I didn't want to have venting of this sort on the internet again; I guess I'm currently predisposed to self-loathing of participation in confessional culture. On the other hand, confessional culture makes sense, and people's lonelinesses and desires for expression get a-funneled this way. If the medium exists, wear it. Or some other amalgam of the cliched and the intellectual and the cliched intellectual.
I'm feeling like a conspicuous consumer this week, having bounteously purchased at the art and craft supply store and indulged in alphabet stickers, a stamping system of various fonts, and actually buying small square canvases. It feels like a stigma to buy pre-prepared canvases at the craft store, as if only students in art schools are allowed to aspire to choosing their materials, and they have to buy so much that they start out with the student-grade paint. I want to write copiously about not using adverbs. No, seriously, I was writing I want to write copiously about DIY and ephemera and the drive to make things constantly and express a ton of ideas visually and tactilely and with words.
I've been stuck in some hell in which I can't get my web designs set up. I haven't been able to put my finger on the way to orient different areas of what I am trying to accomplish or to express it and organize it on the web. I don't like writing in this state of mind. I promised myself I wouldn't write like this ever again. It sucks. It feels weak that I am reaching out like this and it sounds pathetic. Self-help insists that I edit out negative self-talk and art insists that I express the full spectrum of feelings. No matter what you choose, someone will criticize you. I'm filled with rage that I have this subjective trajectory that needs to be expressed in this medium or else I can't seem to get to the more organized, planned, and best-artciulated stuff. AND THAT'S THE KEY: I LITERALLY CAN'T GET TO WHAT I WANT TO WRITE UNLESS I DO THIS FIRST. All I do is think about the writing process. It's like a rolling process, where I have to give in and start writing this shit or the my subconscious is holding the other work on never-gonna-get-it. And now some of you may be saying: then write this privately. I'VE TRIED THAT! I WRITE IN NOTEBOOKS ALL THE DAMN TIME! AND IN GOOGLE DOCS, I'VE BEEN POURING OUT EVERY PROCESS-ORIENTED ATTEMPT AT A SELF-NARRATIVE THAT HAS ANY PROMISE OF TURNING INTO ESSAY-WRITING AGAIN. BUT: THE INTERNET IS HERE AND I APPARENTLY HAVE TO USE IT THIS WAY.
Okay, I'm typing free-wheelingly again: SO CAN I WRITE NOW?
thissucksthissucksthissucksthissucks
I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be awake in the middle of the night and not be able to fall back to sleep again and be writing nothing but A SHITTY STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. OKAY, MODERNISTS: YOU ARE NOT DEAD! MODERNISTS ARE NOT DEAD!
But really, that generation is, unfortunately, dead. And i will die too. and if you think i think this is fun, like, really,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
going to go do something else now and put this fucking post out of my misery
Monday, January 23, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Trying to get my life together
This is not the blog I will be writing from but I feel like I have to post here now. I have a lot of work that I have been trying to throw myself into in the past month. I want to re-introduce my websites to the blogosphere and finish a bunch of small mixed media works. I am also applying to some degree programs to begin an MFA and/or PhD. I have missed traveling very much. Also, I don't know how, if at all, I want to integrate performing into my career. I have been becoming more comfortable with the idea of not having to go onstage to become who I would like to be. Then again, I don't mind discussion panels and... Now's not really the time to go into this in detail, though the words seem to be flowing out of me.
I had gotten a great idea to make a poetic piece about some wonderful experiences I had had last year, but the pattern of my life always seems to be that I must be dropped off of some emotional ledge just when I start being okay with the poetics of historical romance, longing, and desire again. It's like the universe just wants to prove to me that recollecting feelings doesn't get you anywhere. It's difficult to forget how in youth i thought I was strong enough to write with men at heart; but time after cruel time it was smashed home to my heart that shouldn't write anything about any man because the hope and joy get held hostage, and no action or affection is returned. IN fact, the person, no matter how enlightened he seemed to be, always seems to start shrinking from me like I'm a leper or an ogre. WHY BOTHER USING WORDS TO EVOKE WHAT I THOUGHT I WANTED TO IMPRESS UPON A MAN AND AN AUDIENCE IF THE CRUEL MIND OF HUMANKIND INSISTS ON PAYING ME BACK IN SILENCE?
I suppose I should keep typing so that later I can turn this into some philosophical approach to post-postmodern feminism or writerism. But this is exactly the writing that I wanted to cure myself of. It's flowing, I can't think, and someone will inevitably find a reason to mock it, especially since I want to share it right now. But who will read it? REALLY.
I suppose I should hold on to the poem and actually work on it, but I don't understand why my biology insists on making this kind of art. I didn't want to be filled with resentment about it. Anyway, I'll move on to that next. I am okay.
Okay, more later.
OH, NOW I REMEMBER WHAT MY NEXT POINT WAS. That I didn't feel at all like myself without being willing to try to write that type of work. It's horrendous. when I say I wanted to cure myself of writing, I'M NOT JOKING IN THE LEAST. Unfortunately, I can't make that point of view really endure.
I had gotten a great idea to make a poetic piece about some wonderful experiences I had had last year, but the pattern of my life always seems to be that I must be dropped off of some emotional ledge just when I start being okay with the poetics of historical romance, longing, and desire again. It's like the universe just wants to prove to me that recollecting feelings doesn't get you anywhere. It's difficult to forget how in youth i thought I was strong enough to write with men at heart; but time after cruel time it was smashed home to my heart that shouldn't write anything about any man because the hope and joy get held hostage, and no action or affection is returned. IN fact, the person, no matter how enlightened he seemed to be, always seems to start shrinking from me like I'm a leper or an ogre. WHY BOTHER USING WORDS TO EVOKE WHAT I THOUGHT I WANTED TO IMPRESS UPON A MAN AND AN AUDIENCE IF THE CRUEL MIND OF HUMANKIND INSISTS ON PAYING ME BACK IN SILENCE?
I suppose I should keep typing so that later I can turn this into some philosophical approach to post-postmodern feminism or writerism. But this is exactly the writing that I wanted to cure myself of. It's flowing, I can't think, and someone will inevitably find a reason to mock it, especially since I want to share it right now. But who will read it? REALLY.
I suppose I should hold on to the poem and actually work on it, but I don't understand why my biology insists on making this kind of art. I didn't want to be filled with resentment about it. Anyway, I'll move on to that next. I am okay.
Okay, more later.
OH, NOW I REMEMBER WHAT MY NEXT POINT WAS. That I didn't feel at all like myself without being willing to try to write that type of work. It's horrendous. when I say I wanted to cure myself of writing, I'M NOT JOKING IN THE LEAST. Unfortunately, I can't make that point of view really endure.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
look, it's jill all bright 'n' shiny.
Self-Portrait Flashback: August 31, 2007. (It was an outtake from my Day 365 celebratory shoot, completing the 365 Days Self-Portrait Group Project. Woot! And a special shoutout to all my 365 comrades here in the blogosphere.)
Friday, May 28, 2010
Existentialism! Made easy! Not really!
Hell is meta.
Hell is unwanted metaphysical transcendence.
Hell is censorship by other people's unwitting offenses to your self.
Hell is constant self-minimizing.
Hell is a sentence of self-mockery.
Hell is not being able to plan to experience the seasons.
Hell is the persistent illusion of being banned from experiencing the summer of your life.
Time to break out of hell.
Unfortunately, breaking out of hell is a 24 hour per day job.
The second I try to put words to things, I feel as if my IQ has plummeted severely. Language is depressingly imprecise.
There's a Facebook group in support of getting Slavoj Žižek to host SNL. I'd join it, but I don't want to cause the guy any unnecessary angst.
Unfortunately, it's him or me, so I guess peer pressure is the way to go. (That was comedy.
Including the lazy use of punctuation.)
Perhaps language is highly precise in its lazy usage because making parallels to familiar usage is how people most efficiently understand.
Visual expression: another language, another collection of despair.
In this day and age, an apparent lack of interest in Web communication is a psychic cry for help. Agree.
***
Inspiration & suggested reading:
The Plague of Fantasies. Slavoj Žižek. ("Every belonging in a society involves a paradoxical point at which the subject is ordered to embrace freely, as the result of his choice, what is anyway imposed upon him.")
"No Exit". Jean-Paul Sartre. ("Hell is other people.")
While funny, this shouldn't be a joke. (See above note on the preciseness of the imprecise use of language.)
***
Above, a diptych I wanted to share on my blog back in February. (The painting is one of mine.) Just in time for Memorial Day Weekend. While funny, this shouldn't be a joke.
Hell is unwanted metaphysical transcendence.
Hell is censorship by other people's unwitting offenses to your self.
Hell is constant self-minimizing.
Hell is a sentence of self-mockery.
Hell is not being able to plan to experience the seasons.
Hell is the persistent illusion of being banned from experiencing the summer of your life.
Time to break out of hell.
Unfortunately, breaking out of hell is a 24 hour per day job.
The second I try to put words to things, I feel as if my IQ has plummeted severely. Language is depressingly imprecise.
There's a Facebook group in support of getting Slavoj Žižek to host SNL. I'd join it, but I don't want to cause the guy any unnecessary angst.
Unfortunately, it's him or me, so I guess peer pressure is the way to go. (That was comedy.
Including the lazy use of punctuation.)
Perhaps language is highly precise in its lazy usage because making parallels to familiar usage is how people most efficiently understand.
Visual expression: another language, another collection of despair.
In this day and age, an apparent lack of interest in Web communication is a psychic cry for help. Agree.
***
Inspiration & suggested reading:
The Plague of Fantasies. Slavoj Žižek. ("Every belonging in a society involves a paradoxical point at which the subject is ordered to embrace freely, as the result of his choice, what is anyway imposed upon him.")
"No Exit". Jean-Paul Sartre. ("Hell is other people.")
While funny, this shouldn't be a joke. (See above note on the preciseness of the imprecise use of language.)
***
Above, a diptych I wanted to share on my blog back in February. (The painting is one of mine.) Just in time for Memorial Day Weekend. While funny, this shouldn't be a joke.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Signs that you're Jill #1
You cannot disengage Hamlet from photo printing. When attempting to download color profiles from the photo lab, you admonish yourself:
O, that...
The Everlasting had not fix'd
His Canon 'gainst self-printing.
And here's a photo of my friend Ritty Mahoney as Hamlet in Seaview Playwrights Theatre's recent production. More shots, eventually. Facebook? My new photography homepage? Flickr? Who the hell can predict such things.
O, that...
The Everlasting had not fix'd
His Canon 'gainst self-printing.
And here's a photo of my friend Ritty Mahoney as Hamlet in Seaview Playwrights Theatre's recent production. More shots, eventually. Facebook? My new photography homepage? Flickr? Who the hell can predict such things.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
In my years as a blogger, I began to feel the great potential of digital design
(discuss
as a way of expressing self
but also that it's YET another discipline and
in not getting into design of architectures,
elegance of usage
enough
it isn't yet complete
and
BIG BLANK SPACE
i'm not writing this a poem on purpose
not at all
trying to express the ideas of what this blog post will be
and this is what is happening
and
the BIG BLANK SPACE
was not jill's choice to write into the poem
that wasn't supposed to be a poem
but rather something that happened
and then predictably angry with this personality Jill
would type that
and it would say something that
WAS INTENDED BY ANOTHER PART OF MYSELF TO BE SAID
namely, the BIG BLANK SPACE of the negative space in design terms
NOT
the writer's block that that iNSISTENCE ON BEING SAID FOR ITS OWN MEANING'S SAKE was causing
in order to have it's expression be expressed
And I still didn't finish my intent for what this blog post is going to be about.
And this poem is a form-is-also-meaning expression
I don't feel the inspiration of poetry right now viscerally as I had been used to experiencing it in my life.
Rather, I feel mostly nothing.
This is not a poem.
AND I AM NOT PLEASED AT HAVING WRITTEN THIS.
(discuss
as a way of expressing self
but also that it's YET another discipline and
in not getting into design of architectures,
elegance of usage
enough
it isn't yet complete
and
BIG BLANK SPACE
i'm not writing this a poem on purpose
not at all
trying to express the ideas of what this blog post will be
and this is what is happening
and
the BIG BLANK SPACE
was not jill's choice to write into the poem
that wasn't supposed to be a poem
but rather something that happened
and then predictably angry with this personality Jill
would type that
and it would say something that
WAS INTENDED BY ANOTHER PART OF MYSELF TO BE SAID
namely, the BIG BLANK SPACE of the negative space in design terms
NOT
the writer's block that that iNSISTENCE ON BEING SAID FOR ITS OWN MEANING'S SAKE was causing
in order to have it's expression be expressed
And I still didn't finish my intent for what this blog post is going to be about.
And this poem is a form-is-also-meaning expression
I don't feel the inspiration of poetry right now viscerally as I had been used to experiencing it in my life.
Rather, I feel mostly nothing.
This is not a poem.
AND I AM NOT PLEASED AT HAVING WRITTEN THIS.
For me, the search for a happy life is predicated in finding a way to maintain the constructing of a meta-narrative: keeping aware of the days as they pass; knowing that there's a place where I am storing memories, thoughts, and creations; and at certain intervals, re-visiting those memories, are important in creating the self, in my experience.
I do keep notebooks of various types of content, including free-writing, lists, doodles, sketches, notes from various meetings. Personal notebooks, however, don't allow me to interact with readers the way the internet does. I've forced myself, for a few years now, to continue without a redesigned homepage and with a stagnant blog; I've found that the lack of upkeeping the design has enraged the part of myself that desires a home for the virtual metanarrative that I have wanted to be creating. I don't purport to be a designer of great webpage architectures, but I do have a part of me that wants to express itself through the home-design of my webpages.
Social media pages such as Facebook and Flickr do not allow the user enough flexibility of design expression for those sites to fulfill my desire for a web-home. Twitter, of course, though it permits unique background design, limits the length of Tweets (making it not-ideal as a potential Web homebase for a writer); and doesn't host photos, making it necessary to open yet another account, and further fragmenting my sense of web home. Having the photography be on a satellite page such as Twitpic, makes it feel like incidental or supplemental material, when in actuality, it's a primary method of expression. Having the repository of photography be separate from the textual narrative and purported home page has been an irksome peeve of mine ever since it became evident that using Flickr as a visual repository provided a more streamlined and a searchable timeline for my visual web content. I'll get into my feelings about Flickr (both its wonders and its drawbacks) in the future, but for now I'm addressing how these many pages haven't fulfilled my yen for, nor quelled my anger at not being able to maintain a self-designed web-based meta-narrative for myself.
At this point in my writing (in recent months, the jotting down of ideas or private note-taking), I'll veer off to do some reading in the areas I am thinking about.
So much more to address. More later!
I do keep notebooks of various types of content, including free-writing, lists, doodles, sketches, notes from various meetings. Personal notebooks, however, don't allow me to interact with readers the way the internet does. I've forced myself, for a few years now, to continue without a redesigned homepage and with a stagnant blog; I've found that the lack of upkeeping the design has enraged the part of myself that desires a home for the virtual metanarrative that I have wanted to be creating. I don't purport to be a designer of great webpage architectures, but I do have a part of me that wants to express itself through the home-design of my webpages.
Social media pages such as Facebook and Flickr do not allow the user enough flexibility of design expression for those sites to fulfill my desire for a web-home. Twitter, of course, though it permits unique background design, limits the length of Tweets (making it not-ideal as a potential Web homebase for a writer); and doesn't host photos, making it necessary to open yet another account, and further fragmenting my sense of web home. Having the photography be on a satellite page such as Twitpic, makes it feel like incidental or supplemental material, when in actuality, it's a primary method of expression. Having the repository of photography be separate from the textual narrative and purported home page has been an irksome peeve of mine ever since it became evident that using Flickr as a visual repository provided a more streamlined and a searchable timeline for my visual web content. I'll get into my feelings about Flickr (both its wonders and its drawbacks) in the future, but for now I'm addressing how these many pages haven't fulfilled my yen for, nor quelled my anger at not being able to maintain a self-designed web-based meta-narrative for myself.
At this point in my writing (in recent months, the jotting down of ideas or private note-taking), I'll veer off to do some reading in the areas I am thinking about.
So much more to address. More later!
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