Only Bits Of It

Creativity.

What is it?

Never mind that, how does it work?

I find sometimes, when I make things, that they illustrate some part of me I thought nonexistent, buried, irrelevant, stupid, or wrong.

It tends to drag up pieces of myself out of me and make them stare me in the face.

Not always pleasant. Don’t go asking what precise project did what precise thing, but in general, here is the result. Parts of my personality, my subconscious desires and ideas that I repressed or ignored in childhood, in adulthood, whose traces are left in my imagination, jump to life the minute the creative juices begin to flow. Why they were ignored is a story for another year.

One of the comments frequently made about art/creativity, aside from the difficulty of defining it, is that it’s illogical, hard to understand, hard to manufacture. It can be fostered, grown, nurtured, but there is no formula.

Its illogicality (is that a word?) is its strength. We use logic to defend ourselves, shore up our personal and societal denials, then inflict them on others. Let that defense down, that wall of rationality and order, and the truth may just stand up and slap you. The question isn’t so much, “should that happen?” as “what do I do with it?”

When there is a theme, visual, philosophical, or otherwise, that I simply cannot get rid of in my work, I need to pay attention to it, try to understand it. And I should use logic to do that, to understand it, connect it to the rest of the things I know.

 Here's a related quote:

“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”

What? I take that to mean that art can bring up the things that are ignored or stuffed down in a particular time or society, the gaps, denials and lies, and make us face them. Those who are disturbed may be disturbed because they see the gaps, and their consequences, and those who are comfortable have forgotten that the lies exists.

So I guess it helps me see my gaps.

G'night.

Film and Art. (nice pretentious title, yes?)

So I finally finished Girl With a Dragon Tattoo. And though I haven't seen either the American or Swedish film versions, in researching the author a bit I encountered the usual carping that either

(a.) Neither film was any good compared to the book. (Unlikely, yes? There are favorable reviews and unfavorable reviews for both.)
(b.) One was better.


So leaving that specific subject, let's talk about film and art. This is going to be a rant. You've been warned.

I am dead tired of hearing “They ruined the plot. They left out my favorite character. They casted wrong. They made it too (insert whining here.) Look, I’m really quite sorry no one called you up personally and asked your opinion. I’m sorry making a film is a complicated process involving a million other factors besides making an exact replica of a book. You realize that doesn’t work? You can’t just spit out a word-for-word visual copy of a book and expect that to work. The flow is different. The expectations are different.

Books. And films. They are different forms of art. They have different strengths, people process them differently. And don’t tell me, “But I had a picture in my head!” Yeah, so did I. So did we all. Get over it. I am a vividly visual person when I read. I make movies in my head, that’s part of the magic of reading.

When you watch a film, do not begin by thinking “What is wrong with this?” Remember that all art is communication, whether it communicates epic story or nihilism. What are they trying to tell you?  The money and time was limited, the resources were not perfect, and things just go wrong, but for Pete’s sake, when you watch a movie, stop expecting it to cater to your personal vision of the story. I guarantee you will enjoy it more, and who pays ten bucks to sit around and mope for two hours? If you see a film you know is bad, there's no one to blame but yourself for the loss of your time and money. If you got your butt out of the house to go see a movie, give it a chance.

Perhaps, just perhaps, accepting the filmmaker’s vision may deepen your own. Both can exist. That’s art.

p.s.. that said, there are certainly some terrible film adaptations. But please don’t go in expecting that, or it will most certainly come true. You find what you’re looking for.

How I Stayed Up All Night On A Street In Stockholm.

To begin with, I took a bus to Gatwick. That phrase is entirely insufficient. I forgot that the tube had closures on the line I wanted (District, District, District, I have loved thee, I have hated thee…) anyway. Waiting for trains when you are late is a rotten, rotten stinker of a feeling. I popped up to ground level, and ran like a sneaker-clad hare for the bus stop, cheered on by several cheeky bystanders. I round the corner, and see the bus, sitting there. Run run run ruuuuunnnnnnn……on the bus. Through Gatwick, onto a little plane, little but not tiny. Over the dark ocean. It is 11pm when the plane touches down in Skavsta airport. You know, you would not think snow would be an emotional experience. It’s precipitation, for crying out loud. But London, for all its wonders, does not have good Northlandy snow. Sweden does. Obviously. It was immediate, the moment I saw snow. Home. This is like home.

We got off on the right foot, Sweden and I. Even the sparseness of the airport reminded me of northern Minnesota, and I knew in reverse why the Swedish settlers in Minnesota stuck with such a weird place. You don’t love it because it is lovable. You love it because it’s home(y).

 I am starving. I sit down on the Ikea furniture to eat my dinner, thinking to take the bus at 4am, get to Stockholm ever so conveniently at 6am, get picked up, and see the city. Neat little plan. I think well, perhaps I’d better make sure the buses are running when the site said they would.

 Au contraire. The ticket lady informs me that the last bus till 8am is nearly full. Well shiz. I go out in the soft, snowy cold, and stand with a bunch of other people, staring fatalistically at the full bus, most of them smoking. The driver informs us we can either stand the 2 1/2 hours to Stockholm or stay here. “I’ll stand.” I say.

 No sooner have I got myself situated in the aisle than a mother with a sleepy toddler taps my arm and indicates I can have her child’s spot. He doesn’t care, he stuffs his face in her sari and falls asleep. I thank her and doze pleasantly till the myriad lights of Stockholm appear, along with a large bus station.

A dark, closed bus station. It is 1am and I am alone, in the middle of winter, in a city I don’t know. A plan. I have need of a plan. The plan is to not go off this street, so I can find my way back easily when I get picked up. Start walking. And behold! The familiar logo of Burger King. It is open. I walk in, buy nothing, and sit down at a small table. The place is full of people, talking animatedly or exhaustedly eating their Whoppers. They are travelers, street people, night-owl natives, and me. In the spirit of Lemony Snicket, ( “Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”), I have Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in my backpack. I begin to read, hardly looking up till the boy sweeping the floor taps my shoulder and apologetically informs me that they are closing.

 3am. I’m already a ways from the station, and nothing else is open. It’s chilly, probably about 30 degrees Fahrenheit. The wind is nasty, and I head for a three-sided bus shelter. Sit down, make sure as little body is exposed as possible, and keep reading. I owe J.K.R. one for that night, because it would have been awful without her story to keep me company. With something to do, it was interesting, even enjoyable.

During breaks in reading, I watch the street in front of me. It is quiet, clean, unthreatening. I hear a distant siren once, and a street sweeper truck passes. Otherwise it is empty. Occasionally, well-dressed hipster-looking kids my own age pass, prancing down the street in the wee hours. They don’t seem intoxicated either, they are simply wandering and talking, pushing each other into the street. Later, I am informed that this is a result of the boredom of deep winter, when the sun is only up for about 6 hours or less. The ol’ internal clock starts to malfunction.

 Three boys stand across the road. Two of them look wealthy, the other has a streety, crustpunk vibe. I can hear them, and though they’re speaking Swedish, I find their body language and tone tell me what they’re saying. They’re saying goodbye in the drawn-out way of people who aren’t sure when they’ll meet again. After several hugs, the scruffy one lopes across the street and past my spot. His friend yells what I take to be the Swedish version of “Take care!” after him, watches him disappear, and walks on. little tiny stories……

 I was supposed to text Christina. A girl comes and stands next to me at the bus stop. I ask her with my bestest manners if I may text my friend on her phone. She hesitates, smiles, and hands me her phone. I begin to text….

BUT WAIT. the autocorrect is Swedish, and her bus is coming! I put spaces between every character, and hope it makes sense. Hurryhurryhurrysendlittlemessagesend! Is sent.

 I walk to the bus station, which is now open. As I walk through the doors to the parking lot, I see someone vaguely familiar walking towards me. Even though I haven’t seen her in years, somehow I know it’s Christina.

 Back to her house, and I collapse in a big soft bed in a big pretty house in pretty much utter pooped-out contentment....

 To be……continued…….(because Stockholm is nice in daylight too.) Yeah.

See you later/The cursed animation of inanimate objects.

So I really didn’t sleep Wednesday night, unless you count that hour nap in the midst of finishing my paper. But it was fun, for I skyped various and sundry people, and the subject of my essay was mucho interesante.
Since we have not got mod cons, aka a printer, at my house, I went to LCF to print my paper and the few tickets necessary to go Europe-exploring. There was almost no one in the lab, which is UNHEARD OF. It means the printer isn’t freaking out with 5095769097 jobs. And the paper won’t run out. So, blah blah blah, printing, nearly asleep, when I look out the window at the rare London winter sun over the rooftops of Oxford Circus, and realize I won’t be here again, in this exact spot, for a long time. Depressing…….happy sleepy mood gone……

I do my stuff and leave. I go to the toilet. Finish that business. Go to unlock the stall door.

FOILED.
it refuses to unlock.
I try again. Again. Again. Again.
No. not happening. I can see the problem: the teeth on the underside of the bolt have become disentangled from the knob that turns it, and it’s just flopping about. I can’t seem to slide it out by other measures either. I’m alone, thankfully.

No worries, say I, I’ll just slide out under the door. Grimy, yes, but not deadly. And I have assignments to turn in, buses to catch, fickle bathroom locks shall not deter me.

Or will they. This stall is not a standard one, with the accompanying standard foot-and-a-half between bottom edge and floor.

OH NO. this is a custom built bugger. There is no more than eight inches between the floor and the bottom of the door. I’m little.

But not that little, yo.

I look up. The ceiling is probably nine feet high. The door is about seven-and-a-half.

Nothing for it. Slide backpack under door, get rid of encumberments like scarf and Ipod.

“Dear God. If anybody has to go to the bathroom on this floor ,please remind them that they have to buy their witchy step-mother a gift, and entangle them in searching the web for that gift. Just keep them out of here.”

This is why I climbed all those trees in my childhood. This is where scootching up the hallway walls to the ceiling like a little monkey was a good idea. Because that’s what I look like, feet braced on the stall walls, wishing I’d been doing my pushups. My legs are plenty toned, but my arms are about the consistency of chicken skin.


Anyway, I get on top of the door. Deeply, truly, devoutly thankful I’m a lady, because this would hurt like the dickens if I were a dude, astride the narrow end of a slab of wood.

OOF.
Done. Success. Hooray.
Not fifteen seconds later, someone comes in.
I suppress my mirth and dissolve in giggles as I run down the stairs and out into the sharp air and noise of Oxford Street.
A fitting incident for a last day.

Birthday Bloggings. and ghosties.

Me birthday! “so-and-so and 42 other people posted on your wall!” yes, ladeez and gents, today is a busy day on the ol’ Facebook wall.

Went to Brick Lane, just didn’t find anything, the seller I was looking for, the lady with the sweaters and jackets for 2 and 3 pounds was not there. Got my salmon and cream cheese fix at Brick Lane Beigel Bakery though. So goooooooodddd.

Then to Camden for the charity shops, didn’t find what I wanted there either. Good day for the pocketbook. Then to Fleet Street, in search of an ancient old pub called Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. Frequented by Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Teddy Roosevelt, and others. Re-built in 1667. Not built, mind you. Re-built.

Since I was fool enough not to have my camera with me, here’s your verbal description.

Get off the bus at Charing Cross Station. That area has the sense of being an artery of London: right next to Trafalgar, the buses and the cabs and the cyclists in an endless stream towards Westminster, the Abbey, the houses of Parliament, Whitehall, and the rest. Turn onto the Strand, past the toweringly gothic Royal Courts of Justice, daring you to break the law and get away with it. Past the crescent shape of Aldwych, full of weathered stone. The road narrows. Now you’re on Fleet Street.

Walk. Walk. Walk. Stay on the left side, this place is easy to miss. Kind of. The sign is a simple white thing with black trim, looking like the top of a lamppost, with the name written on all four sides. There is no entry in the front.

Step into the tiny dark alleyway on the left side. The onion layers of time fall off, a sensation of timewarp, especially at dusk. The cobbles are old, and the only light is the one above the pub’s door. It is closed, naturally, it’s nighttime on a Sunday. The building’s dark wood walls bow out, leaning over you. Forbidding. Black. Silent. A posting near the windowless door lists the monarchs the pub has survived,the paper yellowed, probably been there since Elizabeth II came in. There’s no one with you. At least, no one you can see.

You know all those tales about London? Sweeney Todd? Jack the Ripper and the rest? All the gruesome, horror-laced ghosty yarns? They don’t hold much water in broad daylight, in front of the lions guarding Lord Nelson, with a million people flooding around you, safe as can be.

All you have to do is step into certain alleyways, wander a bit after nightfall and something whispers out the walls and paving stones and makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up with all the ancient stories it could tell. London is a different creature at night. Keeping secrets, warning you lest you become just a secret like all the rest.

No place like it.


P.S. Stella Artois makes excellent cider.

Writing on the Walls

So. I have been doing plenty of things that I've neglected to put on here. Mostly homework,(corsets, journals, other uninteresting things. I'll post about the corset eventually.) But the thing I've recorded best is street art.

Now,street art......Well, I'll just post what I journaled about it.

Be warned. This will be an epic long post. I'll put all my photos at the bottom, so if you just want to see that, skip the text.


I went to Shoreditch today, with a knowledgeable man who took my Space Place and Culture class on a street art tour. Street art is difficult to catch sometimes because it’s constantly changing, disappearing, wearing off, being painted or arted over. Sometimes not. I'll explain.

There were several names I’d not heard: Malarky, Swoon, Stix, who used to be homeless, Citizen Kane or CZK, Ben Eine. We saw lots of ROA, he’s one of my personal favorites. The crane off Brick Lane is very beautiful, one of his best bits. There’s also a rat crawling out of a wall that I love.

On the wall of the club Cargo, which is under a bridge, there is a very famous Banksy piece, which now has plexiglass over it to keep it from being painted over. Not at Banksy's command, I guarantee. How funny. Protect the vandalism.
For technically,it is vandalism,but it is now part of London, and most people love it.

There was another, rather political bit in the Cargo garden, by someone whose name I cannot recall, had a definite OWS feel/message to it. That whole wall is covered with street art. You can just wander in in the daytime, when there’s no one there.

There was also an incident, our guide informed us, where people would make art with gum on the walls, and stick flash drives in it, with art files on them. You could take a flash drive and in return, replace it with your own art on a drive. Sort of an anonymous art swap. But then it disappeared, as all such urban phenomenons do, likely someone started putting viruses on the drives or something.

There is a street near Petticoat Lane Market which has all the letters of the alphabet on the shutters of the shops. They are not in order, and the only time to see them all is at night or Sunday. We went by at about dinnertime, and only one was down. Ben Eine did that street.

Other well-knows art streets are Rrrrrivingdon? Riverdon? Starts with an r? I think? The street that Cargo is on. Redchurch St. is also a hot spot, and Fashion St. And everywhere else in that neighborhood. It's like someone stuck a knife in London's grimy little urban heart, right about at Shoreditch High St. Station, and spraypaint splattered out for a mile around. It is covered.

Our guide was pointing out that the popular places for street art are always a little bit run down, a little edgy. One of the best spots for street art is on a shop shutter, which you generally only see in poorer places, as opposed to the burglar alarms that operate in places like Oxford Circus.

Also observed that London is a palimpsest, a place with a thousand million shadows of what has been there before, like the shadow when you paint over a bit of street art. Brick Lane/Shoreditch area has always been a place for outcasts, weirdos, artists, immigrants, etc. Jack the Ripper, the Huegenots, Bangladeshi immigrants, the pioneers of street art, working at night, cloak and dagger. You can sort of smell all that, walking down there in the dusk, the past leaking out of the ground. Jack the Ripper. Wow, that's surreal.

But street art, at least, is more accepted than it once was. People actually ask for their walls to be arted, and one walks past galleries full of the artist's work that you can hang on your wall.

The hipsters may whine about commercialization. I say shut up, hipsters. This is the course of a movement, the way that art works. Street art began as a very political thing, still is. Then it becomes prolific, and more people see it, more people are exposed to the message it is trying to convey. If you are truly trying to communicate, the more people the better. Also the artists tend towards the middle-aged, and the middle class. So what? They are artists. What they make is beautiful, insightful, whimsical, disturbing. Art. There's enough drabness and despair in cities and the world in general.

Some of it is political, some of it is just that primordial artistic instinct that leads kids to draw on the walls with crayon. It is a blank space, begging for beauty and interest and humanization. It is a quiet revolution of the concept of space, of the concept of walls. It is also anarchist. The wall may belong to someone. But when you alter it, it belongs to you as well, you've left a mark on it.

That is what street art shares with graffiti, I think, that territorial aspect: I was here, I exist, this is Mine. For my part, walking around looking at all this, I felt very......very much part of a tribe, if that is the way to put it. It makes you feel less alone. And alone can be a terrifying thing anywhere, but particularly in a city, in all the hurry and fear and worry and inevitable loneliness. You begin to feel invisible, non-existent, constantly scooting over the pavement, no trace left behind, passing no one you know. It's basically people leaving little bits of themselves around, little chunks of their humanness. Also vandalism is fun. Yes, I speak from experience. Sue me, arrest me. :) (i only really did it twice, and once was on the bathroom wall in Hard Times Cafe, which doesn't even count, because they pretty much encourage it.)

The odd thing is that once there is art, beautiful, well done art on the wall,often people respect it. Occasionally someone will write some little insulting tag on the wall, but many of these pieces are pristine, and have been for some time.

So now we come to the government reaction. Street art is practically legal. The police probably will not stop you. At least not in Shoreditch. But they may paint over it. And then what? They've simply refreshed the canvas for the next artist. There are cases where the city council will paint over a piece, and the community raises a ruckus, because they liked it. Believe it or not, when someone puts a piece of art on the wall in a rather grungy place like Redchurch St., it's not the people who live there who whine. They are ok with it, sometimes the artist asks them, as was the case with the alphabet street. It adds personality.

Ben Eine is a great example: David Cameron recently gave Obama one of his pieces, and after that, that same week, Eine painted on a wall in Hackney: “The strangest week”. It was a lovely big bit of street art, just like his other stuff. Come the next week, the Hackney council had painted over it. Whilst his piece is presumably hanging in the White House.

So, I think street art will always retain a little of the anarchist artist, and be the better for it. All anonymous urban phenomenons have that characteristic: parkour, bike posses, skateboarding, urban exploring, all varieties of slightly communist sharing, like the flash drives in the gum, all the other stuff I can't recall but have encountered while poking around cities. Good. I like that.

And since talking about art is like dancing about architecture, here's the pictorial proof. LOTS OF IT.


I'm not even kidding, you're about to look at about 70 photos. I will put any relevant/interesting facts or stories before each batch. Ok? OK. k.

The fourth one here is a Banksy. CHEEKY MAN.
ha. a pun.

:)

vampire carrots! and leetle tiny people with an anteater. I love the mini ones, they are there only for the observant. Also the shadows are painted on, a nice touch.

3rd one looks like a Banksy but isn't: it's very political though. It's a stencil of a famous football photo, but with politician's faces swapped in. It's David Cameron (Brit Prime Minister) grabbing some other politician, whose name I cannot recall, by the....not his nose. What a notion, politicians manipulating each other.....

4th is Space Invader. The wall with the blue and red piece is one of the most painted-over walls, bit of a territory war. mine. mine. mine. mine. mine. etc. forever......
and the Not Soup, best tag ever.

oh look! people actually in the act of arting!
how nice.

more little tinies!!

eee.

Also, the third one is an example of what I mean by a palimpsest: something there before, covered, still visible. Layers.

the first two are the Banksy with plexiglass over it, (come to think of it, the man in the loo has plexiglass too) and the others are the stuff on the wall at Cargo.
I like the one of Wile. E. running off with a sheep.

3 and 4 are a Ben Eine piece, 5 is by a Bangladeshi woman whose name our guide has not sent us yet...sorry. She also did the little people on the shutters eating. Wonderfully bright and rich, the photo doesn't do justice.

Not all street art is paint: 1 is a terrible photo I know, but on the corner there's a little thingie made of those melty beads we all played with as children. And the rock, the rock is so clever.

1 and 2 are a Ben Eine piece: ANTI ANTI ANTI on one side of the street, PRO PRO PRO on the other.

AHAHHAAAA that first one. Short. Sweet. To the point.
Hilarious.
and the "useful" piece, what humor.

In order: Malarky, ROA, Stix, Malarky, Malarky.
hark hark malarky. :)

"a shortcut to what?"
"MUSHROOMS!"
but i will bet you it was no shortcut to get it on the roof.
nor to cover that bike in crochet. There was a car there too, but I don't know where I put the photo. OH WELL. use your imagination.
4 is another ROA.

1 is Stix again, 2 is CZK, and the last one is my favorite ROA, possibly my favorite so far. So unexpected.

LAST BATCH. if you read this far......pat yourself on the back. you are PATIENT.
That last ROA....the way he used the wall, made it look like the rat is crawling out, about to lick the drainpipe....I understand it's vandalism, sure. But there is another part of me that says "you paint over that and i'll feed you to the sharks." Or the sewer rats, they get as big as cats in London.
And the last one is one of those that made me feel like I'd caught something, caught London being London. I didn't alter it much either, all i did was make it less eye-searingly orange, if you can believe that.

Keep your eyes open.
-Lu