20051029

Printing

Last tuesday, in lab class, we finally started printing. We had been printing proofs using the Phaser printer, but the inkjet system finally became operational last week. The lab for first year students is outfitted with a (very very nice) Epson Stylus Pro 4800. Teacher had told us the week before that if we wanted to print this week, to buy our paper and bring it to class asap. When I went to the store, they were out of said paper. So I resigned getting it then and went to class paperless.

I was just working on my pictures, turning them to black and white, arranging my weekly contact sheet when I noticed that three pictures I had taken would work perfectly as a triptych. I arranged them and asked the teacher for his opinion. I wasn't certain of the validity of printing that. He asked me what I thought and I confessed that since school started I felt like I didn't know anything anymore. He told me that yes, there is validity in doing that and that I HAD to print it. That questions always come and that we can get carried away by them, but the idea is to keep shooting.

Because of the fact that most students could not get their box of photo paper on time (Ilford Gallerie Smooth Pearl 11x17), the department gave a couple of pro 13x19 sheets to the class for printing. The idea is that the sheets would have two pictures printed on them, so we could maximise the ressources. My triptych needed a whole sheet to work. So when I said to my teacher that I would wait to print it because I would be using a whole sheet, he told me to do it anyways.

So I printed it and it was an amazing feeling. To actually have something come out, something that I worked on. Something that I shot, processed, arranged and then printed.

I came out of lab class with a glow (and a triptych printed on 13x19 pro photo paper).

(See the triptych here.)

20051022

Now What?

I've probably written about this little crisis I'm experiencing toward photography. I'm at a point where I can take decent pictures but nothing really speaks to me. I take pictures that hold up, but they are pictures for the brain and not pictures for the heart.

I had a meeting with my capture class professor today. She commented on the work I've submitted since the beginning of the term. Her feedback was mostly positive. At the same time, she noticed that my pictures are devoid of any emotional charge. I explained to her my current questioning about picture-taking and image-making, about why I'm doing it, what speaks to me and what I want to say through my imaging. She gave me tips, ideas. Mainly, she said something along the lines of: "Olivier, you seem to have hit a comfort zone. You draw your images really well, there are a lot of graphical element, but your images convey no emotions. You like working with people, so why not try to work with people you don't know. Surpass yourself, go further, do things you've never done. Make it as so this term has just begun. Try to infuse yourself with a feeling, perhaps through music..."

So I imagine that it's really time to admit that I need to do some thinking. Why do I take pictures? What drives me to want to record and capture the visual world? What have I got to say? And, most importantly, why do I censor myself?

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My little return to music is really gaining grounds inside of my head. I'm getting back to where I was when I was studying piano, that is, analyzing everything that I hear, paying attention to the progressions, imagining a piano overlay on what I'm hearing.

I'm currently reading Aaron Copland's What To Listen For In Music. It makes for really interesting reading, giving some insight in the various elements that form a musical piece and how they affect us. Also, it's quite nice to be reading a book that was written in the late 1930s. Add to that some autumn and some jazz and it makes you feel like you're there.

20051018

Towel-Throwing

I used to have a nasty tendency to give up when things became difficult. I came to this realisation when I finally received my university transcript for the winter term. At the end of that semester, I was completely run-down and really thought that it was over. Yet another failure to add to the list. But I was wrong. I found out that I got rather smashing grades for that term (Try A- in german and A in cinema). When I told my mother, she told me straight up: "Oli, you always do that, whenever you think things are wrong you just give up".

I received that transcript about two weeks ago and the thought sat with me since then. It's true that I give up easily. I will work hard for things I care about but if I become unfocused or if I fall off-balance, I just give up. I'll try to weasel my way out of the difficult situation, accepting the doom.

At the same time though, I find that I have evolved. My behaviour is not so defeatist anymore, even though it used to be. I could list many things that I have fought for even when I thought it was over. The moving out of home/starting university thing is a nice example. At that time (about a year ago), it felt as though fate was completely against my moving out, yet I found a way and did it. I'm really glad I did fight for that, because I'm happy now.

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In 2001, about a month after being diagnosed with depression, I decided to take piano lessons. I had always been a lover of music, I had taken a little intro course to music in highschool, I was writing little tunes when I was 8 years old. I always wanted to study piano but never had the chance to. At the point where I was and being in my final year of cégep, I figured it was as good a time as any to get to it. I took it for 8 months. When we did the conclusive show for the arts program at my cégep, I played one of Satie's Gnossiennes. My piano teacher was amazed and told me that I had now proven to her that I could do anything I wanted, as long as my heart was into it.

Then I moved out to Sherbrooke and moved back to Granby four months later. I called my teacher and picked up piano again. But I was unfocused. I never practiced and then I got this crazy idea that I should learn more instruments. I ended up taking three different instruments at one: piano, saxophone, alto recorder. It didn't take long for me to just crash and start calling-in to cancel my lessons because I had not practiced or just because I didn't want to go to class. My piano teacher tried a different approach. She made me write songs and taught me some improv techniques. When spring came, we both knew that I wasn't coming back to study piano in autumn. That was in 2004.

I stopped playing music altogether and went on with other things. Rediscovered a passion for photography. Moved to Montreal to study german in university and decided, about a month after school started, that I really wanted to be a photographer. Applied to schools, got admitted in cégep, decided to go for it. During the summer, I had a recurring dream of being in photoschool and music being intricately woven in my life. Not music appreciation, music writing and playing.

I imported my keyboard from Granby during the summer but never actually touched it once. It was just there, in the corner of my room, idle.

Yesterday morning, I woke up at 4am, with an urge to play piano. I had breakfast and sat in front of the keyboard. Music just came out. A little set of four chords kept on returning no matter what I played. I toyed around for about an hour before it was time to leave for school. I was supposed to have dinner with Justin but it fell through because of him being ill and needing to seek medical attention. With my evening free, I just went training and sat the keyboard again.

Today, after class, I went to Archambault Musique and bought a book on scales, chords and arpeggios for piano. I sat at the keyboard and starting exercising myself, to relearn what I once knew and build my musical foundation from that. I am determined not to give up this time, even if it gets difficult.

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The little tune that started coming out yesterday is turning into a waltz. Looking through my book on scales, it turns out that the progression is very coherent, the last chord being the relative minor of the key in which the tune is rooted. The worktitle for it is Waltz For Someone Else.

20051011

Addiction

I am addicted to incense. Don't ask me why, but I just love burning incense in my room. However, I believe I've gone too far recently.

About two or three weeks ago I bought a 50 pack of japanese incense (Daigen-Koh, sandalwood). I finished the box tonight.

I woke up around 3am and there was an almost overwhelming smell in my room. A smell very reminescent of burnt wood, burnt furniture and stale cigarette. You can distinguish the sandalwood somewhere in this very complex fragrance if you really concentrate. It must be the buildup of the smell in the room since I've moved in it that makes it so strong and weird. But I definitely have to stop using incense for a while, until my room takes on it's normal smell again.

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I went shooting pictures yesterday afternoon. I've been consistently taking pictures in the past three days. The first two days were shots without models, yesterday was a shoot walk-around style with Justin.

I had already did a little exterior shoot with Justin, but the light was quickly fading and that lead to most of the shots being unusable because of motion blur and camera shake. Also, no matter how comfortable the person is in front of the lens, I always feel a bit clumsy around the person I'm shooting the first time I'm taking pictures of them. The subsequent times I feel a lot more at ease and oftentimes it shows in the photos.

Yesterday's session was a huge delight. We just walked around a very industrial area, talking about love, life and our respective arts. It was just very easy to take pictures, I felt extremely comfortable. In between our moments of talking there was silence. Not an ackward silence, but a very cozy silence, sometimes completed with Justin humming a song.

Photography can be quite a zen experience.

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Just before I woke up a couple of minutes ago, I was having a dream. It was a very intricate story about a girl getting married and being accused of stealing a very expensive fabric at her aunt's fabric shop. I just remember the ending, when the girl broke into the fabric shop to try to find clues to back up her theory of the cousin being the stealer of the fabric. So she broke in the store and the cousin was there, handling a pickax and menacing her, threatening to break her marriage by killing her. The mother of the cousin (i.e. the aunt) arrives and gets stabbed by the cousin. The cousin then goes for the girl but she is stopped by the aunt who was also carrying a pickax with her and managed to stick it right in her daughter's heart (despite her injuries) and killed her. I woke up when the ambulance and the police was arriving at the crime scene.

20051007

Memento

My roommate moved out of the Villa a couple of days ago. She is now getting settled in her new dwelling, with her boyfriend.

They have been together for, if I'm not mistaken, about three months. They decided to make the move when they were one month in.

Now, a lot of people say that what they did is risky, temerarious even. But I say that it's incredibly beautiful. They are going past the common knowledge, the current thinking of dis-involvement and self-reservation. They want to be together so they take steps to ensure that they will be together. They fell in love and are rightly living that love. I applaud them for that, for their courage to move forward and embrace one another and the love they have for one another.

Rock on, Anne-Marie et Guillaume!

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Anne-Marie moving out cleared up the big bedroom of the apartment. So, since I'm now living alone there, I decided to upgrade to the bigger room. In the process of moving furniture around and cleaning up, I've found a pair of underwear under my bed. Not MY underwear, but a pair belonging to François.

It was one of those moments you'd wish there was a hidden camera filming the event. I was just sweeping when I stumbled unto the underwear. At first I was puzzled and then, when I realised what it was and who it belonged to, I started laughing. A nice, genuine laugh. It's quite the memento, I have to admit. I was doing laundry at the same time I was cleaning up the rooms so I threw the pair in the washing machine. They are now perfectly clean.

Of course, I could make a plaster mould out of the underwear and then make a cast of them out of acrylic, but that would be time consuming and really worthless. So, I will send the underwear back to François with just a note saying that I found them under my bed and that they would probably be more useful to him then they could be to me. I'll also specify that I washed them so he doesn't think I pulled a practical joke on him (though, if he knows/knew me just a bit he'll know that that's not my style). I'm guessing he'll be happy to have them back...

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This morning, on my way to school, I witnessed a great act of kindness performed by a stranger. A blind man was getting out of the metro and, using his white cane, was hunting his way to the stairs. A stranger, coming from behind, took him by the shoulders and softly directed him to the stairs and then just quietly left, with the blind man back on track and going up the stairs.

20051003

Better The Devil You Know

In the last post, I was talking about the new job I was hired for. The next day, I went to the store to get the documents I needed to sign. Getting in the store, a bit of an odd feeling came over me. I went to talk to the manager, he gave me the documents to take home, read and fill-in. When I asked how many hours a week I would get, he completely changed state and became rather stern. "We don't promise hours here", he said.

I left with a real bad feeling. On my way out of the mall, I passed in front of the photo studio I always thought of applying at. Just as I walked by it I decided that it was time for me to go in. So in I went and I asked the girl at the counter the procedure to apply for an assistant job there. "Do you have any photo experience," she asked in a cold, bored voice. To that I replied that I had been shooting seriously for the past two years and that I was a first year photography student. She went from cold to completely interested, grabbed the business card of the studio, scribbled down an email and urged me to send in my resumé with a paragraph listing all my photographic experience.

Later in the day, I wanted to pass by my current job to announce that I was quitting. I was still swarmed by a bad feeling about the new job. Still, I figured that all I need in life is to move forward and that way things will fall into place by themselves. So, I went by my job and wanted to talk to the manager, but she was not working that day. I went to the assistant-manager and announced him that I was quitting. "Not you too!!," screamed he. Turns out the manager was leaving a week from that day. She was fed up (and had been for a while) with the job. I went outside and had a lenghty chat with the assistant-manager. I told him about my frustrations with the current state of the store and about the constant negativity at the job. We talked and figured things out, he offered me to always work around 20 hours a week if it was what I needed. I asked him to give me a couple of days to think about it.

I was going home that weekend. When I came back, I had taken my decision: I would keep my current job. I think I made a wise move. It's better the devil you know.

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If you pay attention to the time of this post, you'll see that it's past 3 am and I'm not sleeping. I don't really know why I have such disturbed sleep lately. I'm guessing it's stress from school and all those changes around me. Because of those recurring insomnia nights/nightmare spells I have been getting, I'm really really close to being expelled from visual language class. In 5 weeks of school, I managed to make it there on time only once. Twice I've missed class because of insomnia that lead to major oversleeping, once I've been late for the same reason and once I arrived late because there was a little party at the Villa and I went to bed too late. I will have to go and talk to my teacher before he fails me by default. All is fine and well in all of my other classes; it seems the flaking out peaks in the night between tuesday and wednesday. Hopefully I won't be kicked out of that class because that would mean having to retake it next year and thus being a year behind in the visual arts courses (it would not affect my photo classes, though).

This past wednesday, I was feeling really confused and lost. Especially after having missed yet another visual language class. When I got back to my apartment after work, I was in a really gloomy state. I went cycling and did it very intensely for 40 minutes, then went grocery shopping and called my mother while browsing the aisles. "Ma, I'm feeling confused," I said. She asked me what about and then we talked and she helped me figure things out. Some of those tips she gave me actually have helped me getting back on track. Now all that's left to do is to sort out the visual language problem.

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Yesterday (sunday) morning, I got an automated email message from an internet SMSing/friends-connection service. It was an invitation to join the service in order to keep in touch with the person who sent the invite. That message was sent to me by François...

Now, I don't know if he did that while we were together and it just happens that I am receiving the message from that service now, something like a month and a half after it ended OR if he sent it recently.

If he sent it recently, I just hope he realises how stupid a move that was. He has not manifested himself at all in the time since the end, he has not even checked the next day to make sure I had made it safely back. I left his place with a feeling that he was just relieved that he was finally freed from me and his lack of communication once that was done actually just reinforced that feeling. So, if he sent that in hopes that I would want to get in touch, he is so completely mistaken. If he has something to say to me, he should write me a real email or call me or write a letter.

So if I was right and he tried to get in touch with me that way, I just have to say: Fuck You.