So- today I got to cracking again with Sam Shepard's Tooth of Crime and just trying to work all the kinks out as it goes in conjunction with The Bacchae. Tooth is not the easiest to understand; the jargon Sam uses in this post-apocalyptic musical alternative reality where Rock Stars declare "turf" and battle each other with song is rather in tune with or akin to the patter that Joss Whedon used in Firefly- kind of back-alley gangs slang if you get my drift. So a few re-readings go a long way, to understand what's both being said and left UNsaid and what is being alluded to. I've read numerous articles on Tooth and tried to decipher the musical reality in order to create the visual one.
One thing I read that I kind of disagree with is that, when it came out, everyone said Tooth of Crime was a show "about fame" and how it destroys the famous and causes them to become deluded. I highly disagree. To ME, Tooth cannot be about anything but RELEVANCE and becoming irrelevant in society as art forms grow, change and morph to fit the needs of the society they are in. As I cross towards my 26th birthday and find that I have more in common with other people my age or older, I find myself greeting new demons of questioning the relevance of myself as an artist and storyteller, and identifying that fear in Hoss. I also find myself recognizing the face of the younger generation in Crow, but also realizing that Hoss and Crow are constructs towards a greater truth.
I read this article about the dying art of film yesterday and it really fed into this aforementioned reflection. Though I agree that the way this author talks makes it sound as if the film industry is in far more dire circumstances than reality would have you believe, I do mourn the passing of the "old" way of doing things in the arts. I don't think it's just nostalgia- the old things WERE better. They were thought about with more depth and worked out through hours of labored imagining, uninterrupted by a multitude of technological distractions and the laborer without a sense of urgent ADHD that prevails throughout most of society nowadays.
Yup. So why is it that we don't want to preserve the "better" old ways of doing things? One cannot argue that the "blues" of the Hoss generation technically trumps the "Crows" of todays' musicians who pick and scavenge the cords of musicians past in order to pick their bones clean. One cannot argue that "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" is a better film than "G-Farce" (the hamster movie in 3D). Why don't we want things to be "better"?
Maybe we're all too distracted. Great art comes from allowing oneself to be "bored" and listen to the muses. You really can't hear the muses over text-messaging.
Just a thought... Until next time...
<3 J
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
The Fifth Re-purpose
And I will keep re-purposing this blog until it contains a theme and a title that makes me consistently want to write. As of right now, it does.
I kept thinking about This Article yesterday and the implications of the right brain understanding something that it can't reveal through the left brain.
Then I started thinking about TM and non-traditional (but are there really any traditional?) methods of locating creative inspiration and utilizing it to its' full potential.
The heart of the matter is that I think a lot like Lynch and tend to "get" his stuff. His stuff being the stuff you're not supposed to get. So I'm wondering- how can that be? And to attempt to communicate this understanding completely fails- playing into the "competing voices" in the brain.
It is possible that the right brain's understanding can be called "subconscious" understanding and I have studied under those who aim to make their subconscious understanding their primary means of existing and using information. However, when one has to communicate using only subconscious understanding, there of course will be failure of communication, since the right brain is not intended towards communication.
But my theory is that because I've heard the compositions of Angelo Badalamenti since I was VERY young, that I somehow subconsciously "understood" the way that Lynch tells stories. When I go to try to create or communicate using my own story-telling capabilities, I use my subconscious more than most and end up making decisions I do not consciously understand. However, they will, as Lynch puts it, knock one "out of your seat" with their "rightness" as far as decision-making goes. To put it into better understanding, for example; I was designing "Antigone" and I didn't need to "think" in the typical sense of rationalizing visual information towards something that would communicate to an audience. I saw a picture of a cliff and I said "YES" and it knocked me out of my seat. I said yes to a few other things as well, and put them into a composition and it almost made me cry. Whenever I show someone the image of this design, I get extremely polarized, powerful responses- 85% of them completely positive.
That is the "rightness" that cannot be understood to communicate it through the left side of the brain.
Back to TM or Transcendental Meditation, which Lynch is of course a big support of (to put it lightly). Lynch has a talent for making subconscious choices that cannot, using left-sided reasoning- create any semblance of a linear storytelling or meaning, but seem "right" to the viewer. I believe that practicing TM can help the creative individual experience this feeling of subconscious "rightness" in their creativity- consistently! And aim to make a study and practice of said meditation for my own goals as a designer (AND moreso, as a person).
My goal is to perpetually fall out of my seat.
I kept thinking about This Article yesterday and the implications of the right brain understanding something that it can't reveal through the left brain.
Then I started thinking about TM and non-traditional (but are there really any traditional?) methods of locating creative inspiration and utilizing it to its' full potential.
The heart of the matter is that I think a lot like Lynch and tend to "get" his stuff. His stuff being the stuff you're not supposed to get. So I'm wondering- how can that be? And to attempt to communicate this understanding completely fails- playing into the "competing voices" in the brain.
It is possible that the right brain's understanding can be called "subconscious" understanding and I have studied under those who aim to make their subconscious understanding their primary means of existing and using information. However, when one has to communicate using only subconscious understanding, there of course will be failure of communication, since the right brain is not intended towards communication.
But my theory is that because I've heard the compositions of Angelo Badalamenti since I was VERY young, that I somehow subconsciously "understood" the way that Lynch tells stories. When I go to try to create or communicate using my own story-telling capabilities, I use my subconscious more than most and end up making decisions I do not consciously understand. However, they will, as Lynch puts it, knock one "out of your seat" with their "rightness" as far as decision-making goes. To put it into better understanding, for example; I was designing "Antigone" and I didn't need to "think" in the typical sense of rationalizing visual information towards something that would communicate to an audience. I saw a picture of a cliff and I said "YES" and it knocked me out of my seat. I said yes to a few other things as well, and put them into a composition and it almost made me cry. Whenever I show someone the image of this design, I get extremely polarized, powerful responses- 85% of them completely positive.
That is the "rightness" that cannot be understood to communicate it through the left side of the brain.
Back to TM or Transcendental Meditation, which Lynch is of course a big support of (to put it lightly). Lynch has a talent for making subconscious choices that cannot, using left-sided reasoning- create any semblance of a linear storytelling or meaning, but seem "right" to the viewer. I believe that practicing TM can help the creative individual experience this feeling of subconscious "rightness" in their creativity- consistently! And aim to make a study and practice of said meditation for my own goals as a designer (AND moreso, as a person).
My goal is to perpetually fall out of my seat.
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