Tag: artists way

Scratch

Matthew EilarLeave a comment

Up late talking to my brother last night means up late this morning. On time, though.

Got to work and felt the crackling nerves of energy and excess brainpower. I feel like I’m a school of fish and a fishing boat at the same time. The net is in the water, and as my fish swim round and round, I’m cutting off a channel through which to flee. Cutting off dumb web browsing. Cutting off most social media. Trying to stay off my phone. Cutting out inspirational reading. I left myself options for distraction, but they are primary materials. It’s hard enough—sometimes it feels like I can get my phone out and have my Reddit client open and in front of my face before I’ve had a conscious thought about it. But it meant that I spent some time job hunting, and reading Mrs. Dalloway, and writing.

If you start playing this and think you hate it, please stick with it until 1:36.

I did spend some time listening to Steve Reich’s Four Sections. I was a Reich hater because I didn’t like how popular he was, until I was a Reich fan for the same reason that he became popular, but most of that is on the strength of Music for 18 Musicians, which I am a superfan of. I’ve always meant to listen through a Reich boxed set that I got my hands on, but it was only a couple of nights ago that I put it on to go to sleep to. One of the most bittersweet experiences I have on a regular basis is of drifting to sleep to glorious, sublime music and having the conflicting desires to surrender to the experience and also wanting to know what I’m listening to. I did a thing I hadn’t done in a while: opened up JSTOR and just browsed around for what I could find on the piece and Reich’s music in general, and downloaded a couple things to read later. It is far outside normal habit now, and I was happy that I was able to chase an instinct to just learn about something because I wanted to. It felt like reconnecting with a dormant part of myself, but not any feeling of regression.

I also spent a lot of time reading this piece on the legacy of the New Republic. This is a classic example of something that I already kind of don’t care about thinking about and shouldn’t, but at the same time, I love reading clear opinionated arguments.

Work was whatever. I played computer teacher and introduced 5th graders to a visual programming language for kids called Scratch. It was interesting to see the breakdown of interest. There was a small number of kids that were so resistant to the structure of the activity that they didn’t even sit down with the computer to try. There were a larger number of kids that did sit down and did try to follow along, and found it difficult to get the concept of the programming blocks or the causality of the blocks to the action that resulted. Another large group of kids understood how the blocks corresponded to the sprite characters, and found one annoying thing to do with it (which was annoying, but also totally how you learn how to do things, and I was happy to see it). And then there was another very small group that understood right away what the possibilities of this program is, were already thinking of the cartoons they could make or the puppets they could make say dirty things, or games they could create. It was incredible to see that some kids really didn’t get it, and others really did. I wondered what kind of kid I would have been. I usually had no patience for systems that I didn’t understand right away. At the same time, there’s a decent chance that I would have understood this right away. It’s impossible to tell. I remember a similar type of programming that we did with Apple Hypercard, but I never had that much time to work with those computers.

I talked with a lonely 6 year old girl. I see myself in lonely children.

After work, I ran home and changed in and out the door in like 180 seconds. I headed over to the Academy Theater, where there was a special screening of the documentary Keep on Keepin’ On. It’s a very sweet movie about 94 year old jazz trumpet legend Clark Terry and his 23 year old piano protege. It was wonderful just to be let into the life of this incredible man with such a history and such a firsthand connection to the musical tradition.

I watched the movie with ex-coworked KK and her boyfriend, G, who I had never met. After the movie, we caught up a little bit, and I got my first chance to summarize where I’ve been since I’d last seen her in December. January has turned out to be quite a month for me, with a lot of change and a lot more coming down the pipeline. I was sharing about this Artist’s Way group I’m trying to get started—the response hasn’t been overwhelming, but it has been whelming and I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to get the group going—and both of them expressed some interest. It was validating, and I’m very excited to move on, feel like I’m going forward.

Lasagne

Matthew EilarLeave a comment

I was planning on spending my morning helping my friend A move furniture, but she cancelled on me, which was so much the better because I turned out to have a hangover after Friday night.


I got breakfast with RS at a family diner—because most of my social set is 20somethings with extremely narrow backgrounds and interests, being in a dining room with a mixture of young people, families with kids, all the way up to elderly couples getting weekend breakfast, can seem like a human kaleidoscope of overstimulation. It was nice to catch up with him, I’m behind on bills right now and it makes me feel weird to talk to him when that’s the elephant in the room. 

I honestly cannot remember what I did yesterday afternoon, which is a terrible sign of something.

I’ve been thinking more about starting an Artist’s Way group, and I decided that I wanted to have a real copy of the book, instead of the shitty pirated ebook that I’ve been reading. I went over to the Hawthorne Powell’s to buy it and use up the gift card I got from exchanging books the last time I went. It’s incredible how shame works. As I was poking around Self Help—General looking for my book, I was flashing back to trips to Barnes and Noble when I was a teenager, trying to quickly browse the Gay and Lesbian shelf (shelf!). It was in the section near the history and biography sections, a plausible interest of mine, and I figured I had about 90 seconds at a time to browse. Anyway, I couldn’t find a copy right away and I new they had them in stock, but I ended up having to ask somebody that works there to help me. I felt as nervous asking him as 18 year old me would have been to ask for The Joy of Gay Sex or something. I also picked up a copy of Vanity Fair which turns out to be a much longer novel than I thought. 

After getting back from Powells, I made some plans to have dinner with my friend RC. I was happy to have a few minutes to catch up with L, but her boyfriend was over. I was briefly overcome with such an angry irritation at his presence, so I decided to give them both a wide berth because it wasn’t really their fault and I was being petulant. 

RC’s many virtues is that she has a true lack of judgement and true unconditional acceptance, so I felt like I could share some of the new headspace I’ve been in since Wednesday. I felt comfortable enough to share some of the stuff that’s in my artistic journal, which is starting to take shape and form and growing into a real work of art. We got into a long and emotional conversation about the way that we mediate ourselves in order to conform to expectations when other people have power over our lives. It was a good talk, a real talk. 

After dinner, I was really full and a little bit sleepy. I decided that all I wanted to do was really listen to music. I listened to Sun Structures by Temples. It’s neo-psychedelic rock, kind of sipping the same juice as Tame Impala, with the gauzy veils of reverb of Fleet Foxes. I liked it fine, I love it when bands have that almost neo-classical impulse to make interesting music and not just try and distinguish themselves with production gimmicks. At the same time, it’s such a retro project that it can be hard to figure out what a good or bad song would be in context. 

After that, I listened to The Voyager by Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis. I enjoyed these songs a lot, to the point of not wanting to be too critical or pick them apart. The songs are really personal, and I don’t feel like I have too many experiences in common yet, but I can appreciate their artistry. I’m a huge fan of Fleetwood Mac, and I felt like I heard a lot of them in this.

Once I caught my second wind, I went on a tear, just playing piano with the kind of reckless abandon and joy at hearing my own sounds that used to keep me occupied for hours as a child. At some point, I became so focused on making sure that my practice times were productive and focused that I lost that spirit. I became a lot more focused on making sure I sounded good and wasn’t repeating myself into cliché. I don’t think that’s all wrong—I certainly want to get better and make sure that the time I am putting in is useful time!—but I think I’m coming to understand that the time when I can just sit back and enjoy the sounds I’m making are the embers that keep my fire alive. All of the time I spend trying to stoke myself up without giving those embers oxygen is a waste of time and effort.

I decided to go out and hear JP deejay at a bar at midnight. He’s been letting me into movies free at the theater he works at. It turned out to be kind of a bummer, and I left as soon as I finished my drinks.

As I fell asleep, I watched an excellent Taiwanese gay movie called Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow. It’s kind of a cross between Punch Drunk Love and Far From Heaven, a deliberately stylized and retro, with a little bit of a old Hollywood movie musical/Technicolor aesthetic. It’s a very controlled movie, never breaks into laugh out loud funny or anything, but some good performances, and a lot better than the average shitty gay movie I fall asleep to on a Saturday night.