Everything Everywhere All of the Time

I’m going to start going through my backlog of boring negatives tomorrow and scanning on Friday so (cross your fingers) I should have around 50 of these suckers done before I graduate.  (Right now I’m at about 20.)  Eventually quality control will enter the equation but it’s nice to just crank stuff out for a change. 

So it turns out that for the first time, today, I figured out I could see the general blog stats for this place, and it turns out that the number is higher than I thought.  It’s not high, and it’s probably mostly just my mom (hi, mom) and people finding it accidentally through Google, but it made me briefly consider whether I should watch what I say. (Nope.)

But this is related to my earlier rant about my thesis show.  The group of people on campus who were most enthusiastic about it turned out to be the security guards.   They kept bringing it up, they wanted to shake my hand, etc. etc.  This actually probably says a lot about who, ultimately, my work is going to appeal to, and it also meant a lot more than the standard “hey, nice job” from some random administrator (or fellow student) who probably can’t remember my name.

More mindlessly fun Los Angeles pictures:

Go here, right now:

http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/

So, this is a thesis blog, so: thesis ramifications.  Everyone said the show, which cost me a shitload of money, was “super,” and but yet people have started to act strangely toward me from when the show opened onward and even when you decoct my considerable paranoia from the events as they unfold, it’s clear that I pissed off somebody somewhere.  Or: I pissed off a whole bunch of people, people who were “concerned” about me because of rumors spread by other students but who now won’t return my calls, people who are concerned “about” me but couldn’t care less that I’m homeless and don’t have much money and went through the hoops of various trauma in the last two months that would leave most other people in a catatonic state, curled up and mumbling “no no no.”

(Deep breath.)

 What this comes down to is purse strings.  The goal behind what came out of my thesis show is to actually go to the REAL Afghanistan because I’m in the maybe unprecedented position of being able to do this in every way except financially. 

And the school, which established a fund for the basic purpose?  Won’t give me any money.  Because, tacitly, my project has to do with politics and because my “behavior” is supposedly a “problem,” by which I mean that I don’t pander to people unless I’m forced to.

What I should’ve done: spent two years here very low on the radar, learned to paint, and did my own work on the side.  That’s how I approach the writing program and that seems to have gone well; I was joking with someone a while ago that I don’t think they even remember I’m a student, but now that invisibility seems like a benefit, if anything.

What this has to do with the class-conciousness chip on my shoulder: if I were able to better perform a better (wealthier, better-looking, less opinionated) version of myself in this upper middle-class context, I probably would have been a lot more successful at getting any practical benefit out of my education whatsoever.  This isn’t to say I haven’t learned a lot or that it wasn’t worth it, but just to reiterate what the year-end show demonstrates: you leave any MFA with exactly the same amount of connections and privilege and possibility as you had before you enrolled.   What this means for me is that I can enjoy my future cleaning toilets third-shift at an airport.

What this means for the immediate future is: I have two big, expensive projects to do.  I have work to do.  And if going to CalArts and/or graduating is going to get in the way of that, my decisions are pretty obvious.

Now that I’m temporarily moving away from Los Angeles again, I feel compelled to make work about the city.  How do I feel about Los Angeles?  Very, very angry.  And burnt to a crisp.  (And, needless to say, this is more sharpie on negative stuff.)

Exciting!

Check out the increasingly lengthy list of links at the right, please.  All of these people are much more interesting and talented than I am.

Sharpie + blank negatives + negative scanner.  Ideally these prints would be really big.

So the Big Show came and went with a whsiper vs. a bang.  Everybody seemed very pleased with it except for me.  Maybe I’m cranky because I’ve got bronchitis.  Maybe it just was a terrible, muddled show.  Onward and upward, though.

Pictures from my second sojourn as an “embedded reporter.”  The picture directly below is of my “shadow,” a Lt. who was tasked to watch me closely; the other stuff is mostly random.  Rest assured that I did not even think about opening that meatloaf MRE, much less actually tasting it.