Inspiration Board: THE HUNT

Posted retroactively, because these were the faces that inspired me most.

Photos captured by @jrianbones, edits by me.

Mathieu Bleton And The Anatomy Of A Fall

You see now how we've missed the part where we turn around and fall up?

This glorious flight is performed by Mathieu Bleton. For now, that's all I know, but let's hope there's more to find and see.

Adele, Simply

If there is a common thread between many of the videos I have posted on this blog as of late, I think that thread would connect the following: one (count it: one) great idea, executed fully, and some good, clean video footage. And while I am not sure if this level of cleanliness and singular vision is running through my own work yet in quite the way I intend, I will continue to post videos to this digital inspiration board and film as much as my handheld camera can take until I figure it out. 

So then. Our next example.

Other things to note, while making the case for simplicity, is how delicious it is just to have a proper twirl? An idea is in there, somewhere, I feel it. Also that these digital layers might have been hokey, had they tried to be anything other than what they were. Which was layers. 

On Fairies And Other Forms Of Light

I've been thinking about light a lot lately. That bright, shiny stuff. What you can do with it, the different qualities it can have, how it bends. I've been thinking about simple lighting effects and how striking they can be, and how meaningful, like the times we build forts as children and huddle around just one flashlight. The rush that comes from a light shut off, quickly, without warning. The speed in which our eyes adjust to darkness. What it feels like to walk alone, outside, far away from the city, on a very dark night.  Candlelight. Streetlights. Headlights. Nightlights. 

I've also, for various reasons, been thinking about Peter Pan. And about magic. How we can transfer magic to an object, just by saying so. How telling someone, say, not to sit in a particular chair suddenly gives that chair a stoic, ominous quality, and also a pull. Now there is temptation to sit in a chair that you previously never knew existed. You are suddenly very aware of the chair, the room reorients around it. Only because someone said, "avoid that chair!"

In the case of Peter, or rather, Tinkerbell,  someone said, "this twinkling light is a fairy," and so it became a fairy. 

I've gone towards the light now (har har), and in doing so begin to put a pin in visuals where a particular kind of light makes a body appear both magical and strange. Look:

and here:

and then here again, and I don't know if it's a detour or if detours even really exist:

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll also admit that there was one other that I decided not to post, a video of a little girl spinning in a Cinderella dress, in the dark, under a street light. It's so dark everywhere else but where the light shines that it's hard to make out her head, only the dress and arms, and the film quality is poor enough that the images are washed to an almost-black-and-almost-white. And she not saying a word. I did not post it because, to be honest, it creeped me the fuck out. But I guess in a good way, because here I am, still thinking about it. Still, I think it better described than seen, so it can keep its poetry, and stay out of your nightmares. 

Janelle

The way this is shot is the argument for just standing up there and doing the thing. That's all I really have to say about it. I think it's beautiful and I think it's real, and I don't want to know if it's not. Watch it all the way through, even if you've seen it before, because it's not new, but it's still right. This is something with staying power. 

Sila Sveta, Digital/Physical

You'd be hard pressed lately to make it through a week, maybe even a single day, without running into the relevant (but, can I say it, tired? to me at least, it's right up there with talking about the weather) and passionately discussed issue of technology and how it is influencing our every move (often with a negative bent). 

No one's wrong. But what I find more interesting --than the conversation about how technological advances are just one more way in which millennials will ruin our weary, polluted world-- is the intersection of creativity in technology and in the arts. Again, some bad, and some good, but I think change is often the challenge an artist needs. Creativity begets more creativity, said Maya Angelou and a million other people, and it applies. 

Take, for instance, the below video. I like it as a conversation starter. Because it is beautiful, like something out of a dream, and a strange visual illusion, like the stairs that go up and down in a never ending circle. And here is my question. That is a gorgeous, human mover. Are you watching him? Is a harmony, between digital image and (a)live performance, achieved?

Listening to Ira Glass

Inspiration served to you in a snack-sized video that feels real real real and presents a much needed reminder to do the work and do a lot of it. Also isn't it great, the sound of his voice?

Inspiration Board: Femme Formulas

Thinking in shadows and strong silhouettes.

Have a Look (and a Listen!): Wintergatan Marble Machine

Okay okay. So my thoughts on this, during seconds 00:01-00:23 were something like "that's really pretty cool, but also a lot of work when you could just, you know, play the instrument." BUT THEN. The thoughts turned into "holy hell, it's a one man band!"

Either way, its pretty fun to watch, and catchy to boot. See what you think.

Marilyn: On Nightmares

She said, of Francisco Goya, "I know this man very well, we have the same dreams. I've had the same dreams since I was a child."

I've had this dream lately where life-in-the-dream-state appears to be normal, except for I know that something is off. And I'll lift up my shirt, or roll up the leg of my pants, and find that my body is turning into something else, something I don't recognize.  I'll wake up with a jolt, adrenaline racing, confused. I'm not sure if this is a dream or a nightmare, but I hate it regardless. I mention it because I can't seem to forget it, the fuzzy corners of it, and the sense that something perverse is hidden somewhere in the middle of it, which flavors the whole thing with an itchy, gruesome quality.

I mention it also because when I watch the below videos, I'm also not sure if I am watching a dream or a nightmare, and I wonder too about these fuzzy corners, and that long, drawn out ooohhhhhhhhhhhhh----

MILK

Well. This is stunning. If the theme of this week was running sprints, then I think perhaps this might be what happens at the end of the race.

Released in 2014, feast your eyes on the magical creatures of Gallim Dance in Zach Gold's remarkable film short:

Regardless of your real life abilities to digest lactose, DOES THAT OR DOES THAT NOT TASTE LIKE FREEDOM? Until it doesn’t.

Vera Ellen: Dance. Your. Heart. Out.

I can't stop thinking about that thing. That thing that happens when there is so much movement, and so little time, and what is being required of you, the dancer, is so big and so full that the only choice you have is just to get it the fuck out and trust that your body knows what to do, because you know that not only are you an artist but also that you are A Fucking Athlete and no one is going to stand there and tell you that you can't do something because you love, love, proving people wrong. And this moment will take the wind out of you but it will also feel, it is also, euphoric, and you, who maybe hates running, suddenly understand why people love marathons, because this is your marathon, except for that it is instead a series of sprints. One. After. Another.

This thing, this feeling, is maybe not so common these days, when we're all, me included, trying to do less, to make it seem easy, like it's not work at all. I think that's true about life too, not just dance. The working-without-making-it-look-like-work effect. Effortlessness and Expertise are your right and left hands, or that's the goal. It's my goal.

But sometimes, I am reminded that I like to just haul off and do the work with all the strength and the will I've got, and that sometimes, at least for me, that seems like the only way to get through it. You can't sustain this forever, this mode. Like I said, it's a series of sprints. My life, right now, is a series of sprints.

Which brings me to the following video, significant not only because this is from my early library, one of those precious dance scenes that set me on the path to get here, because I love this dance break. And when you are sprinting, you should often remind yourself exactly what it is that you love, and that is to say: why you are running in the first place.

BUT ALSO it fits the theme, because the sequence below is a full out sprint. A sprint that manages somehow to look effortless and like work all at the same time.

New goals?

Have a Listen: Djembefola

Contemplating my own heartbeat. Close your eyes and listen to this for a minute.

Nina Simone: On Anger

I have a complicated understanding of anger, in all its forms. Because I don't make a habit of yelling at people. I grew up in a home where practicality was a virtue and problems were solved via rational conversation whenever possible. And even though onstage I value those good old fashioned emotional extremes, I believe that, in life, anger past a certain degree, though sometimes exhilarating, is foolish. I believe that, unlike passion, or even competition, it can be a dangerous fuel, one that makes you forget who you are, who you love, what you love. It wreaks havoc on your true priorities and hides what you are really feeling. Hurt. Shame. Shock. Betrayal. Pain.

But here is the thing. I am a Mixed Race Black woman. I am a feminist. I work in the entertainment industry. And I live in this very real world.

So of course I am angry.

This anger I feel is not rage. It's not hate. It is generally less explosive in quality, quieter. In fact, though it exists, I don't believe it's really visible to an outside eye without some pretty persistent prodding. 

But it's visible in my work.

The legendary Nina Simone has been a frequent topic of conversation recently, after last year's release of the critically acclaimed "What Happened, Miss Simone?" and Cynthia Mort's upcoming film "Nina," with its hotly contested casting of Zoe Saldana in the title role. What keeps appearing in these conversations, somewhere around the third bullet point-- after first discussing her extraordinary talent and musical prowess, and next, her deep commitment to the Civil Rights Movement during the second half of her career-- is that Nina Simone was an angry, angry woman.

And while I can't support the violence that dotted Simone's career, here is where my relationship with anger gets complicated. Because she wasn't wrong. There is so much to be angry about a person can drown in it. Maybe she did. But she also did this. 

See what happened when Nina Simone, The High Priestess of Soul, got angry.

We should end on the following poem, by William Waring Cuney, which Simone set to music for a 1964 Carnegie Hall performance and served as the precursor to Four Women.

No Images

William Waring Cuney

She does not know

her beauty,

she thinks her brown body

has no glory.

If she could dance

naked

under palm trees

and see her image in the river,

she would know.

But there are no palm trees

on the street,

and dish water gives back

no images.

Inspiration Board: Eye Pretzels

Eye candy, brought to you by sunshine and shenanigans. 

via astridxvos

Sunday Morning, 1947; via Saul Leiter

via assemblynewyork

via takubeats

via muhkins

via axeloswith

via alexa chung

via jonathanwgardner

via seenthis

via outdoorvoices

via therealpeterlindbergh

Cyd Charisse: Putting the Gold in Golden Age

Baby, if I'm your White Rabbit for the day then you are in for a treat that has nothing to do with the Mad Hatter, although there are men and hats involved. Follow this tail to freedom because I am about to send you down a virtual hole of Cyd Charisse goodness that makes me reminisce for a time when there was such a thing as the "resident MGM ballet dancer" and underlines this fact that sits at the center of what I love about dance:

Nobody can do you like you can.

So cheers to style, to having a stamp, to being a chameleon without ever losing yourself, and to legs. Cheers to legs.

And I'll end by quoting Fred Astaire: "That Cyd! When you've danced with her you stay danced with."

Enjoy.

Have a Look: Francine Christophe, A Piece of Chocolate, and the Remarkable Strength of Humanity

I feel that it is impossible to write on this topic. It does not feel like my place, nor my right. I'm not sure if I am even capable of articulating the incredible heaviness, the sensation that we are all lost, and hopeless in our lostness- and I think this is called despair- that I experience when I think about this moment in history. It exhausts my soul. And if this is how I feel, it can be only a tiny fraction, if that, of the weariness felt by the survivors of this cruelty.

It is good, then, that the following video needs no introduction. It is the most beautiful thing I have seen in a long time, and the sound of her voice, the power of her storytelling, and the ripple effect of one small, good deed in the face of incomprehensible evil-- these things are nothing short of miraculous to me.

I am reminded that everything, everything counts.

This is just one of an incredible series of interviews that are part of the #HUMAN series. Together they make up three full length films. To see these and other excerpts, check out the official YouTube channel here.

Barbra Streisand: For The Love of All That is Good and Glamorous

The first time I watched this film, I had to rewind the intro and watch it again, because it was so delicious. Watching it now feels like a missive to wrap up in something soft and walk the streets of New York, cherishing all that is unique and idiosyncratic and beautiful and sad-- these things that, added up, make for a special brand of swag that I think you can only grow into with your old, old soul. 

And there's this. An empty theatre is a holy ground and I don't think they called that lone light down front a ghost light on accident. There's a river of good energy in there.

Have a Look: Batsheva and Bob Dylan

There is a game that is played, in different variations, wherein two competitors are given a set of significantly dissimilar objects, people, or ideas, and must race to connect them to a center point, usually via Wikipedia. Clementines and the Empire State Building. An Achilles Tendon and Jennifer Aniston. The color Magenta and the River Nile. 

I think, in certain cases, you'd be allowed to modify the game and use your imagination in lieu of a computer. Let's try it now?

One:

There's not much to say about the first video clip except that it makes me BELIEVE. 

Enjoy this electricity: 

Two:

The next thing for your eyeballs is a clip of Andy Warhol's 1965 Screen Test of Bob Dylan. Maybe what's really got my wheels, once I finish taking this all in, is the question of where exactly we go when we know we're being only-sort-of watched? It's a tricky thing to record someone in their natural state, but humans are adaptable, this is a fact. How long then before we forget that we are not alone?

And also, to bookend the week, see how much actually gets done in the pursuit of doing nothing!

...while we're on the topic of ANDY W. and his Screen Tests, we might as well (read: should definitely) watch this:

Start your engines and connect these dots why don't you? I think I will too. 

Sam Cooke: On Making It Look Easy

Yancy here, with a present for you. This was shared with me by a stranger in the night, a human with an incredibly chill vibe, so it fits. And I'm a Louisiana girl, so it fits twice. To start this week off right, I give you easiness, brought to you by Sam Cooke. And, as it applies to performing at a high level in all artistic mediums, this has me wondering. Is the trick learning how to make it look easy, or is the trick that it was really easy to begin with, and we've all been overthinking it?

Happy Monday.