I have known since I left New Jersey and had seen RENT, which inexplicably brought out a previously unexpressed adoration of New York City in me, that I want to move to said city for college. I want to be there my entire life, honestly, until I find myself being forced to move my new family to Washington D.C. to help govern the country. I've found that New York is the perfect place to grow for me: I can be a hired artist, as I have wanted to be since as far back as I can remember. I can act, as there is Broadway and numerous film acting agencies there. I can be with the people with whom I identify with the most and have a burning desire to return to (your stereotypical Italians who have huge family dinners every Sunday, with the angry grandmother holding a wooden spoon who is feeding 10 but cooks for 25) and also all the other cultures that make up that beautiful city (which I call beautiful even in the sight of rats and cockroaches that crawl through one's walls) that I have been deprived of since moving to the Chicagoland area.
I have no doubt that this is where I want to be, and that my future lies there and I certainly pray that I am not deprived of my city for too long. Even though I love it more than any other place that I have yet been to or studied in this world, I realized today that there are parts of myself that are attached elsewhere, whether I'd like to admit it or not. I was talking to my mom about my future, and about life during and after college, and the immense amount of things I want to do in life and the little time I have to do them, and I started thinking globally.
It was likely because we were speaking in French. But there is a possibility for me to study worldwide in a Francophone region, and not only would I love to study or live there, but almost ANYWHERE in western Europe. My mother said, out of all European places she'd been to, I'd like Rome the most. I personally don't know why, being that I am in love with Ireland, Belgium, France, and Canada (of which my mother is a Quebecoise citizen). There's mythology and art and history in all of them that calls back to the older parts in me, calling me to the woods, out of the city, and to be in touch with total immersion in foreign (yet familiar) bliss. Maybe it is why I can do foreign accents so well: I'm supposed to. Maybe I'm meant to adapt and travel Europe and be a world citizen, a citizen of the arts, of love, and not the boundaries of a country. If we are meant to be something, perhaps that is what I am meant to be. I have always felt a desire to do good for others, and this has even caused me to desire joining the Peace Corps, or some peaceful organization, and traveling to Sudan, proving that I wish to even put my own body in harm's way as long as I feel I am of good worth.
A part of me hates this about myself, that I would give away this desire to go to New York, because people have always told me all the things I should be worried about and have tried to, for a still misunderstood reason, dissuade me from living there as fats as possible. I still want to do that. If nothing else, New York is where I'd start: it has all I want, even a forest among skyscrapers. But I know that that is not where I'll easily stay. A part of me, a very big, ancient-rooted part of me wants me to go where I have never set foot before, yet know and love so well with my heart and imagination. A part of me wants me to find a romantic French woman just as much as a sassy New Yorker woman, and wants me to travel the world just as much as it wants me to stay in the city for the rest of my life. These parts of my spirit are tearing at me from both sides, yet one part, only now coming into its muscled adolescence, has an entire continent on its side, much more than the part that holds a city on its back. I believe, in the end, both sides may get their wish--I hope this is the case.
Because above all, I know that wherever I go, I should not remain here. I know that my future, who I am going to be, has not even begun to flower, and so much is out there for me to discover- and it's all spread out across the world, waiting patiently for me to step on its welcoming terre.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
metacognition: annotating for others
I know this is not a "school" project, but it is something I am currently working on that we do frequently in school: writing our thoughts and predictions in books for the speculation and dissection of others.
A girlfriend of mine recently gave me a book entitled "Looking for Alaska", and proposed that I write in it my thoughts and predictions, etc. so that she could read it and pass it around to other people. She hoped that then there would be a whole tapestry of ideas, of personalities, lacing this book and enriching the experience. I loved this idea; when i got home I started reading immediately and wrote very early in. I guess at first, my intent, my aim, was to make smart or personal remarks that would be 1) witty and/or 2) possibly charming. At first, I knew I was going to like this book because I found it easy to connect with the character, and I can rarely read books if I cannot connect to any central character. This connection, however, made it easier for me to write about personal things. Inside jokes, for example.
Some inside jokes and inferences that I probably would not want whoever would read it next to know, either.
I was surprised at the lack of privacy I was thus experiencing, and also surprised that I still did not care. This was supposed to be enjoyable for me, too, I thought, and so I censored little and wrote whatever came to my mind, for the most part. I could not believe it as I wrote this, because, though I am an artist who advocates self-expression, even for public expression, I am normally very vague in what I am trying to convey if it is at all public. This was not the case-- I wrote little notes to the girl who had given it to me, some inside jokes, whatever language or style of language I chose, and remained comfortable in the knowledge that someone would likely read this in the future--more interesting yet was that she would.
And I realized, if I felt insecure and withheld my true thoughts, that would be against the original concept of the group annotate of this book: to see the color range of people's emotions as they go through the literary journey, in all their comparisons and contrasts. I now knew that it was more so my duty than privilege to write my emotions and thoughts, and went ahead at full speed.
A girlfriend of mine recently gave me a book entitled "Looking for Alaska", and proposed that I write in it my thoughts and predictions, etc. so that she could read it and pass it around to other people. She hoped that then there would be a whole tapestry of ideas, of personalities, lacing this book and enriching the experience. I loved this idea; when i got home I started reading immediately and wrote very early in. I guess at first, my intent, my aim, was to make smart or personal remarks that would be 1) witty and/or 2) possibly charming. At first, I knew I was going to like this book because I found it easy to connect with the character, and I can rarely read books if I cannot connect to any central character. This connection, however, made it easier for me to write about personal things. Inside jokes, for example.
Some inside jokes and inferences that I probably would not want whoever would read it next to know, either.
I was surprised at the lack of privacy I was thus experiencing, and also surprised that I still did not care. This was supposed to be enjoyable for me, too, I thought, and so I censored little and wrote whatever came to my mind, for the most part. I could not believe it as I wrote this, because, though I am an artist who advocates self-expression, even for public expression, I am normally very vague in what I am trying to convey if it is at all public. This was not the case-- I wrote little notes to the girl who had given it to me, some inside jokes, whatever language or style of language I chose, and remained comfortable in the knowledge that someone would likely read this in the future--more interesting yet was that she would.
And I realized, if I felt insecure and withheld my true thoughts, that would be against the original concept of the group annotate of this book: to see the color range of people's emotions as they go through the literary journey, in all their comparisons and contrasts. I now knew that it was more so my duty than privilege to write my emotions and thoughts, and went ahead at full speed.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
360 Degrees: Drawing on my Wall
Months ago, after watching "Across The Universe", something entirely separate from the Beatles triggered an immense creative dream in my mind: to draw without boundaries, to break the bonds of passion-killing 8 by 11 sheets of white paper. In this movie, the lead male, an artist in the late 60's, has a moment of impassioned anger and rebellion, and he takes to his wall with a flurry of paint to the sound of "strawberry fields". I, myself, for months, had been brooding over the fact that the common bland slate called paper was not enough for me to express myself; it was actually hindering my artistic growth. When bound to a piece of paper, an artist, or at least I found, cannot go past his own boundaries after a time: what he has drawn over and over cannot be beaten inside his head: he will put his pen to paper and realize he has no way to make his idea come out in an attractive, dynamic way. It becomes bland, it becomes static. The artist becomes bored, and he ends up making endless mistakes because his mind isn't challenged enough to try to make a difference in his work. He might as well be drawing the same drawing, over and over, on the same piece of paper. Luckily for me, there are other artists who had broken through that boundary. How? By not having boundaries.
It was from that point on that I knew I had to go to my wall.
This was innovation for me from all different points: 1) I was leaving prison. I'd be leaving that irrepressible drone and blandness of pen to paper mind- suppression, and going to a much grander scale. I'd be with my predecessors, Michelangelo and his contemporaries, I'd make my own Sistine chapel. It would be method acting in that I would experience the feeling of having a whole massive surface, that of a house's wall, like the artists of old, as my personal canvas. 2) There is another feeling that I presumed would come of it: rebellion. Joyful, jubilant rebellion. Modern western life, from the time we first watched "Rug rats" (or learned from experience) that momma always says "DON'T DRAW ON THE WALLS!" Thus, this is artist's rebellion in one of it's highest forms: taking modern or societal rules and breaking them for the sole sake of expression. I knew that there was no reason not to draw on my walls: I'd use chalk or something, and the art would only put color to a bland, peach surface. I'd make it live. I'd bring art to a surface that would never have known it otherwise, but most importantly, I'd be breaking all the rules I'd subjected myself to previously, and I would finally break free. I knew how to get out of the rut in the rain- blasted road that my mind's ancient Jeep was in: Leave the jeep, leave the road, and find a better way to the other side. I'd climb the mountain's face on my hands and knees, feel every inch of it's grand slate. That's what I knew taking to my walls with a piece of chalk would be like: working every inch, every space from the floor to the ceiling with startling energy and a desire to break through the wall and get to the peak of artistic creativity until my mind had been drained, my mission fulfilled.
This all does sound a little too good to be true, I realize. It sounds like I'm making things up, that no one could ever really reach that kind of feeling just through drawing on a wall. Most would think that, sure for a while, it would feel pretty interesting at least. A new experiment, of sorts. Pleasing for a few days, maybe, but never really freeing. And, under any other circumstances, I would probably agree with them. But, I have no other circumstances to choose from. Life has given me my circumstances, and I have developed the way I have and will continue on said track. I can empathize very well with others, but I cannot be them, and I will not be. I have been dealt the card that forced me to be restricted to a piece of paper for the first 15 years of my life, and I have since found the way to freedom. I knew, the moment I came out of the movie theatre on that cold, winter night, my mind ablaze with ideas of the future, that I had a way out.
And I am here to say that, this past Friday, on October the 3rd, I came home to discover my wall had been finished, the chalk paint all dry, and a box of chalk lay on my bed. I will also say that upon picking up that chalk, twice since the original discovery, that I have explored the far reaches of my artistic mind and explored nearly every inch, up and down, of my wall, with chalk in hand. And now, I know, that it is as liberating as I knew it'd be. I put the music on to full blast, pick up a piece of chalk, and punch into the wall.
And I have so much yet to discover.
It was from that point on that I knew I had to go to my wall.
This was innovation for me from all different points: 1) I was leaving prison. I'd be leaving that irrepressible drone and blandness of pen to paper mind- suppression, and going to a much grander scale. I'd be with my predecessors, Michelangelo and his contemporaries, I'd make my own Sistine chapel. It would be method acting in that I would experience the feeling of having a whole massive surface, that of a house's wall, like the artists of old, as my personal canvas. 2) There is another feeling that I presumed would come of it: rebellion. Joyful, jubilant rebellion. Modern western life, from the time we first watched "Rug rats" (or learned from experience) that momma always says "DON'T DRAW ON THE WALLS!" Thus, this is artist's rebellion in one of it's highest forms: taking modern or societal rules and breaking them for the sole sake of expression. I knew that there was no reason not to draw on my walls: I'd use chalk or something, and the art would only put color to a bland, peach surface. I'd make it live. I'd bring art to a surface that would never have known it otherwise, but most importantly, I'd be breaking all the rules I'd subjected myself to previously, and I would finally break free. I knew how to get out of the rut in the rain- blasted road that my mind's ancient Jeep was in: Leave the jeep, leave the road, and find a better way to the other side. I'd climb the mountain's face on my hands and knees, feel every inch of it's grand slate. That's what I knew taking to my walls with a piece of chalk would be like: working every inch, every space from the floor to the ceiling with startling energy and a desire to break through the wall and get to the peak of artistic creativity until my mind had been drained, my mission fulfilled.
This all does sound a little too good to be true, I realize. It sounds like I'm making things up, that no one could ever really reach that kind of feeling just through drawing on a wall. Most would think that, sure for a while, it would feel pretty interesting at least. A new experiment, of sorts. Pleasing for a few days, maybe, but never really freeing. And, under any other circumstances, I would probably agree with them. But, I have no other circumstances to choose from. Life has given me my circumstances, and I have developed the way I have and will continue on said track. I can empathize very well with others, but I cannot be them, and I will not be. I have been dealt the card that forced me to be restricted to a piece of paper for the first 15 years of my life, and I have since found the way to freedom. I knew, the moment I came out of the movie theatre on that cold, winter night, my mind ablaze with ideas of the future, that I had a way out.
And I am here to say that, this past Friday, on October the 3rd, I came home to discover my wall had been finished, the chalk paint all dry, and a box of chalk lay on my bed. I will also say that upon picking up that chalk, twice since the original discovery, that I have explored the far reaches of my artistic mind and explored nearly every inch, up and down, of my wall, with chalk in hand. And now, I know, that it is as liberating as I knew it'd be. I put the music on to full blast, pick up a piece of chalk, and punch into the wall.
And I have so much yet to discover.
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