A Trip Down Memory Lane

It's April 12, 2021.

I am nearly a decade older since I started this thing (is blogspot even a thing? I guess blogger is now the preferred nomenclature).

Have I crossed the line into adulthood since all these innocent musings and tumblr-esque curations?

The answer:

If anything, the near-decade that has gone by has done nothing but confirm my long-held suspicion...

...that adults are nothing more than children pretending to be "adults".

If anything, the near-decade that has gone by has revealed that the most important aspect of life is to maintain that state of being the adults refer to as "child-like":

Imaginative. Curious. Always aware. Always playful.

To maintain this state-of-being is to preserve one's soul (the soul exists, by the way). To sacrifice it on behalf of "growing up" is to become a walking corpse.

The near-decade that has gone by, in addition to the years that preceded it, and most likely to the years to come, has taught me what it really means to inhere in here.

Be awareness. Be play.

django unchained

qt has never disappointed me. he is my main sensei. his latest film is as much of a cinematic experience as all his previous work. not many other filmmakers have that ability. here's a great interview with charlie rose about the film.

happy 2013

whoa

whoa. some guy killed about 27 people today at an elementary school in connecticut, 20 of them five-to-ten years of age. mass shootings are always terrible but this one is especially sinister. it seems that the target was children, specifically.

pacific rim

i fucking love giant monster movies. the first one i saw is jurassic park when i was about 5 or 6. i remember being completely terrified every time i watched it, lying on my stomach inches away from the 2' x 2' tv-vcr combo in the barely furnished family room. the room has since become the house's display-dining room. that one nobody eats in.

favorite movies

I've been thinking a lot recently about my favorite films.

The new Sight and Sound movie lists came out a while back. I never knew the criteria for those. How did each person choose? To someone like me – movie enthusiast and aspiring filmmaker – what does it mean to have a favorite film? Is it something I consider to be a great work of art? Or is it something I can watch over and over again, that maintains the same level of enjoyment every time? It could be a movie that influenced the way I look at films and filmmaking and storytelling as I pursue my career, or it could be something that just rocked the way I look at the world. Maybe it just something that's nothing but deep sentimental value.

plato on politics

"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber."

- plato

editing

I forgot how fucking hard movie editing is. It literally is the grammar and style of the filmmaking language, so you could imagine the vast complexities and endless permutations one encounters. I have been in the editing stage of my thesis film for the past several months, the main reason for my lack of entries among other things. I've found these pieces of information useful.

an intelligent design

Why can't this be the mysterious way God put Man on Earth?

limping

FLW

i should've posted this months ago.

"Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change."

- f. l. wright

important civilizations

"In general, important civilizations start with a rigid and superstitious system, gradually relaxed, and leading, at a certain stage, to a period of brilliant genius, while the good of the old tradition remains and the evil inherent in its dissolution has not yet developed. But as the evil unfolds, it leads to anarchy, thence, inevitably, to a new tyranny, producing a new synthesis secured by a new system of dogma."

- b. russell

graduation day

i graduated college today. and wednesday. well i actually graduated in december but i took part in the official ceremony today. and wednesday. the last four years changed the trajectory of my being. the people i've grown close to have influenced me in ways that i never would've anticipated. and i feel so lucky to have developed my perspective in the greatest city in the world. im gonna miss it all dearly.

i think the most important thing i learned can be summed up by an mf doom line (or ben folds, depending on what you're into): the more you know, the more you know that you don't know shit.



now on to new adventures.

just a ride

RIP MCA

i usually don't get sad when musicians die, but MCA was a personal hero of mine, ever since the first time i listened to the beastie boys as an awkward brown kid in middle school. in a weird way, i looked up to him, ad-rock, and mike d as older brothers. they were just so fuckin cool. id scour the net to watch interviews and live performances. id download all their shit, and then all the shit that they were influenced by, and then all the shit that those influences were influenced by. in high school, id make videos with my friends that pretty much ripped them off. in college, the first internship i ever got was for MCA's company, oscilloscope laboratories. i learned a lot there. fuck i cant believe he's dead.

my top 5 favorite beastie boys, uh, things...

offscreen sound

a film exercise from my sophomore year at nyu. shot on 16mm film. i was too poor to get the film transferred digitally so i just recorded the projection with a dv cam. lo-fi. way cool.

my good friend steve balasta acted in it. he has a really interesting blog that's worth checking out. it really makes ya think about shit: http://stevenbalasta.wordpress.com/

you can fly

my brother and i would watch this vhs a lot when we were younger.

bbng

very cool jazz/hip-hop group from toronto. free downloads at their site: badbadnotgood. there's a lot of treasure on the internet. you just gotta dig.

idealism

"Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist." - g. carlin

the hour of the star

i'm currently reading the 'the hour of the star' by clarice lispector. i'm only a third of the way through. pretty sweet read so far. some quotes i like:

a) "When she was a little girl, her aunt, in order to frighten her, insisted that the vampire –– the one that sucks human blood by biting its victims in the flesh of the neck –– casts no reflection in the mirror. She reckoned that it might not be such a bad thing being a vampire, for the blood would add a touch of pink to her sallow complexion."

space