fraidy-cat
feel like one, sometimes
split shot color table
(intense cat track on there – yeesh…)
currently hosting worries about work – this work – getting snatched up off these here internets
i’m aware that there is risk involved
and how fear of risk, mistakes, and failure can be stalling
what’s happening here feels too important not to do, or let fear get in the way of
so…
to myself, and anyone else who’s landed here:
go for it!
just, please don’t take my things…
thanks!
(p.s. something might be happening over here, too)
ok, bye bye… !
“you’ve got the spirit…”
‘Streethawk: a Seduction’ - Destroyer (2001/Misra) design/layout by Rob Carmichael
been meditating through this over the last week. woof. digging it. each time i finish a song on this album i’m convinced it’s the best there is until the next song kicks off and replaces the one before.
sat at the desk yesterday to leave breadcrumbs for a photoshop process i’d learned during another project — one i’d started toward the beginning of the pandemic lockdown. back when having a passion project was a fun distraction from what was supposed to be a few weeks of staying at home. psych!
felt i could handle music while i worked since it was pretty easy stuff. chose Destroyer's ‘Streethawk: a Seduction’ as my dance partner and have yet to be disappointed with that decision. it sends me every time. f--k, this is good.
tossed me into a mood to revisit a couple albums that have been absent from the rotation for a little while:
'Primal Dap' - Secret Sidewalk (2019/Primal Dap Sound) photography by K2 WCF_Lords Krew, layout by Justin Boo
‘tamer animals’ - Other Lives (2011/TBD) art direction by Jesse Tabish and Jonathon Mooney, cover artwork “Casey and Bri. Oklahoma Summer Night” by Benjamin Lee Sperry, design by Ellen Wakayama
Secret Sidewalk’s ‘Primal Dap’ accompanied my desk clean this morning. top notch. and ‘tamer animals’ was a pleasant reunion Other Lives and their country western twang and moody stylings. pretty good. pretty… pretty… pretty good.
also trying to listen to more new music — or, to be more specific, music i haven’t yet listened to. a lot of the albums i’ve got lined up are decades old, but completely new to me. when i start a new album i need to listen to it several times — rooter to tooter — to get a sense of things and identify why i do, or don’t, like something. it can be tough to commit to, but i appreciate what that practice can yield. now that i have more availability to dig in i feel like i’m slowly chipping away at that goal.
‘Hejira’ - Joni Mitchell (1976/ Elektra/Asylum) art direction by Glen Christensen, design by Joni Mitchell, photography by Joel Bernstein, Norman Seeff, and Keith Williamson
Joni Mitchell’s ‘Hejira’ is the current endeavor. i’ve listened once so far, still trying to recover so that i can get back on. admittedly, i sorta slept through the first seven songs. then ‘Blue Motel Room’ pulled up a chair… and ‘Refuge of the Roads’ invited herself in and scuffed up my insides. this is why i can’t have nice things… ‘sgood. i’m nervously excited to start it up again, but in no rush.
this past Saturday i dropped by Dave’s to browse through records. didn’t find what i was looking for (Destroyer’s ‘…Seduction’), but picked up a few albums i thought would be interesting — one fantastic cover — and a few freebies that should be good. Dave and i were chatting and landed on streaming services. i mentioned being a ‘tweener going from cassettes to CDs to mp3s and now streaming. i used to really f--k with CDs. at that comment Dave turned to a box behind him, pulled out a short-stack of jewel cases, and set them on the counter. “would you listen to these? you can take ‘em if you want ‘em.” a collector never turns down a freebie and now i’ve got 11 new CDs to listen to, and one to consider. i don’t know about you Robin Thicke…
in the stack of CDs from Dave’s there’s Sade, Herbie Hancock, Gil Scott-Heron, Donna Summer! these’ll be fun to go through
‘Bonnie Raitt’ - Bonnie Raitt (1971/Warner Bros.)
‘The Band’ - The Band (1969/Capitol) design by Bob Cato
‘You Gotta Walk It Like You Talk It (Or You’ll Lose That Beat)’ - Donald Fagen, Walter Becker, Denny Dias (1978/Visa) art direction and design by Joseph Hosey and Murray Brenman, cover concept by Murray Brenman, photography by Joseph Hosey
the records i picked up were not what i’d come looking for, but also not absolutely random choices.
i really enjoy Bonnie Raitt’s hits like ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’ and ‘Silver Lining’, but i’m not familiar with her origin story. excited to take that one for a spin. The Band is another that i’m not at all familiar with; but i really like ‘Up On Cripple Creek’. and as a late-onset Steely Dan fan, i couldn’t pass up this intriguing collaborative effort by Steely founders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker.
there’s one other that i got in this bunch — the one with the fantastic cover — but i want to take proper photos of it. i also want to get this entry off my desk, so i’m trying to move at a quick-ish pace that doesn’t quite allow for an impromptu album cover photoshoot. and trust, it deserves it.
there are notes scattered about in my journal (the other one) on the music i’ve been listening to. i’ve found it helpful to jot down thoughts while i listen, and this space can help capture the ephemeral participants in the creative process.
this page was on the stoop when i went out to water this morning. it had been stuck in the lavender and turns out Sam brought it up last night.
went out this morning to water the yard: garden patch, lavender, clover, the grassy hill. it was colder than i expected and my hands felt numb after several minutes holding the dripping spray nozzle. when i came back up the steps i saw a piece of paper with typing on it — looked like a loose sheet from a book. the sheet was tucked beneath a glass container on our stoop, which i thought was strange, but as it turns out Sam had put it there after picking it out of the garden patch yesterday.
just wanted to leave it here — a token from the morning.
anyway! long story short, i needed to feather the selection border in order to mask out hair in Photoshop. make the selection — marquee tool, polygonal lasso, pick your poison — feather the boundary starting at around 5 pixels and make a mask. ba-da-bing i’m sure i’ll realize it’s more complicated than that and fill in the gaps later…
turning my attention now to some bits that i’m having a lot of feelings around ahead of getting into: fear, discomfort, anxiety. i’m reserving judgement and holding space and curiosity for my feelings. this is a door that i opened, and resolution that i’ve sought out. i am confident that i can stick to the conviction and authenticity of my intent.
it’ll be ok. i will be ok.
“…don’t lose the feeling”
progress in work
used crayola markers for this. nice to relieve fear of using expensive or unfamiliar tools while keeping room for experimentation.
i arrived at last night’s desk appointment with every intention to continue working on the inaugural self-addressed online entry in what is my experimentation in documenting process. imagining there must be a simpler statement than that, but i need to continue working to get more familiar with what i need, and want, this space to be. this is for me and i will make it what i need and want it to be. i will make notes as it evolves, takes and changes shape. no rush to define or draw conclusions, this process is the work.
anyway… last night was also when this 10-year-old ride or die desktop announced its contribution to procrastination. it had, in fact, very little remaining storage space and could no longer execute the memory heavy tasks at hand. this is the point i’ve reached with most of my tech: balancing on the knife’s edge of obsolescence.
so, in an ongoing effort to keep the motor running, i faced months-old procrastination on another front and began revising the weather with clouds and sync settings. this unplanned computer snow day provided a getaway to escape the near crippling anxiety brought on by sitting down in front of the computer to do this right now.
but i stuck around and watched Normal People while i waited.
the series creeped completely under my radar earlier this year, and i had been reminded of it recently. four episodes into settling comfortable into my virtual waiting room i realized i’d been hooked. the troller was kind enough to bring me in 12 episodes later and i was able to come back to my desk this morning.
i rarely start a series with the intention of binging. sometimes i’ll watch a few episodes back-to-back, but not so much season-to-season. shorter half hour shows are a little harder to portion, especially when they’re good. this show is good. to prevent disrupting sam, who was working in the other room; i wore headphones. that made a huge difference i think. the sound design was top notch. and, because i watched it all in one go, i picked up on a few repeated elements: connell’s chain, hitched breathing, fringe, and marianne’s uncanny resemblance to anne hathaway and charlotte gainsbourg.
i like how this combo came out with the vector graphic sign board. used photoshop to put the GIFs together with different layers. hot tip: remember that files intended to be used for GIFs can be either 8-bit or 16-bit color, but not 32-bit in order to save/export as GIF.
among other things i also took notice of how often the term “struggle” was used. connell said it several times in the context of self critique, which is likely when i became aware of it. in part due to the frequency of use and also recognizing an internalization of that word. turning inward and thinking about what i struggle with, fear stands out most.
fear of failure stays right up there among the usual suspects. but this moment of fear was overwritten by excitement to make something for myself pure and simple. i wanted to start out making “under construction” type graphics between going “live” and actually writing something. maybe that’s because announcing something is “under construction” or a “work in progress” is a comfortable buffer between thinking and producing. however, it did provide an opportunity to test out some stuff with GIFs while tipping my hat to the OG internet days when i’d made geocities and anglefire websites that started out as a host for some “under construction” GIF. I kinda wanted to re-live the excitement of announcing, “just about, but not yet,” even if it was only to myself.
little bug model made from toothpicks, some card stock, and scotch tape. super helpful for visualizing tricky shadows.
the first GIF i tested out, the blinking sandwich board one, was made almost entirely in the computer except for figuring out the shadows. i had a hard time visualizing the shadows in photoshop alone, and i don’t have access to the 3D modeling software i used when i worked in architecture which would have made quicker work of it.
i started out in photoshop creating a silhouette for the sign the way i’d learned in architecture school when making shadows for entourage/scalies/people in renderings to give them dimension. but i was struggling with the sandwich board type legs and couldn’t visualize it when using a silhouette made from an outline of the image itself. sam passed by my desk and i asked him for help, not something i’m so used to doing. i don’t know why, pride maybe? pride probably… we talked about how he would approach it and tried this and that: distortion, perspective, warp, all that. we went around some quick sketches, but i didn’t really see it yet. i remembered we had toothpicks in our kitchen junk drawer and made a bug model which helped a lot.
i am pleased with the GIFs and the process making them. i am really, really happy i asked for help; and that i was patient with myself and sam when i had a hard time seeing things the way he did. this process helped me remember resources are in all shapes and that i’ll need to pick up more short-cuts in illustrator and photoshop in order to get faster at some of the digital stuff.
even with a bit of struggle, things turned out.