Archive for August, 2009
If man is five then the devil is Six…
As of today I’ve been doing this for six years. Happy blogday to me. This forum has allowed me to do something that I’ve tried to do with limited success over the years: reflect on my life in writing. As well it’s allowed me to return to photography and more recently, a kind of daily drawing and publishing.
Usually this time of year I express gratitude for the community I’ve found here on live journal, and that gratitude is still there for me, even though things have changed with the community a great deal. Lots of people on my friends list have jumped ship, and I myself have begun fashioning this into a much more public blog by moving it over to www.naylandblake.net . One nice thing is that the people who have stayed here have been the more committed posters: generally I find far fewer “personality quiz” memes appearing on my friends list. But the decrease of posting overall has diminished my sense of the chatty community newspaper I used to have. A certain portion of that seems to be happening on facebook, and even more casually on twitter. The migration to dreamwidth has also meant that some of the voices I most valued here are occupied elsewhere. On the plus side this year I’ve found a whole group of cartoonists on here who are posting great drawings, and it still remains the source for personal news about friends that I have come to care about deeply.
This next year I want to make this into a source of information about things other than myself: really how many times can we hear about whether or not I’ve done my laundry? The blogs I admire are those that bring me to information or opinion that I hadn’t encountered before. Sometimes that’s because someone is leading a remarkable life and reporting on it, sometimes it’s because they’re a brilliant researcher. I’m neither, but I’d like to find a way to be more of a resource.
So I’m not done yet. But maybe I feel more like a broadcaster than a teen crying in my pillow these days. And all of LJ seems a bit less intimate in the ways that made it exciting a few years ago, more information, but less surprise. I don’t want to simply contribute to that tone. As always, the answer is to work a bit harder, even at this medium that is supposedly recreation for me.
Tags: Blog Birthday, blogging, lj, self examination, writingRelated posts
Remake and yay for legumes…
At some point today I started to get frantic and crabby. It was nothing but nutritional drop. The solution was lunch at Olive Vine Café. All hail the platter of five cold appetizers, which was so varied and fresh that it utterly restored me. Humble and robust lentils with bulgar, and this spinach dish with chickpeas and well cooked tomatoes. Olive oil, lemon juice, smokey roasted eggplant in the babaganoush – brought to the table with a freshly made whole wheat pita, which I pricked with a fork so that the steam could puff out while it slowly deflated. I demolished everything my waiter brought and left more than happy. There was something lovely about clear flavors well combined.
Here’s the redesigned Court Square Diner, close by our studio building in Long Island City. Tonight we had our reception dinner for the incoming class. The school year is well and truly underway.
Tags: daily photo, food, new york in black and white, schoolRelated posts
Up on top…
A couple of weeks ago, when I went with D to consult on her new tattoo, she consulted with me on this new hat. I’m not going to be wearing it every where, but it has a certain dooftastic charm, I think.
For the second Thursday in a row I have had the great pleasure of sitting in my office brainstorming with ICP alumni on their ideas for fantastic projects. This week it about a new space in an incredible location in Manhattan, that they are going to have access to and be able to run as a kind of gallery for at least the next six months. I love seeing things like this happen: artists making opportunities for each other, having fun organizing, and the sense that I was able to facilitate that in some way, to provoke them to think in broader terms than just their own careers.
And last night I had a fantastic and far ranging talk with another friend, who is prodding me to really look at my motivations for some of my volunteerism, and to articulate the goals that I had for it. The excitement that I encountered with those students today is the best reminder of what I want for all the communities I’ve invested time with: i want us to sense the possibilities, provoke our own pleasure, help each other to be more.
Tags: daily photo, friends, organizationsRelated posts
Return…
Tomorrow marks registration for the new academic year here at ICP. I started here seven years ago, which is a little hard to believe. It’s strange to still be wedded to the school year this late in my life. Even though I spent ten years teaching during the summer, September still means the beginning of another year for me almost more so than January. In all my life I’ve only had two jobs that weren’t tied to the Sept-May cycle. Of course the art world also gets itself back on the rails in September, and even without any specific thing coming up I think everyone gets that little bit of “time to get seriousness” about them this time of year. New York has been a bit more frolicsome, even with the grind of healthcare debate. I’ve certainly had a different summer from my last few. It was the first time in twelve years that I had absolutely no role within the Bard Summer MFA program.
This September will also mark the end of my tenure as TES’s parliamentarian. I have some slight regrets in that department, but I’m not sorry I took the job on. I have also seen some behavior around the upcoming election that has saddened me deeply.
The lesson here perhaps is that I’m still in the process of sorting out exactly which communities, personalities and activities are deserving of my time and energy. Boy does that sound pretentious! But my usual mindset is that I pretty much owe anyone or anything that I’ve had an interaction with everything that I’m not currently doing for them. So perhaps if I can be a bit more honest on the limits to my commitments, I can avoid pain and resentment down the road.
I look around my desk and see that it is only slightly messier than it was when I got it sorted out this past June. That’s a relief. I think I should probably tuck in and work on it some.
Tags: daily photo, emotions, tes, workRelated posts
Keep on moving…
Away for a couple of days. May be posting, may not be.
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