T-SOMETHING

2012-01-27T20:22:00.001-08:00

fucking change

2012-01-21T22:43:00.000-08:00

a canadian coin in my purse. grrr.

Mracus travels again

2012-01-17T13:28:00.000-08:00

2012-01-01T19:04:00.000-08:00

New Years 2012

2011-12-31T00:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome to SARGENT COURT!!!

2011-12-27T08:59:00.000-08:00

re-posting

2011-12-27T08:56:00.000-08:00

stumbled upon Valentine

2011-12-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

re-posting this old portrait i found...
xox

2011-09-13T09:10:00.000-07:00

2011-09-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

first day with grandmother
a quick morning, but lovely.

GRANDMOTHER PROJECT

2011-07-20T00:32:00.000-07:00

My next painting project; the dates are set:
After my father's September 9th wedding,
I am going to Charlotte to spend a few days/ week with my grandmother,
recording her in paint and video the whole time.

Woo Hoo! Excited.

working in LA

2011-07-18T10:34:00.001-07:00

real life in LA

2011-07-18T10:20:00.000-07:00

2011-07-13T01:24:00.001-07:00

2011-07-12T22:23:00.000-07:00

on the way to the park

2011-07-10T20:42:00.000-07:00

iphone 3G 7/10/11

2011-05-29T00:05:00.000-07:00

2011-03-06T00:53:00.000-08:00

welcome to real time with kimberly culotta

2011-03-05T22:14:00.000-08:00

destruction to build

2011-03-05T21:38:00.004-08:00

2011-03-05T21:38:00.003-08:00

Valentin

anti valentin

Trevor

2011-03-05T21:38:00.001-08:00

2011-03-05T21:37:00.001-08:00

2011-03-05T21:25:00.002-08:00

2011-03-05T21:25:00.001-08:00

2011-03-05T21:23:00.000-08:00

Beginning of a love story for perverts

2011-03-05T21:21:00.000-08:00

The Living ROom

2010-12-08T20:50:00.001-08:00

I have discovered my Los Angeles living room...

Chapter 2

2008-01-23T23:20:00.000-08:00

The year since New Orleans has been full of whims.
I am finally feeling a little sense of settling in at home (in Los Angeles) and am looking forward to this year being a lot more focused.
That said,I finished off last year with a bang. A little satiation for my need to travel. For the first time, I brought gear with me to paint in the field. It was a worldwind trip, and as I was traveling with 2 buddies ended up being a lot more of a vacation than it would have been had I been alone, but I still made use of all that crap I carried with me.
Here are the sketches I did. I never had more than an hour or two, usually getting up early and making the guys wait till mid-morning to leave a place. But it was the perfect introduction to what I presume will be a new habbit and i've already been out 'field painting' in my neighborhood since I've been back.

I'm not gonna write too much about this trip. It was incredible intense for me, personally. A lot to think about in a place like that. All I can say is that I didn't want to come back and there's still a part of me there. But, I guess I keep a little piece of me most places I go.

Anyway--I WILL start writing about my experiences as I explore my neighborhood--MacArthur Park. Because it's a friggin cool place and almost like traveling to an exotic country. and I plan to thoroughly paint it up in the time I'm there.

for now...where all the early speeches were given. a place of incredible irony, but also, i have to admit, inspiration. it may well be the adolescent in me, but...i'm hanging on to it.
first real field attempt. chosen because of the social scene not the subject. kids playing stickball. within minutes i was surrounded by curious kids. eager to try to communicate. giggling at my attempts. they called me timida. it wouldn't be the last time. anyway--i gave in to the reality that a big part of painting in the field for me is simply another way to interact with a place. a reason to sit still for a while.second field attempt. urban juncture where old men sit and watch. cops on top of that watching me. one senior took a particular interest in watching. the other two sat in place for me until i stopped. i didn't have to ask. the chance that i might recognize and offer something was reason enough--or would they have sat still there the whole time anyway? who knows. didn't really capture the scene, but was worth the expereince. if i'd had more time i would have finessed it.

traveling in the country side. this is where i probably would have spent the whole trip if i was alone. fully set up aisle and splattered it all around. i had exactly 2 hours here, above was the first hour.farmer with oxe tore bloody path in a field i thought was dormant waste. none such in this place. after an hour i realized a limit and moved to the second. believe it or not i literally just roated 180 degrees and this was my new view.

back in the city, our attempts to get out again stiffled by shoddy public transport (again). i couldnt get past the dock--although i didn't mean to spend as much time there as i did. local kid cornered me and was so eager i couldn't walk away. finally a cop came around and...well, that was the end of that.

this was immediately after. i only had a little while and decided to just sit near this carnival and not even attempt to paint. i got this far in a sketch--there were two kids wrestling in the field and older kids playing stick ball--when i was approached by yet another local kid. this conversation lead to late night exploits with the guys deep into the heart of the city. in the end he took home half my suitcase of stuff for his sister. innocent enough kid, but i fear we exposed him to the gluttony of the international tourist.

more super quick sketches in the last hours as we struggled to find internet access to solidify our exit strategy.

up to the last minute...literally got in a taxi for the airport 5 minutes after stopping. i would have loved to paint for 6 more hours...or months.

This is a sketch of a painting I saw, that kindof sums it all up. heh.
i'll be back one day. but what are the chances it will still be like that?

2007-04-11T22:32:00.000-07:00

postcards from the end

2007-04-11T22:23:00.000-07:00

the results are in..

2007-04-02T09:36:00.000-07:00

well at least the first picture...
THANKS! to all who made it to the show. It was an incredible night being surrounded by everyone I love being all supportive.
and Thanks to Jonny at the Found Gallery for putting up a great show. He 'found' a great collection of Gulf Coast art.
The show stays up through April.
But somehow I don't think this is it for Katrina's influence on my art. It has brought out themes I've carried with me my whole life, and now that I've started getting them out visually I"m not quite ready to stop.
well, thanks to all of y'all! Even the ones who were there last night in spirit!!!
XOXOXO

2007-03-26T21:47:00.000-07:00

FOUND GALLERY, Silverlake, CA

Did I forget to mention

2007-02-23T20:07:00.000-08:00

How heart broken I was not to be home this Mardi Gras.
With my head so very much home this year, the stories of my grandmother's silver glitter in her hair, banging her cane on the floats until the cops reprimanded her by name, "Grandmother! You'll have to stay behind the barracade, just like everybody else!"

I did have a masquerede themed party over the weekend, which satisfied at least a small part of my craving for festivities.

PS--workin hard here this month in my lovely gifted apartment, 2 more days of painting and then callin it 'it' and spending the last month before the show on administration and presentation. March 31 will be the opening...

2007-02-22T21:28:00.001-08:00

sanity is much more under control.
as is homelessness.
yay.
time is running out for art working, but i think i'm gonna make it.

2007-02-08T16:22:00.000-08:00

just to keep those of you actually alive out there informed...

i'm back to painting.
january got a wee bit lost to me being homeless and trying to work that out...
and i still havn't, but a friend of mine has lent me her lovely apartment while she is in paris (thanks jenny!!)
and so i am back at it and in full swing. attack mode even.
i have one month to give it all iv'e got,
and assuming i can maintain my sanity (it is questionable at this point) i will wrap everything up in time for the show the end of march...

that's the plan.
please send me your sane and in-control energy.
i'm in need.

Lalalalalalalalalalalala

2007-01-05T15:43:00.000-08:00

back in LA. lalaland? so it's called.
glad to be back. i put my toes in the ocean and i was home.

i went to the gallery yesterday to discuss the upcoming show,
and found my confidence renewed.
the idea was always to communicate something of the intensity, the very specific intensity of the experience of katrina, to people who wouldn't otherwise comprehend it.
and now, being back around people who have no grounds on which to get it, my mission is clear again.
the pieces i need to tell the story are clear.
...so i have my work cut out for me.
about 2 months and i would like to create at least a half dozen more pieces.
so my plan to return to life-as-usual here in LA is being nearly abandoned.

I will do my best to fill a room with---

that sense of loss walking through the neighborhood you grew up in, looking from house to house, recognizing and remembering friends and neighbors you once played with or barbequed with, now just a shell of a building, lifeless. a skeleton. a ghost town. of your most intimate places.

um..tee hee. i suppose i'm still working out how to verbalize it.
maybe i'll use this as a forum to refine my artists statement.
maybe that's precisely what i've been doing.

i'll post details about the show soon.
the opening is likely to be the weekend of march 31.
the gallery is:
http://www.orphanage-art.com
(currently called the orphanage, but the name is going to change to 'Found' I believe)

the end

2006-12-16T22:15:00.000-08:00

ha!
psych!

got an email from my friend in LA, wants to put up a Katrina show in March.
ha! not the end at all.
whole new beginning.
I was just beginning to feel like I have only begun to tap into the images this might inspire.
guess I'll be painting when I get to LA too...

2006-12-16T15:08:00.000-08:00

last trip to new orleans.

walked around the french quarter with all the tourists.
it felt like tourism. which is good, surely. their first real xmas season since the storm. i imagine it will be a much needed jump. but saying good bye to the city, there is also a part of me that realizes my chance to have it "to myself" is just about over. i know people who live here still feel a certain zombie-ness in the city. everyone still talks about almost nothing but the storm and i still hear locals talk about leaving cause they're too depressed living here. but especially with xmas bringing more business-as-usual, i can feel the city approaching its normal self. and very soon indeed you will have to look very close to see any differences (except, of course in chalmette, the 9th ward, and lakeview. still i imagine in well under 5 years even there will be relatively normal feeling. )

but the 'normal' new orleans is what i've fallen in love with. the storm stuff feels significant and historical and is the reason i finally did come back, but the city as it has always been is what i will soon miss.
i'm sitting in a cafe, on what has become my favorite street--oak street, and reflecting on traffic. the tattooed and peirced youth often loud and obnoxious, next to a dude who could be a homeless drunk, next to some academic looking older woman. today in the french quarter there was an old guy with his white ponytail died purple. not even in venice do you see a white haired person take advantage of the opportunity for vibrancy nature has afforded him.
the gothicness, if that's what you can call it. everything feels old. and has a darkness to it. fresh paint, but there are still bricks and iron and shutters--i mean, the kind that function. and skeletons and cemeteries are as acceptable here as oak trees and trumpets. they are proud of the way they dance with and around death.

and EVERYONE in the quarter rides bikes. all the locals know better than to try to drive there. it was made for horses.
you see more bikes locked up than in austin.
and black people. i'm gonna miss the black people. LA feels so segregated compared to here.

i spent the day walking around trying to take pictures to remember the city by. no image seemed to do it justice.
there were dudes with trumpets on every corner, but without the feeling of the vibration of their sounds...whats it worth?

so i'm sitting here, trying to just absorb as much as possible. maybe i'll actually come back for mardi gras. it's been 8 years.
and there are weddings and whatnot that will draw me back soon enough,
but i am sad tonight.
sentimental. contemplating the cost of rent here. or a purchase. for the future. hopefully the attention the city has gotten this year will attract the right kind of people. creative, energized, open-minded people. not that that's what makes the city rich. and not that i believe very much will change here, but it deserves to be guarded. physically and culturally.
period. end of story. it does.
so says i.

see ya later alligator.

the long road home (second attempt)

2006-12-09T15:50:00.000-08:00

So everything is winding down on this project. At least for the time being.
The past few weeks have been about internalizing and then cramming for a couple deadlines that have come and gone.
That's the best explanation I can give for not writing.

Internalizing.
well. it's been a weird but fun process. trying to take everything i've inputted and figure out why exactly it strikes me and then figure out how to communicate that. can't say i've succeeded, neccessarily, but i suppose i found a start.

on Dec. 1 I put all the work I'd finished--a meager total of 4 peices--and some older stuff, photographs and other paintings, up in a tent in the middle of Heymann Boulevard in Lafayette.

All the streets where closed off for the Christmas Sleigh Lighting Festivities, so there were shops open and live music and food and all that festive stuff.
A bunch of our friends who knew I'd be out there stopped by and a bunch of poeple who were just passing by passed by.
And it was..well, it was valuable, even if it only pointed out how much more I needed to do.
Most people from lafayette went straight to my photographs--suppose their exoticism is intriguing, and some people had recently been to that part of the world.
And a few people paused briefly at the paintings, a couple commented on the use of color or questioned the subject matter (even that wasn't clear to some).
Only two people really seemed to get it.
They were two women from Chalmette, who had relocated to Lafayette. and they went straight up to the painting of Mrs. Virgin's lot. I sat back and listened to their conversation a minute before I approached them. And the woman was clearly touched.
She thought she recognized the lot. Turns out it was only a couple blocks from her home.
I think she said, at one point "this is what people need to see."
It felt good. that the people effected directly got it.
so that made the whole night worth it.

but it also pointed out that i was nowhere near communicating to people who were detached.
and that's definiltey one of my goals.

that left me with less than a month left here, and a lot of work to do to get back to LA and get through the holidays and whatnot.
i spent the next weekend resigning myself to move on and finish up the ones I'd started but then start gearing up to go home.

But Thursday night I had one more big opportunity.
I was donating a portrait commission to the Acadiana Outreach Charity Fundraiser on Thursday.
They would display a sample for people to bid on in a silent auction.
I have to admit I saw it as an opportunity to put a painting out there, a way for all of Lafayette's artists and art apreciators to see it.
So come Monday morning I found myself with inspiration. And I spent the next 48 hours painting.
Thursday was the big night, and thursday morning found me still in the midst of it...
but on top of that, puking. yeah. puking. every time i'd take a bite it'd last 15 minutes then i'd puke, then i'd have to lie down, staring at the paitning, then i'd finally convince myself to get up and do something, but i could only last a couple minutes before i started the whole cycle over again.
finally the hour was upon me and i had no choice. i had to deliver.
i knew it was a risk, and a selfish risk at that, and i had a destinct feeling of guilt,
but i had made the decision not to put up a traditional portrait sample, and was thriving on the fantasy of the stir this paitning could cause.
so--i swallowed down some vomit and brought it over to the lafayette convention center.
the whole place was already decorated, it was all this futuristic psychedelic lava lamp stuff.
all the other art was hung up all over the walls and in the silent auction area.
it looked pretty extravagant.
i was nervous handing off the painting, and honestly I gave them the option of it or two smaller portrait samples (tee hee)
but they wanted the big one.

i went home to rest up for the nights gala.
unfortunately, 8 hours later i still wasn't keeping anything down and was too weak to even get in the shower.
watching it all unfold in my head i was SO bummed not to be there. but alas, my body betrayed me.
my dad would call to tell me how it was going and who was curious and whatnot, and i had wnother internal spy who told me how much it bid for--and it actually did pretty well for the charity, so that was a relief on the conscience.
i still don't really know what kind of an impact it had on people,
but...it must have had some kin dof an impact, eh?

anyway, that's what i'll let msyelf believe anyway.
cause now it really is time to buckle down and tie loose ends and get my stuff in gear to go home.
the other home.

and my conclusion is--
to really express the impact of this event, i think i will need to curate a group exhibition.
hand pick peicces that fill in the story.
of, you now, this very historical and personal event.

so. i guess that will be how i continue this once i return to LA.
hopefully with a show here in Louisiana as well,
so-artists, hear this,
if you have something you feel needs to be heard about your experience with the storm.
let me know.
maybe we can pool ourselves together.

tkim@melodicpictrues.com

the long road home

2006-12-09T07:58:00.000-08:00

where have i been all your life?
finally ready to tell y'all.
but first i have to go make my nephew pancakes...

2006-11-28T13:36:00.000-08:00

i swear this isn't all i've been up to...

2006-11-25T16:10:00.000-08:00

i'll post some of my real work by the end of the week.
promise.

i suppose

2006-11-19T22:58:00.000-08:00

i have reached a level of momentum where 2 days off is too much.
after 4 days off i worked straight through 4 more at a pretty solid pace, then took a day off, then a second day was forced off by circumstance and boy was i itching to get back to it.
that feels good.
the finishing part is much slower than the starting.
roughing in is so instantly gratifying. i usually never have time to actually finish anything.

and since the progress is not particularly noticable, especially with the small icons, i probably won't be posting as often.

but i will be going to new orleans again next week with my dear friend alice who is coming in to visit for a couple days.
so i may have some new photos and insights from her.

2006-11-17T09:22:00.000-08:00

bound to happen eventually

2006-11-16T18:44:00.000-08:00

it was hot chocolate.

death in the family

2006-11-16T16:31:00.000-08:00

fiona, our puppy died this morning.
i still don't know exactly what happened.
but it's a shock.

2006-11-16T13:54:00.000-08:00

2006-11-16T11:44:00.000-08:00

2006-11-14T16:34:00.000-08:00

2006-11-14T16:29:00.000-08:00

2006-11-14T00:22:00.000-08:00

on a boat

2006-11-13T14:19:00.000-08:00

4 kind of arduous days of relaxation.
arduous cause i would have prefferred to be working.
but it was very nice to spend the time with my mom, and she pampered the hell out of me.

and for the most part any work or active thught i did was...not active. subconscious.
i'm sure my brain was doing something on the matter but, hell if i was aware of it.

the only very relevent thing that happened was that-
my mom was on the boat for a nursing meeting. on forensic nursing.
and the last speaker they had was the coroner during the aftermath of the hurricane.
so-i got to sit in on that discussion.

first off, the lecturer was not the official coroner.
both the orleans and st. bernard parish coroners were missing in action. they turned up days later having had to swim from their homes and offices and no phones or power and all that,
he was organizing emergency medical examiner or something, ambulances.
and people knew he had previously been a coroner so they asked him to step up.
i forgot to write down his name,..

but. 'he' got thrown right into the mix. the dead bodies floating and stuck in attics and homes and the murders and deaths in the super dome and convention center, all of that.
he was responsible for organizing and identifying the bodies.

and since he was speaking to a bunch of nurses who are quite accustomed to gore, he did not refrain from graphic imagery.
he talked about how hard it was to ID a waterlogged body where the skin may have fallen off and scavenging animals had eaten off their fingers and the medical and dental records were all flooded...not an easy task.

well, first they had to find the bodies. the coast guard and wildlife and fisheries and private boat-owners were performing their own search and rescues--this is what we all heard about. governm,ent was way too slow and the only reason most people were saved was cause local people took action--but they would drop these bodies off on the elevated portion of freeway the morgue and emergency people were occupying and they had no idea where they found them. not that it mattered cause bodies floated or when they were alive they swam to higher ground and neighbors hoses and stuff.
but after all the water went down he had the task of going through all the houses to find and account for bodies.

the marks his men made are still on almost every building in the city.
one slash when they enter, one slash when they exit. the top quarter held the date, the left the team ID, the bottom the number of victims found, and the right any hazards.
at first if the door was locked and there was no answer they couldn't go in (red tape)

anywya- you've seen some of the pictures of house interiors i've sent. imagine them with fresh mud and wet and stench. he said every house smelt like dead bodies cause of the meat left in the fridge or whatever. they had corpse dogs, but they weren't all very good. there were some that were invaluable. he told anecdotes about someone knowing their family member had to be in the house and insisting and his men had checked 3 times, but they sent the dog in and in 25 seconds he founf the body. and that dog would follow behind other dogs and find bodies they missed.

this was kind of intense: more often than not bodies were found in the attic.
when they saw the attic stairs open he called that 'the death trap'
sometimes bodies would be tangled in the chords of the ladder as they tried to swim out of the attic when the water flooded all the way up the attic roof.
they learned, when looking for bodies, to look around the vents. people would tend to hang on to the vent cause it was the last place that had air as the water rose in their attics.

how gorey avision is that?

he said families were furious but he often refused to let them see the bodies of their family members.
oh-and he got in trouble for praying over bodies.
and the whole organizing and cleaning and IDing bodies was a very arduous task.
not only all the toxic shite, and difficulty with no finger prints or tattoos on bodies, and then having to
literally excavate the dental records out of mush cause LSU and Charity hospital stored their records in the basement, go figure, and the xrays would com eup blank and they'd have to take photographs of the manilla folder wehre the image was left imprinted,
well, evetually all but 246 of the 13,200 missing bodies were found. and i think there are a little over 100 bodies unidentified/unclaimed and there is still some fear over what they'll do with em cause previously in our history we've done mass graves, but he insists that won't happen.

anthro department helped by identifying the age bracket of victims.
cause of death more often than not was drowning or dehydration.
also heart attacks and deprivation of medicine.
only 18 homicides despite rumors,
but it is true that the suicide rate in NO is up 300%.

also-transfer trauma.
people, especially the elderly, rescued off rooves, bused or flown to dallas or oklahoma or somewhere where they didn't know anyonw, waking up to strangers asking them if they know their name and where they live and...trauma.
people died from it.

and 141 died in hospitals. (i'm gonna interview one of the refugees at my dad's house who was working in a hospital in NO during the storm and 5 days after till they got rescued.
52 dies in nursing homes, 35 are in court over wrongful death-euthenasia investigation.

the rescue people are having bad post traumatic stress now. alcoholism and domestic abuse.
yep.

what else did he say?
oh, he was pissed off at the media's coverage of the deaths. exaggerating and even posing images (he caught one international group posing a maniquin under a tarp as a deade body)
and they had to declair the area over the temp morgue a no fly zone and put up camofluage cause the media was so desperate to get a body count.
and he was pissed off at "hollywood"'s intervention. they just got in the way.

also-"we are an armed community"
EVERYone had guns.
that's something to think about.

2006-11-13T13:54:00.001-08:00

not quite a week's worth of adventures to expound.
but...here's the gist.

getting back to lousiana, i spent the night in slydell,
which is on the more exposed eastern part of the north shore, a place i had not visited.
they had a lot of regular hurricane damage from wind and whatnot (my aunt lost 40 trees on her property and had roof damage leading to some minor flooding)
but as far as i could tell life went on normally there after the storm, people moved back into their houses.
repairs and stuff are taking forever due to labor shortages and insurance hoopla, but otherwise...normal.

coming into new orleans from that side of town, though, i crossed the I-10 bridge into new orleans east and...that was not ok.
a whole other chunk ...whole other city, really, to add to the list of ghost towns.
you know, apartment complex after apartment complex destroyed and abandoned.
i saw my first "Help" written on a roof, next to a hole the people had punched through to get out of the attic as the water rose.

i wandered around there a little bit, but could only take so much.

and i wasn't sure what to do with my day.
half of it had gone to escporting my grandmother to the grocery store and bank, and i hadn't done the neccessary prep to work on the painting i should be working on, plus there wouldn't be enough daylight.
so i fumbled my way to audabon park,l for no reason other than i like it.
huge oak trees and old houses and old nice comforting new orleans.

as soon as i parked i remembered that the art museum was there too. brilliant! my subconscious had figured out my day for me.
ok-so the art museum was actually in CIty park, but after a detour around audabon park i figured it out.

NOMA is small by any metropolis's standards, but served my purposes precisely. (certainly not premeditated purposes but it served me anyway)
just seeing fine art was good for me.
kind of grounded me and reminded me that its tangible and real. you know- you put some paint on som eobject in some form of representation and other people find some meaning in it.
and really, that's all its about. no pressure.
heh.
and there was a lot of local-american and lousiana artists that brought that home even more.
in a way makes "acceptance" (not that that's what i'ma fter-hehemn) less intimidating. cause, honestly, ...some of the art isn't very good. but its significant. either cause the person who did it did something ELSE that was good, or...cause tis just significant for one reason or another.

falling into the great AND significant category, i got to see what i think is my favorite painting--rodrigue's aiorioli dinner.
i turned a corner and there it was and i think i gasped and .. savored. its so much better in person. gave me more respect for him for sure.

but the thing that was most productive about the afternoon was seeing the other katrina art.
there were 6 peices.
4 as part of a preview for an exhibit that will be there next november. rolland golden.

he's a local artist who has been well known for paintings of new orleans, and is, aparantly, one of the first fine artists to take the katrina subject public in the non-craft art world.
(they sell all kinds of memorabilia type art--glass houses with blue rooves ((for the tarps)) and...all sorts of folky type art)
his paintings were fairly literal.
people reacting to the flooded city.
very powerful images, well composed and executed, but very literal.
which is the thing i'm struggling with with my own stuff.

and there was one lovely landscape. of a 9th ward block.
i think that one was phil sandusky. and i liked the way it was painted. a little more loose, impressionaistic.
and one photograph.

so-gave me a nice sense of perspective before is et off on 4 days of forced reflection.
on a boat with my mom. no work.

mississippi pictures

2006-11-13T13:54:00.000-08:00

casino coast

2006-11-07T20:09:00.000-08:00

i can't upload pictures, but couldn't resist getting on aunt philly's computer.
and i guess i'm living up to the 'pictures being worth a thousand words' thing cause my fingers just kept going and i couldn't control it. you may wish i'd just shown pictures...

spent last night in biloxi, mississippi at a casino with my grandmother.
she had a complimentary hotel room so i took her and while she gambled today i drove around the gulf coast.

but first, last night, i followed her down to the casino.
she can play slot machines--penny slots-- for days without stopping if you'd let her.
and i never got slots, so i asked her to show me.
and-yep-she doesn't get it any more than i do. i guess you're not supposed to. she couldn't tell me what won or why, she just kne wthe colored lights went off and the credit number rolled up.

pretty soon after we got on the casino floor the power went out-everything went black and the whole room gasped in unison. it came back on after aminute, but i can only imagine how odd that has to be for these huge money machines.
and it reminded me of nicaragua, where the power went out every night. there they were used to inconsistencies in power, but here we take it for granted that we have power (more on this issue later)

so i couldn't help but kind of look at everyone in the casino in awe. they have these umbilical chord things to the machines--their ID cards so they earn points (and are kept track of by the casinos) and people just sit there pushin that button like zombies.
but-it keeps my grandmother entertained.
and its kept mississippi's kids educated (kind of)
they are really dependent on the income from casino's and almost all of them were destroyed.
there are only a couple opening up, a year later.

the whole coast was just completely demolished.
at first driving around i didn't see the damage. it didn't feel so bad. there were a few deserted shopping centers
but when i talked to my mom and mentioned that it didn't seem so bad she was like "What are you taling about!? it's gone!"
and as i went a little further, i realized (see, i havn't spent much time there so i didn't really know what was there before)
but amongst all these empty lots there'd be an airbrush t-shirt shop sign,
or the 2 waffle house remnants in a matter of blocks,
and gradually i realized that this was a total beach resort. the street was packed with tourist stuff- hotels and souvenier shops,
a put put golf place you could still make out,
but other than a handfull of signs and slabs, there is absolutely nothing.
just nothing.
gone. wiped out.
my mom pointed out that there were all these antebellum homes,
that are just gone. i passed a sign in front of a feild...just an empty feild now, said "built 1886"
not even sure what it was. its just gone now.

and then i wondered back towards louisiana, but through back roads (and it becomes quite a detour cause all the major bridges are out...and this is like marshy wetrlands we're talking about, so just to get from town to town along the coast i had to go all the way up and back around. huge chunkcs of interstate are just gone. not a trace.

a lot of it just looks like country. and you can tell by the homes that are left that its a lot of camps and vacation type homes, and there are a coupl eslabs and a couple risers (like just the risers left that were at one time under a house) but otherwisre the only real sign of damage is all these plastic tarps and bags still stuck in trees 15 or 20 feet in the air.
like, stuff that floated on the top of the water when it came in and got stuck well enough on trees. but its so strange. slip-n-slides and twister games and bright bklue tarp[s,. just...up in trees. all over.

then the thing that really makes you realize how bad it is, you're driving through this nice country landscape. feels like kind of virgin land. the beach and everything feels kind of untouched.
and then you'll come to a big feild, with like 300 trailers.
i swear, i must have passed thousands of trailer homes, and you realize--all those people had homes here at one time. and they are just simply gone.

as the sun started getting to a nice angle i found myself stopping every few minutes to take pictures.
the first thing that pulled me over was these men walking on the water.
see-there are no waves to speak of regularly on the gulf. it's like a bath tub. just kind of lapping at the coast. literally, no waves. so at parts you can walk out a few hundred feet and only be upto your ankles.
so i saw what at first i thought were remnants of a peir, but turned out to be men just kind of walking on the water, looking down, casually, picking stuff up.
and i went up and took some picutres and eventually asked what they were doing.
the coast guard hired them to pick up stuff drifting onto the beach from the gulf. they were picking up all sorts of crap, putting it in a little boat and a lift thingy, to try to clean up the beach so people will come back to it by next summer, i guess.
and they've been doing it every day for 3 months.
craziness.

then i drove around a bunch of backwoods stuff along the coast and found all sorts of pictureque landscapes and was very much enjoying my mobile office,
(except that i had to run for my life (!west nile is REAL!!) from mosquitos every time i stopped.
(wonder if them being so bad right now is a symptom of the 6 weeks of stagnant water??)
anyway, i wondered back to wehre i knew i might lose myself and it was starting to get dark and my mom's warning about filling my gas tank so i didn't have another episode like a year ago was ringing oh too true in my head as the road turned to gravel and my car (jeep, but no 4 wheel drive) started getting stuck.
and i was having moments of glad my mobile office is a mobile home too (i keep a sleeping abg in the abck), just in case i got stuck out there in the night.

see, last year (and this will be the brief version) i drove from north carolina home 3 days after he storm, cause i couldn't stand it any more and i accidently went farther south than i meant to, right down the 59 into the heart of mississippi and there was no power or cell phones and it was dusk and i almost ran out of gas but picked up 2 guys carrying gas tanks and they gave me some to take them to their car and then i waited 3 hours or so with about a hundred people and a gas truck came and i was thankful for my life and i didn't realize how much the experience effected me until i came back this time, and driving through all this again has definitley brought back the reality of that time.
you are just vulnerable. it is a full on reality check to have nothing out there protecting you-no law, or authority or anything. and no one had neough gas to leave or escape ... i'll probably write a lot more about this cause i'm processing stuff about it in my head for some elements--the more personal ones--of this project.

the thing about the gulf coast that is different from new orleans, though,
is that the damage is 100% natural. this is just severe, SEEVERE hurricane damage.
makes you realize just how collosal the hurricane was, when you consider how many hurricanes these places have been through and survived.
but the thing that's different about new orleans is the man-made responsibility.
well, i guess you have to take responsibility building on the coast too,
knowing we have hurricanes.
and the levees in new orleans lasted as long as those buildings did too...
but the damage in new orleans was from flooding. not the hurricane.
i mean, 20 feet of flooding.
that is just...well i'm not sure but tis something. different.
maybe i'll have more intelligent thoughts on the matter one day.
i'll try again later.

excercise

2006-11-05T18:06:00.000-08:00

the hurricane's damage seems to have lost its potency for me.
i find myself becoming numb to it the way the 'refugees' around me seem to be.
so, driving home in my own hometome--the place i've lived in since i was about 6--i decided to try imagine what lafayette would look like after the damage i see in chalmette.

like judge perez, johnston street is the main veign of town, an even mix of chains and local businesses,
branching off into suburban neighborhoods, including my own.

i started at the far end, coming back into town.
driving down a fully alive, nightime street. cars on the road with people running errands for the week ahead.
etc.
normal.

imagined myself then just coming back after the 6 weeks when they wouldn't allow anyone back into their neighborhoods.
when the water had only been down for a very short while.
of course, there'd be no power. no street lights, no glowing signs.
no cars on the roads, except those that had been left or abandoned, swept into the middle of the street or front yards.
roofs and signs and whatnot would be debris all over the road, a common sight after a hurricane.
but the whole city, also, covered in black ooze.
like the ghostbusters had finally won the crusade in a heated interdimensional battle.

i passed a car dealership and imagined the lot full of piles of junkers, still with the new price stickers on the windows.
their ordered parking an unintelligble patternless chaos.
thinking of the value of each car. that someone months before would have spent thousands of dollars on, now worthless.

past the ice cream parlor--baskin robins--where we first explored our independence. walking from my friend's house.
empty and deserted. .. even a year later.

which businesses would come back first?
when maybe 5% of the population returned, which ones could afford to come back?
the office depots and kinkos and corporate names so familiar and 'trusted', that you'd think certainly had enough money.
or the locally owned Don's and leBlanc's autoshop.
i passed the Daiquiri hut and knew (proven in chalmette) that bars are the first businesses to come back.
the Daquiri hut would probably be the first sign lit up again on the street.
and then actually being excited when mcdonald's is the second.

driving through, an awareness of the landscape you never had when you just saw the obstacles to the day's errands.
instead, now, seeing the absence of a certain building, now exposing the field behind or the small dip in the ground becoming a resevoir for debris.

turning into the neighborhood. the busy sub-veign that i've come to expect to be caked in xmas lights during the holidays, dark..completely abandoned.
not a single house showing any signs of life.
windows blown out, some still boarded up, but dark all the way through.
cars at one time familiar, tilted up against the wrong neighbors house or tree.

someon'e showy boat, left proudly under the carport,
now floated who knows how many blocks away.

the trees. our neighborhood is old enough to have grand shady trees--they'd all be leafless and dead looking. covered in a layer of grey muck.
same for people's lawns, that they struggled to manicure so their kids had a soft place to lay and watch the clouds, or the dog to poop or even just the neighbors to envy,
black.

nameless street after nameless street of lightless ghost town.
so familiar yet so completely foreign.
so much like a bradbury story about a parrallell dimension.
expecting the ether to just ripple and show the real neighborhood reflected underneath.

but it doesn't. and you're here, whether its another dimension or not.
where do you start.
how do you even begin to decide what parts of your life to try to piece together.
the school accross the street, the churches, grocery stores- every institution and social center completely incapacitated.
the streets not only littered with debree, but even when that finally gets cleared away, every street being pocked with pot holes.

approaching my own block. imagining coming back to the pool at my mom's old house, lifted entirely out of the ground and drifted to the neighbors yard.
driving up to my dad's house. where i have all my art from my whole life stored,
knowing, when you left, that you'd be back in a couple days just like every other time you had to evacuate.
the things we brought to the second story or attic thinking it'd be safe, even if it did flood, strewn about the floor covered in caked mud. waterlogged if at all recognizable.
trying to think of anything valuable that could possibly have survived...and then combing for it in a foot of mud with rubber gloves. and even when you've found the silver...would you ever really eat with it again?

finally coming to terms with having lost everything you've saved and kept for that day far in the future when you'd appreciate just looking back on it.
accepting that that day is now every day cause its only left in your memory.

and you start by just figuring out today, then this week or month. wehre will you live? where will your kids go back to school.
something to do to occupy them so you can focus on dealing.
then once you have any semblence of routine, do you have a job?
and then finally starting to figure out insurance. what are you worth now. are you gonna get anything back of the investments you had before?

months and months later starting to plan, finally, for the future.
starting to figure out which of your neighbors are gonna do what.
who has enough cash to even start to think about fixing their homes, or eventually, when insurance gets dealt with,
who will try to rebuild or who will just pick up and go somewhewre else.
and when you have to make the decisions yourself, you're really just guessing.
no one is actually doing it, you don't know if they're being optamistic, or in denial.
if they'll ever really come back.
or you know your neighborhood isn't coming abck.
the people who made it your neighborhood, who made life bareable and fun, who took years just to find and then you had kids at the same time and informed each other when you found out they'd done something bad at school,
they're not coming back. they're gonna tear down their house. or try to sell it.
how scary too, if you're trying to sell yours, to see the nicest ones in the neighborhood, the ones that had any structure left at all, selling for shit change.

but still, just the ghosts.
driving through the nieghborhoods, even the ones i never knew as normal, or with life in them,
are so freakin eery, block after block after block after block of empty ghost dark dry dusty deserted damaged wreckage.
shells. like locust trails after they demolish a crop, leaving the most recognizable parts of themselves behind.
and just knowing that this is it-this is how its going to be for months and months, life breathing back in so o o o o o
slowly.
life bursting and overflowing everywhere else. why would you ever try to rebuild this from scratch.

yep.
ok.
i remember how it feels again.

now to try to channel that into something more than just the documentary images i've been making.

and so is my task.
for the next week.
i'll be out of the office for a week probably,
going on a wee trip with my mom.
and when i come abck, it'll be the home stretch.
to really see what it is i'm doing here.

2006-11-03T22:06:00.000-08:00

busy day today.

2006-11-02T20:42:00.000-08:00

short trip to the city this week.
it got cold unexpectedly and i wasn't prepared.

i spent the night in the trailer with my uncle and cousin.
squeezing our butts in to pass each other. listening to each other pee through a curtain.
my feet 6 inches from uncle tommy's head while we slept.
but it was surprisingly comfortable.
woke up at 6 to make bag lunches and drive Laine to school. been so long since i've been in a highschool home.
felt pretty normal.
my brain even as numb to the city as theirs must be as we drove cross town to school.

then he took me to the new houses.
on the north shore.
a completely different element, being actually built on solid ground and whatnot.
there are pine trees. and woods. not swamps.
and the houses are really nice. a few blocks from each other just like they were in chalmette.
and their with a great view of a coolie (canal thing) and woods.
and high on a hill.
safe.
realization that for some, at least, in a years time life will be better than it was a year ago.
which is interesting, you know.

a lot of people getting an opportunity to start over and make different choices.
or just take on another mortgage.

the lake (ponchetrain) was violently choppy and glaring sun spots glowed white where the clouds opened up. the skyline was a haze at the far end of northern new orleans. you could even see the superdome from the bridge.
i am only now regretting not taking a picture of it.

when we got back he escorted me to my next architectural subject and i went back alone, opting not to stay because i was improperly dressed and on the verge of catching a throat ailment of some kind.
so i went to the art store and spent more than i have on paint, gased up (1.99!) and came home.

THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO NEXT WEEK (if that's what you're doing at this blog)

-video interview of my aunt's sister who was working in a hospital during the storm, trapped without power or food for 5 days.
-biloxi and the gulf coast. (and probably a casino or two...going with my grandmother)
-a few more finished paintings (fingers crossed)

i havn't uploaded the pictures from this trip yet, so check back,
but i don't recall getting anything spectacular.
oh, but there will be a couple of malakai's awesome car costume that ali and i made!

2006-10-31T11:59:00.000-08:00

2006-10-29T20:35:00.000-08:00

sunday morning in lafayette

2006-10-29T10:26:00.000-08:00

last night.

this morning.

2006-10-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

home again, eager to get as much work done as possible so i can go back for longer next week.
try to do a painting every day of each neighborhood.

i showed mrs virgin and aunt debbie the pictures and my paintings, and they were both very strong. mrs virgin had shown tears before, but she didn't this time. she said she was surprised by herself that it was actually quite a relief. she was glad.
they still didn't want mr dick to see, even though when they told him that it was happening he said "it's about time."
i think he could handle it if he wanted to see them, but they are concerned. it's hard to face even after this long. and they think seeing the house in the first place is what gave him the stroke.
but now they can save the insurance money and can focus on their new house, which they are very excited about.

this afternoon i go to a new iberia wedding. rockon.

2006-10-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

i went back the next morning to watch them finish, and help aunt debbie deal with the shed that they didn't remove because the nieghbors put a sign on it claiming it. they finished cleaning the lot, now just a slab with bits of linoleum and names carved in the cement.

and i started painting.

i painted there most of the day. when th kids got off school they painted with me.

it was interesting to get to spend a whole day in the neighborhood like that.
i think for 4 or 5 hours all i saw where the periodic goverment vehicle or construction truck.
oh-and the scavengers.
old flat bed pickups would pass by with a heap of junk in the back, driving real slow past each lot.
scavengers.

when mrs virgin's neighbor saw me that morning when my canvas was still almost white, and i told her what i was doing--painting the old house and then i would paint the lot over it--tears welled in her eyes.
i asked if it would be too hard having me here doing this and she said no, not for her, but her daughter maybe.
she had been very upset the day before, crying all day.

it's incredible to me,
i went out to dinner that night with 3 full time residents of the city, and just overhearing the neighborhood conversation for two days and the construction worker's conversations all day and ...everywhere i've been.
the conversation almost never strays from storm related stuff.
there's just so much logistics, insurance and red tape and ...so much to adjust to and learn that they are constantly talking about stuff amongst themselves. comparing how its going with this department or that or how they're dealing with the rats or which neighbor isn't cutting their grass or refuses to tear down their house even though they havn't gutted it or cleaned it or anything and how much the houses in which block have been selling for and when the oil spill suit is going through and the guy that used to work for fema that went on his own as a plumber and is making bank and whether or not their paycvhecks from fema will come this week and...on and on and on. which neighborhoods will come back, who's coming back how they'll be different.

everything is either "before katrina" or "since katrina."

at dinner it was a doctor and...i guess we'd call him a politician. he's the head of a bunch of public groups, his neighborhood group and also the neighborhood development organization for the city.
but that was the big topic with almost everyone i've talked to-neighborhoods.
that's what they've been mourning.
their neighbors that they've lived with for decades aren't coming back.
or such and such neighborhood is getting bought up by young professionals and all the older people who lived there are buying closer to the lake,
or the 9th ward --where houses have been handed down for generations without any paperwork being done so now no one knows who legally owns them.

but it's like mrs tiffany said when her daugter asked why i was painting this-
this is history. it won't always be like this.

head soup

2006-10-27T13:12:00.000-07:00

this morning i had to wait around in mrs pam's (awesome totally new orleans shotgun) apartment until the weather passed and the tornado warnings were no longer in effect (it only took 2 hours, to give you an idea of the weather here in louisiana).
i drove home under gorgeous blue skies until traffic came to a dead stop for about an hour. i never even saw the accident, but between new orleans and lafayette there are stretches of bridge with no exits or crossovers for miles an dmiles, so when any little thing happens it becomes a huge roadblock.
yep. felt very familiar, reminded me of many a childhood incident.

this run in new orleans was great.
despite having missed the beginning of the demolition of mrs. virgin's house, i ended up getting a lot done.
after the maple leaf night, i slept later than i wanted to and after running some errands i made just enough wrong turns and inefficient route choices that i didn't have time to go all the way to chalmette before i was gonna meet mom and malakai for lunch.
she was going to be working during all saints day next week, so she wanted to come put flowers on the family grave.

that's really what convinced me not to be anal about mrs virgin's,
cause i've always loved the cemeteries, and have never been with my mom to the grave. her grandparents and uncles and two aunts that i grew up with are buried there.
you can put up to 50 people in one 6ft plot. you just keep putting them on top of each other and they drop down and as they decay they just become part of the marsh underneath. cool, eh?

then we went to lunch, and by the time i got to mrs virgin's it was about 4pm, and they were well under way (although they only started working at 3:15, it is just avery quick process.)
here's what her house looked like 2 days ago.

this is what it looked like when i got there.

the whole neighborhood--out to watch
(there are only 2 or 3 families on the bloack)

2006-10-25T01:46:00.000-07:00

on the way to mrs virgin's house, you drive down a street caled claiborne, that turns into judge perez. it goes on for miles and miles into the suburb chalmette. it's the street uncle tommy and laine drive past twice a day. every day.
here are a couple pics from the view:

anywya- on this street i noticed a house that somehow i hadn't noticed before.

it was next door to a mechanics shop, i suppose the area could be classified as the 9th ward, but the north 9th.
so the mechanic approached me and at first i thought he was getting aggressive so as to kick me off his property, but in fact he asked if i could help him by taking pictures of his shop so he could put them on a website to try to get donations or grants of some sort because no inusrance money is coming through to repair the damages to his business.
-his name is mr. smith.

(that's not him)

smith auto sales and body shop.
211 N robertson St.
new Orleans, LA 70017

he could use some help, if anyone reading knows of any way to help :)

when i finally made it to mrs virgin's house i could see they were not working on it so i stopped and talked to her neighbor for a while (the one who called and told her they were tearing it down, because ti is not their policy to notify homeowners.)
she has 2 kids and after floating around a while they decided to move into a trailer in front of their own house so the kids could have some familiarity.
they seemed happy and adjusted enough. although she said during the time when all the schools were "unified" into one school, and at all the temporary intermediate schools, they had some problems with bully's.
now they ride their bikes up and down deserted streets, a few trailers in front of h omes to be repaired, but at least 12 scheduled for demolition (mrs virgin's will be the first to actually have anything done to it)
she very sincerely expressed that watching other poeple's homes hadn't gotten to her, but every time she thinks about mrs virgin's home being gone it makes her sad. i guess mrs virgin really took the young couple in when they moved to the neighborhood and she considers her family and misses very much the neighborhood being intact.
she wants to video the dmeolision just in case mrs virgin and mr dick ever want to see it.

...then i went to the maple leaf again. this time to paint.
i didn't intend to, but i stayed on the hood of my car accross the street, painting under a streetlight, until 3am.
all of frenchy's posse (he rules the block fo sho) would com eup and say hi. (they're all artists visiting from out of state)
and the tourists, and vendors, and even musicians playing the club came over to see what i was up during breaks.
great way to meet the neighborhood.
heh.

i guess we'll call it an exc ercise in painting on burlap.

breaking news

2006-10-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

after over a year, they finally started demolishing mrs virgin and "pawpaw dick"'s house.
it'll be gone by the weekend. she was in tears in the kitchen this morning.
so i'm taking off to see what i can see.

in the kitchen today

2006-10-23T09:05:00.000-07:00

"i think that's the only thing i really truly miss,
is my pots."

2006-10-22T00:19:00.000-07:00

the effect flipping vinyl every 15 minutes is having on my pace.

painting day

2006-10-20T07:46:00.000-07:00

third day behind a painting.
standing in the same place all day is a great way to learn to look at light.

2006-10-19T15:51:00.000-07:00

i didn't end up painting a lick while i was there this time. but i suppose i'm still in research mode, so...i can't beat myself up too much.
i spent the first night at my cousin's house. he inherited the house from his brother, who -although their house was livable as soon as 6 weeks after the storm- had to move out of the city because his kids were having psychological problems--his 5 year old, for instance was chronically afraid of germs and scrubbed her hands till they bled. anyway, the house is big and so they said they didn't mind if i came and went.

oh, wait- i already wrote about the jazz club, didn't i?
well, the next morning (after his girlfrien'ds kids made me breakfast)
i went to put a sign up at a house i'd like to paint in, so that they might give me permission to paint inside the house,
and i noticed a big group in a prayer circle accross the street and mosied over.

they were kind enough to let me watch and take pictures of them working to clean out someone's house so it can be demolished.

i never understood what exactly a bunch of random people could do to help in a situation like this. a situation where there is clearly shortage of resources, but where there are lots of people. the thing is it is just so much work.

to demolish a house.

hours and hours of hard physical work.

days. weeks.

and when people are trying to get themselves back on their feet they can't not go to work themselves, and even if they can take time off--for instance, my aunt and uncle where interested in this group, because they have been on a list since the hurricane hit to have their mother-in law's house demolished. still waiting.
they have cleaned out their own home and their sister's home and just don't have the time or energy to give to another house.
so-it really is incredible what need these volunteers are filling.
this house was also an elderly woman, who couldn't do it on her own. it'd just been sitting like this for a year. she probably never even went inside herself. for som eits too tragic, but for a lot of people, older and not as feeble, its simply too dangerous. you have to walk on piles of debree with furniture and rafters and eveyrthing else.
it is incredible still, today how many piles of debree are just making their way to the curb. in every neighborhood. my mom said the first 6 months the whole block was just a pile of debree 8 feet high in everyone's yard. still,

shit. i know how hard it is just to pack up and move. can't imagine havin gto move even the walls out too.

as i was walking away to my car a tour van drove by. tourism will be the only thing to save the city, and ironically, the katrina tour is the most popular thing to do in new orleans these days.

i also saw a car full of chinese men unload from a sedan next door. i had to ask if they were checking out property to buy, but they said (in trying english) that they were just here to see everything, because they have been selling a lot of material here. concrete and lumber and whatnot.

then i went back to my uncle's neighborhood.

a couple highlights.
i went down his street systematically, and took a picture of each house in order. i could have gone on for blocks and blocks, but i stopped at my uncle's house.

i picked my cousin up from school and we went back to her trailer. when we walked up to her trailer she noted that someone had com eby and worked on the trailer while they were away. i guess fema has the keys to all the trailers and this is pretty routine. she said it made her nervous. they had apparantly changed the locks too and she was calling her dad to tell him she was locked out when i noticed that the landmarks my mom had pointed out where missing--the bbq pit and tv antena. heh. i realized we were trying to get in to the wrong trailer. not such a hard thing to do when your neighborhood looks like this:
eh?

no pictures of jazz

2006-10-17T00:10:00.000-07:00

i didn't bring my camera into the maple leaf,
cause i didn't want to hide behind it.
i'm thinking i'll frequent there,
so i'll bring my camera when i'm ready to ask if they'll let me take a picture of the maple leaf on the floor.

jazz is awesome.
there were 4 musicians, the crowd, and me.
maybe the speakers count too.
and the aluminum relief wall covering, painted bright red with metalic silver trim.
and the unfinished wood floors.
i don't recall these bouncing as much, but people weren't jumping around this time. it was a much more mellow, feet planted and swaying kind of vibe.

funny that my aquantances visiting from baltimore turned me onto the club, although wheni asked natalie she said it was mr. carl's favorite place in ne worleans so that pretty much settled it for me, i had to go.
but they ended up introducing me to their localfriend, (who happens to be a filmmaker) and he introduced me to the artist accross the street--frenchy.
frenchy is a rather porlific painter. his studio is covered wall to wall in perversely bright canvases with hectic strokes fillin gin quick moments in live performances--including saints games, he's the official team painter and paints on the sidelines.

needless to say this was a very valuable experience for me.
gave me a lot to think about.
like, wow-my instinct to use bright colors totally comes from here. comes this far back.
and also brought up questions of exploitation and capitalization. things i'm sure i'll keep thinking about and will hopefully avoid.

:)

but back to the music. at one moment i found myself cheering the sax on in my head- like come on, you can do it.
they handed him the groove for the first time and it felt like he wasn't sure how to take it for himself.
and what an amalgam of humans in the band.
the guitarist was this older asian guy and the keyboardist/singer was this kinda oveweight schlumpy white guy, who startled the hell out of me when i heard what was ocming out of his mouth. so cooool. heh.
yep, i'll be going back there.

ok.
gonna try to actually get up early tomorrow and get out there doin it.
darnit, got me sum idears tongiht.

back to work

2006-10-16T09:30:00.000-07:00

heading to new orleans today.
planning to stay till wednesday.

there's stormy weather all week and i couldn't be more excited.

2006-10-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

made it to the festival

2006-10-15T21:15:00.000-07:00

2006-10-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

2006-10-14T21:12:00.000-07:00

i actually got up this morning, after 4 hours of sleep, to go check out this zydeco brunch in breaux bridge.
and sure enough, at 9am people where groovin. the place was packed, the dance floor overflowing between the tables where people where happy to have someone bouncing the floor next to them while they ate grits and beignets. and yes, the wood floors bounced. a lot.
the musicians where young. and the dancers where the whole spectrum. almost everyone had on louisiana flare--a festival t-shirt, fleur de lis pin, or, my favorite, the guy in the crawfish button down with red suspenders.
i was could barely find a place to stand to watch and take pictures. eventually it dawned on me that this was probably the first time in my life i havn't just immediately jumped on a dance floor when offered one, and just as the thought was fermenting someone tapped my shoulder.
he was an akward young kid from dallas and i told him i didn't really know how and he lit up "i can teach you." he'd clearly been studying. very basic but i was glad to get out there, and eventually pulled myself out from behind my camera long for a few others too.
i left before i got any really satisfying pictures but i was ready to move on.

i wanted to find some burlap while i was in "the country" not my normal m.o., but i thought to call and ask my dad where i might find some and without a moment's hesitation he rambled off some feed and farming store on pinhook-chastons i think it was.
ok, so, this place is in lafayette--the city, not in the country at all really. and when i tell you--it was full of farmers. a saturday morning and it could have been a cafe the way they were chatting and congregating.
people walking up to the counter to order 300 lbs of castille barley or something and gossipping about family and friends and i mean men here. i loved one story this old man was telling about a rat and a woman refusing to go back to work. they just laughed and were so sincerely glad to engage with each other..and so sincerely rural.
the cashier at one point stopped work to take a cell phone call where everyone waiting in line participated in her convo, laughing with her when she'd echo the annecdote from the other end.
heh.
i got burlap sacks, but no rolls.

then i went home and didn't do any work, but played with malakai, chasing him around pretending he was a cookie, cause he kept calling me cookie monster. (he's still calling me uncle kim, btw)

THEN i went to a wedding with my dad where, i don't know why i wasn't expecting to, but i saw all sorts of kids i grew up with and havn't seen in gazoinks. i'd walk up to someone and say "didn't we ride the bus together at some point?" "yeah the short bus"

by the time we left ali was already back form the festival with kai, so we went home and got them and went to the "art walk"
this is crazy- i mean, these are all things that have been around my whole life. there has always been an arts community here, and it is thriving.
one change has been how rejuvinated downtown is. it's like they recreated what it was like in the 30's or 40's, if it was ever like this, but everyone shows up and walks up and down jefferson street under rought iron balconies, going in and out of galleries. mostly with craftsier art for sale, but still just art everywhere. and just like i expected, i ran into almost every art teacher i had here or friend's parent who was an artist.
GREAT for when i'm ready to start getting input on my work (once i actually have some work)

oh and again-the kids even hang out here. highschool kids discussing the art and hanging in groups in parking lots. right in the midst of all the adults.

i mean- come on, how surreal is this palce?
when i got home i felt like i have jumped into a wormhole.
like-i'm dreaming. i walked away from my life to take 3 months in this place. this place with all these personal memories but also just this hwole life of its own a weird unified organic life of its own, that i'm actually part of.
i had started realizing it after a coupl eyears of coming away, started appreciating it when i'd come back to visit. but--the depth of it in me is amazing to me.
fun fun.
still i could never imagine living here.

oh-then in addition to all that, the new extended family aspect:
when we got home my uncle's fmaily where all up and we all stood around the kitchen for a good hour chatting and playing with the puppy. they're so comfortable with each other and with us, and everyone just seems to be living in such harmony it's incredible. 11 people. i mean, our family NEVER had this kind of harmony before. thanksgiving was never really like this, you know? not that irememeber anwyay.

to meet orangejello and lemonjello

2006-10-13T23:01:00.000-07:00

i am in awe of where i come from.

as long as i can remember, we had this thing called "downtown alive" where they block off the streets and there's live music and everybody drinks and dances and, you know, EVERYBODY is there. --nothing unheard of, but it was every week. for like, half the year.
well, its been..i don't know..5 years since i've gone. and they built an amphitheater (permanent) open to all the street and stuff where people come-every week-and bring foldig chairs and dance zydeco and drive home drunk.

but the most interesting part is, our parents all went, but we could have given a shit. well, not true-we got to run around like banchees with all the other kids whos parents went, but we certainly never danced.
well, a bunch of my friends dance regularly in austin--like lindy hop and ballroom, and all that--and now they come back into town periodically to zydeco.
this weekend is also one of our town's 2 biggest festivals, so they all came in this weekend.

boy oh boy it was fun to watch them dance.
and i realized a few things i have brought with me of the culture, things that may or may not play out well in los angeles, but i have acknowledged and accepted them as me anyhow:

*clothes for comfort over cuteness. cuteness is a plus, but if you can't move in em, it ain't worth it.
*don't let sweatiness keep you from a good time.
*switch partners

(heh. that last one was a joke--some of the couples would only dance with each other)
((but they weren't having nearly as much fun))

i know i have a lot of work to do, but i cannot wait to spend this weekend learning to zydeco.
we're meeting for a zydeco brunch tomorrow morning.
where else do you do that!?

oh- that reminds me actually,..in baltimore aparantly you do that.
we met these two guys from balitmore who came down here for the festival to dance.
they say they have a zydeco club in baltimore and they have big parties eevry month and dance.
like-150 people he said.
and he knew all the local musicians and even the freaking clubs, asking who was playing at clubs i've never even been to.

if there's a club in LA it just might become my gym.

time to rest up so i can boogie down in the am.

view from my aisle

2006-10-13T13:41:00.000-07:00

hiccup

2006-10-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

i was stretching canvases tongiht, and in the midst of admiring my work, writing a blog in my head a bout how smooth and tight my canvas was, despite not havin gdone this since highschool--when i started to realize it was too tight.
my the time i finished the first coat of gesso i KNEW it was too tight, but there wasn't a whole lot i could do. as it started to dry it started buckling and all the sudden it snapped right in front of me, splattering my cup of paint all over my father's car.
ha.
i'm not sure if i can salvage the canvas, but i got all the paint off my dad's car.
and it just showsya how far my dad's come cause when i told him about it and showed him he was more interested in the process of stretching a canvas then whether his car got messed up.

the second one i stretched looks brilliant. so-tomorrow one will be started according to plan.

boarding house.

2006-10-12T19:31:00.000-07:00

life in a boarding house is interesting.

there are all the little things like who never does the dishes or who takes over the kitchen,
but then there's this whole extended family thing that feels like a whole nother time or place.
like latin america or a hundred years ago.
there are grandparents, ailing but always with at least 2 cents.
and my sister and her girlfriend who are this young family still figuring out how to raise a kid and be functional,
but they have to not only figure out each other and the kid, but my dad and random grandparents (not ours) and...
it's just interesting to see.
i thought i had more interesting insights...i'll have to start keeping notes.

well for instance, my day today.

i woke up and went to find malakai cause i was supposed to be watching him.
he was in bed with mickey so i took him so she could sleep. we went downstairs and made cereal, told mrs virgin and mr dick and nicholas-the parrot-hello, and took our breakfast up to my room where we put on an old record...i think it was bette midler,(how fun is it to discover someone else's music collection. especially from 20 or 30 years ago) and he sat on the floor and danced and colored and played with cars while i painted.

then ali came home and took him and i kept painting and dancing and eventually had to take a dancing break, cause gill scott heron took me over and i was having so much fun i had to get ali,
we ended up having lunch first and since no on eelse was in the house ali michelle (mickey) and i could speak freely, and did. you know- youthful liberal type stuff. sex drugs and rock n roll.
then mickey put kai down for a nap and ali came in my room. there's a huge open space in the middle of the room and i knew ali would love danvcing in it as much as i did, i showed her the moves i'd been doing and then i painted and she danced, then i danced and she did homework.
then we both just worked and listened to music together.
it was so nice.
i hope this becomes our aptime ritual.

you know- it's just nice.
when you have a functinal space it is nice to share it with people you love.

we'll see how i feel about it in a month.
they've been living this way for over a year, and i am blown away by how kind and gracious everyone is.

sketched today.
came up with a solid painting idea (ali helped) and bounced it off of donna and mrs virgin (refugees)
see--that's what i mean, i went downstairs to get some tool or soemthing and they asked what i was up to and so i ended up showing them my sketches and getting out a map and donna telling me all the places where there is still a house in th emiddle of the road or soemthing else that may work for my painting.
it's awesome. just awesome.

the scout

2006-10-11T22:47:00.000-07:00

well. i finally arrived at my destination.
the last time i was in new orleans was in april. my mom was all excited because the street lights had been turned back on in the week since she'd visited. the progress this time was: as of a few days ago chalmette finally has a grocery store and a mcdonalds (first restaraunt other than taco trucks) ...and the 9th ward has a traffic light that has power, if not function.
it wasn't nearly as deserted as the last time, wehre we could drive for 30 minutes without seeing life. but still, there are only a couple houses in each neighborhood being actively worked on. the rest just sitting, gutted..or not.

i guess i have a lot to process, see howthe reality fits in with the images i was building in my head. as dramatic as my uncle and his mother-in law's house are, i don't think they are going to serve my purposes. but....i'm still figuring out what exactly my 'purposes' are.

humor

my uncle's old house, outside

inside.

their new house.

their mother-in-law's house.

other houses on their street.

the lucky ones? the brave ones? the stupid ones?

the villain of it all..

the one that got the cops called on me...and maybe the painting?

not a very good picture, but my favorite thing a little closer to home.

truckin

2006-10-10T15:27:00.000-07:00

last night we added yet another addition to the household.
a puppy.
yes, i can now see exactly where my impulsivity comes from.
(i was the voice of reason in the situation)

it is a great dane.
it will be bigger than malakai in a matter of months.
but it is kinda cute.

today i took these pictures of my sister to start a portrait sample,

and i worked on a portrait i gave my mother unfinished for mothers day almost 2 years ago.
will post that one when its done.

and tongiht--i got to hooters with my dad.
family tradition for almost 4 years.
tuesday is triva night
(and really, i don't think its just an excuse for my dad to goggle at boobs)

Day 1

2006-10-09T16:32:00.000-07:00

today, i suppose, can be considered the true beginning.
today i put paint to canvas.
it didn't go all that well.
but i'm not at all discouraged.
if i spend a month at this something surely has to come out of it.

day v

2006-10-09T16:27:00.000-07:00

one day to play t-ball with malakai and unpack myself into the room above our garage.
for the first time in my life i have a space dedicated entirely to painting.
it fucking rocks.
yes it does.

the family situation is fun, actually. just...rich.
kai runs around the house counting and playing cars.
for such a small kid the house is a universe of playground.
'paw paw dick' has become his biggest fan.
confined to an easy chair, and barely able to speak they spent the entire time at the dinner table with eyes locked, in a giddy giggly sort of flirtation.

my uncle and cousin left in the afternoon to go back to the city. she didn't want to enroll in school in lafayette, so they opted to commute to their fema trailer every week.
they have been so gracious as to invite me to join them whenever i want.

the night closed with me comfortable on my air mattress, itching to ...do soemthing.
but quite content.

day iv

2006-10-09T16:20:00.000-07:00

can't remember the last time i was hungover..ok, i can. but i can't remember the last time i was hungover and had to wake up to see my dad--that's cause it's probably never happened.

i met my dad for lunch-- at the UL/Houston tailgating party.
i (to the relief of some at home) didn't know what sport we werte tailgating.
but there was something familiar about holding a koozie and cajun music and the smell of gumbo...
i was getting closer...

and where was i getting?
unfortuantely i neglected to visually document,
but ipulled up into my bachelor father's house and there were no less than 6 cars in the driveway.
he wans't even there but every other of the currently 11 member household was sitting in the living room to greet me.

my sister, her 2 yr-old son malakai, her girlfriend michelle,
my aunt, uncle, cousin, my aunt's sister and parents, myself and my father are all ...roomates.

THIS is why i had to come back.

i didn't even bring up the reason i was there. they did. they eagerly brought out scrapbooks and started telling stories and anecdotes and inviting me to see their houses..or what is left.

yep. this is why i came back. to see it for myself, live it.
and if all goes according to plan...convert it into some form of palatable art.

thus stated, the goal.

day iii

2006-10-09T16:17:00.000-07:00

tempted to stop in albaquerque for the balloons, but getting antsy to get this party started, i pushed all the way to austin,
where i fell into a worm hole and woke up in 7th grade again. it was learning how to 'pop it' all over again.
we reveled. my voicemail holds evidence.

things unique about austin:

*no bike signs on the freeway entrances
*they talk about lance like he's super human
*even their definition of 'weird' is liberal.

oh-and i turned down my first job from LA.
small pang of anxiety after doing it, but...the card has been played.

day ii

2006-10-09T16:11:00.000-07:00

san fidel, nm.

other highlights included:

* $5 free at a casino, which lasted me half an hour at the blackjack tables
* stark american reality: a radio commercial for a gun show which closed:
"be ready for osama" osama "uh oh!!"
and a billboard against "licensing terrorists" with a picture ID of a generic islamic man.

phew.

spent this night squatting at an RV park. relieved to at the very least stretch the legs, if not actually feel safe.

ants in the pants--Day i

2006-10-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

4 am. woke up before my alarm, i think. yes..definitively.
had my back to LA by the time the sun came up.

Free Way.

as many times as i've made this trek i've never taken my time..so this time it was all mine.

wondered up to the hoover dam.

and settled into some parking lot somewhere for the night.

the Art of Travel

2006-10-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

since this blog is primarily a personal reference for myself, i am transcribing what i started on myspace a few months ago.
I worked for 6 weeks in south and central america. that there is the inverse of the notes i made------

full circle

so, yes. back in LA. the whole trip fading into ..but a memory.

i'm so curious who's been reading this. cause...well, frankly my parents don't use myspace.
would love a line from anyone who has been.

and if you want some illustration, i've started posting pictures.

http://t-kim.com/funstuff/main.php?g2_itemId=150
and
http://t-kim.com/funstuff/main.php?g2_itemId=151

the first is the snapshots, i've barely started putting them up.
the second are the ones i actually like as photographs.

in a month or so i'll be trekking on m yown to new orleans.
now that i've started this habbit i may just keep it up while i'm there too.
we shall see.

cheers.

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Thursday, September 21, 2006

simply worlds away

it just kept getting more interesting.
from lake titcaca we continued on to the bolivian border.
we crossed the border on foot, since buses were not aloud to cross. which meant unloading all the gear and loading onto these bycicle porters..just guys with carts on their bikes and you pay them a dollar to carry your load accross while you walk. then onto another bus for the trek through bolivia.
in the immigration office we met a southafrican traveler and tom offerred her a ride to lapaz, but they wouldn't let her through without a visa. undeniable priveledge of being american.
tom had been raving about how great lapaz was to party in (he raves about what icnredible times he's had in every city) and i wanted to party but when it came down to it my body still wasn't up for it. the next day we didn't shoot till 2pm. i thought lawson was just hung over or had food poisoning at first. he shot out the scene we were doing that day, but ...puking and curled over. by 9pm when our bus to the salt flats was supposed to leave he was still miserably sick. i mean, it was painful just listening to him vomit from outside in the hall.
still, i couldn't believe it but he actually decided--after much detailed description of the long trek on unpaved roads through blistering cold to the middle of nowhere with no bathrooms much less hospital facilities--he decided to stay back and leah, hassan and i would shoot for him. between bathroom runs lawson croaked out what advice he could,
and at 4am that night, i was on the bus, watching the moonlit landscape pass me by. everyone in good spirits. the guides "blanket fairies" covering us with sleeping bags while we slept. glad lawson wasn't vomiting and shitting his pants in the back. hoping he's ok alone in the hotel at lapaz.
secretly excited by the opportunity, especially as a 3 person team w/ a geniuses instruction ;)

in the morning (have i written this before), after all night of roadless driving, we unloaded into jeeps and heeded even deeper into nothingness. coming to in literally the middle of nowhere. as far as the eye could see...nothing. endless expanse of blue sky above and solid, pure, flat white below. simpler than being in the middle of the ocean. no movement, no sound, ...nothing. just nothing.
the guide told us to run. after only a moment's hesitation most of us agreed, and...yes. strange. just completely detached from any sensory perception. nothing mpoving yet you're exerting everything. like a dream.

and that's oretty much what it was like. there were a couple islands of coral (yes, from when this was the bottom of the ocean) now with cactuses growing on them, and a hotel made of slabs of salt, and an area with minerals and small geysers bubbling up, but other than that...nothingness.

leah was incredible. she was decisive and listened to our comments and concerns but...quite the natural. i was very impressed with her. despite the day leading to the biggest outburst to date (not saying much, there hadn't been very many outbursts to speak of) but tom seemed at his end all day for some reason and well-there was one moment of contension.
oh, that was the second day. i forgot--the night we stayed at a home, essentially, just on the noutskirts of the flat. while chris got a hand bath (frigid water, we all knew better having stayed inhotels without hot water) i smoked and walked with hassan and eventually relaxed enough to stetch and move around on the open makeshift basketball court. i can't believe that's all i needed, but my stomach cramps instantly relieved for the rest of the trip! my body had just missed stretching and moving.
so i went inside and drank bolivian booze with everyone to celebrtate. yay! to enjoy the last couple days.

salt flat highlight: in 15 minutes or less you could walk far enough out so that the only things you can see on the horizon are dots. that dot is a bus, that clump of dots is our jeeps and crew...no human in ear shot or eyesight. you can hear a bus approach 5 miles away and fade into the silence.

the bus ride back. 14 hours or so back to the border (hightailing it now, picture wrapped, to drive back to peru to catch a flight as the airlines in bolivia were bancrupt)
flower smelling bolivian booze picked up at every market we passed, spilled most in the aisle or on each other -celebration attemopts while offroading.
taking my sleeping bag out of th ebag i SEE soemthing. glowing orb things. i confirm with chris, i am seeing static. electricity.

the last 36 hours of the trip were pretty much spent on buses and planes as we drove ...like almost the distance of the continental US, straight through-- to catch out plane in Lima. and reflecting on the reality that was all too soon going to slap me on the face again.

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Saturday, September 09, 2006

titi caca (seriously)

skimed down, production finally bought the good stuff, we got a 48 passenger double decker bus to drive from cusco to lake titicaca.

amazing drive elevatd above the road, the landscape already at eye level with the clopuds, 14,000 above the treeline, the women in layers of skirts and hats pick axing farmland, herds of llamas, cemeterries every mile, people making the bricks to then build their homes. mountains in every dirction cause you´re just in the iddle of them.

sweeeeeeet. i don´t know how everybody else slept. i just love open spaces.

looks like tomorrow we´re going to bolivia despite political unrest.

wish us luck!

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Friday, September 08, 2006

copa cabana is a real place, and i spose that where i{m headed.

to my surprise, honestly, the frustration with production lasted up to the last day of ,real, production (no, i don{t care to learn how to use these crazy keyboards properly)

complaints becoming more like jokes, yet everyone for the most part in good spirits, but, you know, a lot of people over it.

we all liked being in cusco, i think, but there were tons of issues with permits and crap and so there was a lot of time sitting waiting, which people don{t like, as much because theyd rather just be working as cause they{d rather be sightseeing.

but the last 2 days before most of the crew were sent home were the highly anticiapted climax of the job--machu pichu.

we ended up getting to take the orient express equivilant train the ,hiram bingham, which is this really posh train with waiters in suits and we shot of the back care with brass rails and glass walls. i have to say as much as i enjoyed the yacht island experience, the landscape through peru was just otherworldly. a dream. passing lone farmers working their plots seriously made me want to buy som eland and move there. and then it works its way up into the andes and follows a big river and-just awesome.

when we got to aguas collientes-the town outsiside of machu pichu, the crew split up, the ´´neccessaries´´ stayed at the top of the mountain at a hotel literally on machu pichu ($700 night) and for the first time i wans{t included in this crew, which was fine with me cause i had a fever and was gratefull to be able to relax. so we stayed in ahostel down below where there were hot springs. i took a nap and then went to the hotsprings, where this native peruvian with long dark hair and jewelry kept trying to communicate with me from the balcony above the pools, i ended up having a beer with him and 4 of his friends and it was fun to attempt to communicate, me speaking poor spanish and their limited english. but it was fun. the first real local encounter i{ve had strangely enough. suppose it was cause iw as alone. it killed me not to go salsa dancing with them but i knew i needed to maintain what little health i had.

the next day we met the rest of the crew at machu pichu, the bus ride up was pretty gorgeous. i opted out of the 5 AM BUS CAUSE I WAS SICK AND THE MAIN CREW WAS SUPPOSED TO BE GETTING SOME SUNRISE SHOT FROM THE TOP OF A MOUNTAIN SO I DIDN{T THINK I{D BE ABLE TO find them, but as it turned out that ´¨permit´fell through too so the whole expensive hotel thing was kind of a bust, bummer.

but we did spend a whole day shooting at machu pichu, which was incredible. steadicam shots chasing actors through ancient ruins. a romanctic scene ion a doorway on the edge of a cliff looking out to mountains and clouds at eye level.

pretty cool.

then we got to take the nice train back too, even though we were supposed to take the backpackers train and i was kind of lookin gforward to it.

most of us slept, but there was a full moon and a few spectacular sights when we{d come around a bend and a mountain would move to reveal the moon. there was a lunar eclipse but we weren{t sur eif it was that night or the night before and tried to see it but i di on{t think abyone did.

i was feeling pretty mcuh up to par by the end of that excursion but as soon as we got back to cusco´s colder climate (higher alltitude) i almost instantly got feverish again. most of the crew was heading home the next morning but they were mostly too tiredt o rally to celebrate, so a couple of us ended up going out for drinks and i nearly fell asleep at the bar so i left for another feverish night{s sleep. they, of course, went out dancing till 5 am. i{m such a ¨mamaw¨¨ (crew term)

today we began the skeleton crew adventure. shbooting one lasty golden hour scene in the central square. tomorrow mornin gwe get on a bus to start our road trip through bolivia.

aparantly, even though the director{s mother is from bolivia and he has been there, they have not scouted any of the locations or things we are supposed to shoot. will certainly be an adventure. and assuming we can all regain our health will be quite the party too, since these guys barely put their drinks down to shoot.

i{m looking forward to it. glad to be on the last leg of the shoot, since i think it will be a very cementing bond.

bummed knowing that when you get back home the memory fades so quickly. will the other crew guys even be thinking of us by the time we get back? we all talk about gatherings and parties and staying in touch, but we know better, right?

i have a lot of love for each person on this job. it{s pretty incredible that we got along so well, even thought some of us had our moments...heh.

and really the human experience of living with people for 5 weeks has in a way been the most interesting part of this.

heh.

well, don{t know what bolivia is going to be like (other than cold --which, by the way is interesting too that i left in the heat of summer but it will practically be fall when i get back...

another note, i{m still dreading going back to LA. there was one moment where i got exctied and ready, reading and email from kimberly mccullough, but ...for the most part i don{t want to go back just yet.

i{d rater keep safariing even if it is in louisiana. sitting quietly and painting just sounds soooooooo good right now.

ok. nightly night.

ps-chuck if you start reading this you should comment.

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Tuesday, September 05, 2006

production deteriration

what we,ve come to:

our call sheets are now slips of paper, handwritten with the call time and scene description.

last night they were put under our doors after we went to bed.

more and more often, no one knows what we,re shooting an hour before we shoot much less the day before.

we still complain about not knowing, and not being able to do our jobs well, but i know we all have to be enjoying the laid back vcation-ness this job is becoming in some way.

everyone except lawson who actually benefits from the film being the best it can be.

the crew still feels like family, and is in many ways more a machine, more willing to help accross departments since we are paired down to the basic LA crew.

right now we are having a ,siesta, after lunch while we wait for a permit to com ethrough.

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cue the practical jokes

we shot in the hotel this morning, in the room right next to ours in fact (yesterday we shot in our room...neither of which look like anything that couldn{t be shot on a sound stage).

at one point early in the day leah stuck her head out of our door and called me over. she was smiling, but i still thought i was in trouble as she lead me into the bathroom--paranoid about what disgusting neglect i had left behind. instead the little terd in the toilet that she wa slaughing at was really one of the knit finger puppets all the kids on the street sell, a monkey.

she was dying with laughter.

we took a picture of it and when we got back to set had to announce it to everyone and ask who put a monkey in the toilet.

everyone was entertained, confused but entertained even after we explained. then garry (our rather eccentric sound guy who has been fairly open about hie prostitute frequenting in pananma) reminded us about a story leah had told the night before.

before she left, without time to make arrangements for a caretaker for her pet beta fish, she ha dlfushed him down the toilet. it had been weighing heavy on her the whole trip and she finally got it off her chest. (she{s famously a vegetarian as it has been at times a feat to feed hert on the tirp)

the fish,s name was monkey.

well, it continued to be a topic of conversation between takes, i narrowed my suspicions down to garry or chris who were both the only ones directly involved in the conversation.

i had to step out of the room during takes because we werwe shooting in a small room with a HUGE tent built in it, so i would confer with the rest of the crew and then back to chris, garry and leah on set.

well, during one take there was a hoopla cause shannon, holly and connor had all found puppets in their toilets.

i brought the news back to set.

we all had our theories, but since i had the most information, i found myself being in the middle of all of them. personally, and i told people this, i think garry or chris (or garry AND chris which would be even more excitingly surprising een than just garry coming up with it) had put the orioginal monkey in our tooilet, but someone else enjoyed the idea and snuck into everyone else{s room. possibly even tom-the director, who was frustrated at the distraction on set but always a sport for games, told brian or some other minion to do it.

so far it still has not been settled, but i for the first time realized the fun of practical jokes.,

you laugh at the thought and the imagery and imagining someone sneaking and its totally entertaining to specualte and do detective work.

it inspired me to try to pull one off myself and although i forgot that secrecy is the key and told shannon my idea, i still think i{m gonna try to pull it off if i can.

i just need to get some yarn...the 3 producers..director..writer are all in the same room....

i.ll kep ya posted.

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Sunday, September 03, 2006

mountain people

a few moments before we load gear.

so, guess what. after 4 weeks of being sweaty as soon as i left the hotel in the morning, i am COLD!

we are in this mountain town in peru and it{s like colorado in the spring.

11,000 feet elevation. the oldest city in the americas, i{ve heard (although i feel like i wrote that already about that city outside managua...grandada?

anyway, we ha da whole day to ´¨acclimate¨which meant walk around the city shopping and taking pictures and even drawing! which is definitely the most time i{ve spent doing that. and what a city to do that in. so old, and still to traditional. the area where we are is very touristy, people dresed in traditional gard carting around lamas and babies, and even baby lamas trying to get you to pay them to take their picture. and little kids making these knit finger puppets scurrying around you.

but when you walk out of the touristy part it is estill just as traditional! the older women where these poofy scirts and tlal white hats.

ok--AD is calling us in.

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Thursday, August 31, 2006

the sound of wind

before i get started, i havn't been giving updates on the last subject of note but,

things did get juicy for a while, only dangerous on one occassion, but oh what ademeaning occassion it was. but they are almost completely back to normal now.

ok.

just before the sun started lighting up t he sky, leah and i finished prepping our camera package. the camera was built and the bozes we were taking with us were stacked next to the door.

we showered and slept in our clothes so that when the call came at 8:30 we just had to stand up out of bed and walk out the door.

this day of work was "optional," which was how they got away with such a lacking turnaround. i, of course, optioned for it.

the dock was a paparazi funday. luckily we were on another continent and no one gave a shit. about 20 of us, half crew, half 'entourage' boarded a yaht destined for a little island off the pacific coast of panama city.

on the bow, everyone was elated. such a heavenly relief from the brooding overhang of the jungle. the wind blew blood into our cheeks as watched the city of panama, being built before our eyes like the next martian addition, fade into the horizon.

the pilot followed the trail of barges lining up to enter the canal locks out into the pacific.

we had come through something together and we were on the toher side.

the joy we all knew we were experiencing in common gave us a decided sense of family, which i was enjoying when we all noticed a dark cloud of smoke being left behind us. like a sticker on the plexiglass keeping us from some glorious playground, we knew it was too good a feeling to be true. nothing had been this perfect.

and sure enough the boat started heading back to the martian construction.

i sat at the very front of the ship, trying to soak as much of the experience in as possible, presuming i'd be sent home when we switched to a smaller, faster boat.

lucky for me, the entourage volunteered to go home and the whole skeleton crew got to continue sans accoutrament.

after daisy-chaining our gear to another yacht we headed back into the pacific.

i sat on the tip top next to the 'skipper' letting the wind drown out every other sensation. the subtly changing rhythms of the wind were all i could hear or felt as i entered the quietest state i have ever experienced.

blank. clear.

i opened my eyes again just in time to see the tale of a whale flip off to tthe left. i shouted for everyone and for a few minutes we all whale watched together.

still not sure if it was a whale or abnormally large dolphin cause about 20 minutes later we wateched a pack of dolp[hins play in our wake.

eventually a bump on the horizon grew into a small clump of islands straight out of a pirate tale. cliffs and crevases and birds circling above, emerald green water all around.

the boat pulled close to shore and everyone-- director procuer, casdt and crew jumped in in their swimsuits or underwear, carrying a handful of dry clothes above their heads. i noticed that John-- the stoic determinedly professional AD, had a pair of goggles and he mentioned his love of snorkling. i had to admit i'd never been.

the island resort was nearly abandoned. i suppose it was the off season but i can't imagine why there would be an off season there.

while we were waiting for our lunch order i looked up to see john moltioning me to follow him, so i followed him to the ocean where we dove in and he showed me the coral reef he found. he showed me how to scout the reef for drop offs and crevesaes. i laughed out loud looking a fish in the face in a nook in the coral.

awesome. and so much like this whole trip incredibly romantic, despite no romance. as much a human experience as a natural one, i felt priveledged to have been ivnited along.

just as i was climbing the rocks to go back to WORK johns hand popped out of the water and he motioned me to come quickly, he had found oan octopus!

i couldn't believe how well it was camouflaged with the rocks. if it hadn't been hunting somewthing and moving a tentacle we never would have seen it. i still can't bleive he noticed it.

i thought they were small but this one didn't seem so until i r ealizeed how close we were to it!

incredible.

back at lunch everyone was almost done eating. my departure had been 'mysterious' and suspicious but by now they know the two of us well enough to know a fling was unlikely.

we hired a local boat--sort of a deep canoe painted bright blue called 'lucky devil' in spanish, to take us to t he yacht to load gear.

we shot a love scene in a hmoock on the porch of a cabin built into a cliff right over the water. the crabs on tyhe rocks below more distracting than the nudity of the actors.

the sun went down quickly in the overcast sky and it was dark by the time we loaded our gear back on the yacht.

so, of course, we went for one last swim--nude.

on the ride back despite less than 3 hours sleep i couldn't find any tiredness in myself,

instead enjpoying the wind, the company and a rum and coke.

felt like a weekend away with dear friends.

it wasn't until the bus ride back that the weight of it all hit me.

when we got home at 11pm, we wrapped the camera and prepped with just enough time to get 3 more hours sleep before our call to begin our journey to peru.

and here is it, in the airport in costa rica, still too excited to write.

i lost my first attempt to write this, so some of my personal reflection have been poured out already, but for my own record-

i am unbelievably gratedful for the experience. it is definitley something that will change the course of my life. it came at a very significant time in my life where i have to choose my path.

i d on't imagine after this, going back to LA to stay. at least not for a while.

thjere are only 2 things that could keep me there.

one of the doesn't want me and the other shouldn't stop me.

he's probably right, despite my feeling that we could have both, each other and freedom to grow, but regardless that decision seems to be made for me.

so on the other hand, i can't seem to let my career hold me hostage in LA. i have a good enough sense of what the next few years would be like there and the most important thing in my life is self-eduation, which other than on-set experiecne i can do anywhere and potentially with less struggle.

so, i imagine i will stick to my as of now plan, returning to LA to tie ends and then a stint in NO.

and now to make some birthday calls! Malakai and mudi are both 2! i can't blieve it. and it has been a whoel year since my uncle and cousins lost their homes in katrina.

wow.

love.

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the in between stories

our last day shooting in the jungle, our last day with the panamanian crew.

sharing beers around a campfire in front of the camera. cheers then hugs and goodbyes when we cut.

3 am back at the hotel waiting for the truck to arrive.

people (crew) had been freaking out about the short turnaround which they called "optional" (most people didn't have to go to the island the next day if they didn't wat to. of course i wanted to and knew it was my choice, but leah and sound pretty much HAD to and so a 3 hour turnaround was not rediculous for them to be upset about. so i went with leah and gary to find tom and brian at the casino and talk to them. none of use were clear what "overtime" meant exactly, etc.

they were, of course, at the bar. all the cast was enjoying and celebrating their last night together, brian and tom were 'obliged to party'

you could tell they really wanted to go to sleep, but if they had to be there...

so again a sit down.

again me feeling compelledc to put my nose right in their, i always have to know everything that goes on. like being right in the action so i can derive as close to truth as possible.

and they were cool about it.

i knew once the crew left brian and tom would be much more capable of 'taking care of us'

before i get into the interesting stuff, some notes for myself.

about crew negativity. my friend who has been sober for 6 months and i am sure having a tough time being around such partiers, has pretty much checked out from the job and even people unrelated notice his negativity. but i actually just realized what being around him and the other complainers does to me.

i indulged because i am trying to learn to stand up for myself better, you know, demand to be paid for work, etc.

which i more often than not don't do. i just roll.

but we did agree to work a set amount of hours and anyway i believe that if we hold them to it they will be more likely to get things on time.

but the negativity seeps in. i wish poeple could be proactive and productive about it instead of whiny. which is why i helped convince them to approach the producers both these times. just to have the conversatins in the open, since they are so pervasive in our private convos.

and of course, this reminds me about negativity in life in general. who uyou surround yourself with. all that.

for the most part i thin ki naturally surrpound myself with positive people. but it's something good to be aware of.

:)

so- the next story. i can't believe and am so greatful that i have been accumilating so many incredible experiences that is another reason that ifeel guilty complaing about hours and stuff, but relaly if they wanted the "experiece" to be aprt of our pay they should have been up front about that. instead they presented a very professional front explicitly mentioning hours and turnaround in our deqal memos (which i signed but have not gotten a copy of...)

anywya-

so-truck finally srrived, leah and i unloaded everything to the hotel and with the help of some leftovers from our night off the other night (of that whole blog got deleted before it got posted, heh. guess i won't record that night of debauchery. one of the wildest nights of my life. ending in the gentlemen's poker story. very fun) seperated the B package that was being returned and prepared the A camera for the next days trip.

up-bathroom break before i jump in to yesterday's story.

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006

lost notes

i've taken to jotting things down throughout my days to remind me of refelctions i felt worthy of writing about.

well, i've lost my notes for the past few days, and i have to say it is rather disconcerting. i should be able to remember it all, but so much happens in such a shotrt time...that's why i write it.

so this will be unstructured search of my meomory.

horrific shit tons of cats and dogs pouring down on us, organization and leadership desperately lacking as the director and writer went with whims without sufficvient comunication downflow.

ankle deep orange poop mud for 15 hours. huge internal disent.

a mouse-sized black scorpion.

i wish i could remember what shots we got off, casue ti'm sure there's story there but i can't. and so to my current memory the day seems like a farse.

like we barely got any shots off,

oh i rememebr being on the side of a hill shooting a 'montage' peice of the cast pushing the jeep in the mud. having discarded the camera's raingear as practically disfunctional (the DPs call) and run-and-gunning so much that we4 only had time to set up an umbrella over the camera, the back end was exposed to direct rain for a few moments, and sure enough we finally got a truew humidity warning.

i rain down to base camp to get little silica packets that would fit inside the tape deck and rememebred reading that the camera spins the drums internally for 80 minutes, and won't shoot. so i told them we should switch cameras if they wanted to keep shooting and that's what we did.

leah freaking out at this point and even speaking her mind (loudly and angrily) to the director and dp when they said they didn't care if the gear got ruined--but her career/reputation was at stake. still, we continued to shoot in it.

the medics we hired had a huge medic tent, just like a triage unit form mash, and we had decided, as an attempt to create a reain plan, to set up our night campfire scenes inside the tent.

problem was ewveryone knew if we could shoot it inside a 'studio' we could shoot it inh LA so they wanted to keep pushing outside and we never used it.

enbded up ending the day a little early,

and the mutiny came to head and i was delegated to talk to the producers/higher ups to tell them we needed a production meeting.

i made3 sure all the heads knew this was not a vent session and they should be prepared to offer productive solutions.

cause during the day we had become accusstomed to pretty intense venting, in the open really.

ha- oh yeah, we gave up on the day a little early and they decided to give us our day off the next day, since morale was so low and i guess there was a SAG issue too.

so we finnaly packed up all the shit, it probably took 2 hours, for the first time the whole 'lazy' american crew stepping out of their departments to help other departments.

when we finally got it all packed and everyone in the bus we started to leave and watched nto make sure the truck could get out, it could,

but then coming out of the driveway onto the real road i have no clue what happened but it ended up in a ditch, the whole left side about 4 feet lower than the right, head and spare tire underneath nudged in mud.

all the men instinctively went out to look at it,

the lights had been off and everyone cozied up in the bus but i went out too,

always curious. the silhouette of the men from the truck lights in the rain was enticing.

it was fucking shit stuck.

i had moved on from tiredness to excitement emergency mode.

we may have a fucking all night adventure on our hands.

then the AD, trying to be contientious asked about sending the bus home and leaving a few people here to deal with it.

the local coordicnator immediately shot him down, he didn't speak english well enough but the director pretty much explained that that's not the latin way.

but a few moments later another of the local crew was herding us all back on the bus.

i was pretty annoyed to leave them too, especially cause i wanted to stay, but i more than likely wasn't going to be of help in the situation anyway.

the AD, in self- defense opted to stay, as did the key grip, but when the director and writer tried to, they told them there wouldn't be enough rtoom to drive them back. valid point. and the gaffer didn't even try to stay.

(good freind of mine but has pretty much checked out for weeks)

anyway we left them and i shared another ipod experience as we got lost in dark residential panama, seeing the mid night lifew fly by.

when we got back we decided not to have our meeting without everyone that stayed but while waititng to go to dinner it happened anyway.

we ended up speaking out mind, professionally, calmly, maturely and even positively to all the producer4s. lawsom breaking it down rather eloquently. we all want to make this movie, we are all here to see this happen but it could be happening so much more efficiently, we could be making our days without the rain stopping us since we have to p[lan on rain here, etc.

they were only slightly as defensive as we expectwed, sidetracking on kind of irrelevent arguments like the fact that then locals feel like we don't delegate enough. he got hung up on that for a while and we had to point out it really isn't the issue.

but generally i'd say it went very well.

although at the end i could tell tom (the direcotr) was still generally annoyed an frustrated at us for being "whiny"

i know most of the crewe are just being whiney. but i also bleive their arguments are valid. they are having union type complaints.

and so then it becomes a discussion of what, exactly, we signed on for.

should we accept and have expected choas and "low budget"ness?

we were trying to base whininess on failures of things they calimed in the deal memo.

anwyay- that's that.

we had our day off--and the next day woke up and cleaned mud off all our gear and then yesterday things went significantly smoother (they finally got us functionally walkies!!) and moral was a little better.

today is out last day in the jungle. tomorrow we shoot on an island and the enxt day we leave for peru.

more about the day off to follow.