Quiet Day
And yet I’m all wound up. Stiff neck, agitated, wanting something I can’t quite put my finger on.
Maybe because it is quiet for the first time in a while. And when it’s quiet we look to ourselves, and often looking at ourselves can be unnerving. Boo! Who are you? And my answer today is someone who has a lot to do and is fairly uncertain if all the work is going to pay off. After the whirlwind of Cynthia’s energy and the natural momentum of the holidays and all the people involved in Christmas I am left with myself.
Maybe for the first time since Lee and I parted.
It has been hectic since we said good-bye, everyday filled to the gills. And now I don’t have regular work to go to, (though a hell of a lot to do for the de Young that’s for sure), I am not working in a daily collaboration, Christmas and the piles of parties and events that came with that are all over and what I have to look forward to is the end of this rough year as I stare with hope into the uncertainty of the next.
Feeling a little formless, a little 2-D, not all here, maybe a bit like a ghost inhabiting someone else’s life, or floating around the edges of my own life, not fully stepping in.
It is an odd and invisible feeling. In fact now that I think of I felt alternately invisible and not recognized at the gym. People who I have seen many, many times seemed to be looking at me as if for the first time. I am sure it’s all in my head, but nonetheless a full on feeling of disconnect.
I did get a lot done today and did meet with the potential actor to play the Charlie character and I think he would be great. He asked insightful questions and an easy going manner, and I think we could work well together.
This idea of ramping up and being in production is exciting and nerve wracking. I need to be methodical about this and take it one step at a time, utilizing all the great support and wisdom I have around me. I was truly shaken by the postponement early this year. I have however learned a lot and am thankful for that. I am also ready for a good run. I need to hear yes and say no, be clear and not let other peoples’ uncertainty or murkiness muddy the waters around me or my work. I trust my momentum, my instinct and my creativity and I need to respect it and move ahead with this self-trust.
It really does kind of suck feeling the damp blanket of depression and sadness creep in again though. I need to put this in its proper place and move on.
Tomorrow is a full day getting fully ramped up on the de Young tour and my new assistant Greg is coming over in the evening so we can work out where he fits in and hammer out his job description, so the onus is on me to have my organizational shit together so I can make his upcoming time with me effective and mutually beneficial.
I did not take any pictures of note today as I was largely at the desk and my sad eye has a hard time finding anything worthy taking a picture of when I get into this kind of mood. I find it very interesting that on hard days I really have to force myself to see anything worth seeing, and on buoyant days I make myself crazy later when I am curating because I have taken so damn many. Our feelings really do color the way we see our world. One day can be full of beauty and infinite images, and the very same landscape can be as dull as a pile of dirt the next.
But I have also found that if I am in one of my sad eye days and I force myself to look for interesting things to take pictures of I find beauty everywhere and it knock me into a better perspective.
I also noticed today that when I was thinking of taking pictures my instinct was to take pictures of people and not objects or abstractions, and that I was too shy to ask the interesting people that I saw if I could take their picture. That made me reflect on the fact that despite my down mood here at the end of the day, I am becoming more engaged with people, more interested in others than in visual abstracts.
OK, here’s a fucking New Years resolution. If I see people I want to take pictures of I should ask them.
Duh.
So for tonight, instead of trying to make sense of the few shitty little images I took today, I am going to go for a Christmas Week Mash Up and post four images that were not curated, but that I love, that represent the energy and fun, and occasional stress, of this last week.
And I will leave you with this. My friend Carol in LA sent it and it really is quite good. I dare you not to smile, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jedd2FiZTqM
Moments later….
So I just looked at the shitty little pictures I took today and they aren’t that shitty, in fact they sum up a little portrait of bourgeois shopping in an urban setting, please note the yellow food section.
Thankfully I can save my photo mash up for a truly sad and/or uneventful day and use it as my visual get out of jail free card….
