Black

Feb 19, 2014

I am drafting on a moving, human tablet. This tablet is not flesh, nor is it an actual body. It is digital, at times, but it is, of course, not always. It has, though, been shot in the face while playing Hide & Seek. He may or may not live. It was also stomped on the skull for, allegedly, Photo-Bombing. She died. Yes, I am bombarded. And yes, too, Facebook is my primary, almost sole news source. I am constantly broken by events, ever reminded of important desperations, the need to belong, but all I care about, I realize, or at least, care about the most, is art and life, and their layerings through race, sex, and representation. Form? I know, this is a death-blocky issue, but all I have time to do these days is to make film and to edit, go to meetings, do work stuff, sleep, do yoga, and stay fulfilled. I work hard and sleep hard. I play all the time. Even when I do teach. I am reminded of what's possible of my body. I am working with the idea that I am going to ignore those who feel the need to emote in the smoke, or to invite us into the field of the never ending list. Rank. Poetry? Content? I spend most of my time documenting. I have spent a lot of time thinking and reading about production and playing, learning about the need to layer the experience of art making and sharing, or art giving, and shaping, singing, sliding, between the forms within the forms—a slippery set of expectations reliant on clear analysis and intention—so the question is when and how to unfurl, and what parts to reveal, how much to give, what to show to maintain the energy of the line no matter what? But really, the question is, "no matter HOW?" So what’s form anyway? I think I've pondered this since I discovered mirrors. I am untrained. I am highly trained. How can I not be? My films are “Brown” and “Black.” I do know that I love myself, or at least what I can recognize of myself so all I can do is try, right? To speak in ways that are unfamiliar and not, found, and sharp, embedded, broken, and then there is the streaming, flowing, ever-present narrative that is fun to leap into, and outside. To be beside myself: all to see, all the possibilities in thinking, in making, all to hear, to feel, to record, and to make. And to sweat. I am rarely bored. In the last note, I wrote about how working in iMovie (editing lines of poetry, sound and scene, in between the various visual fields) is form, or is a way of pushing form away, back, back in, at least insofar as it changes poetic perception, method, mode and intention. Accident. Skillz. Form: Video. Yes, I am making Videos. Not Film, for now.