Miami

As you guys probably know, I am currently in Florida attending a wedding. Not only am I wearing shorts, but I happened to learn about the Miami art scene during my stay.

Over here, my mom has a friend by the name of Jude Papaloko. He's a painter/visual artist/musician from Haiti, and a lot of his work is based of Haition mythology and Vodu. This morning, he gave me and my mom a tour of his gallery, which was in a newer location than the last time I visited.

Inside the gallery were various African looking sculptures, women growing branches, and plenty of images of Toussant, among other things. Jude set out some burning incense and returned to his studio while my mom and I roamed though.

The original painting of this is owned by John Legend.

I also got to take a look at his studio. The space was small, but it still seemed large enough for the wooden art pieces he's creating. Right now it seems he's in the process of making large lips which are to be painted over in resin (?) if that's the right term.

The places in which artists live and work are so interesting (by this I'm implying all artist, not just visual artists). A creative person always seems to add personality to their environment. In addition to works in progress, Jude also had plenty of Haitian instruments and strange sculptures.

To me, it seems like an artist's studio is their home base. They work in a comfortable environment, and then they go out into the world for when they have meetings and things. It's a whole cycle of eat, work, meet with business, work, sleep, wakeup, repeat. You're gliding through life instead of working on a strict schedule. Reality is very intense.

Probably one of the coolest things we did during the visit though was just walking around the area. Jude's studio is located in one of the most amazing art centers I have ever seen. Literally every building has a large unique mural, created by each artist who owns a studio there.

There's really a sense of artistic community. While looking at one of the murals, we ran into some artists that were Jude's friends. Right away, they brought me and my mom into their studio and started talking about their exhibitions. I never imagined a place where artists live an thrive in this way could actually exist. In New York, we don't have this kind of thing where easily rent out well spaced studios and make large murals. Most art is condensed into general galleries or museums (at least that's what I've seen, but I could be wrong).

I know they say that New York is the art center of the world, but damn is Miami a great place to be an artist (and a tourist). 

Deadlines

It's funny how all of us in the songwriting workshop were able to crack out songs in 2 periods on the fly, but with a project that's due on Sunday, we're all mysteriously stuck. Why?

Deadlines.

Humans as a species have trouble moving forward. This is why I believe that being an artist is one of the most difficult occupations in existence. In most general office jobs, a boss gives you a project and a dead line to get it done by. If you do not not complete this project, you fail, and you lose your job. Not only are you given a timed task, you're also given an incentive.

Artists have to do that work completely on our own. This takes a very high level of discipline.

Sure, right now we have Luke to breathe down our backs and kick our butts when we feel discouraged and uninspired, but when we finally grow out of high school age and have to work on our own, we have to be our own butt kicker. We have to figure out a way to follow our deadlines.

I think the reason it is so difficult for us to give ourselves deadlines is because it's so easy to negotiate with ourselves. You think, "I have a lot of work to do today, can I complete this tomorrow?" and in response, your brain tells you, "Sure, I understand, it's no problem." This is BAD. On the other hand though, would you rather have your brain telling you, "No, if you don't get this done I'm going to punish you." Would you punish yourself? Most likely you wouldn't want to.

Self-discipline; such a vital skill, but so challenging to achieve.

Recently, to teach myself discipline, I've began developing new system for myself. I'm giving myself tasks and telling myself I need to complete them by a certain day or time, even if I do not want to/have to. Perhaps one day I will be able to work completely this way. First though, I must practice and start with the basics.

Songwriting Day 1: Day Dreaming

Since I've started practicing songwriting regularly I've noticed something interesting. Sometimes, when I'm bored sitting in class, or I'm walking down the street, I hear songs playing in my head. Not songs I've heard before. My mind literally starts to make up songs for the purpose of entertaining me. If only I was able to write them down.

One thing I've found about these songs I hear in my head is that I can't write them down for one reason: technical ability. I go to play the chords on my guitar or piano, but then I get caught in an endless loop of simplistic chords and the freedom that I had in my head is lost and forgotten.

When I sat down to write a song today, I got it done, sure I did. In my opinion though, it was mediocre. And I'm fine with saying this because it was a task and I was getting it done. But you know what I did in response? As soon as I got home I started writing ANOTHER blues song because I thought the one I made wasn't good enough (also I heard one in my head on the way home, probably had the chords on the brain).

In this second song I made, I ended up getting stuck after the first verse. But the first verse I wrote wasn't bad. I think I'm getting better at this.

I'm the kind of person that craves difficult work. The more projects I have, the happier I am because I love the feeling of getting stuff done. Unless I suck at everything I'm doing. Cause that just sucks.

At any rate, I think I'm getting closer to that little thing artists call "passion". Frankly, music has become an obsession. I just have to keep doing and doing it until I get it right, which I know one day I will. Until then, I'll just have to wait. Thankfully though with my brain on survival mode making a song a day, I'm not bored. I'm excited.

Expressionism

Based on what I've observed, it seems that Expressionism is the display of human emotions so heavy and raw, it becomes surreal. Somehow, expressionism has a way of physically forcing emotions out of you, unlike most forms of art which only entertain and make you reflect.

One thing I noticed is that a lot of the imagery in the videos we saw contained characters with deformed bodies. It was common for people to have white painted faces and dark black eyes. In particular, one of the versions of Wozzeck had people with hunched over bodies.

These characteristics are intense enough to seem out of place, but still subtle enough to seem almost human. I believe that's what induces the most fear into people: distorted reality.

A lot of the expressionist work deals with distorted, grotesque reality. Mary Wigman's dances played around with this concept. All through the Witch dance, she was twisting her body in all sorts of awkward positions.

The Witch Dance (this is not Mary Wigman)

The way that this person's arms are twisted back and their fingers are fully extended, they seem like another creature. Just looking at them makes you feel unsettled.

It was interesting to see how expressionism was used in music and writing, where you don't create a physical image. 

Listening to the atonality of Wozzeck instantly made me think of Sweeney Todd (which I'm guessing is definitely expressionistic). The music in Sweeney Todd has a tendency to change keys randomly, and change time signature randomly. Stephen Sondheim definitely knew his stuff when he was composing. Even though there's no clear melodic path, the songs in Sweeney Todd are still quite memorable. And scary.

One thing I find interesting about modern art/movements: It's funny how after hundreds of years of cultural evolution, we've decided to throw out all of the rules and standards that have been created for art in favor of our own set of rules. It's like we've all started from scratch once again, from the beginning, when art was first developed by the human race. Perhaps this is a common cycle that is necessary for new things to be created. I just find it intriguing.

Ethics

Talking about ethics is difficult. Although everyone treats it like black and white, there's shades of gray, and it's always hard to know what's right or what's wrong. It's one of those things that isn't clear cut, so it's hard to describe, hard to judge, and sometimes even hard to punish, or to feel guilty about.

This has recently come to my mind after having my dad yell at me for "unfairly downloading music". 

It used to be clearer back in the day who owned what. When a person owned a CD or a record, they owned it, and no one else. Nowadays, it's so much more complicated.

Of course, one option that people have is illegally downloading music through websites which is definitely not the right thing to do. Perhaps people can give reasons like

• No one will notice
• The musicians have enough money anyway
• The recording industry is very corrupt anyway
• Music is not worth a price, especially when I can listen to it free on youtube

In the end though, it is illegal activity, and someone ought to get in trouble for it, or at least feel very guilty. That's clear. But it gets more complicated than that. 

Let's say that you're in a musical, and the teacher is giving out music from the soundtrack of the musical for anyone to download. Is it unfair to copy the music, even though you're using for educational purpose? Even if you have no other choice BUT to download the music?

Perhaps yes. You did not pay for it, so it is not really yours. But you still OWN it, it's a file on your computer. It exists, and it doesn't un-exist unless you delete it.

At that point, are you supposed to pay for the music itself, even if you already have it? According to my dad, yes.

If your friend has a CD and you copy the files from the CD onto your computer, is that stealing?

Probably yes, but it doesn't feel like it. Does it make you a bad person if you do so?

If you listen to music on a free service like Spotify, should you buy some of the music you listen to anyway? Sure, the record companies are paid to a certain extent, but if you're listening to the same album over and over, should you buy it, for the sake of giving to the musician and simple morality?

Stopping yourself from unethical downloads is like staying abstinent. People think you're weird and won't want to put up with it, and you get rushed into a bad decision because you really want to get something however you can.

Along this line of thinking, I also think about some of the Anti-Bullying laws I've heard about. I understand that bullying is a bad thing, but I think that a lot of these laws are impractical and almost impossible to use.

There isn't a fine line between teasing and bullying, and there are many reasons for this. Kid A could be joking around with Kid B, but Kid B takes offense to it. Kid A could be teasing Kid B and Kid A just has no clue he's hurting Kid B's feelings.  In addition, many people can argue that bullying builds character, and trying to prevent bullying is just sheltering kids off from the real world.

Now, what I'm talking about is bullying, which is teasing that can hurt another's feelings. There's a different between bullying and harassment, in which a person basically takes another person's life and makes it a living hell. Examples: A woman poses as a fake boy on facebook and pretends to like a teenage girl and get her to admit all of her secrets; a person mocks someone and gets so many people to join in, the kid can no longer defend himself.

But even though these two things are different, they tend to blend into each other at a certain point. And when that happens, what do you do? It's not black and white.

Hopefully we all have a percentage of good inside ourselves that outweighs the bad, but there will always be bad.

The Sky

 I know my posts are usually about me talking about complex concepts. But not today. I just want to talk about the sky.

After being stuck in the car for 5 hours driving home from Utica, I started to take notice in it. The sky is such an incredible thing. It's so vast, so complex, so beautiful.

The thing I love most about the sky is wherever you go, it's always there, showing its magnificence. Even when it's just a regular day, you look up and the clouds are so majestic, forming themselves into different shapes, changing colors as the day goes on into night, where the gleaming moon greets itself warmly.

Being the dork that I am, I've started taking many pictures of the sky, on different days, in different places. I know it's probably nothing special, and I took them all on my iphone, but here's a few.

Somewhere around Albany

(this one's my favorite)

On a regular Saturday drive

I've always thought that photography was the coolest thing, but I never wanted to be one of those dumb girls who's like "I have an $800 camera am I a photographer now?" But hey, if I want to do it, it doesn't matter. Possible new hobby?

Arrogant Teens

Yesterday, my new English teacher finally came into school after being taught by a substitute English teacher for the past 3 months. Everyone's been really excited for it because they didn't particularly like the teacher we had before. He seemed nice, but he was kind of a strange guy, and he didn't really know what he was doing. When the teacher came and gave the first class, everyone was excited for a new face, and I was personally excited to finally have a teacher who could teach English well (hopefully).

Of course after the class, everyone gathered and spoke their words on the new teacher. I really liked her, and I was hopeful for the class. For some reason though, the rest of the class had a different opinion. They all said the same thing.

"Oh god, we're actually going to have to work."

Perhaps I'm overreacting, but when I hear comments like that, it upsets me. I can't stand the attitude that teenagers have towards teachers and education sometimes. Sure, I understand that homework is not always the most pleasant, but without it we would all just be illiterate fools.

In Herricks, we have such a rare opportunity. We have a school with generally good quality teachers, we live in an environment that generally encourages learning, and we don't have to pay extra because it's a public school. So many people do not have the advantage that we have. People in Africa or in 3rd world countries don't have the chance for good education, but not even that. A lot of people in the US lack good education, especially in the public school sector.

I understand, when you're young, it's generally hard to appreciate the gifts that have been given to you because you don't have a full scope on the world yet. Even I fall into the trap of seeing things narrowly, judging, and acting like I'm superior. Everyone does.

However, if you're expecting to get into Harvard or another high level school and you say that you don't like your English class because you "actually have to work"? School isn't just about numbers and grades. We're learning such incredible things, and everyone takes it for granted. If you're going to be lazy in High School, you'll probably be just as lazy in a high level college. After college passes you by, you'll have a degree but nothing to back it up. Perhaps you will later regret the amazing opportunity you had to talk to world class professors who are experts in their field and ask intelligent questions. More likely, you wouldn't even know what you were missing.