vancouver memories part II

Up until 4:30 am last night pounding through more memories (see previous post).

So far, all of my really bad memories are about breaking up with someone, dealing with the police, or being dangerously injured. The theory (thanks A!) is that you retain bad memories for survival - so it makes sense that injury and arrest are retained memories. But why breakups? Maybe it's a propogation-of-the-species type of instinct. If we all thought it was great to end a relationship, there wouldn't be any babies, and/or the dude might take off and not help provide / protect, etc.

I think as you get older you get really tired of them breakups. All those bad memories pile up in a steaming mess until you just don't want to do it any more. When you're younger, there's not enough bad memories yet, so you keep goin' for it.

I think the same applies to physical risk / injury. It takes a certain amount of negative experiences for you to instinctively go "okay, there's like a 25% chance I'm going to get road rash and tear my jeans if I do this. Not worth it."

Conversely, my negative experiences with the police have not taught me to abide by the law. They have only shown me that many laws are ridiculous and over-enforced by barbaric dickheads who have absolutely no mandate to be fair or just.

Jumped in the ocean today - while drying off, I watched an eagle swoop down and make a try for a duck. He dove down far away from the duck to gather speed, then soared horizontally about a foot off the surface of the ocean. I guess he's had success with the low sneak attack before? He was about 6 feet away from the duck before it dove under the water.

vancouver memories part I

I'm trying to do 2-3 years of Vancouver Memories every night. I have to do it after dark, otherwise the sunlight coming through my window changes the colour temperature as time goes on, and you see all kinds of distracting colour changes throughout the animation. So I'm writing down memories in the day, and working from 6PM until 2-4AM on this. It's taking a long time because I'm being really accurate about where I went and what happened.

My two biggest realizations so far:

1) I spent a lot of time at the University of British Columbia, a beautiful campus on a forested peninsula somewhat removed from the city. Even after I graduated from the school, I would go back there a lot to bike in the forests and swim / party at Wreck Beach and Tower Beach.

2) Possibly the biggest single thing that changed my life was getting a bike in 2nd year University. Choosing to ride a bike instead of a car opened up a world of exploration, and kept my ass fit over all these years.

It will be interesting to see how much of the map is left uncovered by the end of this process. I'm really interested to see how the stop-motion animation turns out. I've decided not to put the animation together until I'm completely finished.

retracing steps

Here's the next project for my overhead stop-motion camera rig. I'm doing a map of Vancouver, retracing all my movements and memories of the city from when I first moved there in September 1992. It doesn't look like much yet, because I just started, but by the time I'm finished most of the map will be transformed into a wash of colours and a mess of lines. The animation will be purdy interesting as well (I hope).

This is a very exciting and powerful exercise - to run through every memory I've had in that city in the last eighteen years. Listening to music and remembering my awkward days as a young adult.. lots of fiery and exciting times. So far the memories are mostly good. I don't know if a person blocks out the bad stuff or what, but the only bad stuff I can think of is extreme and uncommon, like getting beat up and hospitalized.

thoughts on a trail to the village and back

PETRIFIED WOULD
why do we try to project ourselves
into the future
trees fade into the mist

OLD LADY TREMBLING
behind fake wood
her earrings match her sweater

THROUGH HANGING CLOUD DROPLETS
the colour of coolness the drifting wet on deep green

the leather will go bad

If you can figure out what the hell that writing is about, I'd love to know.

Today I procrastinated until 8:00 pm, then worked like a buzzard for 4 hours and made up for the lost time.

Listened to Black Metal - the darkest shit you'll ever wrap your face around. Good winter music. Makes you want to rip your shirt off and drag your torso across hard snow until you bleed, howl at the moon, gnaw on bark and bleed a little more.

stoneworks

Illustration for a buddy's stonework / masonry company. The legs were tough because he's kind of bending at the knees, and with perspective... but I think it works. I have to clean up an inkblotch or two, but that's easy enough.

I had the use of a car for the last 4-5 weeks, but I'm back on my bike again. It partially sucks to slog through wet rain, but it partially kicks ass. It's nice to feel the weather on my face. I already feel more healthy and energetic, even after 4-5 days of biking.

I have so much fucking art to do in the next ten days, I'm gonna need that exercise to keep the stress off. I'm loving the work though.

back into it

After some good days off, back into the art. I took about 600 photos of this painting as I made it, now I'm trying to make those photos into some kind of interesting animation. So far my progress includes 15 minutes of animation, a 2-hour nap and some kind of problem with colour-correcting all those photos.

Nice and cold days on the island. Sat next to a trail in the frost this afternoon and listened to a raven for a while. The crisp blue sky was slowly washed over by grayness from the West. Perfect sky for ravens.

I haven't been in the water lately but I think it's time to get back into that daily swim. I have a full-body wetsuit now so I can do longer swims when I feel like it.

That's it for now. I hope everyone had some good holidays n' stuff.