Mr. Nobody

I don't know why this film wasn't on my radar for so long. It's such an interesting and beautiful film, and the lack of attention that it gets really surprised me. The movie is about choices. The whole idea of the film is that anything is possible if you don't choose. The film explores the different paths of all of Nemo Nobody's possible lives. While watching the film, it has a sort of Cloud Atlas aspect to it. Cloud Atlas came after this film, but it has the same sci-fi, disconnected storytelling that Mr. Nobody has, but Mr. Nobody is able to tie all of the beautiful paths with a plot that makes you think about the film as a whole, while Cloud Atlas feels separated in my memory.
The main reason I'm blogging about this film is because it feels very STAC. It's one of those films that nobody has heard of but is fantastic. You finish the film with the feeling of "what just happened" which is best feeling to have after experiencing art. What really upsets me is the reviews of this film. It's a general trend that I'm noticing about movie critics, they never analyze the film for what it actually is. Some of the critiques I've read have been nothing but a page of adjectives attached to the single grievance that it's confusing. Yes, it's confusing. It's supposed to be. I hate it when people dismiss a piece of art just because they don't understand it. Imagine if Waiting for Godot was a major motion picture before a play. Imagine how awful it would have been received by critics because "it's confusing". These experts are too focused in it trying to make sense than actually experiencing what is happening. That's how I differentiate the good confusing from the bad. If I'm standing in a museum in front of a piece of wood with nails in it, I try to experience what the piece is conveying, but after a couple of seconds I'm able to dismiss it as stupid and move on. If I stood in front of the piece and started to try and make sense of it, like so many people would, I'd come to the same conclusion, or worse, get caught up in the message of the piece and accept it as good. The ability to experience art is what is missing from the individual.
Take my mother, every so often I accompany her to a film. She get's the satisfaction of spending time with her son, and I get to go to any R-rated movie I want to for free. I try and take her to the best films that I can find or hear about, and sometimes I feel that it's wasted on her. After every film, on the drive home, I try and talk to her about the film, and I notice that most of the movies just fly over her head. I see that her mind focuses on the tiniest details of a film, and overlooks the film itself. For example, last week I went with her to see Lucy. I honestly didn't have high expectations for the film, but that day I was in the mood for some mind numbing sci-fi action so I decided that this film would do fine. I was surprised to actually find some substance in the film, and even though it has its faults in my mind, it still had aspects that could be thought about and discussed. Like first, Lucy as a character. She is the absence of character, which is extremely captivating because it allows the film to take on much more philosophy because there is little need to discuss Lucy's purpose or past, she acts as a vessel for the story to be told, rather than a story told about her. I wish that the filmmakers remembered this and didn't try and Hollywood it up with the French love interest, but the scenes of Lucy losing her humanity were captivating and satisfied more than the creation of a backstory that didn't need to exist. Also, [spoiler] the way Lucy is able to survive after her death in the end. She explains how time is what creates reality, and how without, one cannot exist. The final power Lucy acquires is the ability to control time, and so when Lucy dies in the end, the moment when the consciousness loses time and stops existing, she's able to survive as a sort of ghost, which could be seen when she send the text to the Police officer saying "I am everywhere". Anyway, after all of that, the first comment that I hear from my mother is that she thinks that the movie should have addressed other humans who were able to acquire these super powers, and she specified Jesus. I exploded on the inside when I heard that. First off, the comment makes me think that she wasn't paying attention, or actually, she was paying so much attention on the two minute scene with Morgan Freeman talking about super powered brains that she just decided to check out for the rest of the film. Secondly, the criticism is that an entirely new movie should have been made. That's like asking your friend if she thinks your soup needs salt, and she tells you that the duck would have been better. With a little salt, Lucy would have been amazing. There are honest criticism to be made on the film, like how the car chase scenes and the final break in scene are ridiculous, but people like my mother and movie critics so often ignore what they are looking at to focus on unimportant details.

I Went to Canada and I'm Starting Art Classes

I am currently sitting in a Dunkin Donuts by The Art League of Long Island, waiting for my class to start. For the rest of the class I'm going to be carpooling with Vika, but today, Vika is away and I had to get a ride with my mom. Because of this, I had to arrive two hours before my class started, and now I have two hours to kill. There are better things I could be doing in those two hours, but I thought that I write about my trip to Canada last week.

Canada is an interesting country. It's interesting in that everything is a little different in the english part of Canada, and significantly more different in the French part. Toronto isn't a pretty city in my mind. On monday morning, my mother and I flew into Toronto and we proceeded to visit the first university I had on my list. Glendon College at York University is this tiny little campus in the suburbs of Toronto. The whole idea of the university is that it has a bilingual education. It's one of the only schools I had found anywhere that has a program like this. My main reason for wanting to study in Canada is so that I can really learn French in a French environment. Spanish is easy to learn and practice because I live so close to other spanish-speakers, even now in the coffee shop the ladies are speaking in Spanish. I don't want to study language, I just want to speak them. I don't care much about getting ultra technical with spanish or french. I want to know enough to get by in conversation and be fluent in the same way that one becomes fluent in their native language. Glendon offered me that opportunity, but nothing else. I don't like the school. It's boring and tiny. I don't want to go to a school of 2,700 students and have a tiny list of things I can study. I don't see myself studying political science or anything like that.

After that day, my mother and I drove to Montreal in a rented car with a Massachusetts license plate which really killed the whole "don't treat me like a tourist" vibe I was trying to achieve. Montreal is a wonderful city. It's beautiful and there is still so much left for me to explore there. We arrived in Montreal on Tuesday, July 1st, which for all the culturally inept is Canada Day, which is independence day but Canadian. 

***Side-note*** It is hilarious how white girls order their coffee.

Also, that same night was part of the famous Jazz Festival that Montreal hosts each year. We went to the festival, saw some guy whose name I forgot, and ate cheese for dinner. Our hotel was located right by where the universities were. McGill University and Concordia University are the two huge english schools in Montreal. Along with those, UQAM and Université de Montréal are the french schools. Together, all the universities in Montreal make the largest student per capita population in all of North America, according to the pamphlets. I could see that. College kids where everywhere, the amount of young people was both intimidating and fantastic. 

The following day, we went to see Concordia University, which was the only school that had any sort of fine arts department. I feel in love with the school over the internet. It was perfect to me because it has everything that I want. It's in the middle of a mainly French environment. It has a design program. It's big. It's different. We arrived at the tour and I feel in love with the school even more. It's facilities were beautiful, and mainly new, except for the dorms. The whole school felt like a campus, but also didn't because your in a city. All the buildings are connected by underground tunnels, so that in the winter you don't have to freeze walking between classes, but it also created this sense of campus. As long as I didn't walk out the doors, I didn't need to know French, but at the same time, if I wanted to practice my French, all I'd have to do is buy a coffee outside. 

McGill was different from Concordia in the regard. I love McGill. It's a beautiful school, but it's enclosed. McGill has a proper campus. There's a field surrounded by these beautiful old buildings, and the campus stretches out all over the upper part of Montreal. I wouldn't need to know French to go there. I could manage with only english for the entire four years. I don't want to be pushed into speaking French, but McGill feels like is pushing you against it. Besides that, I loved the school. I took the tour and it was fantastic. The biggest problem again was that there wasn't any program there that I'd want to study. I wouldn't know which school I'd want to apply to. If I can't study the program that I want to, like Design or New Media, than I'd want to study Urban Planning. McGill has that program, but it's in its engineering school. I cannot get into that school. My grades in math and science aren't awful, but there not engineering school quality. And then if I realized in my first year that I actually hate Urban Planning, I'd be stuck and could only choose science and math based majors in the Engineering School. If not that, then I could apply to the Arts Faculty, but then I'd be in the same position as I was at Glendon. I don't want to study political science or language, and the other degrees there don't interest me at all. I could go undecided into the Faculty, but it wouldn't be what I want because each Faculty has less options to choose from. 

In the end I have added McGill and Concordia to the list of school I will apply to. I've taken out Glendon completely, and it was good that I visited. If I hadn't, I might have not ever seriously considered McGill, and I probably wouldn't have dismissed Glendon. 

Summer Plan

Since the summer is here and school is over, I probably won't be blogging as frequently, but I thought that I'd write this post to try and sum up everything I'll be doing this summer, artistic and not, so that if I do write another post about one or more of these things you all can have some context.
1. Ganes' Art Class
This is probably the most exciting thing I have planned for this summer. Right now I'm in this purgatory of sorts, waiting for the class, and consequently my summer, to start. I'm taking the class with Vika which is good because it means that she can give me a ride in the mornings so I don't have to take a bus, and because Vika is super cool and it's awesome to have someone you know when you go into a program like this. It's five hours a day of art. That's a comfortable amount of time. What I'm really excited for is some more hands on instruction, and getting portfolio pieces ready, even though I'm not 100% sure if I'm am going to apply to school that need portfolios.
2. French Classes
Again this summer, I am taking French classes at FI:AF in Manhattan. Next year I am taking French 4, which means that I'm jumping French 3. I am confident that I'd do fine in the class next september without the summer classes, but my goal with French isn't to just get by, I plan to have some level of verbal fluency by the end of my senior year. Being trilingual has always been a dream of mine. Learning language exposes you to an entire new collection of ideas and experiences. Especially when you are in the art world, having a knowledge of any other language let's you experience so many other culture's writing, actors, films, in a way that you can't experience with just knowing one language. The summer French class is also in preparation for the next activity on my list.
3. Canadian Universities
In my searches for what schools I'll be applying to this fall, I discovered the gem of education that is Canada. Schools are cheaper, the drinking age is lower, and French. I have no illusions that I'd be ready to go to an all French University in Quebec, but there are a number of English Universities and bilingual ones in Quebec and the rest of Canada. I have two schools that I have fallen in love with, one more than another, but both are incredible. My second favorite is York University and I'd study at the Glendon College campus. York is in Toronto, which isn't my preferred area of Canada, but Glendon is a really awesome school. They whole school is bilingual, and very internationally diverse. I don't want to study language as a major, but I want to be fluent and continue it, which is what Glendon gives. They don't have any major that I'm crazy about, but I could focus a lot on my French and Spanish there, and get the trilingual degree that they offer in an area that I have some interest in, like international studies. My current favorite school is an English school in Montreal called Concordia University. It's an english school first of all, so I could comfortably understand all of my classes, and it's in a French city, so I could get the experience of having to order coffee and ask for directions in French. Concordia has all the programs that I could want to take, because right now I'm not sure what I'd want to do, but the school is large and has all the options I could want. I have tours scheduled to see these school this summer, and I'm super excited. They are going to take up a lot of time for me this summer because of the whole international aspect. There is no CommonApp option for these schools and the application process for international students is always harder.  In addition to visiting the schools, I also have to prepare the requirements for the schools' applications and start to look into student visas for Canada.
4. Gym
I'm going a gym. Even though exercise doesn't seem like an inherently artistic thing, I actually do view it as an artistic venture. It's a matter of will, like my 365. I can run on my treadmill everyday for half an hour, but after a week I give up. That's what's happened to most of the people who've tried a 365. It's a couple hours a week of my life so that I can live longer and look better. And it can teach me how to bear through something uncomfortable so that I can be happier overall.
5. Guitar
I've gotten pretty good at playing the chords along to the songs that I like. I put this towards the end because it's generally a minor thing for me this summer. I'm going to take a class a week, but it's definitely just something for myself because it makes me feel good.

Update

 

Sociability

I thought that I'd write a blog post since I had some free time. I already wrote a post about my latest art project, so, I thought that rather than writing about process, I'd write about my life like I used to do.

I sometimes forget to reflect on my life. Personal reflection is one of the most important things to do. Most people don't really know who they are. They live life getting to know others, loving other people, but our selves sometimes get lost. Even looking in the mirror, sometimes you forget what you look like, and you know the person that exists in your mind. As an example, in my mind, I'm loud, but when I look at how I act, I'm exactly the opposite. When people catch me off guard and talk to me, I respond so softly that even I can't hear myself. It's this unconscious response, and it's one of those things that takes more than trying to consciously change it, it'll require a total change of personality on the subconsciously level. I recently watched a TED Talk on body language, and how it can change who you are. With all the acting lessons I've received in STAC, I was well aware of how it can change the way that people view you, and ever since I've been way more aware of how I move, but this TED Talk was something even more insightful. The main idea was "Fake it until you become it". If you're a more shy person, like myself, you can fake not being that person until eventually, the fake you becomes the real you. The speaker explained this through body language, and how changing your body language over time can change the way you interact with people. I really like this idea. I feel like I sometimes get so caught up with the fear of interaction that there is no hope for me to be more social. I take actions to try and change that, but sometimes I worry that it isn't doing anything to me, which is the major reason why I do things. The more I think about it, I have become much more social in the past few years because of this, but I'm still not where I'd like to be. I purposely do things that I wouldn't normally want to, I go places that are out of my way just to try and be more social, I talk to people that I normally wouldn't, just so that I can learn how to interact better. It's helped, but I been able to realize a big problem that I have when it comes to being more sociable. I fear guys. I don't what it is, but I can't talk to stranger guy without becoming the person that I don't like being. I've been able to make friends randomly out of girls, literally just be being more sociable and talking to them, but I have a weird trust issue with guys. I worry that they wont accept me, and even when they do, I still feel awkward and shy, so no real reason. I don't have crushes on these guys, but I can't seem to act normally around them. My new goal for now is create more guy friends, particularly straight guy friends, just to rule out any romantic affection. I miss having guy friends, I miss being able to talk about video games, and I hate all the drama that girls have. Guys do it too, but literally everyday I hear that someone hates another person, and I hear all this shit about backstabbing and it's just so stupid. I don't want to believe that this is the price for having friends of substance, but I hope to find some friends that aren't like that in the form of males. The period is going to end soon, so I'll end this blog post now.

New Piece

Recently I've been working on this extremely large painting. One of the things I've been looking forward to is working on a larger scale I don't have the opportunity to paint on such a large canvas, and even if I did buy one for myself at home, they're wouldn't even be space for it in my room. I've been tackling a lot of the problems that I've been neglecting for a a while because of this new project. With my 365, I find that I rarely ever think out the pieces I'm making. The composition of the pieces is more me putting the image on the left rather than right in the middle. Most of what I make isn't made with the idea that other people would see it as a finished piece. This piece that I'm working on now is very different.

Taping out where I wanted the stairs and door was very useful.
This was the product after the first day. The great thing about the tape is that you can move it. It it's an inch too far left, I can just pick it up and move it, while if I started with charcoal, it'd have to worry about erasing the line that i had, make a new one, and then keep doing that until I got a composition I enjoyed.

After the second day of working I started to add detail with the charcoal. One of the biggest problems that I was facing was the amount of empty space. The wall and ceiling were completely empty, I put a light on the ceiling so that there could be less empty space. 

The next day, I added even more detail, and then sprayed it, and started painting.

The next day, I started painting the face. I really don't like monster right now. The colors of the clothes confused me a lot, so I just put random colors for them but I'm going to go back and rethink that aspect, and I want her face to be brighter. 

I worked on the face more today. I wanted it to be more vibrant. I also got the stairs to look more like wood. That took a while, but what I ended up doing was smudging it with a paper towel

The big thing today was making the wall interesting

Didn't have much time today, but I worked on the feet.

The Evolution of This Thing

I've been slowly working on my STAC art project for about a week now. It's been an interesting process, and it's the first project I've even done where I completely changed everything.

The first day I got home with the canvas board I painted this in acrylic paint

I liked it at first. The idea of me as a slug creature really interested me, and I realized that one of my artistic issues is brains, because in the last STAC art piece i made I also focused on brains. What I liked about this piece was the face. It wasn't too detailed, but I liked the expression that I first got. I very much disliked the tail of the slug. I had it facing the wrong direction and it just looked weird. I knew I'd have to eventually do it over.

The next couple days I started to work on it more. 

Even though I did like the head and face, I didn't like the direction that it was facing, and once I started to look at it a lot, I thought it'd be better if the face were bigger. So, again with acrylic paint I tried to fix the face. I also worked on the tail a bit, trying to put it in a better place, but that was still not a success. I changed the color of the brain, but hated that. I stopped working on this because I got a bit frustrated, especially because the acrylic paint kept drying and wouldn't let me paint over the face the way i wanted to.

The next day I came back to the piece made big changes.

I painted the entire head and tail white. I painted the white in acrylic, and then waited for it to dry, and painted over the head and tail in oil paint. I made the head bigger and the tail look like a tail. I was satisfied with the face and the slug body so I stopped working for that day.

I didn't touch the piece for about four days, and came back to it today in STAC art.

I put in the grass and started to put some detail to the pond that I am running away from. I still need to paint the other slugs running away, and the creature that is eating us in the pond, but it looks a lot more finished. I also worked on the slug body a bit more, adding little slug arms and making parts of the body lighter.

Not a single thing from the original painting exists in this painting. I'm happy about that, I realize that working through fear is something that I'm pretty good at, not to say that I don't feel it, but I know how to just keep going. I know that I probably have avoided putting detail to the brain because of fear, but if I've gotten this far, making a brain shouldn't be so scary.  

UPDATE 5/27

I finished it!! I don't really love it, but I don't hate it either. I fell that if i had planned it better from the start it could have come out better, but I like it enough to be done and move on.