About alone.

It's going on 2:30 am. I'm falling back into my normal habits and sleep patterns after being away last week.
Until this afernoon, I had not even unpacked my car from my trip to Durham nearly a week ago, pulling out bags as needed. Toothbrush, soap, etc. I'm still tired from missing out on my weekend and then the fundrasier last night. Tired is usually the one thing that will push me over the edge. Tired is when i email my ex boyfriend. Tired is when i start letting desperation show. Tired is when i have no control over my emotions. I'll reach out to grab hold of who ever happens to be standing there, regardless.

I guess this is why i've felt so lonely the last few days. It's been tough to get through the day with out crying once (and for nothing in particular). Today I heard "mass pike" by the get up kids and was jolted back to the beginning of my relationship with my ex. I remeber how nessecary his presence was to my life and here i am years later... god i hope no one important reads this.

Being alone is ok most of the time. The toughest times are in the "doing" alone. eating, deciding what movie to watch, someone to go to the dog park with. Or when you head into unfamiliar territory. It's so much easier to be brave if you have someone standing next to you who knows you and knows your special.

The fundrasier was beautiful and successful, etc. But the whole night I felt that deep ache in my chest. I helped frame all the photos of the couples as they arrived at the event. I was dressed up just like they were... but you didn't see me did you? I looked pretty. My dog was the only one who saw.
Anyway... I'm not longer interested in making sense. It's time to try this again later.

Day 3

Day 3: Community Folklife Confrence-

I have a minute before we are gathering to listen to our ENORMOUSLY unsuccessful audio projects. Using fancy recording equiptment (to the tune of $400-500), we spilled our guts into a microphone that was held 2 inches from our faces. Then, having spilled such relevence, we expected to emerge with equally relevent pieces of audio.

Using the equiptment: I managed to stumble through this process with mild ease, flashing back to days of fucking with mic levels in the band. I understood when the mic was overloaded, i knew what happened when the mic is too close, u know what “popping p’s” are. Once i managed to get situated with my partner, trying to ignore the red ants on the picnic table where we were sitting, I was completely suduced by the sounds i hear amplified from “nature” (i was sitting in the middle of Durham).

I was really looking forward to reflecting on these momments, hearing the wind and birds. I was curious what i might be able to accomplish by inserting these sounds, using them to transition into different pieces of the interview we were about to conduct. Then i was thinking ahead to my own projects, where i might paint large canvases and insert sounds from my own field recordings. Or what could i do to creat an audio pattern out of these sounds?

Next we breeched the interview. Niki, forever assuming that everyone wants to share their lives as much as she likes to share hers, dives right into the messy questions and proceeds to lead her poor partner on very serious and personal venture. And vice versa. But i discovered 2 things: I LOVE the sound of someones voice (even my own b/c it is still largely unfamiliar on high quality digital recordings) close to me. I like to hear their voice in my headphones, like it’s some fuckin spirit or angel or real live warm body speaking directly into my ears.
The second thing i discovered was that my voice isn’t so bad to listen to so long as it is recorded with quality equiptment. I sorted remembered that i used to sing and it didn’t suck.

Anyway... I arrive at the computer lab with large dreams and great expectations. We get settled into a computer pull up the program (Audacity) and it proceeds to crash after ever single action. Sometimes more often than that.

All my hopes and dreams went out the window. I am defeated

Day 2 Center for Documentary Studies

This is the second day of the workshop at the CDS in Durham. Yesterday we experimented with the "interview" today we moved into digital photography. The interviewong process was very difficult at first. We were paired (this is a small and intimate group) with people who were VERY different from us. I was VERY uncomfortable talking to a complete stranger about my personal life. But we worked with the same partner today and the process of photographing one another was slightly less uncomfortable. Aside from feeling completely exposed to a group of people i didn't know, i walked away today new ideas about piece for my personal work and revealed that i am a very capable photo documentarian (but by no means an expert). I took some great picture of my partner, Marty (a tribal planner for the Haliwa-Saponi Native American tribe, also a song maker and an expert in his native language, and all this at 31). HE also took some very interesting photos of me. We framed eachother as artists, so the pictures were about the work we make. I've posted several of the photos Marty took of me on myspace. www.myspace/thegoodchild.com.

Tomorrow we venture into audio land with new partners. My new partner works in the social justice activism field and seems to be such a multi-talented and warm person. I'm looking forward to working with her. We've already established a mutual love for music.
Again, this is an element i have been interested in incorperating into my visual work. And since a lot of the work i create stems from "collecting" and "repeating" and pattern and family and personal history, this just seems like a natural progression.

I hope to have a complete audio piece to post on the internet by tomorrow evening.

Now... I MUST get some sleep. More soon. xo

New things

I'm trying this out as a test. I post crap on myspace all the time, but i was looking for something a little mroe separate from my personal crushes, obsessions and perhaps even a little more intellectual?
Whatever.
This is a trial.