big rocks/soft hearts
pivoting, restarts, and word searches
september has always been the start of my year-my birthday, school starting, and rosh hashanah-lots of ~beginnings~ the first mark in a brand new composition notebook. My only fall plans are a couple of concerts here and there along with hunkering down on animation practice, and diving deeper into this super 8 camera business.
“hazardous conditions” at venice beach, hmm that’s gonna be a no on renting a surfboard, museum day it is! this type of scenario used to break me, i’d get so laser focused on a plan, could forsee it, and would get so upset if the plan needed to change- “but that was not what i was imagining”, what will happen if things go not as i envisioned for the day? pivoting, one of my first and easiest dance moves i’ve ever learned, has a sort of magic to it once you really lean in. in these last 6 years with juan carlos, one major thing i’d say i’ve learned is how to just “be a leaf in the wind.” we had a mostly spontaneous day on my actual birthday and I LOVED it. Our only plan when we left Juan’s parents house was to visit the Hollyhock House. We got lucky and snagged tix without prior reservations, skipped over to MoCA afterwards and oggled at works by Félix González-Torres, Ana Mendieta, and Barbara Kasten. After finally finding the car in the parking garage (queue Seinfeld theme), we returned to Los Feliz to grab dinner and wandered into a vintage shop where we perused and juan scored a sweet wool jacket. adventure continued on into skylight books where I picked up a magazine and opened it to an article titled “the unhinged bisexual woman novel” so naturally, I had to purchase. what a great day.
i turned 35 on september 2nd, at least 3 friends text me to wish me a happy birthday coupled with that they watched “your so no invited to my bat mitzvah”, yes I watched, and yes sarah sherman is *chefs kiss* razzle dazzle! we were in LA for the week staying with juans parents and drove out to the Grand Canyon (my first time). Along the way we stopped at 7 magic mountains and vegas. while at the grand canyon we receive advice from our tram driver that the best hike is from the abyss to mojave point, we also hear immediately after on the prerecorded announcements that this hike is not recommended for people who are afraid of heights-leaf in the wind! 35!
bought a word search activity book at the airport because i’m a child and can zone out and do word searches all day. but for real, word searches are my happy place-i completely lose myself in them for hours. i have profound memories of eating at restaurants with my family as a kid, my dad would ask for an extra kids placemat always so he could do the puzzles alongside with me, i’d take so much comfort filling in the empty spaces with magenta and cerulean blue or finding a word quicker than he did.
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Movie of the month
House (Hasau), 1977.
This one has been on my radar for a while and it felt good to take the time to finally watch. Was not aware at all that this is a horror flick- for whatever reason I thought it was more of a whacky psychedelic movie interspersed with trippy animation, but surrealist slapstick horror?! Wow! Sure! Stylistically parts of it reminded me of the twilight zone episode where the girl gets trapped inside the cartoon, a fav. The theme song was stuck in my head for at least 24 hours after watching.
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Driving through the desert, out to the Grand Canyon I selected “Something’s On Your Mind”, and after the first chorus, I point out that we both have goosebumps… this album was absolutely meant to be played out on the open road <3 Juan bought me In My Own Time for my birthday on vinyl and since we watched the Karen Dalton documentary last month (highly rec, its’s on the criterion channel ofc), she’s been on the brain and thus I’m making this album, album of the month… also feels like a great closer for summer. _________________________________________________________________________
Got to catch the Guillermo del Toro exhibit up at PAM this weekend, if you haven’t gone yet you def should- it’s only up until September 17th. Some of the details just blew my freakin head off. Getting to see the process, behind the scenes, aka how the magic’s made, it all brings me so much delight and inspiration…particularly enjoyed the video recordings of people acting out the movements of the characters themselves and the character development board.
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In the studio…..
this week has been humbling as I move through the first exercise for the SOMtember challenge. here’s what I came up with for week 1- been in a bit of a creative rut lately so I’m shaking off my rusty bits, allowing myself to “be bad” at animation and learn from it, hoping to create more routine habits that’ll stick by working through these prompts.
Lots of traveling and birthdays and events in the last month, looking forward to hunkering down and getting in the studio these next few weeks. As always, thanks for reading, and get ready for spooks and animation deep dives next month <3 <3 <3