cat tyc: News

I am waiting for a file to compress so I uploaded some photos on Flickr:


http://
www.flickr.com/photos/7339847@N02/

Things have been a little exciting lately.

A few months ago, I submitted a treatment to this contest on the MTVu contest & didn't win that but the Swan Island music video that I directed last spring got selected as Best Film of the Week which was really exciting because it wasn't online anywhere.

We had premiered it in January in Portland at the Holocene which was really incredible. The space was packed beyond capacity & it was quite thrilling to hear the crowd cheer during my favorite scene which is when Bob bikes under the Morrison Bridge as streams of rose petals float around her.

So, then that happened & then MTVu thing premiered it and that was great to just share with friends outside Portland and then I got an email that it was selected as a finalist for the top 25 to be the best in this other contest they are running.

Long story short, after faithful clicking, it has made it to the top 10 and clicking still needs to happen to take it to the top 5 so it can be judged by their panel.

In case I haven't already bothered you about it already, the site to view http://www.bestfilmoncampus.com/contests/bfoc/

1. Films by Alejandro Jodorowsky

2. Thurston Moore's "Trees Outside the Academy" record

3. Aweather "Cove"

4. The Elementary Particles by Michel
Houellebecq

1. The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen

2. Amy Hempel's writing

3. The World Without Us - Alan Weisman

4. Sad Horse - To see them live will bring you much joy.

There are a lot of pressing deadlines this week so of course, I return to the blog to procrastinate.

So much has happened, and is going on but to stay on my new mantra of '08: quality over quantity.

I just want to focus on the things that have made this week/month so special.

1) 'Latche Domo" - a documentary I just watched about gypsy culture all over the world

2) breakfast with Chelsey & Emmett

3) friends finding fulfillment in their careers

4) friends that were there with me on the Swan Island video premiere even if you came and left before it actually screened, that meant a lot

5) discovering Emily Haines on David Byrne's Playlist, I want to eat her music

* This month's list is especially good and there is only a few more days to hear it but there is this Kanye West mashup with Daft Punk's 'Stronger' which is absolutely the best thing ever in my opinion

5) having friends to go to the movies with, what I have seen so far: 'Atonement, And There Will Be Blood' and 'Latche Domo' which I mentioned earlier

Has anyone not seen 'I'm Not There' yet or am I really the only one ?

Ok, I have to go film a light right now.

Don't even ask.

sheesh.....I don't even know where to begin.

There are two music videos that I directed that are about to premiere on the Internets.

I have been shooting the Showcases for the Rock and Roll Camp for Girls.
A story, using some of my footage, about the camp will be airing on ABC's Nightline any minute now.

I am working on a few installations for a show in 2008 and there are some book projects in the work.

I was just in California. I still do not like that place very much.

So, I am finally coming out of my holiday cave to take on the New Year and such.

So far, my hard drive has blown up trying to make a new piece for the Hexasions series at the Portland Art Center.

Currently, I am just waiting to get my computer back and start editing away but don't really know how that is going to go.

Typically, I like this time of year so much. So much hope, so much possibility....

but I am about to turn 30 so reality knocks those concepts right out the door.

Things I do feel positive about: the autobiography by Yvonne Rainier that MIT Press put out, Zadie Smith's On Beauty and the solo Thom Yorke record and that is pretty much it.

My 'furness' piece showed in 2 wonderful shows last weekend.

I am working on too many things at the moment to anticipate the New Year.

Looking forward to the holidays.

These two writings, one Bob Kaufman poem and one segment of writing by Gerhard Richter resonated with me the most of anything I have seen or felt or thought in the past few weeks.

You are with me Oregon
Day and night, I feel you, Oregon.
I am Negro. I am Oregon.
Oregon is me, the planet
Oregon, the State Oregon, Oregon.
In the night, you come with bicycle wheels,
Oregon you come
With stars of fire. You come green.
Green eyes, hair, arms,
Head, face, legs, feet, toes
Green, nose green, your
Breast green, your cross
Green, your blood green.
Oregon winds blow around
Oregon. I am green, Oregon.
You are mine, Oregon. I am yours
Oregon. I live in Oregon.
Oregon lives in me,
Oregon, you come and make
Me into a bird and fly me
To secret places day and night.
The secret places in Oregon,
I am standing on the steps
Of the holy church of Crispus
Attucks St. John the Baptist,
The holy brother of Christ,
I am talking to Lorca. We
Decide the Hart Crane trip, home to Oregon
Heaven flight from Gulf of
Mexico, the bridge is
Crossed, and the florid black found.

- Oregon, Bob Kaufman

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"8 June 1983. The plight of art is shown at its most horrific in those
supposed conservatories of art that impose on the public at large by
assuming the sonorous title of 'Academies'. This one word hoodwinks
goverments, ministries, mayors, city councils, critics and newspaper
readers, parents and teachers; and under this name applicants are
deluded and students are so warped and ill-taught that they rarely
recover."

- from Gerhard Richter The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings 1962-1993 (p. 105)

All I can really say is that the clouds are back, and that is good because there is nothing worse than sitting in a dark editing suite for 6-8 hours a day while your friends email you about how gloriously sunny it is, just outside, where you cannot be.

To keep it simple, everything I am working on is in mid-edit. I am working on two new videos, with two totally different approaches and one on Avid, a program I am in the process of learning.

In between, I am revising and reworking a few pieces of writing which shall go public, if I finish them.

So, things are slow going and leaving me feeling like I am perpetually in a state of limbo where I robotically work on these various projects every day and the finish line still stays where it was when the day began...at about exactly 20 miles away.

In between, I still find time to see the rock shows (Dear Nora played an amazing goodbye show @ the Holocene the other night with Cynthia Nelson & the Non Stop Co Op. they 'came correct' and Kaia Wilson played an extremely charming set of songs that she kept saying she wrote when she was sixteen.

I am currently obsessed with poet Mei-Mei Brussenbruge, TC Boyle's 'Drop City', that '99 Problems' Jay-Z song or most specifically, the Mark Romanek video for that song, actually dancing at the 'Booty' party at Acme, Hanne Hukkleberg's record 'Little Things' and this British movie called 'Radio On' that Plexifilm is releasing on DVD very soon (the title of this entry is a paraphrase from the film) and 'Midnight Cowboy' which I just saw for the first time last night.

So, tonight I build a website or try to....dear friends, tell me what looks good and what doesn't....

The only real news is that I am working on a new story for this reading at Towne Lounge on Sunday night.

If in Portland, you should come out and hang out if you can because I think Garett Strickland does a real nice job of mixing literature & rock and roll and I am honored to be asked to be part of this series.

Besides that, I am just tying up loose ends before my first real vacation in I don't even know how long......