I've been somewhat absorbed lately with this identity film project that I'm working on for class. It's all about my russian heritage and my connection/disconnect to it. I wrote a narrative from the perspective of my great-grandmother from what I've heard about her life that I'm going to have as a voiceover. I think it's a pretty cool story. What do you think?
I was only sixteen when I came to America. I can still remember standing in that long line on the dreariest day ever. It was only early morning, but the heavy rain made everything look gray and later than it really was. After a few hours of standing in that line, all the people began to look gray and expressionless as well. But we stood there just the same, waiting our turn and hoping that we wouldn't be the next person to be turned away. Away from our hopes and dreams. This was the day we were to leave Russia for good and start our new life in America.
Not all of us would be boarding the big ship. The Russian soldiers who strolled up and down the long line saw to that. Their job was to weed out the weak ones; the ones not fit to go.
I began to cry and started to miss my mother and father already. Would I ever see them and all my brothers and sisters again? But I was the oldest and so it was up to me to make a new start in a strange new land. I can remember crying more loudly and the woman standing behind me poking me.
"Stop that silly crying girl! Do you want them to draw a big white "X" on the back on your coat? Show them that you're strong!" She pulled a small white apron out of her over stuffed purse and gave it to me to wipe away my tears. The soldiers came and marked a big white "X" on the woman’s back, then promptly led her away. I never saw her again, but still had the white apron she so kindly gave me. I often thought of her and the kindness and advice she gave me.
The sight of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty was bigger than I could have imagined, and the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I can still remember coming off the ship and the first moment I stepped on American soil. Oh, to be free at last! Who of us knew what would happen to us next?
After all the paperwork was finalized, I found myself being whisked off with a group of strangers. We were to share a very small apartment together. Those were the loneliest days of my life.
I soon found a job as a waitress in a busy restaurant on Hauser St. in N.Y.C. I wore that white apron given to me by the kind woman. Before long, I started to recognize some of the people. They had become like family to me. The usual supper crowd would filter in, most for a taste of old Russia. Some blini, kishka, or perhaps a bowl of borsch. There was one particular man who would come every day and order his usual bowl of borsch. He always had a twinkle in his eye; his large unkempt handle bar mustache covering the half hidden smile. There was mischief in this one. He wouldn't have anyone else take his order except for me. Maybe it was because I was the only one who could understand him? He only spoke in Russian. Oh sure, he knew how to speak English, and was fluent in several other languages as well. I later found out that he didn't want to let on that he could speak a variety of languages so that he could always sit at the tables I waited on.
I would take his order, and as I turned to place his request to the cook, he would reach over and pull my apron string, unraveling my white apron. I would watch it drop in slow motion gracefully to the floor. Then he would get up from his table, walk over to the apron, pick it up and hand it back to me. He never said very much, but repeated the same routine over and over every day.
One day, he pulled my apron string and it fell to the floor as usual. And as always, he got up from his table and walked over to the apron. But this time, it was different. He picked it up and walked over to me, but he knelt down on one knee and took my hand. He looked up at me with tears in his eyes. "Will you marry me Julie and be my wife?" There was total silence in the noisy, over crowded restaurant as the patrons waited for my answer. I said "yes." I figured he would bother me forever pulling at my apron strings until I said yes, and so I did.
Suddenly the whole place turned into a big party. Most of the patrons were Russian, one was even a famous ballet dancer. She danced in celebration for us. Accordions and balalaikas appeared from nowhere and we danced all night long.
We were married a few weeks later. He was a good man; a hardworking man and our love grew day by day. He built us a house with his own hands in N.J. and it still stands there today, with echoes of happiness. And so my Sarah, my great grand daughter, I pass my white apron on to you. May it always remind you of the kind spirit that it was given to me and may you wear it in good health. And who knows, perhaps one day they'll be a man with a twinkle in his eye and mischief in his blood for you.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Sunday, September 17, 2006
A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more you tell the less you know.
Now into the 5th week of school and this semester is flying. I started out wanting to get more involved because I was worried about being bored this year with a lot of my friends gone. But I think I may have overextended myself and gotten too involved. I joined a bunch of stuff at once. I recently joined Trojan Vision, the university news station. I write interview questions for The Cutting Edge, a show that screens student films and then interviews the filmmakers. Some of the films really suck, which makes it more fun because we get to screen them beforehand and mock them incessantly. The people seem to be pretty nice. They do a lot of group outings, like this past Friday we went to a Dodger game. Had to sit in the stratosphere section and spent 45 minutes walking around the parking lot looking for our car afterward, but once I got over my fear of sitting that high up, I had a nice time. 3 people got kicked out for throwing things over the railing. I'm trying to get more involved in AIGA, the graphic design club on campus. I toyed with the idea of having an officer position, but with everything being the way it is, I think it'd be a committment I couldn't take on. I don't want to be so busy that I can't do thing with friends or go out on a weekend if I want to. And I've still got all the sorority things going on and all my classes, so it's turned into a fairly busy semester...which is exactly what I wanted. I'm getting a better idea of how my classes are going to be this semester.
Senior Seminar-We spent the first 3 weeks doing presentations about our own work. I had technical difficulties and half my stuff didn't show up in the powerpoint, but it worked out ok. The class split into 2 classes, basically designers and fine artists, and we've begun to go over everything we need to know in order to graduate and get a job. Last week, the whole class was devoted to resume development, so I think I should be a little better prepared to graduate.
Special Projects for Design- We're working for CBS in this class. We're doing the ad campaign for the Monday Night comedy lineup and also for the Grammy Awards. i would greatly appreciate ANY insight into the grammies. Who's going to win? What's the general feel of it? I havent actually watched the awards for a few years so I'm kinda clueless. I'm mainly freaking out about the comedy stuff though. I have a hell of a time designing for comedy. Dramas are so much easier. With comedy, you have to be funny, but in a way that's very quickly understood and not stupid. I'm drawing a blank so far.
Advertising Media and Analysis- blandest subject matter ever. I have to pump myself full of caffeine before each class to avoid falling asleep and snoring.
Art Theory- generally fun. It's the advanced art theory class here and I'm with mainly all art majors. There's a fair share of dense reading and critiques, but our teacher is kind of eccentric and interesting to listen to.
Digital Video- I like this class a lot. The teacher does tend to show us too many hours of "art films" which I dislike a lot. You can only watch so much Matthew Barney so many times, and once we hit The Karen Carpenter Story acted out entirely with barbie dolls, I knew we'd gone too far. And the class meets in the basement computer lab where it's dark and cozy and I tend to get sleepy. But the assignments we have are really helpful. Right now, I'm working on an "identity video" project. We had to pick something about ourselves and create a 5-10 minute video project. I decided to do it about my Russian heritage and my disconnect to it. I'm thinking of having it in the style of a nostalgic, slow piece and I'd like to do it in the style of a film title sequence. Think "To Kill a Mockingbird" with its retrospect of childhood objects and humming or this http://www.d-kitchen.com/nw/nw_911.html except with more balalaika music.
Other than school, I went to the football game, which has basically turned into an angry mob of students pushing and trampling each other to get into the stadium. The school oversold student seats by 4,000 seats so everyone was panicking. After being squished up against people in line for 2 hours, my friend actually had a panic attack and we decided to leave the line. We waited til the crowd died down and went in, but I don't think I'll be going back to any games if it continues like that. I think i'd rather watch the game from the comfort of my living room than to risk being trambled and then get squished into the student seating area that didn't actually have seats so we all had to stand to watch the 4 hour game. Booo USC football and your money-making schemes.
And yay, this movie is finally coming out! Diane Arbus is one of my absolute favorite photographers, so I'll definintely be seeing this. The poster is really well designed too.
Senior Seminar-We spent the first 3 weeks doing presentations about our own work. I had technical difficulties and half my stuff didn't show up in the powerpoint, but it worked out ok. The class split into 2 classes, basically designers and fine artists, and we've begun to go over everything we need to know in order to graduate and get a job. Last week, the whole class was devoted to resume development, so I think I should be a little better prepared to graduate.
Special Projects for Design- We're working for CBS in this class. We're doing the ad campaign for the Monday Night comedy lineup and also for the Grammy Awards. i would greatly appreciate ANY insight into the grammies. Who's going to win? What's the general feel of it? I havent actually watched the awards for a few years so I'm kinda clueless. I'm mainly freaking out about the comedy stuff though. I have a hell of a time designing for comedy. Dramas are so much easier. With comedy, you have to be funny, but in a way that's very quickly understood and not stupid. I'm drawing a blank so far.
Advertising Media and Analysis- blandest subject matter ever. I have to pump myself full of caffeine before each class to avoid falling asleep and snoring.
Art Theory- generally fun. It's the advanced art theory class here and I'm with mainly all art majors. There's a fair share of dense reading and critiques, but our teacher is kind of eccentric and interesting to listen to.
Digital Video- I like this class a lot. The teacher does tend to show us too many hours of "art films" which I dislike a lot. You can only watch so much Matthew Barney so many times, and once we hit The Karen Carpenter Story acted out entirely with barbie dolls, I knew we'd gone too far. And the class meets in the basement computer lab where it's dark and cozy and I tend to get sleepy. But the assignments we have are really helpful. Right now, I'm working on an "identity video" project. We had to pick something about ourselves and create a 5-10 minute video project. I decided to do it about my Russian heritage and my disconnect to it. I'm thinking of having it in the style of a nostalgic, slow piece and I'd like to do it in the style of a film title sequence. Think "To Kill a Mockingbird" with its retrospect of childhood objects and humming or this http://www.d-kitchen.com/nw/nw_911.html except with more balalaika music.
Other than school, I went to the football game, which has basically turned into an angry mob of students pushing and trampling each other to get into the stadium. The school oversold student seats by 4,000 seats so everyone was panicking. After being squished up against people in line for 2 hours, my friend actually had a panic attack and we decided to leave the line. We waited til the crowd died down and went in, but I don't think I'll be going back to any games if it continues like that. I think i'd rather watch the game from the comfort of my living room than to risk being trambled and then get squished into the student seating area that didn't actually have seats so we all had to stand to watch the 4 hour game. Booo USC football and your money-making schemes.
And yay, this movie is finally coming out! Diane Arbus is one of my absolute favorite photographers, so I'll definintely be seeing this. The poster is really well designed too.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Learning from Los Angeles
I always like hearing accounts of Los Angeles in ways I haven't thought about the city before. Here is a snippet from my latest art theory reading assignment by Dave Hickey:
"So, for the artist or the citizen living and working in it, Los Angeles becomes less a drama than a casting call, less a novel than a telephone book, less a text than a dictionary; it is less a place, in fact, than a network of intersecting mythological journeys, or less a deployment of communal plazzas than a confluence of intersecting "strips." It is a world in which space unfolds irrationally in a sequence of vistas, after the manner of the romantic garden, or Ed Rusha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip. By comparison, you can conceive Manhatten, hold it in your head, read it like a book-a paginated codex. Los Angeles is inconceivable in this manner. Further, there is so little real past here, and so much fraudulent "high" concept, that that characteristic, deep, tilting, shifting space becomes the emblem of what is "real."
"So, for the artist or the citizen living and working in it, Los Angeles becomes less a drama than a casting call, less a novel than a telephone book, less a text than a dictionary; it is less a place, in fact, than a network of intersecting mythological journeys, or less a deployment of communal plazzas than a confluence of intersecting "strips." It is a world in which space unfolds irrationally in a sequence of vistas, after the manner of the romantic garden, or Ed Rusha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip. By comparison, you can conceive Manhatten, hold it in your head, read it like a book-a paginated codex. Los Angeles is inconceivable in this manner. Further, there is so little real past here, and so much fraudulent "high" concept, that that characteristic, deep, tilting, shifting space becomes the emblem of what is "real."
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
10 things
I've been meaning for a few days to update this thing with stories from my trip to New Jersey, but everytime I thought about sitting down and writing about it, the venture seemed too daunting. So instead, I'm going to post this thing I'm writing for my digital video assignment because it's already written and all I have to do is copy and paste. Our next film project for the upcoming weeks is a personal identity project. It's a 5-10 minute video about some element of our identity. So in preparation, our teacher wants us to write a list of 10 things about our identity that will help us define who we are to ourselves and pick a subject for our piece. It can be anything from personal (a coveted object, a phobia, dynamic with a parent) to broader social categories (gender, race, religion, etc.) Here's the list of 8 of the 10 I just typed up tonight. It will probably change before it's finished and I have no idea which of these things to base my project around...suggestions are welcome, but here it is:
1. Russian heritage: I want to feel connected to this culture and be able to relate to my relatives, but I’m a 3rd generation Russian who is completely American. How do you connect to a culture you haven’t experienced? My great grandmother came to America from Russia, where she lived as a gypsy. She inspired an appreciation for mysticism and fun in my family that I think is still there generations later.
2. Vegetarian: I’ve been one for 6 1/2 years. Treating creatures with respect and living in harmony with nature has been very important to me. I was brought up with a belief in the interconnectedness of all things, and to me this decision just felt right.
3. Phobias:
• Heights. I get really debilitating vertigo when climbing open staircases. My earliest memories of being afraid of heights was when my family visited a windmill and you could climb to the top. I didn’t want to and neither did my mom.
• Butterflies. I went to a butterfly atrium when I was 3 and there were all these super large butterflies and they landed and got tangled up in my hair. I got so freaked out that I ran out of the atrium as fast as I could.
• Animatronics/Puppets. I watched a kid’s video when I was little and it had a scene with a purple hippo puppet that got stuck in a tree and was going to fall and crush these little children. Every since I saw that, all animatronic or puppet animals that talk freak me out beyond believe.
4. Ballerina: I started dancing ballet when I was 3 years old. It wasn’t really dancing, it was mainly hopping ungracefully over alligator ponds that our teacher drew on the floor in chalk. I continued to do ballet up until I was 16 years old. It played a large role in my life and still plays a role in how I behave and try to carry myself.
5. Sorority: I joined a sorority my sophomore year of college. It was never in a million years something that I thought would fit my lifestyle as an art student, but I joined because my freshman year was uneventful and I knew people who had fun in sororities. I’ve made many friends and found just one more outlet in college where I can explore my identity.
6. Observer: I’ve always thought of myself within society as the quiet observer of people and situations around me. I’ve always been on the quieter side and I like to see the beauty in the world around me without really interacting or disturbing it. I got into photography as a way to channel what I saw around me into something artistic.
7. Daughter/Sister: I’m extremely close to all members of my immediate family. My mom is literally my best friend, and my brother and I are so close in age that we get along really well. I take after my dad because he’s very patient and rational. My older sister passed away when she was just a baby from SIDS, which affected my parents very strongly but I also think it brought the family closer together. It really says something about my parents that they could come through the loss of a child and still be the amazing parents that they are today.
8. Los Angeles: My relationship with the city has taken many forms. When I was younger, I couldn’t wait to move away from LA. Growing up in a desert suburb on the outskirts made me feel like there was nothing but fake people and hot weather. Moving away meant freedom, adulthood and independence. When I hit college and moved into the heart of the city, I discovered my love for all the quirky places in the city and proximity to my family. Now that I’m interested in entertainment graphic design, it looks like I’ll be with the city for a while longer.
1. Russian heritage: I want to feel connected to this culture and be able to relate to my relatives, but I’m a 3rd generation Russian who is completely American. How do you connect to a culture you haven’t experienced? My great grandmother came to America from Russia, where she lived as a gypsy. She inspired an appreciation for mysticism and fun in my family that I think is still there generations later.
2. Vegetarian: I’ve been one for 6 1/2 years. Treating creatures with respect and living in harmony with nature has been very important to me. I was brought up with a belief in the interconnectedness of all things, and to me this decision just felt right.
3. Phobias:
• Heights. I get really debilitating vertigo when climbing open staircases. My earliest memories of being afraid of heights was when my family visited a windmill and you could climb to the top. I didn’t want to and neither did my mom.
• Butterflies. I went to a butterfly atrium when I was 3 and there were all these super large butterflies and they landed and got tangled up in my hair. I got so freaked out that I ran out of the atrium as fast as I could.
• Animatronics/Puppets. I watched a kid’s video when I was little and it had a scene with a purple hippo puppet that got stuck in a tree and was going to fall and crush these little children. Every since I saw that, all animatronic or puppet animals that talk freak me out beyond believe.
4. Ballerina: I started dancing ballet when I was 3 years old. It wasn’t really dancing, it was mainly hopping ungracefully over alligator ponds that our teacher drew on the floor in chalk. I continued to do ballet up until I was 16 years old. It played a large role in my life and still plays a role in how I behave and try to carry myself.
5. Sorority: I joined a sorority my sophomore year of college. It was never in a million years something that I thought would fit my lifestyle as an art student, but I joined because my freshman year was uneventful and I knew people who had fun in sororities. I’ve made many friends and found just one more outlet in college where I can explore my identity.
6. Observer: I’ve always thought of myself within society as the quiet observer of people and situations around me. I’ve always been on the quieter side and I like to see the beauty in the world around me without really interacting or disturbing it. I got into photography as a way to channel what I saw around me into something artistic.
7. Daughter/Sister: I’m extremely close to all members of my immediate family. My mom is literally my best friend, and my brother and I are so close in age that we get along really well. I take after my dad because he’s very patient and rational. My older sister passed away when she was just a baby from SIDS, which affected my parents very strongly but I also think it brought the family closer together. It really says something about my parents that they could come through the loss of a child and still be the amazing parents that they are today.
8. Los Angeles: My relationship with the city has taken many forms. When I was younger, I couldn’t wait to move away from LA. Growing up in a desert suburb on the outskirts made me feel like there was nothing but fake people and hot weather. Moving away meant freedom, adulthood and independence. When I hit college and moved into the heart of the city, I discovered my love for all the quirky places in the city and proximity to my family. Now that I’m interested in entertainment graphic design, it looks like I’ll be with the city for a while longer.
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