August 31st, 2006
Searching for beauty in my own flawed eyes
I think that is going to be the title of my piece next month. It’s quite fitting, for it encapsulates so much of what has gone into this production, as well as the underlying mission I so often instinctively charge myself with. My photography is flawed and the disparate mess of a novice. But I have already learned more in the last two months than I have in the last three years in terms of what it’s going to take to get better. So, this art show is already a success. No one has to come and see it, no one has to buy a single piece of photography. I am already proud of myself– an increasingly rare occurrence.
 |
 |
Recently, I’ve somehow managed to find time to cook lunch for myself, four days a week. However, my mother’s spaghetti sauce is still nearly intolerable due to the only ground meat available being composed of a pork and beef “mix”.
I have the materials for my photographic display. I spent over two hours at a home improvement center in Tachikawa last Saturday. I made the potentially fatal mistake of not leaving leeway, hopefully I won’t hang for it. I started tonight’s two-plus hour session by laying out the proofs I have right now to get an idea of how many photographs I can display. It seems we’re looking at 18-28, depending on print size, poetry usage, and any other decorations I end up adding to the facade. Unfortunately a mediocre pass on my print stock right now leaves me with just under two dozen shots, so I’ll cram another two rolls if possible this weekend before turning it all over to iterative printing at Horiuchi.
Per the always spot-on advice of Rodney, I got an Edirol UA-1EX last weekend after scouring all of Akihabara. Now I can record the music from the synth with a lot more fidelity (24-bit 96Khz). Now if I can only get a power supply for the Sound Canvas, and figure out how to use the damn thing without a manual, I may just generate the minimum one hour of music I need for the show. This will probably happen mostly in the next two weeks because of the scant amount of time I have to work with the printer on color matching.
I have more words that I’m satisfied with than I do digital camera pictures, which means that if I thought about it, I may very well try to look for some common threads and patch together a boring and fragmented manuscript of my thoughts. For this time, though, I’ll print out some torn, faded tidbits of verve to caulk around my pictures. I’m worried all of the flavor will be lost in translation though; I could never do my feelings justice in another language. But, such is life. I am young, I am learning. I will build greater halls in the future.
After the show is over and I decompress from the ridiculous amounts of frothing stress, I’ll put together something nice on the main site so you can see what you missed. And who knows, maybe you’ll want to put a little brown bread into my burbling stomach, and buy a print.
I haven’t been this focused and excited about anything in ages. I am slicing into this project with a deadly, single-minded efficiency that is startling even me. Thank God.
