New Year's Visualization.

My New Years Resolution Blog from last year: it has gone unpublished for over a year.  My new resolution is to tie up loose ends and to continue to live in the moment.  Publishing this old one is a way of doing so.  Enjoy, a year overdue.

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Resolution:

Resolve my shit.

Okay, that's done.

Solution:

Solve root problem creating all aforementioned shit in need of resolution.

Ah, piss...

I read once that there can be no scientific solution to the major problems facing humanity. If any solid, significant change is ever going to occur, ethics are what need to shift. Changing an ethic is hard work. (The publication is The Tragedy of the Commons, I forget the author.)

I think since ethics are so closely tied to world view, those are the things that need looking at first. I could continue writing about this on a global scale, but that's not the point. This entry is about shifting ethics and world view on an individual level.

Every year starts with some variation of the resolution to resolve one's shit. The shit is the variable. Each varying piece of shit has its own pre-packaged, scientific solution to the problem. To illustrate:

Examples of varying types of shit (not my own, just typical given the holiday): Examples of varying solutions to said shit:

-Need to loose weight -Diet and Excersize

-Need to quit drinking -Cut back on booze

-Need to quit smoking -Nicotene Patch

-Need to get a better job -Quit existing job

-Need to get laid on a regular basis -Accomplish all of the above to attract mate

You get the point.

I'm attempting to shift the way I look at the world: I color code my life.  Every year, the same thing.  January-early February is Black, Spring months change from light green to mint greet to sage green, summer months are orange, fall months are deep red and December moves back to black.

Each segment of the year also brings with it certain feelings and stress.  If I rid myself of the connotations I have with the season, I will be free to live each day as if it were the only day I'll ever have -- free from preconceptions and color-coding.

I plan to do this by creating a piece of art that is representative of each day.  I hope I stick to it.

I came across this Jack Kerouac quote which spurred this thought.  "I saw that my life was a vast, empty glowing page and I could do anything I wanted."

I want blank pages.  Each day is a blank page, canvas, wall, etc.

If I want to change the world, first I must change my own perception of it.  This is what I plan to do.  This time next year, I hope to live each day dancing across a new, blank page.  

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Well, I didn't stick to it past mid-February.  Yet that little bit of time did change my connotations with the seasons.  Each day is a cornucopia of color.  It's been a lovely year in my head.  Now it's time to tack responsibility to living an exciting, colorful life.

I like looking back.

Presentational Performance Vs. Representational Art: A Self-Reflective Interview...once again, set to Fiona Apple.

I've been thinking a lot about performance art lately.

This shouldn't sound odd, given that I'm getting a degree in acting. Actually, it should sound a bit troublesome... Why am I only thinking a lot about it lately?

I guess because I have always somehow separated theatrical acting from performance art in my mind. Silly, I know. Lately, I've really been appreciative of how honestly people perform when they perform their own material. It's raw. It's painful. It's healing. It's beautiful.

Is it wrong that I have built such a strong distinction in my mind between an actor and an artist?

Not really. I think there are very few actors who can really call themselves artists, at least in the way that I define an artist. Myself included.

So what is it that distinguishes an artist from a performer?

Simple. A performer presents, and an artist represents.

Let me elaborate.

A performer presents something to an audience. They present another person's art in some kind of a physical manifestation. This is a very important role, don't get me wrong, there are performers who blow my mind, but I think there are really very few performers who fall into this category of "artist". An artist as I define one, anyway.

An artist represents. Break this word down. Re-present. This a ceremonial act, and the word representation is easily substituted for transubstantiation. An artist summons the soul of the world and throws it into their work. They call the past into the present, so the power of the thing can be felt and better understood. They re-present a life that has once been lived and feel it all in the moment.

So, who would I consider a performance artist, then?

Fiona Apple. I mean, I named my fucking blog after one of her songs, who else would it be?

Why?

I'll let her demonstrate. It needs no explanation...

...but I'm Lily, so I'll end up explaining it anyway.

Fiona Apple is a performance artist. This may be because she lives and relives her own work and her own words, but she's done some pretty gut wrenching covers as well, so I think that is only part of it.

What strikes me about this video is how beautifully and courageously she throws herself into it. It's obviously a painful subject, and she's reliving it. Some moments are more obvious than others (though the subtly is lovely and very well placed), but by and large, you know that she's in it. She isn't just singing about something that happened to her months or years before, she is living in the experience. That's what makes her so impossible to tear your eyes away from.

That's the art of it. Because she is feeling it, I feel it with her. She makes her words somehow feel like my own.

She obviously has this effect on others as well. Which brings me to the next video.

Same song, different artist. At first I couldn't decide if Elvis Costello fit my idea of a performer or a performance artist. At first I was leaning towards the former...but by the end of the song he's got me stuck on the latter. Hook, line and sinker. Welcome to the club, man.

What gets me is that he fills in the blanks she left at the end. He adds another two "I know"s Fiona deliberately leaves out. This delights me. He's really made it a tribute as opposed to a cover. He delivered his own representation of her words. That brings the whole spirit of being a performance artist back into the song. At least for me. She seems pretty giddy and proud of the tribute at the end, as well. She invoked something profound in him, and he did a representation of her work in his own Elvis Costello way. That. Fucking. Rocks.

So, then what have you taken away from this?

A desire to make another's words feel like my own, and to step out of the realm of performing. Acting is just what is sounds like. I'm tired of acting...I want to turn acting back into a performance art for myself. Time to represent, ya'll.

Time for something new.

MyName is Lily, and I'm a weblogaholic.

Hi Lily.

This may sound a bit too hypocritical to be taken seriously, but I'm here because I'm sick of MyLife being displayed on a web page. Naive, I know.

Let me elaborate.

When did a MySpace profile become a more favorable substitute than a telephone call, getting coffee, or writing a letter to keep up on how our friends are doing? I find I am far too guilty of making a person's web page an easier alternative to actual face to face interaction, and that is fucked up.

Fighting fire with fire also seems a bit fucked up, too. That may be what I am doing, and if I come to that realization someday, I vow to only write down MyThoughts on salvaged scraps of paper, put them in glass bottles and throw them out to sea hoping they'll land with someone, somewhere. You know, old school blogging.

Regardless of the fact that I may just be creating a different dish to feed the same horrible appetite, I'm done. There is only one thing I'll miss from it all (aside from all the precious amounts of MyTime wasted away floating through MySpace.) I'll miss blogging. It keeps me writing.

So, now that I have made MyCase--this place is MyEscape from the commercialization of MySelf via MySpace, while still giving me the ability to write in a fairly public forum--I will now make a promise.

I will no longer make a logo of MyName, a brand of MyMind, or a virtual reality of MyLife. I am sick of this need in our society to compartmentalize everything about ourselves in order to fit into and keep up with this ever-growing, unstoppable world. We can't even put a fucking space in MySpace.

I am simply trying to slow down, step back, and put the spaces back into my life.

I need my space.
My name.
My art.
My mind.

My life.