if I quit smoking, I can quit slacking, right?
Although I was a smoker for only three years, and I've been slacking since at least the mid-eighties...
One last thing. I'm going to let some people know about this journal. Mostly those who also know about my work. Anyone who I think would benefit in some small way (hopefully) or another from reading me drone on and on and on about creative endeavors. Here's to those few. Raise your glasses and drink deeply. |
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agonael's journal