when an anti-establishment hippie is established...

I'm coming

Now I present this huge and highly laughable  possibility:

that I am going insane, that I have tripped over the tidy lines of reason

that I am tumbling head knee feet ass eye first into blankness and I am open-armed, laughing, guffawing to myself becausedeepinsideIamthrilled to see the pain rush upwards and towards me

the poles and spikes and shards and steel and rocky, pointy objects I grew myself and within and ALL THAT STONE I put out there

 so I am never humiliated and mangled by others not I

because only I can hurt myself only I can only I

Posted by: Hoon at 18:11 | link | comments

YES, MASTER

So here we have it, energies and molecular sinews in focus, taut, seconds before release.

I want to get a masteral degree in Media Arts. There are a few kinks yes, one being dismal state of economic affairs and second having no portfolio work of any kind to build upon…..but. The iron gates of goal settings have creaked and cracked open and I am in. I am thus concentrating all visionary efforts into creating this scenario, or variations of:

 

Inside room with desks and chairs and professor, etc; generally known as classroom:

Me pushing indie bangs away from brows furrowed over presented work problem.

Construct an audience-specific environmental message where target audience = hipster.

On the blank lines, I poise a fat pencil and begin to write: You recycle clothes and musical preferences. Time to recycle something of real value. (Place token hipster here).

Then a classmate, a tall, bearded vegan named Joe suggests redirecting our advocacy towards animal slaughter.

I draw a piece of tofu looking cool but bored in a pair of skinny jeans. And an off-center cow looking too excited and unexcusably shoddy.

Joe suggests the tofu should be walking a dog.

I draw a baby-carrier and a year-old androgynous kid strapped on to the tofu.

“I said dog, not a baby” Joe says.

“Aren’t they the same?”

 

Like I said, or variations thereof.

 

The more important thing right now is to make stuff. Funny how I’ve spent three years “teaching” “Video” and “Creativity” and “Production” and never really got around to doing anything myself----except that millipede film in which I spent an entire Sunday following a horrified millipede around the house with a creaky camera. There was also that one time I made an instructional “How-To” video for my hapless Elective students, relying heavily, nay, entirely on Windows Moviemaker, which, aside from my ingenuity and deviousness (deviously drawing upon my sister’s Halloween shoot for footage, and Jose Gonzales for extra emotive pull) was my only tool. Needless to say, not a lot of award-winning material in stock.

 

But therein lies the beauty. Here I am being perfectly presumptuous, but this is my space and I have every legal right to: Because film-schooled applicants to desired Media course have churned out (and have been churning out) films and videos and portfolios by the buckets, I thus apply the Law of Repeated Action Resulting in Boredom. They have been shooting and framing sequences for years, and are therefore, sheathed by theory and principles and Laws of Thirds and Fourths and other Holy Film Mandates. They are, they could be, there’s some probability that, they might be bored. I, on the other hand, emerge from a completely unsullied, unbesotted…(okay,okay) unschooled (at least not formally)  point of origin. So, I am screaming, I am jumping, I am doing 300 km/ph at the chance to finally create something, something, something real. I may or not shoot a man sleeping for 8 hours and call it “Sleep.” I may or may not film punk-looking characters dragging on cigarettes, engaged in shallow conversations that in fact have deep philosophical undertones. I may or may not shoot 100 people shouting from 100 different angles. I may not even come up with anything original. But I will do it with commitment and heart, and more importantly, I will do it because it is time. (I am fully aware that by speaking such words I have revealed myself to be overeager, shabby cow and not bored, tight-jeaned tofu. I am only slightly regretful).

Posted by: Hoon at 03:18 | link | comments

Blue Berry

One thing I love about the city----overhearing snippets of talk between strangers, and then just being looped in. Was munching on a blueberry muffin and slurping at a sadly watered-down cup of coffee from a rolling Jolly Jeep-style food stand outside Barnes this morning, when a dreadlocked man comes wandering along and stops to stares blankly at the menu. An old man yells cheerily at him, “Make up your mind yet, Mr. Murray?” as he himself ambles nearer the stand. Mr. Murray is confused. He doesn't think he knows the man, but evidently the man knew his name---he looks seriously perplexed for 2 seconds until suddenly both men are doubling over, chuckling at the nametag Mr. Murray had forgotten was stamped on his chest, and more ribbing and chuckling ensues. I am a happy witness until both men start looking over at me for approval and I am soon hearing how Mr. Murray had lost 40 pounds in 6 months and how he could see his feet for the first
time in ages. It’s all about the attitude, he says, sipping on his Lemon Zing tea and opening up his own blueberry muffin. We exchanged emails, and he got a refund for his muffin cause the food stand guy burned it.


Ironic how just that morning, Sandra was sitting on the steps, looking particularly sad, as she told me how she doesn’t understand why people in New York are so indifferent. “In Peru, is so different. When you meet a man, it’s ‘Ola!’ here people not say anything. Is very different. I love New York, but not to live,” She tells me in her beautiful Spanish accent. And she asks me if in the Philippines the little kids kiss the mothers. I say yes, we do, and abruptly I feel fall and the cold coming in and I miss my parents.


Sandra is here for 15 days, to watch the U2 concert at the Giants stadium. She goes to the gym in the city every morning, and the first time she had to use the subway, I went with her and drew her a map. “F Train I go in, I wait, then 42, out,” she repeated over and over, more to herself, as we walked down 7th avenue. I don’t remember when and where I went when I took my first subway ride by myself, but I understood exactly how she felt, standing there, small and anonymous, at the platform.


When Mr. Murray leaves, I go inside Barnes and plant myself on a bench, armed with Plath’s The Bell Jar. I immediately love it, not only because it’s set in New York, not only because the character is wary of New York, and not only because she goes crazy in the end. I imagine Ms. Plath’s low, haunting voice writing the book, and I am in love.


I tell myself it is time to write again.

Posted by: Hoon at 01:46 | link | comments

in ernest


he took her with her mouth full
and retreated blistering
in the bold cold room
folding her instincts
she took off after him
and wet her mouth against his chest

he of taste
of smell
of flesh
of creviced noir
unpatterned
feral patterns
sick and swollen
bitten, bitten he is sweeter
then

Posted by: Hoon at 18:39 | link | comments