Inadequacy versus gospel

Hey.

So, I've got half a dozen half finished posts on my life and how things have been for the last five months.

They mostly relate to the challenge I've had of finding work, of living on the smell of an oily rag, and on the challenge to be content with all of this, and to trust God in the middle of it.

It's been a hard road, and I'm not expecting it to get easier anytime soon, but I'm learning a lot from it, and I guess that's a good thing. So I'm going to keep on going, while nutting through more big questions than I've ever had to deal with in my life before.

I mean, there's only, like, two or three of them, but that's a 300% increase on big questions I'm wrestling with seriously, so it's keeping me sharp.

This blog post is about one of those questions.

See, one of the challenges I'm having with my life at the moment is, do I consider full-time ministry?

And I've got this big mental list of reasons for and against - it's a list of concerns and hopes and all it has really done is put more questions into my head.

I mean,

I'm concerned that I'm not at the perceived standard I need to be at to consider full-time ministry. I struggle with reading my bible every day. I think the last time I tried to have a gospel conversation with someone was about a year ago. I don't have a whole lot of non-Christian friends, or at least, not a lot that I have regular face-to-face contact with. It's difficult to have a conversation about Jesus and then invite said person to church when they live in Sydney, or on the other side of the world. I'm scared to share the gospel, despite the fact that I know enough to do so. I do what I can with ministry already, but can see my limits in what I have time to do, and the level of responsibility I can handle/am given reflects where I am, which doesn't feel like 'ready to take on an apprenticeship position at church'.

I'm concerned that I'd let the perceived status of the position go to my head. That the childlike equation of 'Church worker therefore competent/zealous/'perfect' Christian' would stay fixed, and I wouldn't be able to dispel it. I'd have to face off against the inside of my head and the challenge of making my relationship with God faith-based and not works-based - which has been a constant challenge in my life, and probably one of the marks of inheritance I received from the denomination my parents used to serve in.

I'm concerned that I'm thinking about full-time ministry because I can't expect to find work anywhere else, and would be hoping to find work in the church, but at the same time, be helping in the small ways that go unnoticed and don't require me to wander too far from my shell. I mean, everyone needs a supply runner, right? I can do admin stuff and not have to be called to task; be called to the hardest and pointiest parts of Gospel work.

These among others are my concerns. They're buds, small things that I can see as problems in my life that could interfere with Gospel work, if left unchecked.

It's a big list of what-ifs and maybes and potential negatives, and I don't really have a list equal in size to balance it. I do have these thoughts though.

When I was doing WAVE this year; when I was part of FORGE last year, I felt the purpose and the urgency of the gospel. I was part of something bigger, and we moved with purpose, and learned with purpose, and I could tell, that if there was something worthwhile in my life that I could do - really, actually worthwhile, then perhaps Ministry would be it.

I felt that if I threw my life at the gospel, then maybe it would be worthwhile. I was finishing my uni degree, realising that it was coming to an end and that once it was finished, I would be unleashed on a world that really didn't give two squats about my work or my life. None of it would really change the world. None of what I could make with my own hands would exist after I was gone, if that.

But what of ministry? What if I could do something that would have an impact beyond the here and now?

It's always been a challenge looking at things and holding eternity next to them, but I didn't have the same sense of uselessness looking at this in that way.

What does that lead me to now?

I'm still thinking through things. I'm quiet, so it's difficult to talk about something this big to any one person, particularly, as you can see, because the concepts I'm dealing with are half-formed; unfinished. I'm dealing with a lot of maybe and not much solid-state stuff. I don't trust my heart, or at least, I'm very cautious about chasing after a perceived notion.

I'm aware that doing an apprenticeship in church ministry would break me from the inside out. I'm aware that it would cause me to feel a lot of pain, and a lot of joy, and a lot of gospel.

But I think I'm prepared for that notion. To have the fairy-tale and the 'oh, they're an MTS-er, they have their Christian walk all together' blown wide open. I don't know if I'm capable of it though. I don't know if anyone would want me for the task.

(That's not passive-aggressive or anything, by the way. I'm genuinely looking at my faults and knowing them, concerned that I'm vastly inadequate for the task and wondering if I should try now or build up some more skills and try later.)

I know that we grow to the tank we're in, and that while I'm inadequate now, I'm hoping that maybe that would change if I went down this path. Maybe I would grow to what was required, if I was willing. Anyway.

It seems hypocritical to say 'I can't talk to any one person about this' and then blog it, but I think it's easier to blog thoughts. I'm taking you through a narrative, where we start with one set of thoughts, and then go through a process, and then end up at a conclusive point. I'm taking you through the inside of my head, on a well-worn path, pointing out the things that are problems and then devoting half a breath to why I'm still thinking though it.

Because in spite of my fears and concerns, I really can't think of anything more worthwhile to do with my life than to throw it at the gospel. That might be in ministry, or it might be in something else. I'm just trying to work that out at the moment.

It's not "I can't think of anything better, so I may as well do ministry", it's "I can't think of anything objectively better to do with my life than ministry". I know they read similar, but understand that there's tone required to make the difference between the two, and writing in text can't convey that.

I don't have a lot, but I want Jesus to do something with it.

I booked the airbrush for next Tuesday...

...so I guess you could say things are getting pretty serious.

It was with great protest I decided that if I tried to keep going with the armour at this speed, and do Sheik, and do fibres, I would probably die. And I'm still recovering from yesterday/Wednesday night's madness, so there is that.

The Seventy percent 3500 word essay is in. And I still have a sleep debt to pay.

Also, I'm writing from the incredible student gallery of Watt Space, and my headphones have chosen here and now to pack it in. Ah well. I tend to use headphones all the time, and have never really been kind to them. So I only buy cheapies. This pair has lasted me a bit over a year. Well, either a year or two. Can't remember. But for ten bucks and me thrashing them, that's okay.

Alright, where to begin?

For reasons such as 'I did not want to do the essay', I left it to the last minute and put the production of the armour on hold for this week. Which will make this weekend rather busy, but hey. The essay's in, and that's important.

I finally networked with the people attached to the airbrush and made friends with it yesterday. I think I've kind of got the hang of it - fine detail is something I'd still have to get my eye in on, but I'm fairly confident that that will come while working on the big bits. I like how an airbrush can apply acrylic paint without using a propellant or solvent. That was the big hassle/trial problem for using paint on the foam armour, and I think that at the cost of a nice sheen, it will work in any case.

So there's really, sadly, not much progress to report on that side of things. I guess I could work through the concept of it though. Like, why it is I picked Tex. There's a few reasons, and some of them have spoilers for the later seasons of Red vs Blue, so if you would rather skip them, scroll down to when there's big text or something. There's no spoilers as far as I can remember for the first five seasons though. So all good on that account.

Also, spoilers for the Hueco Mundo arc of Bleach, and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time. And Final Fantasy VII, I guess.

I'll write up what was so fascinating about each one I picked, actually. Even the outfits I ditched. Spoilers ahead and stuff.

Anyway. Begin.

I picked the Hollow for a few different reasons.

There's a certain kind of allure that comes with insanity. Perhaps it's a zero-accountability thing, perhaps it's the fact that insanity rides on impulse and stuff. Plus, the hollow was a type of butt-kicking that sagas are sung about.
I like that.
There was the degree of unpredictability, and raw power, and despair that drew me in with the idea. Plus, I wouldn't have to tuck my hair under a wig or anything.
I think that the fact the hollow was the flipside of the character was a drawcard as well. That in spite of the fury and terror that the character embodied, it was still Ichigo. The drawback for the creature was actually the loss of reason though - a double-edged sword. Unable to tell friend from foe, the hollow was capable of lashing out at anybody.

The hollow is a reminder that I have the potential to be a monster.

Now.

Tex.

Tex started off as a ring-in character in the Red vs Blue series. She gets sent in as a freelancer for Blue team, and all they know about her is that she's prone to violence (Which is due to an aggressive AI that was implanted in her head) and that she had some kind of long-standing attachment thing to Church, one of the other main characters in RvB.

And then as the series progresses, you kind of see that she's actually a decent soldier, as opposed to the rest of the characters. That she's keen on ending the war between humans and aliens (covenant) and that she'll go to any length to do so.

And then something real weird happens. You find out that she's some kind of memory - that originally, she was someone dear to the creator of the AI, and she'd died, and he'd somehow made a copy of her. This ends up making more sense later as you find out she's actually an AI herself. Or, to be more precise, she's a fragment, a byproduct of creating another AI. That she existed, self-aware, but was always doomed to fail at the big things she tried to do, because all of the memories that she was built out of were centered around her being dead; that there had been a failure in the system and she'd died as a result of it.

She wasn't aware of this herself for quite some time, and when she did learn, it changed quite a bit. She tried to save what was left of the AI she'd fragmented from, but, because it was part of her composition to fail, she couldn't.

Probably the saddest thing about her was that the Director, the man who accidentally created her, kept trying to bring her back. Because she was all that was left of the woman that had been dear to her and had died. And it never worked properly.

So what then do I find interesting about Tex?

She's really good at being a soldier. At fighting and doing things and she's always motivated to save people. But no matter how hard she tries, she can't. She'll always fail - it may not seem to be her fault, but she'd end up blaming herself anyway.

And she doesn't exist properly; she's a memory, a shadow.

Also, I'll just put in here what I mentioned casually earlier. She's the Beta AI. Hence, The Beta Experiment.

I so sneaky.

...

Next character I wanted to do/revisit was Sheik.

Sheik arrives in the Ocarina of Time storyline shortly after the main character (Link) travels forward in time seven years (effectively).
Flipping mysterious, Sheik usually seems to know where Link has to go next to defeat Ganon's power in that area of Hyrule. I think the first clue the player even gets to the character is when Ruto (one of the sages) calls the Sheikah a young man.
So Sheik kind of exists as an assist character. The first time you see something serious go down with the character is just before the Shadow Temple, when Sheik tries to seal off the evil at the bottom of the well. It doesn't work, and you have to progress through the freakiest dungeon known to man.
Anyway. Track through that one and the Spirit Temple, and you head back to the Temple of Time, because you get told that there's someone waiting there for you.
It's Sheik. Who is actually Princess Zelda; gone into hiding for seven years while you, Link, had been missing from the world. Funnily enough, it's the moment that Zelda takes off the disguise that the big bad finds her and takes her away, since she holds part of the supreme power, the Triforce.

So, Shiek exists as a princess in exile; one who'd adopted a full disguise to stay hidden and yet still remain fully useful to the mission of freeing Hyrule from the evil king's grasp.
Something similar goes down in one of the later Legend of Zelda titles - Windwaker.
It was cause enough for me to giggle when I realised. Because in 2011 my sister and I went to a convention as Sheik and Tetra. Pirate and Ninja, but both effectively Zelda.

Sheik is kind of like an important character but not. I've heard many speculations over whether the character itself is male or female. My counter argument is that I have never ever seen a male Sheik cosplayer. And she's Zelda, so there is that.

So far we have three characters which

A) Forsook social expectations for combat

B) Don't exist properly

C) Are second-fiddle characters to the story.

The fourth originally planned was Aerith Gainsborough, from Final Fantasy VII.

Now, Final Fantasy VII was a game I didn't actually get into contact with until high school, when my siblings and I were wandering around Target and Jack spotted Advent Children in the DVD section and tried explaining the plot to me, as someone who had no idea who the characters were and what the plot was.

So, like, a motorbike that also functions as a knifeblock for your swords, and there's giant swords and stuff that explodes, and a bunch of kids are sick with something, and there's explosions and stuff.

I bought the DVD, and we watched it. Confused as buckleys, I turned to the internet for some explanation into the characters.

Just a word of advice - be very careful when turning to the internet for information. It can be a scary thing.

Um.

Okay, so after watching Advent Children, I kind of gathered that Aerith was important to the story, but she died, and in Advent Children she kind of pops up a few times. Like she's trying to help the main character (Cloud) get over the guilt that he has because he couldn't stop her from being killed. From wherever she is on the other side of death.

And in VII Aerith was supposed to have a major role in stopping the big bad from wreaking the world, and then she dies, so everyone's like 'aw crap, now we can't stop the world from ending', and then they find something she left behind that would still be able to stop the big bad.

There's a giant meteor that crashes into the planet, and the counter-attacking magic that she was part of save everything, and that's that.

I realise that it's not my gift to explain part of a narrative without explaining all of it. Apologies.

So, Aerith (At least in the spinoff movie Advent Children) appears as a character who, like the three before, only half-exists.

Considering a bunch of other characters I'm kind of keen on doing sometime in the future, I think this might be a trend. Hmm.

Anyway.

SPOILERS END HERE. SO DOES THE MAJORITY OF THE BLOG POST.

It's now Wednesday again. I'll start a new post to let everyone know how the painting went.
I finished the foam patterns for the chest on Sunday and the helm on Monday. Sunday arvo I tried everything I'd built on over the wetsuit, which was fun. It's still difficult to move in, but I'm hoping that's because the armour isn't stuck to me and thus keeps falling down (Shoulders, thighs). Velcro soon.

Have a progress photo.

NaNoWriMo #3 - Things that help with the writing bit

NaNo on Gone Aerial Part 1
NaNo on Gone Aerial Part 2
NaNoWriMo website

Resolving to at least try and maintain some visible level of enthusiasm and punctuality, I decided to keep posting, once a week, about NaNo. I thought that maybe, it might help encourage people to get interested and get on board and try something big and different and exciting.

So I've been plugging away like there is no tomorrow. Sort of. About a month ago, I had so many big things coming up:

Animania
21st
End of Semester
NaNo
December (And visiting people in Victoria)

Now two of those things are down, and the end of Semester is beginning to register in my head. I have, like, four weeks of madness left, and an assessment due tomorrow, and have to remember how to write a catalogue essay for that. So, as an exercise to the fingers and the mind, was like yes, I should do the weekly NaNo post right now.

So, now you know where I am. And how I've already covered the basics of National Novel Writing Month, and how stories in general work a'la Joseph Campbell.

So this week, with my brain scrambling for a subject, I thought I'd share a few of the things that I did last year to make writing a fifty thousand word novel a little easier:

Start with a notebook.Last year, I grabbed a fresh notebook and started scribbling in it. I wrote most of Shift on the computer, but for days when I was out doing things and suddenly had an idea, that notebook was invaluable. I would jot down plot points, notes on names and some of the basic research that I would wiki when, for example, I realised that I had no idea how C4 actually worked. Sometimes I would feel the need to actually write old-timey style, so there's bits of the novel in there too. For those of us who do not carry Smart Phones or Tablets, a Notebook is fun. Plus, you can draw in it and stuff too. Feels good to work with your hands once in a while. Oh, this would bring us to the next bit:

Write down how the plot works before you start typing.

This can happen in your notebook, or your computer, or on your wall with lots of bits of paper and red thread everywhere. (I'm a spatial thinker, so that last suggestion doesn't seem nearly as far fetched as it sounds)
The point is, you don't start building a house by sticking bits of gyprock together before pouring a foundation. A human body can't function without bones to support the muscles, and in the same way, it's important to write down basic plot points before you get started. Things like these always begin with a basic idea, but creating a baseline plot allows you to create something that can function and be follow-able for reading later. You can be as specific or as vague as you like with those plot points, but the fine details are something that you get to fill in later. The fine details are your novel.
This is something designed to help you, the writer, first and foremost. It means you don't get lost, or hopelessly confused about the different roles of your characters. And speaking of characters:

Make sure you know who is who and what they all look like.

I'll go with Inception as a visual example for this.




(Trying to upload photos on dialup-speed internet is making me go insane. You can have photos later.)

The main character list goes something like,

Cobb
Arthur
Eames
Ariadne
Yusaf
Saito
Fisher
Mal

If you watched the film with the sound down, and had the list of characters in front of you along with basic descriptions of appearace, you'd probably get at least four of the characters mixed up.
So is that guy with dark hair and blue eyes Dom, Eames or Fisher? Wait, Dom and Arthur are cohorts. So that scene with the brainstorming and the chair-tipping, are those guys Dom and Arthur?

Adding the roles to the character names in the list makes things a little easier. In the context of the movie,

Dom Cobb - The Extractor
Arthur - The Point ManEames - The ForgerAriadne - The ArchitectYusaf - The ChemistSaito - The TouristFisher - The MarkMal - The ShadeSo, the characters immediately have a bit more definition. They have roles now; you know what they're supposed to do and how they're supposed to behave. The person we've made watch the movie with the sound down has a little more information to work with.

Adding descriptions of the characters to their names and roles helps further that distinction between characters and how they function and interact. I draw, so drawing the characters helps for me.

Knowing that not everybody draws is something we as the MLs of NaNo for Newie have taken into account. We're sorting out a paper doll/avatar creating method currently, so you the writer can create visual aids/figure out what the character you are writing about looks like.

It's helpful because you don't end up accidentally creating a lot of characters that look the same.

Researching details, even a little, will make things kick butt better.

Do I know anything about firearms?
Not really. Most of my knowledge comes from pulling apart Nerf Guns and listening to people who know guns explain stuff. And Hollywood.

Hollywood has a bunch of things wrong about guns, but we'll leave that for later.

I got to write about guns last year. It was fun, but not really knowing model names or makes meant that I had to do a little research. I didn't do stacks, but I did do enough to be able to talk about them when I wrote. It adds a little extra to the novel on two different levels. The plebs can go 'oh, this person knows what they're talking about' and the pros can say likewise. Or at least, not throttle the writer for leaving out important things.

A few years back, I encountered a character in James Patterson's Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports. They'd had Galapagos Tortoise DNA spliced into their own genes and claimed to be over a hundred years old with the appearance of someone less than forty-five.
Which is all very well.
Until you realise that this novel is set in the present day (2007, when it was published), and that Watson and Crick first found the chemical structure of DNA in 1953. (And that's just discovering it. Mapping the human genome took about ten years, and that was only finished in the early 2000s.)

I know it's not common knowledge, but for those of us who remember trivia, it's a little frustrating.
And that's probably the trick to it: You don't have to research the heck out of these things, but enough to cover the information given in the novel will help a lot. Jargon is impressive and fun to use, but needs to be grounded enough that the people who know what you are talking about won't facepalm to the stars above.

Am I getting pedantic? Apologies. Point 5:

Show, don't tell.

Mira climbed the water tower, set up the sniper rifle and waited.

______________________________________

Mira adjusted the weight of her weapon against her shoulders for the climb. She pulled her hood further over her face and huffed against the biting cold that came from being awake at this altitude and time. Carefully, she scaled the freezing tower, brushing off the ice on the steel rungs with her hands before putting her weight on them. She reached the top of the tower and slid her sniper rifle from her back, assembling it for active use while looking for the best vantage point. Selecting her position, she silently moved into place, double-checking the padded coat that she'd be lying on for the next few hours. The cold here could kill a person if they were careless or foolish. Mira was neither of those things. She settled down, put her eye to the scope and began her hunt.

When writing, I have the option of telling you what happens, or showing it to you. Telling condenses what is going on. It simplifies the situation and keeps details to a minimum. Showing allows the reader to experience what is going on; to share the happening with the character and understand what is going through their heads. It's a very basic example, but the first piece of writing had me tell you what was going on. The second piece showed you. It's more interactive and (this is important when you're aiming for a word count) takes up more words to say. So have fun with adjectives; plot specific action sequences before you write them and talk about how something works rather than just it working. So much more fun.

Which in part brings us to the next bit.

Don't be afraid to use big words.

The English Teacher I had for year 12 is a fan of Westerns, Ancient China, horrendously bad puns and big words. He would do the kind of announcements in assembly that would expand your vocabulary just by listening. And in spite of him making us study John Donne and Snow Falling on Cedars, I will still nod to the Mantle. He taught us the value of using bigger or alternate words in writing (both creatively and in essays). I mean, there is certainly a feeling of achievement at being able to pronounce tergiversation but there is also more to come from it when you are able to use it in a sentence.

And sometimes it's an odd combination of cheating at scrabble and just finding alternate words.
For example, said.
Said means 'someone has spoken. Has - therefore it's past tense'
But how many different ways can someone have said something?

I think Mum has a poster of that kind of thing up on her classroom wall. It has stuff like 'whispered', 'shouted', 'grated', 'yelled', 'whimpered', 'cried', 'laughed', 'giggled', 'roared', 'grunted', 'asked', 'mumbled', 'uttered' and half a dozen others.
Using any one of those immediately attaches emotion to whatever the person is saying. It adds an extra dimension and allows the reader to experience it more completely.

This can be added to more than just how someone speaks. You can describe how they walk, move and do things. Sometimes it's word padding, but it does add to the novel regardless. Using bigger words is exciting. Just make sure you know what they mean first. (So, Gambit sounds gnarly, but make sure it's in the right context or things get odd pretty quickly).

Have fun.

When I was small, I had dolls. I didn't have very many of them, and they all pretty much ended their lives in the same manner; covered in pen and dirt and food. I never had a doll house, although I did at one stage have a castle smothered in glitter (like every seven year old girl should). Point is, I wasn't really into tea parties or shoes or playing house. Adventures into caves and giant trees was more my thing, complete with actual trees, sand, and my mother yelling at me to get off the shed roof before it collapsed or I got tetanus or something.
Point?
Um.

Have fun when you write your novel. You're constructing a story; a whole world, with characters that you've made and scenarios that you get to enact. Immerse your mind in it and write about the feel of things rather than just the happenings. Get emotional. Ingest too much caffeine and write 5000 words in one day. Look over to the clock and be surprised at the time.

Because soon it will be November, and I will get to have adventures like the ones I had when I was seven. Minus the glitter.

Hollow//Redux

In August, I went and posted an entry that I'd written way back at the start of the year. The post in question was ambiguous, and odd, and unfocused, but I thought that it might deserve a little bit of clarification/closure now that Animania has finished for this year. The post in question concerned the fictional monsters called Hollow from Manga and Anime series Bleach.


Because I've posted so many times about it, I don't see a need to explain the plot. Maybe a little bit about how the monsters work, but that's all.

The post I'd written was a reflection on how I had tried to cope with losing something valuable at the start of 2011 by giving up on trying to feel things. On having emotional responses and instead just doing things because instinct told me to.

This had upsides and downsides. It meant that I didn't really feel the fallout of the loss until a couple months after everything had gone down (which isn't to say it hurt less; it was only delaying the inevitable), and it meant that I was able to keep functioning at nearly the same level as before. Or at least, to a level where I wouldn't be a drag on other people.
The downside of not allowing yourself to think or feel, and instead to run on instinct, is that humans are inherently selfish and broken people. We're not perfect. We mess up and if I was to follow my instinct all of the time, it would have just spiraled into this out-of-control, self-serving mess and I would have hurt a lot of friends in the process.

So in short, allowing myself to be hollow for most of last year was something that was do-able, but ultimately wouldn't hold out. It was this big ball of lucid, angry emptiness and as enticing as it was, I'm kind of glad that I don't have to be there any more.

See? This is what happens when you put the wrong focus in your heart and it gets ripped out.
One big ol' hole and something you have to hide behind.

It's taken a while, but I'm getting better.

So, that's kind of a recap on that post. A little more focused, a little less ambiguous. I'm trying to leave it as ambiguous because when this blog got started, I didn't want it to turn into a 'Dear Diary' shermozzle. So it's a matter of figuring out what personal things are okay to talk about and which are not necessary, so you still get cool posts that have more than just cats in them.

Where are we going?

Oh yes. Animania is done, and now I'm trying to figure out how much it's okay to have my friends freak out over me dressing up as a monster on Saturday and having the photos turn up on social networking sites with my name attached to them.

Because my costume was kind of freaky. I did go as a Hollow.

Why?

Because it's how I face the things I get scared of. Infiltrate and disarm from the inside out. It's why I did Weeping Angels with my mates earlier in the year. Yes, those critters are hella scary. Yes, I have been scared of them. Yes, they still give me chills.

But I know what goes into them now. I don't have to be afraid of that anymore.

I suppose that this is where people would normally go "But Brooke, it's a fictional thing. You don't have to be afraid of it at all."

What, so you've never watched a scary movie and then left all the lights on in the house?

Most people get less scared of things by forgetting them. I'm not good at forgetting.

So when I've dressed as something scary, it's my way of coping. It's my way of disarming it. It's also how I remind myself that as a fallen being, I could actually become this if I don't watch myself. And not 'become' as in, dress up as one. I mean "put on a mask and be unable to take it off because you've assumed too many characteristics of the thing you're portraying".

And that can happen. It does happen. Maybe not with literally turning into a critter with big teeth, but socially? It's much easier to gossip when you are around other people who gossip. It's much easier to let your standards slip if you have mates who don't care about the occasional laspe.

Manifesting the scary into something that I can put on is one part of it. But being able to get to the end of the day and taking that mask off is probably the more important thing. You feel like a weight has been lifted.

(Both metaphorically and literally. Saturday's mask was heavy.)

So, my friends; to those who understand my cosplay and those who don't. Please don't freak out if or when you see me dressed up in the scariest mask you can think of. I'm just sabotaging the cool-looking things that I'm scared of.

Catching what doesn't exist

Well, folks. One last push. Tomorrow is the date of my final assessment, so naturally I'm scrabbling like an idiot to get everything done in time. Because, you know, I didn't burn out from my last two assessments or anything.

(That was a lie. I've been pretty useless the last 18 hours.)

So I guess that this is the final comment on acutal uni work on the blog for this semester. Shall we do it?

This is the concept for my other Photography subject, Light. My other, 3000-level, third-year elective. (Brooke is an idiot.)

The theme for this project was Fabrication.


Because Light was all about using light (in its many forms) to fabricate a composition. Funny that. Anyway. I really can't remember where exactly this started to crystallise into something solid.

I guess it was when I started breaking down the concept of Fabrication by writing things and sticking them to my wardrobe doors. I love this wardrobe. Not just because it's a giant IKEA monstrosity that I built when I was sixteen, but because it's really good for spatial thinking, and for taking photos against.

That aside. Somehow I arrived at an interesting conclusion. Depict and create a recurring character on film.

The character in question I refer to as the Girl in the Blue Dress. She doesn't have a name. I don't want to give her one either - I've named too many separate pieces of personality, anyway.

But this one; she is odd. She doesn't exist properly; always outside of the action and the noise. Unable to speak or touch. Removed from reality but for one thin point of contact, and she's always wanted in, but can't. She's made out of the wrong stuff.

Admittedly, that 'wrong stuff' allows her to float around, and blend, and interact with the world like a whisper. Busy looking cool and slightly frustrated by the alienation.

I draw her a lot. That's how I know her. And she's probably my most successful fabrication. Moreso than Beech, or Rowan or Joey or Kara or Aeon or Caspian or Xander (who are all characters in stories I've written over the last ten years or so). I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I didn't give her a name. It's allowed her to keep growing because she's not defined by it.

And then I was going to try and take photos of something that didn't exist, with a device that is designed to pin down reality. The indexical qualities that we give the photograph means that even when we know it was 'shopped, there was something that this was taken from that existed first.

It's an odd concept, but it's also something that's almost exclusive to the realm of photo and video. It's much more difficult to alter a photo than a picture or a painting. Not in a technical sense, but there's a bit in your head that still goes 'this is a part of that person'.

Weird.

So, camera dictates that the photo has to have stemmed from life, somewhere. Photo also dictates that something has to be there to create the subject matter.

Because explaining Girl in the Blue Dress to people was a bit difficult while I was working in the classroom, I had to simplify it a bit.

"It's about the things you invent in the back of your head that don't exist properly"

Well, sort of. The manifestation that we got to see through my project was just her.


There were two parts to how the project was executed.

The first was in camera (and I work with film because I enjoy a nice simple life).
Because I wanted to take photos of something that didn't exist, or at least didn't exist properly, the project got pushed in the way of ghost photography and long exposures. I would leave the shutter open for a while and let light and the girl walk across the film before closing it and advancing the film. The results always varied from horribly overexposed to difficult compositions. Good photos were few and far between. It wasn't until I was almost finished that I had another tutor talk to me about how the photos were taken.

"So you're taking all of these in camera?"

"Yeah."

"On 35mm film?"

"Yeah."

"That's actually really difficult,"

"I know."

Oh. For those who aren't familiar and have not gotten info from context. In Camera means that the composition or special effect was applied when the photo was taken. There was no post-production work done to get the effect.

(Which is still possible in a film camera. If you don't believe me check out Jerry Uelsmann. The guy is a nut and a genius.)

Manual Photoshop.

Having the subject move around in camera was good, because I got these blurry half-defined images of something which definitely didn't exist on the same plane as everything else.

And then, in Silver, we learned how to tone images by dunking them in more chemicals. Some of which were very smelly. But that was how I got introduced to the sepia bleach, and after seeing what it did to the images, decided that it was needed for the project.

This is a little bit funny. Because it was Bleach and it was working, because of the other Bleach with the swords and the ghost people and such.

This is a tiny bit deeper, I promise.

I haven't read much of the early manga, as I watched the anime and then started reading when I ran out of it. But the early anime had some interesting lighting effects, and they may have gotten incorporated a bit in the process.

See, this is what the environment looks like when the characters are interacting with the normal world:

Which is a fairly normal colour palette for an anime. And then a couple of seconds later Rukia literally knocks Ichigo's soul out of his body so she can take his Soul Reaper butt to the park to take out a Hollow.

Screencapping level: novice.

I like how all the highlights are blown out and everything seems more ethereal. Well, ethereal for an anime. It's like...the light is harder, and infiltrates even the darkest corner. The small details are lost to the eye and even the air has tactile qualities, like the edge on the breeze of an autumn evening...

Ah. Yes. I think that in the anime this might have had a twofold purpose; 1. It let the audience know when the characters were interacting with spirits and 2. There were less details. Easier to animate. I've heard it said that 'Bleach has no backgrounds.'

I'll pay that.

Have another gander. Ichigo's first encounter with Rukia. And she looks back at him...

And then walks away. Ichigo realises that she's not part of the material world as the noises of everyone else who did not see the chick in samurai gear dispose of a giant mantis filter into his perceptions.

Screencapping level: should not be screencapping.

See the difference in the background? The contrast is heightened and the highlights are so overblown it feels like when I walk out of the darkroom to check stuff in white light.

Blinks Owlishly.


And I love it.

So, applied Bleach to prints to make the compositions feel less real. Or, less tied to flesh and blood reality, anyway. Dawg.

Oh. The toning was the second part of making-the-images-feel-like-they-weren't-tied-to-reality.

And then:

we came full circle. Scurrying to think of how to present the story, the Girl in the Blue Dress invented someone else without a name. An Observer.

I found it disturbingly easy to write like a crazy person.

I wrote a series of letters from the perspective of someone who'd sighted the Girl and had been unsure of what they were seeing, but decided to document it anyway. Eventually, they convince themselves of her existence only to find that she was a projection of themselves all along. Which explains the fabricated evidence and drawings, but not necessarily the photos.


Because those photos have to come from somewhere.

The idea of the submitted project was to leave that one open to the reader. To have it not-completely-resolved because it allows the viewer to draw their own conclusions about who and what the Girl is. Because even though she was fabricated by me, I believe that it's not too much to a stretch to see others with the same small existence, scratching at the wall of reality, desiring to be let in but unable to interact with the world that does not see them, because it's warmer on the inside.

That's about as profound as I can get for now. Talk to you later.

Silver in the City

I guess that this blog post, rather than be dedicated to the many many things I've got sitting on the backburner and have been eyeball-deep-in-uni-so-could-not-post might be a bit of a letdown. After all, it's really just more uni work. But it's also the core concept behind one of my photography subjects; specifically, Silver.

Silver is a third-year photography elective. Which means that next semester when I go to pick subjects, I won't give myself three ones that are a year up from my current level. Stupidhead. Anyway. Third year elective specific to film photography. Films and negatives and darkrooms and stuff. It's quite a bit of fun, and I enjoy the process and concept behind this type of photography more than others. I guess that's because there's a much smaller margin for error when creating photos. They're harder to fix when you get to developing the negs, and in general, you have to know what you're doing.

So. Concepts and stuff.

The course, as always, gives us a theme to work to and start with and the theme for Silver was 'Investigating the Shadow'


This sounded quite dark and intimidating to begin with, and in the first couple of weeks, I continued with printing photos from negs I had taken last year, along with stuff I'd taken for 'getting my eye back in'.

The only other thing you probably need to know at this stage is how I operate in the darkroom. This is pretty similar to how I used to work in TAFE. Don't feel like chatting while working. Stick headphones in and go. And the waiting period that you have to have while waiting for test strips to develop and then fix allows you to think in between working on things. So while the music is going, I don't always pay full attention to it.

This particular afternoon, I was walking out of the darkroom with Switchfoot in my ears. It was this song.

"we are

crooked souls trying to stay up straight

dry eyes in the pouring rain,

well,

the Shadow proves the Sunshine

the Shadow proves the Sunshine"

And like a bolt from the blue, there was the core idea. Sort of. I was going to talk about depression and hope in the brief. Shadow and Sunshine.

This initially was thought out as a series of constructed studio photographs, a bit like what I had done in the previous year with photography, where myself and some friends got to sit down and play with masks and stuff.

And stuff.

And then I went to Sydney three times during March. Each time I had a camera, and each time I took photos of the city. 

There were a lot of skyline photos, but there were some odd ones that cropped up too - tiny observations that kept crawling into my lens. I couldn't stop taking photos of them. 

And then I talked to the tutor about it. Very quickly, the project evolved into something else.

Depression and Hope in the City.

I have to admit, I liked where this was going; a take on the city which, while certainly investigated before, could have something added to it. Ack. Too many pronouns.

The city.

There was probably still stuff left over in Brooke's head from last year, where this clip got used for the Mask unit. Can't remember why it was relevant specifically. I think it got included because it's a beautiful clip.

But this got to pull the project more and more into that view of the city and the black and white and the soul in something so large and grey and paradoxical.

Add to that the fact that Anberlin, who have been mentioned earlier on this blog, are popular with me, and the album that the above song is called 'Cities'

Look at that album artwork. That is some beast work. It even looks like a city.

This album, which I've probably mentioned before, is my favourite out of all the work they've produced so far. It...ah.

It explores so many large themes and manages to do it with some kind of deep understanding that I love. And there's the music and the lyrics and the yes. It just feels like the city; at times peaceful or sunny, but also rushing along at the breakneck speed that comes with life and construct and all-of-the-things-I've-been-trying-to-express-this-afternoon.

Look. Just go and buy a copy of the CD. I was a muffinhead and bought the CD/DVD copy, so it was pretty expensive, but the standard twelve-track wasn't too pricy.

I guess that the song I explored more than the others in the making of this project (which is slowly turning into another 'Brooke really loves Anberlin' post) was actually the seventh track on the album, 'Hello Alone'.

From a lesser known, I'm here. And there's hope. There's hope.

I'm going to decide later whether making this was work or procrastination.

Hope is such a powerful thing. It keeps us going in the darkest of times. It gives us something to look forward to - My phone dictionary, as sad as it is, says '(any reason or encouragement for) the state of feeling that what one wants will or might happen.'

It's a pretty soggy definition, but it'll have to do for now. The point that the above definition is missing (I think) is that in order for there to be hope, there has to be some pretty unfun business going on first. We never hope when we're in a good patch. It's like a little candle, and it serves its greatest purpose at night, when we have little else to guide our steps.

Considering the emotions I have encountered in myself and others since moving to the metropolis of Newcastle, and the feel of the city in the first place, this seemed like a good place to start. Buildings and pavements and arriving here with the smell of London still on my shoes, used to the beat of a thousand floors - cobbles, gravel, pavement, bitumen - always hard and unforgiving.

(Pretty sure tears came to my eyes when I went for a walk through Hyde Park on the grass.)

Right about then.

But that's what the city is; it's rough and big and scary and it doesn't give a rats arse about you. It's grey and smelly and there's people everywhere but none of them see you. Not the real you, anyway. It sounds kind of unfun.

Through the project, I just really wanted to be able to show that; the simple play of dark and light in the city across all of it's artificiality. That as unforgiving and dark the city appeared, that there could also be something worth hoping in as well. Something outside of the grey stones and grey skies.

Something with promise. Because there's hope.