youth

'Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life. ' - Arthur Rimbaud.

nobody knows

'If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name. For the rest: my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own, or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be.'
- Evelyn Waugh. Brideshead Revisited.

you might find yourself

'In one of his prose poems, Baudelaire describes how a man spends a day walking around Paris with a woman he feels ready to fall in love with. They agree on so many things that by evening, he is convinced he has found a companion with whose soul his own may unite. Thirsty, they go to a glamorous new cafe on the corner of a boulevard, where the man notices the arrival of an impoverished, working-class family who have come to gaze through the plate-glass window of the cafe at the elegant guests, dazzling white walls, and gilded decor. The eyes of these poor on-lookers are full of wonder at the display of wealth and beauty inside, and their expression fills the narrator with pity and shame at his privileged position. He turns to look at his loved one in the hope of seeing his embarrassment and emotion reflected in her eyes. But the woman with whose soul his own was prepared to unite has a different agenda. She snaps that these wretches with their wide, gaping eyes are unbearable to her, she wonders what on earth they want and asks him to tell the owner to have them moved on straightaway. Does not every love story have these moments? A search for eyes that will reflect one’s thoughts and that ends up with a(tragicomic) divergence - be it over the class struggle or a pair of shoes.'

∞

F I R S T

“In the first half of my life I moved towards all that gave me pleasure. But after the accident, the accident of growing older, I became cautious, preferring the same roads to work, a familiar breakfast, marriage. Because my memory is a limited resource, like gold or uranium, I go back over my life slowly, running fingers over the moments until I can taste them again. Remembering is like running backwards, an art I practiced with a friend from childhood, Oscar, who says there are just two tragedies in life. Not getting what you want. And getting it.”
- Mike Hoolboom

∞

My friends had a 'first year party' on the weekend, they are so far away and I got all nostalgic. In my head I always picture my first year of university in such a warm perfect light, an exciting new city, always available friends, new experiences, the safety of institutions and mapped out paths. I remember sitting in my roommate Kaitlyn's room and signing up for Facebook for the first time. It's hard for me to imagine there can be any more periods in my life with such an amazing steady stream of discovery and it scares the crap out of me. But then I remember I'm looking for new experiences, not trying to recreate exact situations, with every failure of recreation I'm only reminded that only new experiences can produce that exact feeling I so long for.

2

Guess which two I am.

2010→2011

'Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.'

—Ira Glass

Understanding this concept changed my entire perspective this past year. After I finished my thesis collection at the end of May last year, I basically refused to make another garment for the better part of 6 months, that's a lot for someone who had been pumping out outfits monthly. I made excuses for myself, I said maybe I was sick of sewing, but that's such a superficial lie I couldn't even believe it myself. I was mostly mad that I couldn't produce work at a level that I saw as adequate, so instead, I stopped creating. Like Glass said, my work just wasn't meeting my taste, and being the natural aristocrat of taste that I am (ha!), I couldn't help but feel discouraged with my amateur efforts.

Making clothes was something I had always believed I was intrinsically good at, and here I was upon graduation afraid that I would never be truly good at it. I escaped by diving into a world of admiring others' art, mainly film and photography and by harshly critiquing others' effort at fashion design. Meanwhile, I was secretly ashamed knowing that all this time they at least were creating but I was too afraid of failure to even try.

I've never been good at expressing my self through words, so seeing this stated so plainly and clearly I am able to pinpoint the sentiments I was unable to express. I guess this is why quotes has been such an integral aspect of this blog.
So, here's to 2011, the year of studioworks and the continuation of my 10,000 hours.

In the words of Arcade Fire: Here in my place and time/And here in my own skin I can finally begin.

Speaking of which, hey! Do you remember last year? This decade is going to be full of pivotal moments.
Happy 2011.

Quote via Obia.
Photo: Betty Goodwin. Gloves IV, 1971.