Inspired Involvement

As you can tell, I'm struggling a bit with maintaining this blog lately. It was begun in a burst of enthusiasm for social networking and Portland's open source community, and a deep desire in my heart to bridge disparate elements. I mean, that's the whole reason that I love animation- it's an amazing balancing act between creativity and technology, between inspiration and repetition. It's a place where I can satisfy both my desire to create original work, and then endlessly perfect it.

And yet, despite my excitement about the events that Asifa is putting together (Drinking and Drawing next week!) and my incipient freelance event*, I've also been going through a very introspective period lately. So instead of blogging about events and happenings in the community, I've been blogging about what I'm thinking and reading, or blogging not at all.

I'm fortunate that this blog has so few followers, and all of them know me, so it's not like I have to live up to any particular expectations, and yet I did have some expectations of myself when I began this, when I chose this title.

And I have gone on a slight derail the past couple of months, when I decided I was going to move and that anticipation put a number of things on hold for me (since I'm also not updating the sister blog to this one). And those steps I was taking for personal growth were very meaningful for me- I hope to resume them as soon as possible.

However, I very much don't want this blog to devolve into a journal. I do sincerely hope that the act of reading it is of some benefit to someone, and not just that the act of writing it benefits me.

And on that note:

* I want to put together an event, perhaps an unconference, that focuses on the realities and opportunities for freelance animators (and other creative people) in portland. I think that the film and video community have a lot of resources that animators don't necessarily know about, but that there are also challenges unique to the animation community. If anyone is interested in helping organize such an event, or has thoughts or suggestions to share, they would be welcome.

Thanks as always for your patience with me. :-)

poem

I've been thinking of this one lately, but can't seem to find the text of it online. So here's an excerpt from memory, which I'll correct someday.

James Riedel- Pill Bugs

In the leaves that border the cinderblocks of the house
My son counts pillbugs in his palm.
Beads the color of lead.
One by one they open and crawl
Until a touch returns them to playing dead.

My son's hand is quiet
As the museum of a spider's corner.
That room full of people I will get
If I keep my house.
If my stone-carved year falls from it's orbit
Before my son's.

They will wait for him to close his father's eyes.
To close them more than once, for the grey yolks of the irises refuse to dry.
From years of watching, long into the night
The lean, striped shadow waiting by the stairwell.

When it starts to climb for a child,
I speak to make it look at me.
To show it that I fall quicker to its paw.
And feed its family more.

edit: remembered the missing bit!

Upcoming and outgoing

Women in Animation had their first public meeting last week. I think it went really well- good attendance and great people. They sought input on what people want from the chapter, which was welcome- it's good to be able to give input. I expect great things from them, and am so happy I played my small role in getting it going.

ASIFA meeting last night discussed upcoming events: Animation Show of Shows on Saturday, a drawing trip on November, a Show and Tell in December, Drinking and Drawing in January, and we're thinking about putting on a freelancer resource fair/panel discussion/something in February. Let me know if you have any insights on content for the freelancer event- I'm sort of spearheading that one, so I'm looking for input and suggestions as I try to see who would be interested in participating.

Work is busy and just doesn't seem to slow down. Which is good, I know- good for the company, good for the economy, good all around, but personally, selfishly, I wish I had a little more down time in a given day. I'm out of touch with all the blogs I used to read at work. We've had a really great group of clients lately, though, which helps immensely.

Last week (was it only last week? It seems forever ago), my mom and I took a trip down the coast to visit the aquarium and see Newport. I don't think I had ever been to Newport, and it's silly to miss things that are so close. I need to get to Crater Lake someday. I took a couple pictures that I'll put on Facebook eventually.

I've been reading a bit, but mostly fiction, re-read Neuromancer and some Gaiman. Here are some gems from Dune:

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of mankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him.

I am like a person whose hands were kept numb, without sensation from the first moment of awareness--until one day the ability to feel is forced into them. And I say "Look! I have no hands!" But the people all around me say, "What are hands?"

Finally, it looks like I've been keeping this blog (more or less) for a year now. It went so fast.

Finding a creative job in Portland

I end up being asked for my insights from time to time, so here they are, in my official jobhunting in PDX post. I'll edit this post periodically as I think of new things.

Firstly, tweet tweet tweet. Portland is one of the epicenters of Twitter use, and every interactive agency, ad agency, creative company in town is on Twitter. So get yourself a twitter account and follow anyone at any company that looks remotely connected to what you want to be doing. Participate in the community: ask questions, share insights and information, and help people out. There are a bunch of good blog posts on Twitter use and etiquette, I'll edit them in here as I find them. Short answer: Get on Twitter. Lazy answer: search twitter for "jobs Portland" Better answer: Get on Twitter and participate.

Which leads me to: blog. Twitter is a great place to share your blog, so you can keep a blog about your personal and professional work/insights/challenges, and then tweet your posts. Keeping a blog creates a larger context around your resume (which you will also have on your blog) and your reel (which you will also have on your blog), and gives people some sense of you as a person. Portland is a small town, so personality matters (see participate in the community above).

I guess before you do any of these things, get interested in the kind of work that's being done here. There are a ton of interactive and advertising agencies in town, so get familiar with who's here and what they do, which means doing some research. Also, because it's a small town, sending out your reel and waiting is a poor strategy. Be proactive, be visible, be accessible.

Also: PDX mindshare is a great job posting and networking resource. LinkedIn is a great place to form and maintain professional connections.

That's all I have for now. :-)

ASIFA whatnot

So, as I think I mentioned, we're working on the Mary and Max event on the 3rd. It's very cool, because we have a Q&A with the director afterward.
We're also taking first steps toward hosting a Drinking and Drawing in January, and you know that's my baby.
I'm also thinking of my Laikans, and talking with the chapter about maybe having an event focused on freelance animators in Portland. What's the climate like, how does it work for people who are doing it, what are the resources, etc. Maybe a panel discussion and a resource fair? There are a bunch of resources out there, but I'm not sure how well known they are. I'd be willing to help pull something together if people were interested and wanted to connect in that way. So I guess what I'm saying is that, if you're interested, let me know and I'll see how the chapter feels about it.
I have to say, I love how informal the ASIFA people are compared with the SIGGRAPH board. The SIGGRAPH board had a lot of formal behaviors, like making motions and seconding them, and formalizing meeting minutes... it's nice to be able to kind of skip all that and just talk things through together.

And, as I said just nine months ago, I am so sorry for the loss of the wonderful, talented, good-hearted peeps at Laika. When they move on, the Portland animation community will have suffered a tremendous loss.

Jack Kerouac

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

The Way We Live

by Kathleen Jamie

Pass the tambourine, let me bash out praises
to the Lord God of movement, to Absolute
non-friction, flight, and the scary side:
death by avalanche, birth by failed contraception.
Of chicken tandoori and reggae, loud, from tenements,
comittment, driving fast and unswerving
friendship. Of tee-shirts on pulleys, giros and Bombay,
barmen, dreaming waitresses with many fake-gold
bangles. Of airports, impulse, and waking to uncertainty,
of strip-lights, motorways, or that pantheon -
the mountains. To overdrafts and grafting

and the fit slow pulse of wipers as you're
creeping over Rannoch, while the God of moorland
walks abroad with his entourage of freezing fog,
his bodyguard of snow.

Of endless gloaming in the North, of Asiatic swelter,
to launderettes, anecdotes, passions and exhaustion,
Final Demands and dead men, the skeletal grip
of government. To misery and elation; mixed,
the sod and caprice of landlords.
To the way it fits, the way it is, the way it seems
to be: let me bash out praises - pass the tambourine.

Bric a brac

Well, it looks like I'm a board member of ASIFA Portland. I have to admit, it seems like it will be fun- I don't have, you know, a Real Job like an elected member, and they are a pretty laid-back bunch. So we'll definitely be putting together another Drinking and Drawing- I may not be hosting this one, but I'll show 'em how it's done. :-)

Personally, I'm going through a few transitions- I can't tell if this is baby steps toward major progress, or just sidesteps as I work out a few things. One thing I've been really focusing on (and it was going well until tonight) is delineating my time- I need my work day to end, period, at some specific time, and the rest of my life to commence. I tend to drag work stuff around with me all the time, and it's poor stress management and doesn't let me focus on other areas of my life that need attention. So even if it's just for an hour or two at night, I need it to officially stop. I've been hitting a gong in my apartment, and it's funny but it helps.

I'm reading Locke's Essay on Understanding. Delightful writing style- he starts out so self-deprecating, with just a few of his humble observations, and then commences to thoroughly, systematically, demolish any competing opinions. Funny how we take the whole tabula rasa argument for granted now, and wrap it into nature vs nurture- when he wrote this stuff, it was really groundbreaking.

What's coming up? Cre8Con, for one. I'm not sure I can afford to go- it's so much more expensive than it was last year, and my job just spent a fortune to send me to Siggraph. Too bad, too- I got a lot out of it last year. Also Art Spark, BackFence PDX, OMPA Industry Night, and Dr. Sketchy. So if you're a creative type, September has a lot to offer.

Madmen

by Billy Collins

They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
and this time they are absolutely right.

Take the night I mentioned to you
I wanted to write about the madmen,
as the newspapers so blithely call them,
who attack art, not in reviews,
but with breadknives and hammers
in the quiet museums of Prague and Amsterdam.

Actually, they are the real artists,
you said, spinning the ice in your glass.
The screwdriver is their brush.
The real vandals are the restorers,
you went on, slowly turning me upside-down,
the ones in the white doctor's smocks
who close the wound in the landscape,
and thus ruin the true art of the mad.

I watched my poem fly down to the front
of the bar and hover there
until the next customer walked in--
then I watched it fly out the open door into the night
and sail away, I could only imagine,
over the dark tenements of the city.

All I had wished to say
was that art was also short,
as a razor can teach with a slash or two,
that it only seems long compared to life,
but that night, I drove home alone
with nothing swinging in the cage of my heart
except the faint hope that I might
catch a glimpse of the thing
in the fan of my headlights,
maybe perched on a road sign or a street lamp,
poor unwritten bird, its wings folded,
staring down at me with tiny illuminated eyes.

what's going on?

My job is sending me to Siggraph 2009, which is cool. I'm excited to go and excited to visit New Orleans.
I'm taking an online creative writing class, which is interesting.
Meditative lately- the fourth of July always makes me think of our political history, of war and fear and things I try to not think about the rest of the year. And I'm deeply emotionally involved in current events in Iran, and feel hopeless to take any appropriate action. Which is why I generally suppress these kinds of thoughts, I guess. All my twitter and facebook friends are probably sick of me nagging them about it.

from The Once and Future King

A truly amazing book, by the way.

There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey rules which are constant. It has no rules. Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops. You can't teach a baby to walk by explaining the matter to her logically--she has to learn the strange poise of walking by experience. In some way like that, you cannot teach a young woman to have knowledge of the world. She has to be left to the experience of the years. And then, when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds that she can do it. She can go on living--not by principle, not by deduction, not by knowledge of good and evil, but simply by a peculiar and shifting sense of balance which defies each of these things often. She no longer hopes to live by seeking the truth--if women ever do hope this--but continues henceforth under the guidance of a seventh sense. Balance was the sixth sense, which she won when she first learned to walk, and now she has the seventh one--knowledge of the world.
The slow discovery of the seventh sense, by which both men and women contrive to ride the waves of a world in which there is war, adultery, compromise, fear, stultification and hypocrisy--this discovery is not a matter for triumph. The baby, perhaps, cries out triumphantly: I have balance! But the seventh sense is recognized without a cry. We only carry on with our famous knowledge of the world, riding the queer waves in a habitual, petrifying way, because we have reached a state of deadlock in which we can think of nothing else to do.
And at this stage we begin to forget that there ever was a time when we lacked the seventh sense. We begin to forget, as we go stolidly balancing along, that there could have been a time when we were young bodies flaming with all the impetus of life. It is hardly consoling to remember such a feeling, and so it deadens in our minds.
But there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and passionately concerned. There was a time when it was of vital interest to us to find out whether there was a God or not. Obviously the existence or otherwise of a future life must be of the very first importance to somebody who is going to live her present one, because her manner of living it must hinge on the problem. There was a time when Free Love versus Catholic Morality was a question of as much importance to our hot bodies as if a pistol had been clapped to our heads.
Further back, there were times when we wondered with all our souls what the world was, what love was, what we were ourselves.
All these problems and feelings fade away when we get the seventh sense. Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments, without difficulty. The seventh sense, indeed, slowly kills all the other ones, so that at last there is no trouble about the commandments. We cannot see any more, or feel, or hear about them. The bodies which we loved, the truths which we sought, the Gods whom we questioned: we are deaf and blind to them now, safely and automatically balancing along toward the inevitable grave, under the protection of our last sense.

He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.

Also, the last several pages have some really fascinating thoughts about war and human nature, but I can't type them all out here and the fragments won't be very insightful.

A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London

by Dylan Thomas. Brought to mind by current events in Iran.

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

Happy birthday, Walt Whitman

A NOISELESS, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

incredible!

This was going around twitter a couple days ago and I just finally watched it. Incredible. I need to watch it a few more times.

Gerard Manly Hopkins

Hopkins is a masterful poet, one of the greatest in the English language. So I had to pause to read this article on Slate.com just out of curiosity.
What's strange to me is the author's contrasting of those two poems for the purposes of the article, because it's easier to say what's different about those works than to say what's similar. The subject matter is entirely contrasting, the authors' perspectives utterly different, the messages and themes completely at odds with each other. One may as well take an apple and an orange and list all the ways that one is not like the other although they are both fruit. Thomas is commenting on the ironies of class and Hopkins is struggling with God, for chrissakes.
Not saying that the author of the article doesn't make some interesting points about the poems, but I'm wondering why he chose to contrast these two to begin with. That is all.

Envoi- Eavan Boland

Appropriate for me on so many levels right now.

It is Easter in the suburb. Clematis
shrubs the eaves and trellises with pastel.
The evenings lengthen and before the rain
the Dublin mountains become visible.

My muse must be better than those of men
who made theirs in the image of their myth.
The work is half-finished and I have nothing
but the crudest measures to complete it with.

Under the street lamps the dustbins brighten.
The winter-flowering jasmine casts a shadow
outside my window in my neighbor's garden.
These are things my muse must know.

She must come to me. Let her come
to be among the donnee, the given.
I need her to remain with me until
the day is over and the song is proven.

Surely she comes, surely she comes to me--
no lizard skin, no paps, no podded womb
about her but a brightening and
the consequences of an April tomb.

What I have done I have done alone.
What I have seen is unverified.
I have the truth and I need the faith.
It is time I put my hand in her side.

If she will not bless the ordinary,
if she will not sanctify the common,
then here I am and here I stay and then am I
the most miserable of women.

Balance

This is an amazing short that I hadn't seen for years (despite looking for it from time to time) until my friend Kristen posted it on Facebook today. Wonderful!

Abt Vogler- Robert Browning

Just about my favorite poem ever.

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,
Man, brute, reptile, fly,--alien of end and of aim,
Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,--
Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,
And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,
This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!
Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,
Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!
And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,
Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,
Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,
Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.

And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was,
Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,
Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,
Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:
For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,
When a great illumination surprises a festal night--
Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)
Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.

In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth,
Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;
And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,
As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:
Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,
Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;
Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,
For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.

Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,
Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,
Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,
Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last;
Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone,
But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new:
What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;
And what is,--shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too.

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,
All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,
All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,
Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth:
Had I written the same, made verse--still, effect proceeds from cause,
Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;
It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,
Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:--

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,
Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,
That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.
Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is nought;
It is everywhere in the world--loud, soft, and all is said:
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:
And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;
Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;
For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,
That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go.
Never to be again! But many more of the kind
As good, nay, better, perchance: is this your comfort to me?
To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind
To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.

Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?
Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!
What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?
Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?
There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence
For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason and welcome; 'tis we musicians know.

Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:
I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.
Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,
Sliding by semitones till I sink to the minor,--yes,
And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,
Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep;
Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,
The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.

Uninspired

So, as you may have noticed, this blog is less and less about the community and more about myself personally.

I think it's just that I'm in a bit of a down place lately- a lot of collaborative projects have sort of fallen apart due to one thing or another, so I'm having a little rebound period where I rethink what I want to be involved in and the extent of my involvement.

On the other hand, being done with those things is incredibly freeing, and I'm starting to feel a spark of creativity and enthusiasm for personal projects. So it's fine, I'm just not in the same place I was six months ago when I started blogging.

One of the things I'm thinking about is that I need to take on personal projects that specifically don't resemble the work I do for money. I really enjoy the weird stuff I make with wire and paper and find it gratifying, and want to explore working more with physical stuff, rather than looking at a monitor.

Also, I need to make more substantial connections with some of the amazing people I know, because I think that having people to bounce things off of would be really helpful for me. I have a hard time prioritizing spending meaningful time with people, but I need to do that.

So if you don't mind, I'll continue to share like I have been, and keep the title the same. And thank you for your patience.

The Neighbor- Rilke

Dangit, I can't find the Snow translation online, so I'm going to have to try this from memory.

Strange violin, do you follow me?
In how many distant cities before this
Did your lonely night speak to mine?
Do thousands play you? Does only one?

Are there in all the great cities those who, without you,
Would have long since lost themselves in the rivers?
And why does it always reach me?

Why am I always the neighbor of those who force you
From fear to sing, and to say out loud
Life is heavier than the weight of all things.