I like to drive. Sometimes when I’m having a bad day, I’ll just get in my car and drive. Fast. I don’t need a destination. When I go places with friends, I don’t mind being the driver or taking long shifts in the driver’s seat. When Wonder Boy and I travel, though, he prefers to drive. It’s not a sexist thing. He gets antsy and bored in the passenger seat so really, it’s better for both of us if he’s driving.
There are some nice perks to being a passenger in the car. Much like a baby, cars are a wonderful place for me to take naps. I think it’s funny when we go past cars with TV screens playing to try and guess what movie people are watching. But mainly, I like to prop my feet up on the dash and enjoy the ride. (In my first car, I figured out a way to prop my one foot on the dash while I drove. It was manual transmission, too. Maybe not my safest move.)
Not too long ago, Wonder Boy got a new-to-him car. He loves it. He’s particular about what we can eat and drink inside the car and insistent that trash leave the car as soon as possible. I’m okay with this. Someday I will also be the owner of a new or new-to-me car and I’m sure I will implement some goofy rules.
With one rule, I think Wonder Boy may have gone too far. Yesterday I hopped in the car and started to prop up my feet, like I always do, and he was all, “Wait! I have something for you.” He pointed to the side panel of the car where an old dishtowel was sitting in the door. You know, that way I can rest my feet on the towel on the dashboard instead of directly on the dashboard. Because my apparently filthy feet will dirty up his car.
I recently had to get a new passport. I was very pleasantly surprised when the government mailed me back my old one! It’s is full of so many memories from so many great trips.
One of my favorite sections is where Delicious and I got stamped going in and out of Morocco. Somehow we only needed one stamp. But when we saw another man with a stamp, we made sure to get a second. We were so excited to get stamped from Morocco, from Africa!
Visas are a relatively new thing for me, so the pages with those just seem fancy.
Looking at each page in the passport transports me to some vacation. Seeing the Ecuador stamp makes me smile thinking of Wonder Boy’s first international trip. That was in 2006 and since then he’s been to seven more countries!
I love my France stamp because it reminds me of my $65 whirlwind trip with The Man Who Toasts Ronald Reagan.
Mostly I’m just taken by how many places I’ve been fortunate enough to visit. Now I have this empty book just needing to be filled up. So very many places to go!
It’s so cool to get to experience an art form and gain an appreciation for what it really takes to make something by hand. Last night Wonder Boy and I enjoyed some glass-blowing lessons. I’d taken some previously and loved them so was pretty pumped for the class. I don’t know if Wonder Boy knew what he was in for, but he definitely had a great time. You know something is good when hours later, randomly, a person keeps announcing how fun something was.
And now begins a recap of the evening that can be taken so wrong.
When I took my first glass-blowing lessons, I was unable to blow hard enough to create my globe. A teacher ended up blowing for me. So, last night when we approached blowing, I was trying to psych myself up. Turned out, we worked in pairs. Wonder Boy blew my glass and I blew his. When it was my turn, I really went for it. Maybe a little too much? I blew way too long and hard. True story. The teacher was all alarmed. “Didn’t you hear me say stop?!” When I realized what I’d done, I broke into a terrible giggle fit and couldn’t stop laughing. Turns out that all I did was hook Wonder Boy up with a big glass. Because that’s what we were making – glasses. (I have some regret about not sticking to my guns and making a bud vase…) I was assured that my glass could hold a beer, which was my main concern. Wonder Boy’s can hold at least two.
There is a Spanish proverb that says, ““The busy man is troubled with but one devil; the idle man by a thousand.” This is not the sort of preachy saying I normally pay any mind to. In fact, if someone said it to me, I’d probably tune out to anything that followed. But.
There’s been a lot of negative mojo swirling around me lately. To cancel it out, I’ve been packing my evenings and weekends with as much fun as I can handle. My sewing lessons have been going gangbusters. I’ve made countless napkins and a few potholders. (Next up are ironing board covers, curtains and baby bibs!) I’ve been doing a great job of being social, which is not always my strength. And I’m doing what I think is most important when you’re trying to shake things up – novel things. The speaking event with Feist and Martin de Thurah at the Contemporary Arts Center last week, some glasswork lessons with Wonder Boy next week and a night out a new local bar / brewery. My goal is that my keeping busy, I won’t be as troubled by the negativity going around me during other parts of my days.
I’m exhausted from so much doing, but I think the plan is working. I’m much happier.
That said, I still have so much negativity around me. Negative people I cannot avoid. And I don’t know what to do with that. I try to help make things more positive, but after a while, that’s exhausting. I remove myself from the situation as much as possible. I tune things out when I can. I try to be pretty obvious about the fact that I won’t engage in too much negative talk. What else is there to do? Negativity can be like a poison and I want an antidote.
Last night Wonder Boy and I had an impromptu evening, along with a couple hundred other people, with Leslie Feist and Martin de Thurah. Both were in town to talk about music videos, in conjunction with a new exhibit at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) called Spectacle: The Music Video.
We’ve been to a few events at the CAC now and what I love about them is the intimacy. I think the thing last night was sold out, but once everyone was seated, it just felt nice and cozy. Not overly crowded. And I was about 30 feet away from Feist!
I haven’t seen Spectacle: The Music Video, yet, though I intend to. What intrigued me about last night’s talk was the opportunity to explore the evolution of the music video. Music started as a live art form. Then just an audio one. With video, it became visual and glossy and expensive. Since everything went digital and things have been uploaded to YouTube… Well, I’m curious how that’s changed things. I’m not sure I had that entirely answered last night. Feist expressed how she loved when her songs got a life of their own. She creates something and releases it out into the world. People find it the videos on YouTube and the songs wherever, and can recreate it, remix it, do whatever. And then this thing she created gets even bigger. I would imagine her responses hasn’t always been so zen.
Here’s a little bit about what I learned last night:
Feist, Bittersweet Memories: We got to watch the Bittersweet Memories video, which was just released yesterday. Wonder Boy and I felt so cool. A few months ago we had a party where you had to come dressed like some picture from your past, a la the Back to the Future project from Irena Werning. Feist’s new video is basically the Back to the Future project set to music!
Feist, I Feel It All: While Feist and I have very little in common, her story of the I Feel It All video had a few familiar parts for me. She was planning the video while living in Paris with her roommate, Mary Rozzi. As in Rozzi Fireworks from Loveland, Ohio, where I grew up. She mentioned how cool it would be to have explosions going off in her video in time to the music and Mary was all, “My uncles can totally do that.”And so she went to Lawrenceburg, Indiana, and filmed the video for I Feel It All. They had four tries to get it right, but after an accident with some fireworks, had to select from two takes. Two takes! But the video turned out pretty cool. And I thought it was pretty cool to hear her describe the fireworks testing field in Loveland, because thats where I played so many soccer games growing up…
Feist, 1234: The video for 1234, which I had never seen before last night, was done in one take, as in it’s not all edited to look fancy. It really is that fancy.
Feist, The Bad in Each Other: Martin de Thurah is a video director and he and Feist collaborated on the video for The Bad in Each Other. The video is terribly sad (burying the dog!) but also really quirky and weird, in a good way. De Thurah came across like that – quirky and weird, in a good way. He had people laughing but also did a wonderful job of trying to explain how he translates abstract ideas onto film.
Car Park North, Human: This was one of the first (the first?) music videos that Martin de Thurah ever created. It doesn’t feature the musicians at all but still tells such a story. De Thurah said he was inspired from day dreams he used to have as a kid.
Fever Ray, When I Grow Up: I’ve already established that Martin de Thurah presented himself as a quirky individual. Apparently he’s been that way for quite some time. As a kid, he was intimidated by physics. Before a big exam, he stripped down to his underwear, painted his upper body in watercolors and mowed his lawn running very quickly. It was part of a ritual to help him prepare for the exam. Imagine! When he heard When I Grow Up by Fever Ray, he remembered this ritual and wanted to work that idea into the music video.
Royksopp, What Else Is There: The music video for What Else Is There seems very big budget to me. But according to Martin de Thurah, it was anything but. In the middle of the night, they hooked up the singer to the ladder of a firetruck and let her dangle in the middle of the street. Then they drove the truck up and down the street very quietly so as not to attract any attention. Because of money, they hadn’t been able to hire police and shut down the street properly, so they just crossed their fingers that no one would question the girl hanging in the middle of the street.
James Blake, Lindisfarne: I cannot pretend to like James Blake. I just can’t. But hearing Martin de Thurah explain how he came up with the idea for this video was fascinating. The end result is beautiful and twisted.
It’s been a long time since I really watched a music video. After listening to Feist and Martin de Thurah discuss them, I’ll definitely pay more careful attention. Last night was wonderful – I look forward to the Contemporary Arts Center hosting other similar events!
