30 December 2007

I often do wonder if there is actually some kind of fulfilling personal gain from nurturing a hatred of someone that really, really doesn't care. Honestly, I have often wondered what the appeal of maintaining a hate against any one person yields. I mean, I believe that hatred can be a useful emotion, and can effect some kind of positive impact. Hatred of oppression, or high taxes, or serial killers. Hey, I didn't condone the death penalty last time I considered it, and I've seen enough cop movies and shows to know emotional involvement within the pursuit of justice can be a larger hinderance than any other, but the fuel is there to drive someone to care. Just a slightly misguided or misinterpreted cousin of passion, hate is.

All that I feel right now would only come about as pure narcissism if articulated, but ya know, there ain't no shame in having pride. I do feel as though I have picked up on some important maturation somewhere along my short voyage through life that those older than me seemed to have overlooked. I'm glad I do not let a silly past conflict affect my entire demeanor at a light-hearted social gathering, just to maintain that hatred, that carefully groomed hatred. I feel really high school even writing about such a dramatic situation, but I also cannot help but feel that I got the better hand here. Whereas Jessica will actually put forth the effort to post myspace bulletins, start facebook communities, and orchestrate prankcalling sessions against a person that wronged her over a year ago (apology included!), I feel very good surveying the constructive things that I use my time for. Hell, all she has done is evoke some interesting thought for the night, and in all honesty, without even a hint of a condescending tone, I do pity her in some way that her character is of such a calibur, she is willing to alienate herself from a conversation to prove a point. Furthermore, a point to someone who is not worried about having such a point proved to her.

Dear Jessica, darling, should you read this, I would love you to ask one thing of yourself in all sincerity: What personal fulfillment to you achieve from such middle-school lunchroom tactics? I know you, you are actually quite a bright girl, and have a big heart. I harbor no ill will toward you, aside from the character judgments I've been rather forced into coming to. So why the eye rolling? Why bother? I want you to know that I will most likely never in my life be affected by your opinion of me, and that you are only detracting from your own personality by continuing the behavior.

A lot of people I've encountered simply don't change. A lot of them continue pointless or self-destructive behavior because of deeper issues. Cries for attention? Proving one isn't a pushover? A lack of self-respect, at least in some regard? There are a thousand catalysts for anger and hatred. I suppose we all have our own, but I think one of those great things you learn in the journey of figuring yourself out earnestly to the best of your ability, and then liking who you are, is how to differentiate between emotions that should be acted on. Keep yourself at numero uno, Jess: if it ain't making you feel good, it's not good. And if aformentioned stuff does make you feel good, perhaps you need to get to know yourself a bit more... or let a shrink do it for you.

All in all, you are the second person in my life I have ever known, who has articulated such an all-encompassing resentment toward me to this day due to some high school aged conflict. And well, the first girl was a self-loathing, promiscuous cutter.

15 December 2007

I love how important things like when you are to be out of the dorm, what happens to you if you are not, and how exactly you prove that you're gone are things I do not hear a word about until the day of. I also love that the school finds it acceptable to fine $50 per person of the dorm that has a "dirty" common area. I like that I'm supposed to "check out" of the dorms with an RA who is not here. I really like that I am being threatened $50-a-day fines for every extra day I am in the dorms past Saturday, December 15th, and I like it even more that the only way to prove I left is to check out with an RA that is not here, and I love that I didn't know any of this until TODAY. I REALLY love that although it was advertised through e-mails and posted flyers in the hallways that the school would be open until December 19th, it really isn't open past December fucking 14th. I really love that I was told the wrong day, because now I have no means of finishing a month-long project that was going to be a Christmas present because I planned to do it Monday. I am only lucky I caught the last guard on duty and coerced her into letting me run down to the shop and retreive it, otherwise I would have been miserable.

By love, I mean, I feel the need to eat paperwork and shit it out on people's desks.

06 December 2007

The Kite Runner

Tonight, I saw an advanced screening of the Kite Runner, a movie of which I had absolutely no prior knowledge of--meaning I hadn't seen a trailer yet, because Lord knows I would have known the plot, subplots, conflicts, and characters within two and a half minutes, negating the need to actually watch the movie. Trailers today are like Sparknotes: get the story and pass the test, but miss the experience.

But I digress. The movie was incredible. All I knew going in was that the PG-13 rating specified it was due to harsh language, some brief gore, and the sexual assault of a child. Needless to say, I was on pins & needles waiting for the atrocity, but even after, I was completely absorbed. I can barely form sentences right now, and cannot even think of specifics, not that I would dare want to give a plot point away and lessen the impact of the film as a whole. So let me say, this is a film that will break you in half and stitch you back up crookedly. It is a superb representation of Middle Eastern culture, beautifully written, and wholly one of the most heartbreaking movies I have ever seen. Spend your eight dollars on this.

05 December 2007

Art School Professors are just High School Egos with Wrinkles.

The professors, and teachers in high school, summer art programs, theatrical training, etc., that I have held in the highest esteem, have always been very well-rounded teachers. For example, I think Howard Paine is a great teacher, but it has to do with the fact that although he is specially skilled in Graphic Design, he dabbles in a bit of every medium. I feel that has endowed him with a bit more openmindedness, so that he can appreciate the skill and labor that goes into both a design and a painting, and can appreciate aspects of both, even those that overlap that perhaps only one who has labored over both a canvas and a computer screen can dilineate. I have seen him attending exhibitions of video animation and sculpture, and perhaps this variation is not the most valuable quality, because the man is laid back in general. It seems that even though he can carefully giggle at a prod at another student, he has not succumb to the gossipping, stressful air of his peers. For that I respect him.

Adrian Duran, who I also respect highly, both as a educator and a human being, is similar. True, he is well-versed in Titian and Po-Mo equally, but he exercises his right to opinion. He does not praise everything he teaches, and perhaps more importantly, is not simply versed in textbook art, but hip hop of all things. And even though I heard criticism of his attempts at photography by Photo Majors, he does at least seem to care enough to try it himself; to search for that appreciation through experience. But alas, he too is young, bright, and too intelligent to be swept away in a fit of egomaniacy.

However, my qualms lie with the older--the much older--professors. Those who were trained in the sixties, yet seem to have completely forgotten that sense of finding yourself, finding a place in society, and stirring the pot once in a while. While Prillaman was never one to critique a painting show, he was the best metalsmith I had ever met, and was open to any endeavor you wished to take on, wholeheartedly.

I suppose in my ethical opinion, the professor for an introductory painting class should never have the right to come to the conclusion that a student has no heart for painting after 13 classes of mandatory still lifes, and should furthermore never attempt to give them advice on how to live their life directly following. I may sound like a bitter middle school girl at this point, but every event of yesterday boiled into my blood that art teachers are just walking egos. All artists are. Every piece is a self-portrait, every artist looking in the mirror with a hard-on. I have not met one self-doubting painter in all my life. To think you have such wonderous wisdom and talent that you should be coaching others is masturbating into a classroom of completely unsuspecting, poor, innocent art students.

I have such a problem with this particular teacher because I feel he has wedged himself into Painting I, yet is itching to critique New American Paintings, and instead buries the urges in alcohol, tearing down illustrators, and submersing himself in a warm pool of ass-kissers. And why? I do believe they stem from a complete snobbery, a total lack of appreciation for any innovation of separate mediums. He has latched on to a single medium, and a solitary visual concept, and repeated it, without movement, for fifty years. He doesn't loathe drawing, he has forgotten that is what spawned his precious paintings. He loves your work if it is in oil, heavily layered, with specific horizon lines and luminosity because it reminds him of himself. It's much too late to do a damned thing to change his mind, so I recommend to his students, beware, and don't listen too carefully. Kiss ass and get your A, or experiment how you wish, and let the GPA suffer.