Women in Animation exploratory meeting

That was a great meeting. The community in Portland is pretty small, so most people were connected to each other one way or another, and the sheer talent at the table blew me away.

The outcome seems to be that everyone wants to do it- to form a local chapter and become more involved with each other, to build community and support, to share and mentor, and, for me of course, to host some kick-ass events.

For those who don't know, yes, of course men are allowed and invited to participate, but we also want to acknowledge that women have a lot to share with each other, and need different kinds of support and mentorship.

I'm really excited for this opportunity, but equally excited that I don't have to spear-head it and push it forward. :-)

Miscellany

The exploratory "who wants to do this" Women In Animation meeting is on the 29th. Kate's gotten a huge response- she's starting to worry if there's going to be enough room at the table for all of us. Wonderful!

I just got a notice from the library that Altered Carbon is due sooner than I thought it was, and I haven't made much progress on it due to being sidetracked by Don Quixote. I'm going to try to finish it this weekend- I don't have a lot on my plate, so I should be able to jam on it.

Interesting Portland is moving forward, and I'm bummed that I missed all the meetings- they've been in the morning, before/into my work hours, and I just can't hang with those times. However, the event itself should be pretty cool, and the tickets are already on sale at a steep discount for the adventurous who are willing to buy tickets before the agenda is announced. For more info, go here.

The final animation from Drinking and Drawing

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What I really like about this one is that people really maintained continuity- if you look at the one we made last year, it just morphs and morphs... this one has more of a sense of story.

Derrida- Rogues

At the moment of confiding it to you, I am myself torn or split in two.
On the one hand, this double question would require us to inflect otherwise the very word question. It would impose itself at the very beginning of the game, and that is why I spoke without delay of an injunction and of the greatest force, of a force that will have won out over everything, and first of all over me, in the figure of a violent question, the question in the sense of an inquisitional torture where one is not only put in question but put to the question.
On the other hand, this double question has returned to torment me. It has made a return, turning around me, turning and returning, turning around me and turning me upside down, upsetting me, as if I were locked up in a tower unable to get around, unable to perceive or conceive the workings or turnings of a circular machine that does not work or turn just right.

In the end, if we try to return to the origin, we do not yet know what democracy will have meant nor what democracy is. For democracy does not present itself; it has not yet presented itself, but that will come. In the meantime, let's not stop using a word whose heritage is undeniable even if its meaning is still obscured, obfuscated, reserved. Neither the word nor the thing 'democracy' is yet presentable. We do not yet know what we have inherited; we are the legatees of this Greek word and what it assigns to us, enjoins us, bequeaths or leaves us, indeed delegates or leaves over to us. We are undeniably the heirs or legatees, the delegates, of this word, and we are saying 'we' here as the very legatees or delegates of this word that has been sent to us, addressed to us for centuries, and that we are always sending or putting off until later. There are, to be sure, claims or allegations of democracy everywhere 'we' are; but we ourselves do not know the meaning of this legacy, the mission, emission, or commission of this word or the legitimacy of this claim or allegation.

In its constitutive autoimmunity, in its vocation for hospitality, democracy has always wanted by turns and at the same time two incompatible things: it has wanted, on the one hand, to welcome only men, and on the condition that they be citizens, brothers, and compeers, excluding all the others, in particular bad citizens, rogues, noncitizens, and all sorts of unlike and unrecognizable others, and, on the other hand, at the same time or by turns, it has wanted to open itself up, to offer hospitality, to all those excluded. ... Rogues or degenerates are sometimes brothers, citizens, compeers.

D. H. Lawrence- Snake

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
i o And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Drinking and Drawing

Turnout wasn't as high as I had hoped, but everyone had a really good time. It's funny, because the group of people who ended up doing the bulk of the drawing really took ownership of the final product. I hadn't seen that happen before, but I think it's because at prior events there were so many people drawing that they only got to go once or twice.
I had a really good time and saw a lot of people I wanted to see, and finally met some people I had only met on Twitter.

My use of Twitter on this event was really interesting to me. I created a Twitter account for DrinknDrawPDX, and specifically sought out people on Twitter that I thought would be interested. Over time, DrinknDraw developed a social network that only slightly overlaps my own, and introduced me to people I wouldn't have met otherwise. And I'm still not sure that all those people know that I'm DrinknDraw and DrinknDraw is me. Funny.
So DrinknDraw developed a small social network on Twitter, and I spammed the hell out of everyone from my own Twitter account, and Facebook, and the Oregon Media Network, each of which had a slightly different result from a different but overlapping group of people.
The DrinknDraw account ended up being followed by some local art and media outlets, and had people volunteer to post press releases, as well as volunteer for the event itself.
That was pretty cool, actually- normally the process of getting volunteers for chapter events involves sending an email to a massive distribution list and then having interested people contact a coordinator who tries to coordinate them- in this instance, I called for volunteers from both Twitter accounts and within minutes I had one confirmed volunteer for each account. I love the speed and ease of tweeting those kinds of requests, and how quickly the community passed on the info. It's really cool.

At the event, someone I had never met before showed up and took the lovely photos posted here. Her name is Heather Zinger, and I think there's a wonderful artistic sensibility in her photography. And lo, she's interested in animation, so will show up to our WIA meeting.

On a different note, I think I need to set aside Don Quixote for now- it's a huge time sink, and I have some library books I'm dying to get to. It's a strange book- I spent a long time expecting a Decameron/Canterbury Tales kind of thing, and then just when I had accepted that it was going to take on the novel form, it switched over and seems to have become that. Which makes it easier to set down, actually.

loss of momentum

So, somehow over the snow days and the holidays, a kind of inertia set in and I'm struggling to get out of it.

Correction, I'm not trying that hard to struggle out of it, because I am enjoying pulling inward a bit right now.

Rest assured, soon I'll arise and attack this animation festival and get my teeth into Bobbsey and forge ahead on Women in Animation and so on. Drinking and Drawing is next week and that will probably get me going.

So, because I'm not really acting on those things right now, and I'm deep in Don Quixote (which is really long and strange), I just don't have that much to blog about.

I'm still mentally wrestling a bit with issues of creativity and connection, but I don't feel like I have anything new to share. I'd still like to chat about it with anyone who wants to. :-)

T. S. Eliot

I know, I owe you an update- I got caught up in the snowpocalypse and the holidays and whatnot, and do have a few things to catch up on. However, I've been thinking about this poem a lot lately, so here it is. Real update to follow, but in the meantime read this amazing work.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse

A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.

Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo

Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,

Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair-- (They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!") My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin-- (They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!") Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all-- The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all-- Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

* * * *

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

* * * *

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet--and here�s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"-- If one, settling a pillow by her head,

Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;

That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the

floor-- And this, and so much more?-- It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say:

"That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all."

* * * *

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous-- Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.