On waiting too long
Content Warning: I briefly talk about my depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, suicidal ideation, and delusions. Just a few lines really.
For a number of weeks, I've want to apply for the Internet Phone Book, which is "a physical directory for exploring the vast poetic web. It features the personal websites of hundreds of designers, developers, writers, curators, and educators." Created by Elliott Cost and Kristoffer, the latter who runs Naive Weekly, a wonderful Sunday newsletter delivering sites and open calls from the poetic web.
I'd submit this website, www.eileenramos.com, but right now I don't feel like it's built out enough. Too few blog posts, no projects in this iteration, and I still need to build my open calls and close calls prompt pages. The book will debut on September 20th, at Naive Yearly in Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia. So that doesn't leave me much time to submit, though at this moment, the form is still up.
This is my tendency--to work on something or even put it off 'cuz it's too imperfect and not enough, and just not submit it and miss the deadline. I've done these with way too many ideal jobs & internships, cool classes, wonderful open calls, art shows, mail art, etc. I don't want to do that again. I should just go for it, right? If they say no, that's okay, at least I tried. And sometimes I'd apply and get surprised by a "yes". I shouldn't self-reject myself, maybe my site as is, is more than enough. It doesn't and shouldn't be lofty, I don't think that's what poetic web is all about at all.
A few months ago I had a short, but amazing streak of applying everyday. And I believe I scored mostly yesses! I got into a chapbook, an art show, a sweet rejection but an auto-yes for next year's gallery exhibit, a class, zines. It astounded me how often I got accepted. So I'm gonna submit everyday again. Here are some stipulations:
- it must be an opportunity you absolutely want
- it needs to be something that expands you, whether creatively, financially, emotionally, experimentally, etc.
- you need to submit something or apply
- it can be something you mail in, like a letter or mail art
- it can be for a workshop, class, zine open call, exhibition, vending, a pitch, exchange, etc.
- you can submit it after midnight for it to count as the same day as long as you've been awake the whole time
- it's okay to miss a day, as long you've made some progress on the thing you want to submit or apply for
I registered for three classes, one day before yesterday, then yesterday and another today. First up, at Millennium Film Workshop in Brooklyn:
āSunday, August 18, 2024 ā 2:00pm-5:00pm ā WORKSHOP: VISUAL POETRY Led by Anna Doyle
August 18, 2024, 2:00-5:00 PM email info@millenniumfilm.org to register $15 Suggested Donation
THEORY: My conviction that experimental film is poetic by nature. In this workshop, we will learn a few principles of film poetry ā how to use poems as an inspiration and script to your film? How did the French Surrealists, Pasolini or the American New York experimental filmmakers do it? Poetry Films are not illustrated poems, nor are they texts combined with moving images. How does one visualize the malleability of poetic language and text into the materiality of film? We will watch a few examples of film poems and analyze their effects.
Practical workshop: āEXQUISITE CORPSEā The "exquisite corpse" game was invented by the Surrealists. First used by writers, it consisted in writing a surreal sentence without knowing what the previous player wrote. Each player had to write a subject, verb and then complement. The process was then applied to drawing. We will apply it to film.
Bring a line of a poem you like! It can be your own creation or one of your favorite poems ā each of you will try and translate the linguistic effects of the line of poem into film, using your smartphone or personal camera, by exploring the visual and acoustic environment of the neighborhood!
Do you want to use objects as a metaphor, or else shapes, faces, symbols, colors, reflections? Do you want to express contradiction, surprise, beauty, choc, or melancholy? Then we will discuss the material and I will gather it to combine it into a collective film-poem -- I will send to you once edited! -Anna Doyleā
It sounds amazing. Iāve been wanting to make a poetry film and this feels very approachable as as complete novice. Plus sheās part of the Plantasia Exhibit running at the workshop:
āMillennium Film Workshop presents the second annual screening and gallery exhibition, PLANTASIA, curated by Brooklyn artist Holly Overton. Whereas the first installment focused on works by artists who use the outdoors as a tool, PLANTASIA VOL 2: WORLD WIDE WEB TAKEOVER visualizes an internet landscape, from the expansive cloud to the world wide web and all of the bugs caught in it.
The films, paintings and sculpture in this show feature many interpretations of interconnectivity, whether viewed as omnipresent and vast or felt as isolating and distorted. Consider the dialogue between a womanās search for digital and physical belonging in Anna Doyleās 16mm to digital short film, GOD BLESS I CLOUD, and the countlessly layered abstracted, organic forms in Kate Alboreoās acrylic on canvas, Heavy Toward Each Other.
In PLANTASIA VOL. 2, Overton asks how far we can extend ourselves into the digital world, and what would it look like if we could see where each piece of us goes. Installed as floating in the air, Janelle Kroneās MidJourney Collab #15 and #4 severed head paintings envision an answer. While Alanna Rebbeckās short film, an Earthly Expedition, captures Google Street Viewās camera as a sentient being along the Colorado River, Jessica Scottās Snapshots from Terra Nullius viewfinders on pedestals reveal a close-up of mold landscapes at various moments in their life cycleā¦ So is the internet a digital mycelium?ā
More details can be found here.
The next workshop Iāll be attending will be online with the Echo Park Film Center Collective, 8/28 7PM ET, Haiku You. The EPFC Collective is āa diverse group of artists, activists and educators dedicated to sharing film/video resources, partnering with arts, education and social justice organizations, and continuing to support the creation and exhibition of heartfelt, handmade movies around the world.ā They have a lot of cool screenings and workshops so Iām grateful they made this one available to everyone online.
āIn this workshop for poets and filmmakers, weāll use the natural wonders of the season as our inspiration to write and share haikus and then turn them into experimental short films. Free event!ā You can register by emailing the address given in the event page above. I really like that this is monthly, it gives me a chance to refine my skills and storytelling. I hope I like it enough to continue attending but I have a feeling I will.
The next class Iāll be taking is on October 26th, Saturday with Mita Mahato at the Poets House in NYC. Mahato was a fantastic teacher when I took her online workshop with Common Area Maintenance. CAM is āa shared art studio and gallery, founded and propelled by artists, whose purpose is to cultivate an inclusive, affordable, and supportive creative community through resource-sharing, collaboration, curatorial events, and spontaneous karaoke parties.ā Iād love to attend an event there one day for sure.
We brought food packaging and used it for our poetry comics which was later compiled in a risograph zine. So cool! One of the best workshops I ever took, online or IRL. I canāt wait to finally meet her and I know the workshop will be ten times better in person. Poets House is āa comfortable, accessible place for poetryāa library and meeting place which invites poets and the public to step into the living tradition of poetry. Poets House seeks to document the wealth and diversity of modern poetry, to stimulate dialogue on issues of poetry in culture, and to cultivate a wider audience for the art.ā
You can access the library for FREE. Their open hours are: Tuesday to Friday, 11am-7pm & Saturday, 11am-6pm. I havenāt visited in a number of years and Iām excited to return. I definitely want to donate the poem comic zine I made, I think itād be super cool to say Iām on their shelves hehe.
Mahatoās workshop is The Poetry of Paper:
āInstead of approaching the page as an emptiness to be filled with words, what if we perceived its texture, weight, size, or color as just as fundamental as words to the meaning and impact of a poem? Concrete poetry, erasure poetry, collage poetry, and poetry comix are all forms that depend upon the materiality of paper to contribute to a poemās making and meaning. But even in the most conventional sonnets or sestinas, we feel the impact of a pageās surface as we pause in the āblankā between stanzas or navigate an enjambed line. In this 3-hour workshop, we will feel into the poetry of paperāboth drawing out written poetryās visual and material aspects and experimenting with making visual forms that will tickle, sharpen, and possibly corrupt your creative habits.ā
I canāt wait, this sounds so lovely and physical. I know itāll open my mind to the further possibilities of the page and my creativity.
You can actually pre-order her Poetry Comics book Artic Play now at The 3rd Thing:
āArctic Play is a drama, a dirge, an expedition log, a series of poetic experiments, a comic book. Mapping an Arctic imaginary of beings and landforms onto a shifting stage of woven and layered papers, Mita Mahato conjures geographic and creative uncertainty as the necessary condition for navigating the climate crisis and its sorrows.ā
Iām gonna order it soon, canāt wait for it to arrive. I love her work so much. You can check out an excerpt at Ecotone: Whale Fall Sequences 1, 2, 3. Itās a moving and layered read that is unlike anything I ever read. I love how she utilizes space and color and the grid.
I spent much of my life in standstill, stagnant, stasis. Not pushing myself to try things or talk to folks outside my circle. I didnāt believe in myself. I actually absolutely loathed my being and more. I was severely depressed which Iām still currently treating, along with my anxiety disorder and bipolar disorder. I just slept the day away in order to stay up all night to not interact with anyone. For years. I get sad when I think of those days, but Iām a lot better now. More self-assured, more joyful, more optimistic of whatās to come. I strive to do things that wouldāve made my younger selves excited and be like āI get to do that?!ā Iām at an age I never pictured myself as, for many years running, and itās only been a few times where I could see myself as old and gray. But I have a feeling Iāll have that vision more and more as time goes by.
Every opportunity and class and event and show and so on, is a chance to see how Iāll grow. Itās fun and wonderful to figure out what Iāll make in the next experiment. As long as itās something I wouldāve made outside of the prompt, itās well worth it. Iām grateful I have the time and space and money and resources and ability to do all of the above. Iām lucky beyond measure and I donāt want to be someone who misspent their blessings and potential. Iāve waited too long in a number of ways, but honestly, I feel like Iām on time. Iām a late bloomer through and through, but Iām way more grateful to achieve things at a later age than I wouldāve if I did it āon timeā. Because thatās whatās expected. But doing it on my own timeline, in the way I want to, is such a great gift. I donāt want to take who I am for granted. I love who Iāve become and even the little one I was back then. She got me here. She still tried. Even when she thought she ended the world, she tried to save it anyway. And no matter who I will be or what the future holds, Iāll never be able to take that away from her. Iām getting teary-eyed realizing that hehe.
Man, I love blogging lol.