Yesterday I did something I've been putting off ever since I finished my BA: I rented a space in an art studio. I've been struggling to live amongst the debris that I brought back from the university studio, which is not exactly helping me to work - or live - coherently. Also I need somewhere I can be messy while I make work - I realised the only reason I felt able to make the video featured in my previous post is that there was no one else in the house for a couple of days, so I didn't have to worry about getting in anyone's way.
I think I'm not the only one who felt this, as the business card for the studio was strategically left in my room, with a note suggesting I call up about it, since the rent looks so reasonable. So eventually I got round to it, made an appointment to view the space, which happened yesterday, and decided to sign up. The studio is about half an hour away by car, but it's quite a pleasant drive and somewhere I do go to anyway. It's on a site that I think may have originally been some kind of takeaway, but I'm not sure. The studios are little cubicle type rooms in a building which has a transparent (glass or plastic?) roof. Apparently I can do pretty much anything I want with the space, including adding some insulation round the gap between the cubicle walls and the ceiling, in order to make the electric heater - which I don't have yet, but will most certainly need to obtain - a bit more efficient. The electricity is on a meter, so I'll have to see how that works out. There was another girl signing her contract at the same time as me, who seems very nice - her name's Anna and she makes leather accessories.
I am quite excited to be able to move some stuff over there, and was going to make a start on that this afternoon since I finished work at 1, but since it kept snowing steadily all morning, I decided it wasn't worth the risk of getting stranded. Instead, I made a start on sorting out what I actually want to take the the space, what should stay here, and what really needs to go altogether. I'll hopefully be able to go over there again on Saturday, so I'll update on progress when it happens.
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Sunday, 10 January 2010
1st - 10th January, 2010
Anyone who's ever watched a particularly sad film or TV show with me is likely to have encountered a particular problem I have: not only do I have a tendency to cry copiously at fictitious sadness, I also, if it's hit me in the right (or, as the case may be, wrong) way, find it very hard to stop once I've started. The first example I can remember of this was when Aslan gets killed in the BBC TV version of The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. I remember crying so much that I refused ever to watch the show again, and therefore didn't find out that he comes back to life.
So I'd been dreading the final episode of Doctor Who featuring the 10th Doctor, the marvellous David Tennant, ever since I heard he was, inevitably, going to be leaving. Not just because I would be sad to see him go, but because 'new' (2005 and onwards) Doctor Who seems to be particularly adept at causing my issues with over enthusiastic tear-ducts to manifest. I don't know what this says about me, or about the show, and while I could get into my thoughts on that here, I'm not going to. Given the fact that I was genuinely dreading the flood of tears that were almost certain to ensue, a sensisble person might suggest that I could have simply avoided seeing it. However, I've always had an obsessive personality, and a tendency to get excessively emotionally involved with fictitious events, but a compulsion to partake of them nonetheless.
Anyway, when I woke up on New Year's Day, (it might even have still been technically morning) I felt the urge to turn my dread into something. So I made a video self-portrait of sorts, which is finally finished, and can (with any luck) be seen below:
I spent around 6 hours on New Years Day constucting and filming the video, making a lot of mess and a smaller scale domestic flood along the way, and was very glad that I finally felt driven to do make a video, as it had been several months since I'd done anything of the sort. I edited the video and recorded the soundtrack (starting with the very haphazard approximation of the theme tune) over the following week.
As footnote to the video, I thought I'd share the rather unfortunate situation in which I found myself when I actually came to watch The End Of Time - Part 2, on the evening of January 1st, 2010:
Since I was alone in the house for a few days, with everyone being elsewhere for New Year, I'd decided the previous day that I didn't particularly want to watch the demise of the 10th Doctor on my own, as (I hoped, anyway) I'd be more likely to cheer up if I was with someone else. So I arranged to watch with my friend Joe, having warned him that I was almost certain to cry... he assured me that the same was true of him, so this would not be a problem. However, what I didn't know was that the young lady he lives with (who is not a Who fan) was due to be having a family gathering that evening... and that the arrival of her guests would co-incide perfectly with the painfully drawn out pre-regeneration sequence, which, by the way, I found even more upsetting than I had predicted. So I made a brilliant impression on several people I'd never met before, by being introduced to them with tears streaming down my face (Joe, as I had feared, managed to get away with the normal person's response to sad fictional events, which consisted of wiping away a couple of tears and saying 'that was really sad'). I did try to explain that 'I'm not normally like thiiiiiiiis' but I don't think I pulled it off. And, as I feared, however hard I tried I was unable to make the tears stop. While this is standard fare for me, and my family have had to get used to the need for mops and buckets to be stategically placed before I can even think about watching or reading anything sad, I was somewhat embarrassed to be seen in that state by strangers assembled for a festive occasion!
Since making the video, I have stumbled across various videos on youtube of various wives crying at the end of various films. If I were married, I'm sure this would be my fate.
Oh, and if anyone has managed to read this far, and is worried that this entire blog will be about Doctor Who, well, I don't intend for that to be the case. Although having seen the trailer for the next series, I am getting a little bit too excited...
So I'd been dreading the final episode of Doctor Who featuring the 10th Doctor, the marvellous David Tennant, ever since I heard he was, inevitably, going to be leaving. Not just because I would be sad to see him go, but because 'new' (2005 and onwards) Doctor Who seems to be particularly adept at causing my issues with over enthusiastic tear-ducts to manifest. I don't know what this says about me, or about the show, and while I could get into my thoughts on that here, I'm not going to. Given the fact that I was genuinely dreading the flood of tears that were almost certain to ensue, a sensisble person might suggest that I could have simply avoided seeing it. However, I've always had an obsessive personality, and a tendency to get excessively emotionally involved with fictitious events, but a compulsion to partake of them nonetheless.
Anyway, when I woke up on New Year's Day, (it might even have still been technically morning) I felt the urge to turn my dread into something. So I made a video self-portrait of sorts, which is finally finished, and can (with any luck) be seen below:
I spent around 6 hours on New Years Day constucting and filming the video, making a lot of mess and a smaller scale domestic flood along the way, and was very glad that I finally felt driven to do make a video, as it had been several months since I'd done anything of the sort. I edited the video and recorded the soundtrack (starting with the very haphazard approximation of the theme tune) over the following week.
As footnote to the video, I thought I'd share the rather unfortunate situation in which I found myself when I actually came to watch The End Of Time - Part 2, on the evening of January 1st, 2010:
Since I was alone in the house for a few days, with everyone being elsewhere for New Year, I'd decided the previous day that I didn't particularly want to watch the demise of the 10th Doctor on my own, as (I hoped, anyway) I'd be more likely to cheer up if I was with someone else. So I arranged to watch with my friend Joe, having warned him that I was almost certain to cry... he assured me that the same was true of him, so this would not be a problem. However, what I didn't know was that the young lady he lives with (who is not a Who fan) was due to be having a family gathering that evening... and that the arrival of her guests would co-incide perfectly with the painfully drawn out pre-regeneration sequence, which, by the way, I found even more upsetting than I had predicted. So I made a brilliant impression on several people I'd never met before, by being introduced to them with tears streaming down my face (Joe, as I had feared, managed to get away with the normal person's response to sad fictional events, which consisted of wiping away a couple of tears and saying 'that was really sad'). I did try to explain that 'I'm not normally like thiiiiiiiis' but I don't think I pulled it off. And, as I feared, however hard I tried I was unable to make the tears stop. While this is standard fare for me, and my family have had to get used to the need for mops and buckets to be stategically placed before I can even think about watching or reading anything sad, I was somewhat embarrassed to be seen in that state by strangers assembled for a festive occasion!
Since making the video, I have stumbled across various videos on youtube of various wives crying at the end of various films. If I were married, I'm sure this would be my fate.
Oh, and if anyone has managed to read this far, and is worried that this entire blog will be about Doctor Who, well, I don't intend for that to be the case. Although having seen the trailer for the next series, I am getting a little bit too excited...
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