Shh

I could sit here and write up a short summary of Gregg Goldston's biography. I could write where he was born and where he went to school. But, chances are, anyone who will read this blog will already know the basic facts of Goldston's life, it's all over my blogger homepage. So instead I've decided to write only what interests me, and why ( I hope that's okay ).

Goldston decided that he wanted to study mime when he was 18 after seeing a performance by Marcel Marceau. I was shocked when I read this. 18 is so old. There is a pressure on teenagers to know exactly what they want to be for the rest of their lives as soon as they enter high school, especially if what they want is in the arts. It seems as if actors, dancers, singers and basically anyone successful in the arts began as toddlers. Singing lessons as soon as you can talk and dancing lessons as soon as you can walk. Of course this is not true, you could easily prove me wrong. But, I get the feeling as if it's too late for someone my age to begin now. Crazy right? I'm only sixteen. And then again, I'm sixteen and there are people who have been studying since they were two.

Goldston began at 18, and he proved that he could be just as and even more successful than someone who has their entire life planed out by working hard. He has toured all over the world and in 1980 founded the Goldston School for Mimes and in 2008 co-founded The School of Modern Mime. He has worked closely with his greatest influence and close friend Marcel Marceau while on Marceau's solo tour and Marceau's seminars at his school for mime.

I spent most of my time researching watching Goldston's videos on youtube. They are snippits of play's that he has written and performed in mime. I never knew there was such a thing. Goldston tells stories, has intense conversations, and develops relationships without speaking. The body can say so much without words. It's fascinating.

We Come to Dream

Today I went over Courtney's house to film the commercial about her. I'm not going to lie, I was freakin scared. Last year I was a newbie, so I knew that I could always fall back on the oldies if I screwed up. We sink or swim together right? But now, I'm the oldie that is supposed to know what I'm doing, and my nerves and insecurity got to me and I felt like I didn't know what I was doing at times. I had to keep reminding myself why I was doing this. It's not because Luke assigned the commercials to be filmed by me. I could have easily said no, I really don't think it will come out well, Can I take the next one? But, I didn't. Why? Because I want to do it. I want to film the commercial and help direct Ellen with hers. I know that I could do it. I know this stuff, and even if it comes out like shit, it can't be that bad and I know that at least I'm learning. Courtney and I work really well together and even if this first try is really bad we will end up with a decent commercial. Today may have been great and it may have been shit, but at least we actually went out and did it. It's really hard to make shit twice. This is starting to sound like a pep talk.

No Labels

I messed up. I didn't do my best in STAC this quarter and I can't blame it anything but myself. I didn't keep up with blogging and I know that my portfolio could have been a lot better. I hate this. I hate that I do this. I KNOW I'm messing up when I mess up. I know this and yet I keep doing it.

Blogger is one of my top visited sites. It's right there every time I open Safari. It used to be the first site I clicked. Now I avoid it. I look over its name on the frequently visited and pretend it's not there. I feel guilty, so guilty that I can't even look at it. Tomorrow will be the beginning of the first week of the new quarter. I can't screw up this quarter, I can't screw up this entire year. I feel like shit right now and I don't want this feeling to ever come again. At the end of last year, the entire class was going on a roll. We were banging things out like machines and I loved it. I felt like I was doing something right, like I had a purpose. But now I just feel sick. Like there isn't even a point because everything I do will suck. I know this isn't true. It's just the feeling I get when I'm being lazy. It's the worst feeling in the world. It's like Im sleeping through life and every one and every thing is racing past me while I'm left behind.

I had trouble coming up with a daily practice. I guess I felt intimidated, not by one person in particular, but by every artist in the world. What could I possibly do that could measure up? Nothing. What am I anyway? Am I a writer? Should I write everyday like I did last year? Or was I more of a listener? An observer of life? Am I an actress? An Artist? And then I realized... who the f*** cares? Colleges maybe, but I don't want to think about that right now, I'm not ready to label myself just yet.

So heres what I am going to do:

I am going to continue with what I started last year. I am going to write a conversation everyday. Not a scene, just a conversation between two people. It doesn't matter from who. I can get inspiration from actual conversations that I hear in life, from movies, books, music, anything. I will follow the same rules I set up last year.

But, I know that I have a horrible work ethic and I get bored very easily so I will expand my practice to posting at least one thing that I find interesting or one thing that I do that is creative.

This could be anything, a piece of writing, a drawing, a photo, as well as the conversations.

My practice may be mostly conversations with a few other things thrown in there and it may be about equal. I don't know. The other things I include may spark conversations. I could post a picture and the next day write something based off of it. I like the freedom of being able to do anything, but also having something that I started last year to work and expand on.

Bold Optimism.

Movie? What Movie?

I tried not to think about the movie over the weekend. So go ahead and ask me the name, because I don't know it (actually I do). It was difficult to take my mind off the movie, but I don't want to write about my opinion of it so far because I want to see the entire film first. It wouldn't be fair to write about it on my blog when I haven't fully absorbed it in yet. That would be like judging a book by its cover. Of course I already know that I really like the movie and my opinion on it probably wouldn't change. But still, writing about it would be like critiquing a painting that you only saw half of. Does it even matter if the half you saw you liked? I'm not making any scene.

Anyway, this week we alternated between book binding workshop and working on our scrips. My group was first up for book binding. At first I was really frustrated. It takes a lot of patience to bind books. I cursed more that day that I ever did my entire time in high school. But after a deep breath, some help from fellow classmates and some reassuring words from Carl, I managed to enjoy making my little book. It came out better than I expected. That might be because at the rate I was going, I expected cardboard paper throw up.

It was very easy to work with my Be Kind Rewind group. Although we did get side tracked a couple of times we did get a lot done. Whenever we would get stuck someone would suggest something and we would all jump right into it again. I love the way ideas flow between us. I love doing projects like this. STAC is so much different from my other classes where the more people in a group makes it harder to work together. But with us more people mean better results.

Be Kind Rewind 2

These batch of Be Kind Rewind films were all so amazing! They improved so much from last year. We have learned so much so far. Writing the synopsis's for the Prisoner defiantly helped us in getting things done simply and quickly. I think that the problem last year was that no one (especially my group) focused on a concrete plot. But this year, our ideas were all over the place and building off of each other, and we still managed to pull a story together. We took the process very seriously, but I think that that was necessary to get the results we got. It's funny now to think about how we had intelligent conversations about the motives of a stuffed unicorn. I think we should defiantly do these projects more often.

Lazy Entertainment

Earlier this week we watched the Prisoner. It was a confusing episode, but I liked it much better than last week's episode with the election. Its like I want to not like the Prisoner because it is so confusing and doesn't make any sense at some points. But I can't because I like how it is confusing, it makes you think. I hate lazy entertainment, where you don't have to put any effort in. With the Prisoner, it constantly forces you to pay attention. Its like a thriller in a way, you are always at the edge of your seat and on the tips of your toes. If I had to pick a model episode to summarize what the prisoner is so far, this would be the one I would pick. I know that picking just one is pretty much impossible because they are all so different, but I think that this episode had the perfect amount of mystery and craziness with a reasonable plot behind it.

We had two days of STAC art today to work on the Busby Berkley projects. I did this exact project freshmen year in Gane's art class, but I am glad that I'm doing it again. I can already see how my art has progressed since the beginning of high school.

We also watched To Sir With Love on Firday. At first, I thought that the movie was predictable and that there was nothing fresh and new about it. But then I realized that it was made years before the movies that I was comparing it to. It was the original and all the ones that came after it are predictable because they took from this movie. I'll include more about this in my review.

Liminality

The second phychogeography assignment asked us to photograph "liminal spaces", meaning spaces in-between.

I interpreted liminal spaces to mean a space that is neither one thing or the other. Liminal spaces are places where a little bit of two environments are present, but neither one dominates the space. With this limitation, I photographed areas around my own environment, my house, that had two different feels to them. I took pictures of places where you were able to see two different rooms or spaces at once.