The Tell: Weak Means Strong, Strong Means Weak

Check out this sweet campified short film I worked on last year with Devon Lyon and Kevin Curry at Lyon Films.  A Best in Festival award at the 7th Annual Eugene Open Lens Festival (plus a review in the Eugene Weekly) got the film back on our minds this week. As a town that proudly hosts well-attended nearly year-round Rocky Horror Picture Shows, Eugene loving the campy creepy fun is no surprise at all! I love this little bit from the Weekly review about short films as a valid story-telling device: "Short films don’t have all that much time to truly suck, and when they’re done well they have all the compressed emotional impact of a great short story." Also, "This nearly perfect short film is creepy, bloody, hilarious and, in the end, completely shocking — like a musical conceived by Scorsese, scored by Sondheim and directed by Guillermo del Toro." Wow! 

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The week before shooting The Tell (I guess it was Fall 2009), I met Devon at their studio and picked up a gallon of blood and a bag full of fake scars and plastic open wounds. This being my introduction to gore FX makeup, I enlisted my dearest (and most patient) male friend Scott (guys like blood and gore right?) to practice on. The night of (this was a 12 hour, all-nighter shoot), Nadia Kingston and I put the gallon of blood and falsie wounds to good use. I especially enjoyed my job of dumping blood down the neck of our poor young man sacrificed over the bucket. Jillian Rabe stars as the lady in distress alongside Todd Robinson and Norm Sanders. 

Love Is So Short, Forgetting Is So Long

I, right now, am not in the business of forgetting. That was Mr. Neruda's job, some night in a far off time and space, or at least the job fit for the speaker of this poem. At the risk of becoming one of those dreary blogs I've talked about, I want to share this poem by Pablo Neruda. Someone I care about deeply gave me The Essential Neruda book for Christmas, and this poem is one of my favorites because it captures heartbreak so perfectly, as well as the stories we tell ourselves while in the midst of heartbreak. My friend Emilee (a fellow lover of poetry) read it to me in the car this summer on a three hour drive to 10 Mile, a friend's old growth sanctuary on the Oregon Coast. Above poppy is by Bran Symondson from a photo story called "The Best View of Heaven is From Hell" on Dazed Digital. Check it out. It's eerie, but beautifully done, and about opium addiction among the Afganistan police. Pablo's poppys remind me of my Grandma Anita: she, a committed botainist, knew their power and loved them as some of her favorite flowers. 

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I can write the saddest verses

I can write the saddest verses tonight.

Write, for example, "The night is full of stars,

       twinkling blue, in the distance."

The night wind spins in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this I held her in my arms.

I kissed her so many times beneath the infinite sky.

She love me, at times I loved her too.

How not to have loved her great still eyes.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.

To think that I don't have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.

And the verse falls onto my soul like dew onto grass.

What difference that my love could not keep her.

The night is full of starts, and she is not with me.

That's all. In the distance, someone sings. In the

       distance.

My soul is not at peace with having lost her.

As if to bring her closer, my gaze searches for her,

My heart searches for her, and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.

We, of then, now are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, it's true, but how much I loved her.

My voice searched for the wind that would touch her ear.

Another's. She will be another's. As before my kisses.

Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, it's true, but maybe I love her.

Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,

my soul is not at peace with having lost her.

Though this may be the final sorrow she causes me,

and these the last verses I write for her.

-Pablo Neruda

Nothing Remains But A Kiss Of Salt

Sometimes I work on shoots where I love the model so much I think: we would have been fast friends in middle school. Good measure for how cool and real someone is, right? Thinking back I'm not sure if I told Lynsee I could imagine watching TGIF with her when I was 11, but I may as well have.

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Here is a model, living in Portland, working full time. I know, it's unheard of. I had to ask her several times what else she does. Granted, most of her work is international or NYC. She flies up to Canada to do commercials, and spent a significant part of last year in Asia doing shows and shoots in China. She rarely works in Portland. Ben and I felt really lucky to shoot with her, and we should feel even luckier still: sigh, she's taking off for New York. Portland still isn't able to support many full-time fashion people, but that's another convo for another time.

Ben Pigao shot this in an abandoned Nike studio space in NW. (It was sweet in there, but no, you can't use it. He's a Nike designer with his office in the building, so has free range.) In this elevator shot, it's newcomer Ryan Self with Lynsee, her makeup and hair pretty simple; her sweet nature made me want to do lovely. After a lonnnng day of shooting, we were contemplating final looks, and Lynsee said, "Everyone wants me to look sweet and pretty. I don't really have anything in my book that's tough." She showed me a couple sample shots of a heavy, blacked out eye, and I happily conceded. More photos from this day to come I hope! Go here for my first shoot with Mr. Pigao.

Lift The Rock To Find The Life

 

A heart-shaped rock

lies face to the sun,

dusty pink and almost smooth,

its four chambers pumping with life.

The cloudy contours fit perfectly in your hand,

but it’s bigger than it looks.

It’s a plateau, an entire landscape,

a mountain.

The heart’s spring came long ago

when the earth was hot and bubbly.

At its genesis it was connected to the earth

by a cord of molten.

Finally it broke apart and freed itself,

Tearing off its gown like one of Rumi’s roses.

Broken lines circle like a crown:

little rock stretch marks and

earthquake smile lines.

Proof it had to crack a bit to form.

-Carrie Hamm

Do Work. Dress Up. Feel Good.

How is it that 68 degrees feels so much colder some days? I'm doing web design today from home, and trying to find a warm place to work without turning up the heat or distracting myself with hot lavender baths. I've finally settled all bundled up in front of the fire with the gray alpaca blanket my sister and brother-in-law got for me from Peru this fall. I've pretty much avoided the living room since my little sister left after New Years for Chicago; home takes some time to get used to again without her. But now here I am with a cup (okay a pot) of Chicago's Metropolis Redline Express coffee and my day's work.

Here are some pictures from our Masquerade Ball @ Mt. Tabor Theater. Lately it has been just my style to wear the cheapest little clothes (above note the forever 21 dress) with way more valuable (albeit mostly borrowed) accessories. Thank god for Sahlia's most gorgeous jewelry (and her sanity-giving breezyness). About an hour before we needed to be completely ready to leave I went flailing over to her studio dramatically needing to be rescued with a feathered headdress, jewels (a freshly braided mixed-metal neckless which we wrapped around my wrist) and a glass of wine. I rambled on and on while we doctored the Urban Outfitters mask and cut the cloth flowers off the dress. I've come to the conclusion that it is impossible to get ready for an event without some drama. Best masks of the night in my opinion: Erica, Hannah and Ali and taking the total cake very bottom Ethan and Kerri with their dramatic homemade masks.

Photos Hannah Aronowitz

Secret Bin Of Sweetness

Again felt the need to unplug. Get to the bottom of my essence, find that core, stoke it and watch the brilliance unfold and shine out. Still digging my well, building my tower.

And it's coming along quite nicely, thank you.

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I'd like to come home to my blog and give us this beautiful poem by Mary Oliver, from her book of poetry American Primitive. My dear friend Ryan gave me this book on a rainy Oregon Coast weekend this fall, one of the treasured weekends I got to spend in wild, musical passion with my extended family of conscious friends and teachers.

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Like that weekend, today the wind rushes through the leaves, sounding like a wooden rain maker being turned and turned and turned; the rain comes in waves, showering the damp earth and leaving a mist for the moss to drink up; thunder rolls some ways off, vaguely threatening. In the front of the book Ryan wrote: "May your winter be warm with words and wet with rain." It is here we will visit the bear and her drunken, fulfilled happiness.

Happiness

In the afternoon I watched
the she-bear; she was looking
for the secret bin of sweetness--
honey, that the bees store
in the trees' soft caves.
Black block of gloom, she climbed down
tree after tree and shuffled on
through the woods. And then
she found it! The honey-house deep
as heartwood, and dipped into it
among the swarming bees--honey and comb
she lipped and tongued and scooped out
in her black nails, until

maybe she grew full, or sleepy, or maybe
a little drunk, and sticky
down the rungs of her arms,
and began to hum and sway.
I saw her let go of the branches,
I saw her lift her honeyed muzzle
into the leaves, and her thick arms,
as though she would fly--
an enormous bee
all sweetness and wings--
down into the meadows, the perfection
of honeysuckle and roses and clover--
to float and sleep in the sheer nets
swaying from flower to flower
day after shining day.