Texas-Time follow-up

A Moment In Time: Texas-Time with the Bros

Presented by Senatorcam™

I've been inspired

Recently, I feel, I haven't had the will to create. I really haven't felt creative in a while. Yeah, sometimes I shoot things and sometimes I can get really creative with cameras and lighting, but it hasn't had that fulfilling creative effect. I haven't really been inspired by anything in a while and haven't had anything to put into an art form to show the world a view of itself.

Currently I am taking classes at Emerson for Summer Session I. I was pretty pissed about taking them, but they are necessary so I can stay out in LA after Fall 2013 and start the rest of my life. The class that has taken me sort of by surprise is my Contemporary US Theatre class. I haven't really studied Theatre since High School, but I have always enjoyed it. Of course they started with my favorite movement as the first assignments.

I had to read the classic Absurdist play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" by Edward Albee for class. I was reading the play on my iPad and I was being sucked into the text. I haven't felt like that in ages. And I realized, I love the absurd.

Absurdity has been a part of my life (and our lives) since we were children. I grew up on absurd cartoons like Rocko's Modern Life, Angry Beavers, Johnny Bravo, Spongebob, and Looney Toons. I've been watching shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and South Park all my life. I recently have been watching more and more absurd comedies like Arrested Development, 12 oz. Mouse, Wrong, and Pain and Gain.

I'm realizing that most of the media and entertainment I love has been absurd. From Vonnegut to Hedberg, and Dupieux to Python, I have had absurdity in my life since as long as I can remember. And it's time I played what I've been dealt.

I've finally been inspired to create. I've had ideas kicking around my head but had no way to get around them. I've had one film idea that is a short that would be part of an anthology with over arching themes that I have had no inspiration to write. But now that I have this class and now that I am realizing how much I love comedy and especially absurdism, I think it is time to finally explore this thing I know best rather than trying to think of gritty dramas or things of the such (they become so cliche). Absurdism is an outlet for me to express myself (and my distaste with the reality around me). I like to think my comedy (and our comedy) has been more on the nonsensical side and it's really been an inspiration.

Today in class as we talked "Zoo Story" and "Virginia Woolf", I could only think of ideas to write about. And that is what my challenge to myself is for the rest of the summer. I now have two ideas that I can research and begin writing; one is a short and one could be a feature. I really need to do research and I am not ready to formulate the ideas on this blog, but as soon as I begin working on these ideas, you will all be the first I call for advice and help.

All I gotta say is that I haven't felt this good creatively in a hell of a long time. I feel like I finally have a grasp on the world around me, or lack there of.

It's time to stop asking "why?" and answering with "why not?"

I Also Took A Trip Part D: Art

I thought I'd put in a little blurb about how tripping impacted the experience of art.  When I went to draw, like everything else that night I was just experimenting.  And for the first time in a long time I was just drawing and fully enjoying the process, with almost no concern for the final product.  The final product would be a genuine result of the time I spent putting my pastel on the page and exploring what I could do or what I wanted to do with it.  It wasn't something I was trying to force to happen and to be a certain way; it would end up the way it would and that would be the art.  As for music, a lot of what we listened to was instumental, and it felt right.  Normally I'd be bored with just instrumental stuff, but instead I accepted it as part of the overall environment and when we went to listen to one of Brandon's tapes, we briefly contemplated whether we needed to even turn off the background instrumental music that was filling the room in order to enjoy listening to some songs on this little tape player.  Later, we were listening to some radiator collective songs by a really chill dude who I've met a couple times.  When his songs were on, it felt like he was right there in the room with us.  One song really expressed some deeper thoughts that he'd been having, so it fit in with the night's theme of talking out thoughts, and when that one played it kinda felt like he was exposing his mind and touching ours at the same time.  His other song just kinda expressed his style really well and painted some cool images.  Both generated some incredible 3d images in my mind's eye.

A Moment In Time: Josh talks about pissing

It's nice. He's usually talking about shit-taking.

I Also Took A Trip Part C: Drug Dependency

This is something I've been contemplating for a while, and as such I brought it up and talked about it during the trip, and it's still on my mind now.  Because there is a paradox here that deserves exploration.  Basically the thing is this: whenever we party, or hang out, it's almost always funner when there's weed and/or alcohol, and of course in this case shrooms.  Sometimes this bugs me.  During the trip I could bring up literally anything on my mind and explore it and talk it out with my friends.  Why can't I do this normally?  I think maybe the reason I don't is because I have inhibitions that make me worry about other people's judgement of me if I bring up certain thoughts or ideas, or say certain things.  So I end up struggling to find anything interesting to say, and sometimes my thoughts are going through a filter.  And of course I don't know for sure, but I get the sense that a lot of other people definitely do this too. (We all know the difference between an unfiltered drunk person and a filtered regular person.)  So this leaves me with this image of a bunch of people going around, having all these thoughts, and theyre afraid to share them because they think they'll be judged, so they're stuck with all their thoughts just circling and building in their own heads. And this could of course just be me projecting myself onto others but whatever.  The point is that people put up walls, and that drugs have this power to totally remove these walls.  So in this way of looking at it, drugs are a tool that wouldn't be so necessary if we didn't let our fear of judgement silence us.

But at the same time, in the case of weed and shrooms, these are just things that grow in the ground.  They just grow naturally, and when you put them inside you, you feel more understanding and/or happy.  So why would this be wrong?  And maybe putting up walls is just how the human brain operates naturally in our environment, and these natural substances can give us this power to see these walls and to break through them.

Anyways, I'd like to know what y'all think about this, because I feel like I could be completely off base and just projecting my own issues of worrying what others think of me onto everyone else.  In which case I'd like to know.  This was something else we talked about a lot; projecting our own artificial images onto other people, maybe in our desire to connect more, maybe other times to feel superior to others.  And we sometimes do this instead of allowing ourselves to see people as what they truly are.  Anyways I think I need to talk to/really listen to people more to flesh out this idea.

Friday Night After Drinking With John and Suja