Artist Jeanne-Claude of Jeanne-Claude and Christo has passed away at 74. I didn't get to see THE GATES or any of their works, but I do have a piece of fabric from The Gates tucked away in my box of treasures. It's like having a little piece of her hair.

Read more on NYTIMES.COM.

Labels: ART, DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 11/19/2009 - 0 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

You can audit Yale's Philosophy of Death course from your bed. Click HERE.

What should my attitude toward death be?

Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 8/07/2009 - 0 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

You've heard all the bad news over and over again, but when I'm assuaging my guilt for enjoying a cigarette or three I like to read THIS ARTICLE and remember the social and therapeutic benefits of cigarettes. So drop the guilt, cause feeling guilty will make it harder to put them down.

Labels: BAD DOG, DEATH AND DRAMA

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 8/05/2009 - 0 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 7/30/2009 - 0 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

In 1518 a plague broke out in Strasbourg causing the residents to dance until they died:

She was still dancing several days later. Within a week about 100 people had been consumed by the same irresistible urge to dance. The authorities were convinced that the afflicted would only recover if they danced day and night. So guildhalls were set aside for them to dance in, musicians were hired to play pipes and drums to keep them moving, and professional dancers were paid to keep them on their feet. Within days those with weak hearts started to die.

By the end of August 1518 about 400 people had experienced the madness. Finally they were loaded aboard wagons and taken to a healing shrine. Not until early September did the epidemic recede.

(Source)

The theory is that the people began dancing because of the extreme distress caused by famine, disease, and poverty. The need to dance was so strong that when the urge finally overtook every reason not to dance it ended up killing them.

This reminds me of a documentary I saw in an experimental film class in university. The people of an African (I believe - might have been Haitian...?) village would set aside a day every year or so to go into trances. They would induce themselves into feverish and violent dancing and convulse until they frothed at the mouth, claiming spirits had overtaken them. Animal sacrifices were made. Child shamans spoke in tongues. Huge riotous gatherings took place. And then, the next day, everything went back to normal. People behaved as if nothing unusual had happened. Any indiscretions were not addressed. It was as if it simply did not happen.

Apparently this was a way for them to release stress - these trance dance rituals. They ascribed a higher power to the act of dancing so that they could completely release themselves and be as violent and frenetic as needed without being self-conscious about their movements. I guess it's the same reason that people drink before they feel comfortable dancing. It would appear that the need to dance is inherent, but only when we're either completely desperate for it or we are sure our movements will have no consequences can it really be released. Looking at these examples, it seems that dancing is not at all a frivolous or unimportant activity. A night out on the town could very well save your life.

Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, YOUTUBE

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 7/28/2009 - 0 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

Every once in a while I break up with myself. It's painful, but it has to happen. For the dumper side of me it's a relief and I look forward to moving on to bigger and better stuff. For the dumped side of me, I go down the rabbit-hole and am forced to painstakingly analyze everything I've done wrong. I'm like a Mini Wheat. A soggy Mini Wheat.

I was once told by someone who I thought mattered that the most interesting thing about my photographs was seeing my discomfort as a photographer reflected in the expressions of my subjects. I clung to this deduction like it was the only thing that made me unique, and I've just realized that it's something I've been hiding behind.

Ever since I began making images seriously I've bounced back and forth from using just my camera and the sun to making HIGHLY CONTRIVED and constructed work. My struggle for the past few years has been trying to define myself as an artist. How do I reconcile my aesthetic and thematic disparities?

I've often blamed my eclecticism for my difficulties in getting shows with my own work or for failing to get grant money for short films I've written and photo series I've proposed. I thought having done ad work made people think of me less as an artist. I got a big head and thought I was too big for Toronto. But recently I came to the realization that maybe it's not them, it's me (see, it really is like breaking up with myself). And, although I have to keep doing what interests and excites me, maybe I need to grow up a bit, too.

I admit that I like the look of distrust in my photographs, but it's gotten me into trouble. I've always found it more interesting and engaging when my subject doesn't look pretty. I've never been interested in making the people who sit for me look good; I've been interested in making a compelling image. Avedon's images of a despondent Marilyn Monroe are more interesting to me than any other image of her. I've never requested "fierce" from someone I was photographing. It just doesn't thrill me. I find it so disposable. But I've often been unfair to my subjects. I've objectified them because I believed it was more interesting. While I stand by my photographs, while I think they say as much about my insecurities as they do about the subject's, I now understand how cruel I can be.

After spending a couple weeks in San Francisco with photographers at different stages of their careers I was thrown for a loop. Of course I have been around photographers I think are amazing for years, but I mostly went to school with them. I saw them do crap and I saw them do great things and I saw their insecurities and their strengths grow and change as they did. And they saw mine. Being around Parker, Ryan, and Luke changed my mind about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. I'm sure they all have their insecurities, but unlike my colleagues in Toronto, I didn't see them grow, I just see them now, and I'm humbled in different ways.

PARKER is a brash young thing heading into his first year at California College of the Arts. He's one of those photographers who loves having a camera in his hand and takes it everywhere. He's going to kick my ass big time and he's going to do so well in school. I'm so excited for him and can't wait to see what he'll do. It makes me remember how people who had taken time between high school and university did so much better in the photo program because they really knew they wanted to be there. Parker's really unselfconscious with his camera, he trusts that people want to be photographed and want to be photographed by him, as well they should. I've never had that confidence. I always felt like my subjects were doing me a favour rather than getting anything out of the experience themselves. Watching Parker shoot with such excitement for the medium was both inspiring and disconcerting. I felt like I didn't get nearly as much out of my education as he will. The lucky thing is that I'll get to go back to school this fall. I can't wait to approach my film education with a fervor and understanding that I lacked in my undergraduate experience.

LUKE, who I didn't get to spend a lot of time with but hope to get to know better in New York, is fresh out of UCLA and blowing up the photo world. His work is really fantastic and beautiful and original and varied but coherent - something I aspire to but take too far in some ways.

RYAN is a well-known young photographer who did his MFA at SVA and watching him photograph was so fascinating for me. We use the same camera, but not in the same way. I am sure that in some ways the style of my university education gave me this complex that I have to have a set or a gimmick going on in my photographs in order for people to be interested in them. I've felt like just having my camera wasn't enough, and I felt that from the people who asked me to take photographs of them. I didn't think anyone would trust that my photograph was going to be interesting unless I had a stylist and an elephant on hand and we were going to a treetop village in the Amazon. Watching Ryan trust himself and trust that a camera was all he needed was fascinating. And when I sat for Ryan I suddenly understood how unfair I could be with my subjects. I totally trusted Ryan because I knew his photographs and I knew he would not be unkind to me. It was when I was sitting for him that I understand why people might have been reticent to let me photograph them knowing that my photographs were all about what I wanted them to be, not about who or what they really are.

I have not been a subject for anyone for about six years. I didn't really understand what it was like to be in front of the lens, which I now realize is something a photographer must experience seriously. I thought I knew what it was like to be a subject, and I had disdain for subjects who (I assumed) wanted to "look hot". Both Parker and Ryan photographed me, and while I'll never ask them to retouch an image of me or have the delusion that I'm a model, I see how vulnerable it can make someone feel to be photographed.

So, moving forward, my overarching modus operandi is becoming clearer. When editing my photographs from San Francisco I went down the rabbit-hole because I was afraid others would think them boring landscape photos. But, for once, I'm going ahead with what I believe in rather than what I want people to think is exciting and fresh. I resisted the urge to hide behind digital gimmicks or design tricks and just edited the straight images from an intuitive place.

I see these images as a continuation and purification of what I began in London. London was an accidental beginning to a theme that carried through the photographs in Are We Having Fun Yet? When I went to Mexico I expected this theme to continue, but I mostly just found good people genuinely wanting to enjoy themselves with their families and getting along and having a good time, so the focus shifted. My own solitude began to leak through as I felt on the outside of this group of people I didn't want to judge anymore. This came out as well as a methodical and almost meditative way of photographing. A centre-heavy, Bernd & Hilla Becher informed framing of the subject emerged. I was compelled and excited by this somewhat boring regimented style of photographing. This style reappears in the San Francisco photographs and is even more methodical and unapologetic in its wistful prettiness. I think this way I'm photographing is a foil to the gimmicky pictures I do. It is the most consistently recurrent style of photograph I have taken over any period of time. And it's not to say that I won't have fun with photography and image-making ever again, but I'm really trying to pay attention to what these are and why I'm doing them.

Parker told me that when we went to photograph together that he felt he totally was not a part of my process, that I was working alone. It's true. It needs to be a solitary act for me. I need to get lost in it, I need to feel uninhibited and not judged or scrutinized.

In the end I still haven't been able to pin down what I'm going for, but this way of photographing is leading me by the hand to somewhere I want to be. It's taking me back to the photograph and the medium itself. Kind of purifying it. And it's still me. There are themes that I've always imbued in my work - loneliness, smallness, boredom, apathy, bleached or faded vibrancy, existentialism, and a kind of hush and stillness or stasis beyond the obvious stillness of the photographic medium. I think these themes are not hiding behind anything else anymore. I hope they're not so earnest, that maybe they're a little more natural.

Though all this was a tricky mind-trap to navigate I feel better, lighter, and ready to move forward. I'm still proud of the things I've done. Some things more so than others, but it's all brought me here. And though my work may sometimes be schticky and sloppy, I'm glad to say that I've never approached it from the side of irony.

So for now this Mini Wheat is floating alone, but sugar-side-up in a warm bowl of milk.

Labels: ART, BAD DOG, DEATH AND DRAMA, EW, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON., MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, NARCISSISM, PHOTOGRAPHY, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 7/16/2009 - 3 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

The answer is at your fingertips: WWW.HASTHELARGEHADRONCOLLIDERDESTROYEDTHEWORLDYET.COM

Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, NOBODY LIKES A NERD

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/08/2009 - 0 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

By PAUL CHAN from his exhibition at the University of Chicago until April 12.

These free FONTS are pretty great too.

Labels: ART, DEATH AND DRAMA

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 4/04/2009 - 0 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

I was watching Big Love (here comes a spoiler if you haven't seen episode two of the third season) and I was at the part when Barb is talking about dying "taking great comfort in knowing what her family will look like in the celestial afterlife" or however it goes. This made me think about whether or not I'm afraid to die. I don't believe in an afterlife, and basically think that when I die I'm dead that's it. I won't remember anyone or anything from my life, it will all just dissipate and disappear.

This made me recall that horrible movie "Paycheck" starring Ben Affleck. In this movie Ben's character decides he is going to have something done to him which will make him forget the next three years of his life.

I often wonder what it's like to get amnesia or to "not remember" events. When I was a kid this boy from the neighbourhood, Ray Oakley (or maybe it was his brother Chad...either way, good names), got hit by a car. When he recovered I remember him saying that he didn't remember anything about the accident, though he was physically conscious and responsive throughout the whole experience. He said he remembers going out on his bike with the other kids, but doesn't remember leaving his driveway.

But this is the thing - if you're about to go through a horrible experience but know you won't remember it, are you still afraid to go through it? I mean, you still have to experience it even though you won't remember it. Say, for example, you made a deal where you would have a wish fulfilled, but you had to witness a murder. You wouldn't remember anything about the murder but would the terror of going into that situation, even knowing it wouldn't stay with you in any way, stop you from going through with the deal?

So anyway, back to Big Love and dying. I guess I'm afraid that I will feel like I didn't get done everything I wanted to do and it will all be for nothing, and that none of it will matter because everything I know and remember will just disappear with me, and here I sit making sticks with hair that spin in space.

Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON.

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 2/16/2009 - 1 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, MUSIC

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 8/26/2008 - 0 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, MUSIC

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 7/25/2008 - 0 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, MUSIC

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/22/2008 - 2 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON., MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, NARCISSISM

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/11/2008 - 0 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

Next up: "iTunes Essentials: Black People Music."

When are people going to stop doing shit like this?

Lord almighty.

Labels: BAD DOG, DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, MUSIC, REALLY FUCKING GAY

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 5/07/2008 - 0 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

Home Depot Honors Fallen Soldiers With Great Prices On Tools

Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 4/29/2008 - 1 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

IT'S A SAD DAY. I suppose POLANOID will become a graveyard.

Here's one of my favourite Polaroids that I took way back in 2003:



I will miss Polaroid...but damn if only the film wasn't so expensive!

RIP

Thanks to Tim for the tip about Polanoid.

Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON.

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 2/13/2008 - 3 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

HERE IS THE PSA FOR FUCK DEATH.

Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON., MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 1/27/2008 - 2 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

I made a one minute short for THE FUCK DEATH FOUNDATION for their screening and fundraiser:

Friday, January 25th
8PM
Camera Bar
1028 Queen Street West
Toronto

$5 Cover

My short will be shown before the main event - Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal".

Come kill death.

MORE INFO

Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, DEATH AND DRAMA, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON., MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 1/25/2008 - 0 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

I haven't been posting much crap-garbage I find around cause I haven't found much crap-garbage that I care about at the moment. So I'm just gonna write some junk. And I'm gonna continue to do what I bitch about on other blogs...I'm gonna post more pictures of me...but they're from the trouble years so it's worth it.

I was on the subway today when I finally realized it's 2008. You know how sometimes things to do with dates and time changing take a while to sink in? Like after your birthday you'll say you're 7 when you're actually 8 and you win a colouring contest in the wrong age group and you go up to the front of the school to accept the award for best drawing in the 5-7 year old category and your classmates stand up and yell "He's not 7 he's 8!" and they strip you of your title of "Best Colourer of a Muskoka Winter Scene" in front of everyone? Grade 3 sucked.

Anyway, I realized it's been 10 years since I left to go on an exchange to Switzerland for a semester of school. It was the best thing that's ever happened to me. I worked and paid for my flight out of my two-horse title-stripping town, lived with a francophone Swiss family, went to a francophone school, saw Milan and Paris and Zurich, snowboarded amidst avalanches, ate breakfast and dinner every day with a view of Mont Blanc from the table, showered after gym class with a guy I nicknamed "horse-cock", and began to come out of the closet. It was terribly liberating, and the return to the misery of Gravenhurst was a prison sentence. I specifically remember standing in the hall a couple weeks after I got back, staring at the alternating brown, orange, and green lockers, paining for my European life, and thinking "In 10 years, I will not miss Switzerland at all." That devastated me.

At that point in my life my experiences overseas were the most important thing. There was nothing bigger or more important than those memories, and there was nothing better than those memories. And for some reason I recognized that one day they would not be the most important things in my life, and I dreaded not missing Switzerland. I anticipated THE DEATH OF MISSING.

And it faded, the missing. I went to school in a bigger town where they had photography classes, I found friends, a boyfriend, got my driver's license, and so on. Then other missings took over. Friends moved, boyfriends moved on, I moved to Toronto. A series of missings and renewals, all the while Switzerland became a sharp point in my mind. I wrote to my host family less frequently, I stopped looking through the album, I stopped watching the video, I just stopped missing it.

The most interesting thing to me in The Death of Missing is that by the time missing dies it doesn't hurt anymore. You fear losing those emotions, but in losing the emotions you lose the pain. There comes a time when thinking of something you used to love doesn't cause you to well up or get excited or swell in the heart (or another) region. When I break up with someone I have loved (okay...when I get dumped) I at first dread the day I won't long to feel him beside me. But it just fades...and in the end it doesn't hurt.

I know it's neurotic...to miss something is one thing, but to fear not missing something is entirely another, then to dramatize the fading of that feeling is beyond reason...but that's how my ticker tapes (what?).

I won't say I'm not nostalgic about things even when I don't miss them. I can't say that plowing through my packet of photos from Switzerland didn't swirl up some sludge in my black heart. But it just doesn't kill me like it used to.

I wonder what I'll miss in 10 years. Maybe if they stop making Twix bars I'll miss those.

Anyway, here are those pics:


^Me with my lesbian retiree haircut and exchange partner Maria at the Creux du Van.


^Standing on the balcony of my room at my friend Estelle's ski chalet.


^Eating chocolate on the boardwalk in Morges.

The photo at the top is from the window of my host family's dining room. Mont Blanc is between the V the mountains on the right make. The mountains on the right are where Evian water comes from. Oooooooooooo!

Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON., MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, NARCISSISM, NOBODY LIKES A NERD

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 1/09/2008 - 4 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT

I'm back after holidays and the flu.

I had a dream last week that my teeth were falling out. According to online dream dictionaries either something great is going to happen, or something terrible is going to happen. So I'm going to continue spending my time alternating my mindset between "excited" and "terrified".

Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, EW, MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, NARCISSISM

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 1/07/2008 - 0 COMMENTS - ADD COMMENT