Venting blog 25Million: Copyright

I am so frustrated right now.

The other night we all went down to the music building and jammed. We do this many nights. It's what we do. I even jammed; I brought my ukulele.

At some point, I handed my Flip camera to this woman who was hanging out. I asked her to take some video once we got playing, and she happily agreed to.

At the end of the night, as we all packed up our instruments and started heading back to our rooms, one guy, let's call him Rajesh, stopped me.

"You got some video?" he sounded excited.

"Oh, yea, I asked her to film some."

"Well can I see it?" still sounding excited.

"Of course. I'll put it on the internet --- that is, of course, unless you'd rather I didn't. I know some people are funny about that."

"Right. I'm one of those people. I'm funny about that. I'll need to see it before it goes on the internet."

Admittedly, I've thought myself into a box here in terms of video sharing. "But in order for you to see it, it will have to be on the internet."

"Can't you play it from that right there?"

I took out my camera and played him the last clip. Rajesh held it up to his ear and commented that it sounds great, and to put it on the internet. This was Sunday.

No one stayed out Monday because of the late Saturday and Sunday nights, so I stayed in and finished editing my Travel Vlog. I thought about uploading the stuff from the music building, but I didn't get around to it. Just not high on my priorities.

Today (Tuesday) at dinner, he comes and sits next to me. Not sitting next to me to eat dinner with me, but sitting next to me with his jacket on and nothing in his hands, like he wants to tell me something. I assume he's going to say something about bringing some instrument to the music building tonight, something like that.

"Oh, hey. Did you put those videos on the internet yet?"

"No, I haven't had a chance."

"OK, because I'm going to need to see them before you do."

At this point, something inside me snaps. Interacting with this guy is usually pretty awkward, as he sometimes takes things too literally. I'm going to do that annoying thing and say that I think he's on the spectrum.

Little tiny fencers start jabbing the insides of my brains. I want to smack this guy.

I stare at him in disbelief.

"I'm sorry, the other night you told me to go ahead and put them up."

"Yeah, but now I'm thinking about it, and that was a bad idea."

"I don't know how you are going to see them large format without me putting them on the internet."

Now he's frustrated with me. "You just have to go get a cord and plug your camera into a computer. This place is like, computer-central."

"Fine."

He sits there staring at me, not sure if my 'Fine' was a consent. I start to tear little pieces off my buttered roll and shove them into my mouth.

"So...are you going to?"

"Yeah, but right now I'm going to finish my dinner. And to be honest, I'm really frustrated because you gave me your yes the other day. What if I had put it on the internet already?"

"But you haven't, so it's OK."

"Whatever."

"It might be whatever to you, but it matters to me."

"Yeah, but what if I had already put it up?"

"Well, then, maybe I'd ask you to take it down."

For another five minutes he sort of stared at me while I ate, repeatedly asking me in different ways whether or not I was going to be posting this without his approval. I asserted that indeed, I'd show him on the computer after I was done with my dinner. Finally, he went away. I wanted to scream, but all I was afforded was raised eyebrows at someone else sitting with us.

After I put my dinner things away I began heading toward the computer lounge, and I ran into him right outside of the dining hall. It took a lot of energy to formulate a nice way to speak to him.

"Um, if you have a minute, I can show you this on the computer. I've got some time now."

He was standing with another one of the people we play music with. Let's call this other guy Carlos. "OK" and to Carlos: "let's go watch this."

The three of us make our way into the computer lab, and to be quite honest, I have no hope for these videos actually playing. Yes my camera plugs into a USB port, but I had tried to watch some videos on YouTube earlier in the residency, and while the sound was fairly consistent, the picture was extraordinarily jumpy.

As the computer recognized my camera and I opened the first file, he said "Alright Carlos, let's check this out."

Not "let's check this out" like when I say: "hey, check this out! This is awesome!" No, more like when an overfed pasty policeman spots a young black male duck into an alleyway. There was something faux-authoritarian and accusatory in his statement that really grated on me.

I tried to play the video files straight off my camera, but the sound cut in and out and the picture was jumpy, even worse than the YT videos I had tried to play earlier. I tried to copy the files to the desktop, and as the time for them to copy was about 9 minutes, Rajesh decided to check his e-mail at another computer.

I started to explain to Carlos my two YouTube accounts, and how I would be uploading this to my second account, where there are only 9 subscribers, and I upload whatever crap I want. Rajesh looked over and said, "let's just try to figure this out right now." As though, somehow, my killing the 9 minutes was wasted time, but him checking his e-mail was completely acceptable.

The pinwheel of death indicated to me that I should 'Force Quit' Finder, and then I found myself trying to explain to Rajesh that it wasn't that there was a problem with my video, but that this computer just didn't seem to be able to handle playing them.

I finally copied one of the files to the desktop and opened it with little hope for it to play smoothly. My expectations were met. It played just slightly better than when I attempted to play it straight off the camera. I internally cringed a bit because the woman who filmed this for me had used the zoom, which makes the poor-quality footage (a side effect of low lighting) even worse. Rajesh asked me to just let the video play, and I tried to explain that I was, that the computer was making it jumpy. Frustrated at not being able to hear it all the way through, Rajesh said, "why don't we just say 'don't'? It is amateurish anyway."

The quality of the video was such that his likeness was barely recognizable, and he was one of maybe 7 musicians contributing to the sound, one of two musicians playing his particular instrument.

I couldn't help it. I had to pry.

"Is it because you don't want your likeness on there? Because you can hardly see you anyhow."

"This is how I make my living and I can't have anything like this out there."

"I wasn't going to attach your name with it anyhow."

"Either way, I don't want it on there."

"OK, that's fine, but you should know, I may use a clip that just shows me playing."

"No, because that still has me on there. You can't put that on there without my consent."

"I don't understand. It won't have your name attached, no one will be able to see your face, no one will know it is you playing. It could be anyone playing."

"Just because you bought a $100 camera does not give you the right to post videos of my art on the internet! What gives you the right to say it could be just anyone? It is my creation and you do not have the right to put it on there."

"I'm not trying to argue property laws with you. I just don't get why you don't want me to put it on there. I don't understand how it would be detrimental to your career if your face and name are not associated with it."

"It's just that I want a say at what things I create do and do not get put on the internet. I've had to ask people to take things down before."

The anger started to become audible in my response. "Fine. Then I'll put the footage of me playing with the sound removed. Your face won't be in it. Your playing won't be in it. Nothing of you!"

He stared at me. Just stared like he was doing at dinner. Stared like he didn't believe me. Stared like he thought I was just telling him what he wanted to hear and that I was going to go do what I wanted.

I returned his stare with an exasperated, pained expression. "I DON'T BULLSH%T!"

This seemed to satisfy him. Not only that, but it also seemed to put him in a cheery mood. "Thanks!" As he walked out of the computer lab, I looked at some other student trying to convey in my glance that my head was about to explode. Rajesh stopped in the doorway and looked at me before walking away.

I usually don't ask permission when I record. I try to not record anything I think people would be upset about, and I would of course comply if someone asked me to remove something. The thing is, my scope isn't really large enough for people to get upset. I understand that Rajesh has the right to say whether or not his stuff goes on the internet, but his reasons were bullisht. It isn't going to ruin your career if NO ONE COULD KNOW THAT IT WAS YOU. I don't even know his last name. I would understand if he was singing, but he was merely contributing a small amount of the instrumentation. NO ONE WOULD KNOW.

What else is ridiculous? So many people are desperate for their video to reach many people, and this guy is upset about the probably-less-than-9 views this video, uploaded on my second channel, would receive.

I made this angry music playlist for times like this.

Alexander Technique

The MFAIA program at Goddard College is growing. Each new G1 class is bigger than the last. I don't know if I will even meet everyone this residency. Sometimes I confuse some of the G1s for Goddard staff.

There is one kid who I did not confuse for staff. He does not look old enough to be in college, let alone graduate school. He is not much taller than me, blonde with big blue eyes.

There is a woman who transferred from the Port Townsend, Washington campus to the Plainfield campus. This never happens. This aparently is not an option. I was not aware. She is a voluptuous woman with long strawberry blonde hair. I think her name might be Susan. She talks of having been a printmaker and having a near death experience and hearing a voice instructing her to sing. So now she sings, and I hear she sings beautifully. She also coordinates burlesque shows and maybe rock operas.

She calls herself the problem child, mostly for breaking what I didn't even realize was a rule.

Moving on:

There used to be a student in one of the other programs at Goddard who studied yoga. He would come to our residencies and do a class 3 mornings. I suppose he has graduated, these opportunities no longer exist.
To create other opportunities for movement, the call was put out for people to step up to the plate. Some really hokey things came about, with very vague activity descriptions. I chose to not attend any of these.

Someone put a poster up on the bulletin board about Alexander Technique. It was described as a way to reduce tension within the body during daily life. There were a list of times, and I decided I would go to the one Tuesday night, after the Bread and Puppet Theater performance.

Post B&P Q&A, I walked three doors down to the media room. On the center projection podium sat a lamp, like you might find in a living room. It was the only thing illuminating the space. The blonde boy stood in front, giving instruction in a less than totally self-assured way. Three women sat in chairs, listened and followed directives, two very thin, tall-ish women, and Susan who had her feet on some books. I looked around and noticed that everyone had removed their shoes, so I did the same. I introduced myself to the blonde kid, who is probably about 5'6", 120lbs. He gently shook my hand and told me his name is Luke. He tried to quickly catch me up, explaining that the goal of AT is to get you to open your body up and out (here he demonstrated open body language, head up, back straight, rib cage open, appendages free) instead of the closed and down (here he slouched and compressed his torso, drawing his right arm across himself so the right hand was at his left hip. The resemblence to the guarded body language of a shy friend was uncanny.) Alexander Technique, he told me, is not about doing, it is about thinking. The main directive is this:

"Let the neck be free so that the head can go forward and up so that the back can lengthen and widen."

We considered direction of bones and muscles, and practiced walking with these things in mind. Susan made some very observant statement about herself, and when it was discussed that she would be a great first student, she argued that she would be a terrible student.

"You have a 'bad student' hang-up" I told her.

We practiced sitting down and standing up, considering how many muscles and movements we used and should be using to do these things. One of the women expressed difficulty, and Luke placed a hand on either side of her neck, fingers extended, to help her do this and think about this in a correct way. The ring finger of his left hand, facing me, proudly displayed a silver hued band with a small (diamond?) set into it.

'Not only are you not fourteen, you are married!?' I pondered, incredulously.

I noticed that I was the only one not having an incredible change in experience and perception at the change in thought. "How do you all know so much about this?" I inquired of Susan.

"We're all dancers," she responded. Ohhhhhh. I wondered if this meant that Luke is a dancer. I assumed that it did.

We did some active rest at the end of this exercise, using books for pillows. Much of the active rest exercise and language sounded the same as that used by Rodney Yee on the yoga DVD I got from the library. I asked how much yoga and Alexander Technique are related. Susan voiced that they are essentially inseparable.

Luke guided us through this, and came around, starting with me, and touched our feet and our shins, instructing in direction of thought. The physical contact was really gratifying, which makes me realize that I am lonely. Every now and then I am reminded of this.

After this session, I spoke with Luke about my experience, and he said that the sensitivity and observation is something that develops over time. The way he breeched this conversation was by inquiring if it had been really weird for me. He asked this in a way that was slightly self deprecating.

I spoke with Susan in the hallway for a while, and she told me that AT is really an awareness of the skeletal structure, and that it works really well for modern dancers, and angular movement. She said that these people are very much thinking from the bones, and they have a better understanding of architecture and things of this sort because of it. She said that she sensed that I, like herself, am very much in my organs, which gives me a sense of empathy and of people. She mentioned the facet that I picked up on her, had figured her out immediately. She said that a type of dance that was more curvilinear would probably suit me best. I had shared my dancing experience with everyone (I quit in fourth grade, I watch recital tapes and I'm easy to pick out: I'm a step behind). She suggested Salsa, Belly Dancing, African Dance. She said that being in the skeleton was a very close knit relationship between the nervous system and it, the thoughtACTION contrasts the t h o u g h tprocessAction of those people in the organs. Relating the way we engage our bodies with the way we relate intellectually with the world is something so far removed from anything I've ever thought about. It blows my mind. I told her so.

So even though a more fluid dance might be the dance for me, I do notice that the more active I am, the more I want to extend my limbs and engage my muscles in this way. I have noticed that my walking style normally encorperates a good deal of looking down and slouching. It makes me wonder if my body language is at all off-putting, if I walk with more confidence, will it make me appear older and therefore get a few less comments from students and teachers in middle schools about confusing ME for an 8th grader? If I walk with my neck free so my head can go up and forward so my back can lengthen and expand, will I seem more confident in a way that is attractive?

Most of all, will I stop having backache so that I can stop scheming plans to get people to give me a back rub?

Snooze Button Junkie

I am a snooze button addict. I generally set my alarm clock with this in mind, although sometimes I plan on getting up early to do (insert beneficial activity here), and then in my half awake state hit the button thinking "screw it."

This morning was one of those. Unlike other mornings, when the only one I would be annoying is Igby (who lets me know by slowly inserting her claws into my face), this morning was a Goddard Residency morning.

Whereas the previous mornings I awoke before the alarm clock and turned it off, this morning I decided jogging would not be in the plans, and hit the snooze button.

I don't know how long the snooze cycle is, but it feels shorter than the 9 minutes I get at home.

Maybe at one point I contemplated getting up for a bit before hitting the button again. Sometimes if I just listen to the terrible noise, it helps to wake me.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

As I made my way to the door, stopping to put on more decent attire, the visitor signaled again.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

I open the door to a woman, younger in the Gs than I. "Um, are you ok?" she asks. "Your alarm clock has been going off for fifteen minutes and we're wondering if you're OK. We can hear it all over this floor."

"Uh, yeah, I don't know....sorry..." I stammer.

She is now among the ranks of people I am afraid of, will make a nice smile at but avoid all conversations with.

In other news, I've been thinking lately about digging a hole, and getting in. Unlike the holes of others, I imagine my hole to be on the side of a hill, sort of cave like. I imagine how it would feel to be completely surrounded by earth, it contacting my skin, the weight of it. The responsibility-less nature of hiding in a hole.

But then I think....after a while, I will want to be stimulated in some real way, converse, move about. I also think.....I bet I wouldn't last a half hour before I started getting the heeby jeebies-things are crawling on me-get me outta heres.