On a total and completely seperate note:

I love this poem: 

Adapted from Neruda's "Que dispierte el lenador"

by Allen Ginsberg

VI

Peace for all twilights to come,
peace for the bridge, peace for the wine,
peace for the letters that look for me
and pump in my blood tangled
with earth and love's old chant,
peace for the city in the morning
when bread wakes up,
peace for Mississippi, the river of roots,
peace for my brother's shirt,
peace in the book like an airmail stamp,
peace for the great Kolkhoz of Kiev,
peace for the ashes of these dead
and those other dead, peace for the black
iron of Brooklyn, peace for the letter carrier
going from house to house like the day,
peace for the choreographer shrieking
thru a funnel of honeysuckle vines,
peace to my right hand
that only wants to write Rosario,
peace for the Bolivian, secret as a lump of tin,
peace for you to get married, peace
for all the sawmills of Bio-Bio,
peace to Revolutionary Spain's torn heart
peace to the little museum of Wyoming
in which the sweetest thing
was a pillowcase embroidered with a heart,
peace to the baker and his loaves,
and peace to all the flour: peace
for all the wheat still to be born,
peace for all the love that wants to flower
peace for all those who live: peace
to all the lands and waters.

And here I say farewell, I return
to my house, in my dreams
I go back to Patagonia where
the wind beats at barns
and the Ocean spits ice.
I'm nothing more than a poet:
I want love for you all,
I go wander the world I love:
in my country they jail the miners
and soldiers give orders to judges.
But down to its very roots
I love my little cold country.
If i had to die a thousand times
that's where I'd want to die:
if i had to be born a thousand times
that's where I'd want to be born,
near the Araucanian wilds'
sea-whirled south winds,
bells just brought from the bellmaker.
Don't let anybody think about me.
Let's think about the whole world,
banging on the table with love.
I don't want blood to come back
and soak the bread, the beans
the music: I want the miner
to come with me, the little girl
the lawyer, the sailer, the dollmaker,
let's all go to the movies and come
out and drink the reddest wine.

I didn't come here to solve anything.

I came here to sing.
And for you to sing with me.

-----

Movie things to come soon! I promise.

I think this is the beginning...

...of a beautiful friendship. With you, my readers. ... All 2 of you.

See, I've been holding off on a big[ish] announcement (for me, at least)...
I am embarking on the making of a short film, tentatively called "Friday," but hopefully to be renamed.

I'm letting you all know because I am very excited about it [having not made a short since college], and I want to chart the creation of the film for you online- first, here, at drawing the eye-- but hopefully, once I get my crew together, we'll create a space online for others to contribute.

My dear friend, Kishori, will be working with me. (She is awesome and you should read her blog.)

Tomorrow, I'll start my posts about the process -- starting with talking about writing and revising the script.

Things won't get really rolling until the middle to end of September, but you should keep checking back here for updates on where we are... also-- if you know how to find me the next one of her:

That would be helpful. 


Here's a snyposis for your enjoyment:

On the eve of their rehearsal dinner, Rae and Scott are trying to wrap up the loose ends on their soon-to-be-ended News and Gossip blog. But, just as she is finishing her goodbye column, Rae gets an email she can't ignore and convinces Scott to follow one last lead...




Photo from the NYPL Digital Gallery.

Mini Edit Away

This is awesome.



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Limitations...

I like to extol the virtues of digital cameras.

Sometimes I question my own reasoning though.

If someone is "a photographer," in the great all mighty 'artistic' sense... then one should be able to take a great photo with whatever instrument they have available (see these amazing photos taken with iphones).

When I think about this and also about the limitations I feel with my old Canon G9 point and shoot-y type camera, and the results I get... I tend to think that the above is not true about me. A friend told me some of my pictures were 'obvious,' so I've been trying to find some more subtle things. But occasionally there is really low light and my camera gets all grainy regardless of what I do and  I get super frustrated. So I give up.

But I continue to practice. As I did today with a visit to the Cloisters... before I gave up, as described above.

[Also, a benefit of not being preoccupied: when I stopped taking pictures,  and started reading about the art there, I learned about the existence of Lilith... alleged to be Adam's first wife... blew. my. mind.]

Totally beautiful, regardless of my above attempts, which I didn't even really feel like touching up or correcting. These are raw..... But, anyway, you should go and see for yourself.

A Taste of Hammonton

When I go home, I can look forward to fresh produce, italian delicacies and most importantly things made by this woman: 

This is my Grandmother. Lucia Ezzi Curcio... and these are her amazing Pizzelle

I grew up around lots of farms and farmers markets:

With lots of produce:

And flowers:

And lots of little Italian Markets.

We like things to be delicious.

The 135th Our Lady of Mount Carmel Festival

So, the little town from which I hail... Hammonton, NJ (also known as "The Blueberry Capital of the World") holds this yearly festival on the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
 

While I don't know too much about the history... I do know that it started with a few farmers in 1875 and that I've been going since I was a child. You can get a more detailed, if not necessarily definitive, history of the Saint and feast (though not really Hammonton's version) here.

The feast is celebrated every July 16th with a procession of the saints. Some of you may or may not have seen something similar in a certain revered gangster movie sequel. In our little town, it is less about the intrigue and more about simple faith. You have money pinned onto the saints and in return you receive a scapular or prayer card.

It's quite a thing to see, though not as well attended these years as I remember (or, for that matter, as my mother remembers when it was an event in the 60s).

Here are some of my favorite moments and tidbits of the day:

If you are dying for some more Our Lady of Mount Carmel action... you can see more images here.

Lessons of a One Woman Crew #2 -- "Shooting to Edit"

Or- How to Stop Worrying and Love your SD Camera

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the Panasonic DVX100B. This was my graduation gift in May of 2008.
It made me super, incredibly happy.

Alas-- 24 months later, DSLRs that shoot incredible HD are now running the same price as the lovely little SD Camera above... or well... ok. Some of them are cheaper.

What, do you ask, is the difference?
Let me show you:

 Panasonic - SD

Canon - HD

The differences are many. They include not only the fact that my SD doesn't shoot in native widescreen. In terms of picture, in strictly non-technical language: The light bleeds a lot more. The colors are not as crisp. The pixels in the image are not as defined, so you can't zoom, etc. 

What isn't apparent here--is that the movement actually looks different. With multiple compressions, you loose some of the smoothness- I've found.

Anyway- quite simply- the quality, in terms of "life-likeness" in SD is not as striking as HD. 

So, why-- do you ask-- have I not switched? 

Well, first of all. It's expensive. I simply can't afford to buy an HD camera in the way that I would like. I want to do it right-- buy the right lenses, arm myself with the right tools. It takes some savings. 

But-- there's also certain advantages that I'm beginning to understand about the use of SD. Primarily:

-- ACCOUNTABILITY

In HD, if I need a close up to cover a dialogue edit or slip, I can zoom in and crop and create fake movement that you can [mostly] not tell that it was changed in post -- See Above. 

In SD-- not really possible. You can't zoom into the image without significantly degrading the quality, thus you can't cover your ass by adjusting your shots in post-- what I call "faking" above.

In SD- you are forced to shoot like a storyteller. 

By "shooting like a storyteller" -- I mean-- you have to force yourself to make the picture constantly interesting and think like an editor in terms of your composition. You must  give yourself options between close up shots, wide shots, different angles in wide, smooth  movements. With HD, you don't have to shoot this way- because all of these things (save a wide shot from a close up) you can really, honestly, fake. So, SD makes you accountable for what you shoot in a more immediate way. And you are forced to act like a storyteller as you are capturing the image, as opposed to leaving it to whoever is doing post. I call this "shooting to edit" because, in a way, you are creating an assembly as you shoot. You are limiting your edit to what you capture, and thus you are essentially "storyboarding" even during doc shooting. 

I recently finally read the amazing book "Hitchock" by Francois Truffaut in its entirety.

 (If you look closely - you can see that the book above has a picture from Notorious. I like to accompany my education with margaritas. It makes the knowledge go down easier...)

In it (I warn that this is broad paraphrasing), Hitch talks about how he used to shoot sequences in such a specific way so that only he was able to assemble them. In this way- not only was he economic in his shooting, but he also prevented the studio from recutting his footage, and occrance that would likely destroy his vision for presenting the story. 

I like to think that using my SD forces me to act the same way. If I have to shoot with the edit in mind, it is likely that I will be the only one to put it together. Thus- the piece is always "my" way of seeing-- and it forces me to be more aware of the story I want to tell from the outset. 

Cohesion.