Passion Project Updates & Reflections

For this semester, I'm working with Abhishek and Nandhini on a zine which we've entitled Onism.
Initially, we were planning on writing lengthy articles and compiling all of our work into a single magazine, but we've since decided to incorporate many visual aspects as well: photo essays, polaroids, comics, paintings, collages, playlists--nothing is exempt from consideration for us. While all of the work we've accumulated is thriving, we need to focus on refining everything soon: scanning all of our artwork, editing our articles, and compiling everything into something solid.

After talking with Doug Wainwright, a student who has been making his own zines for a while, we were really motivated to get to work. My favorite thing about this project is that it's such a concrete and finite medium, but we have total freedom with it.

Obstacles we've experienced within these past few weeks have been communication (see: Nandhini and Abhishek do not work well together) and focusing on our work. We've managed to surpass this by working independently at times but also keeping each other updated on our work. Future obstacles may include getting our zine printed and selling it//distributing it, although there seems to be a great online presence of zine-creators that I'd like to get into.

Overall, our project is making lots of progress and I'm excited to work on it tomorrow.

Passion Project Updates & Reflections

What I have learned: Creating a screenplay is a lot more than just sitting down and writing a script.

What I know: 

-There are stories in me waiting to be told. 

-Not all of these stories are fit to be transformed into films. 

-Collaborating with another person (especially one I admire so much) is scary and wonderful and challenging at times. 

-A lot more gets done when we stop waiting to be hit with inspiration and instead try to play with ideas we already have.

-We have a lot to get done.

During the past few months of school, Abhishek and I haven't gotten much writing done. In fact, much of our attention has been placed into getting ideas out and making calls as to what is worth making a movie about. It's infuriatingly difficult at times when ideas don't come or they're only partially formed, but it's a pivotal step we omitted a bit with last year's script. We're planning on extending our Passion Project to next semester and completing more of the production side of things during the last half of the year. Since I'm leaving this upcoming summer there's a sense of insistence on making this project something really special. There is so much we need to do between now and the completion of our film but ultimately, I want to create something we're proud of.

"I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance." -Van Gogh

Kanye West: The Ultimate Outlier

"For me to say I wasn't a creative genius, I would just be lying to you and to myself."

Kanye West was born June 8, 1977, growing up in Chi-Town with his single mother, Dr. Donda C.(who was the first African-American woman to be Chair of the English Department at CSU!). Mr. West even spent time in China with his mother at the age of ten while she taught at Nanjing University. Kanye displayed a love for the arts from the start, writing poetry and drawing throughout his school-age years. By the age of thirteen, he was writing his own compositions and his mother facilitated his passion by paying $25 an hour for Kanye to record in a studio. In this way, he was raised in concerted cultivation, with an incredibly supportive parent. After graduating from high school, Kanye went on to go to art school, studying painting, and later went to CSU to major in English. But after a few semesters, Kanye West realized college wasn't getting him where he wanted to go, and so he dropped out, much to his mother's disappointment. His mother later reflected, "It was drummed into my head that college is the ticket to a good life... but some career goals don't require college. For Kanye to make an album called College Dropout it was more about having the guts to embrace who you are, rather than following the path society has carved out for you." And goddamn, does that sentence embody exactly who Kanye is. 

"I refuse to accept other people's ideas of happiness for me.
As if there's a 'one size fits all' standard for happiness."

After his decision to drop out of college, Kanye started his music career as a producer, working with people like Jay-z, Alicia Keys, Ludacris, and Janet Jackson. Here he began making connections within the music industry, and though West was successful in the realm of producing, his aspiration was to become a rapper. In his song Last Call, he talks about the plight he endured in order to get signed with a label. But eventually, Mr. West did get signed with Roc-A-Fella, the record label founded by Jay-z, and here began the making of ten years of music courtesy of Yeezy. 

Kanye West is possibly the most incendiary, loud, passionate, and confident voices in pop culture at the moment. And this is exactly why I love him. In his incredible interview with Jimmy Kimmel, he stated, "You gonna love me, you gonna hate me, but Imma be me." To me, Kanye West's message of confidence and creativity overrides any immature comments he's made at award shows or in front of cameras. While he doesn't always know how to express himself in a way that's easy for everyone to grasp and digest (a bit of a lack of practical intelligence), his positivity always leaves me itching to create, to love myself, and to give something to the world beyond myself.

Throughout the ten years he's spent creating his own music, Kanye has broken down many paradigms within the genre of rap, the music industry, and the world of celebrities as a whole. There's no doubt he's an innovative and creative artist. His debut album College Dropout was quickly followed by the founding of GOOD (Getting Out Our Dreams) Music, Kanye's own record label. He then went on to create Late Registration, Graduation, 808s and Heartbreak, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (considered by many his magnum opus), and Yeezus. But West is something of a renaissance man; his efforts have expanded to many mediums including films, fashion, philanthropy, and making his own creative agency. Whether you love him or hate him, Mr.West is an incredibly successful man and he has no shortage of creative intelligence. Not only is Kanye commercially successful, but he's a living testimony of one of my favorite quotes: "An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection-and on his own terms, not anyone else's." Kanye is perceived by many to be arrogant and pleased with himself, but I'd argue the opposite; he's constantly trying to evolve as an artist, a person, and pushes his own limits-never settling for what's been done. "Now I could let these dream killers kill my self esteem/Or use my arrogance as the steam to power my dreams." 

Kanye and Aziz being the best

Kanye West has an incredible amount of talent, and not unlike the examples we've read about in Outliers, his success is not only due to this talent, but his opportunities, support, and ability to make it in the world of artists striving for perfection just like him. Kanye is an inspiration to me (and I don't use that word lightly because it sounds cheesy as hell), and to so many others. "I'm just here to make good music and make people feel good... I say things the wrong way a lot of times, but my intention is always positive. I want to help the world. I want to make people's lives easier."

Now someone get Mr.West a damn croissant. 

How to Get a Stranger to Smile (#32)

A guide on how to get a stranger to smile:

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl way
1: Go to your local grocery store on a lazy, humid Saturday afternoon.

2: Walk aimlessly through the cereal aisle.

3: Pretend you're on the set of a cheesy 70s film. Listen to the questionable song choice over the store's intercom system.

4: Begin singing softly to yourself. Snap like you're listening to a slow jazz song. Make your way to the frozen foods section.

5: Pass your reflection in the glass of the freezers and twirl a little. Walk by customers and watch smiles stretch across their faces like putty.

The Missed Connection way
1: Go to a big city in which you know almost no one.

2: Visit a coffee shop and order something.

3: Read that paperback you've been working on-the one with the dogeared-pages and yellowed pages.

4: Notice a stranger and smile in his/her/its direction.

5: Admire their returned smile and hastily leave the coffee shop because of overwhelming anxiety induced by human interaction.

The Expressive Artist way
1: Develop a talent that you use as an expressive outlet.

2: Make something you're proud of and start part of the co-creative process of making art.

3: Experience the other half of the co-creative process-that of the audience. Watch as what you've made affects them, how they bring their own experiences and stories to the one you've created. Watch them experience beauty.

RE: Joyas Voladoras (#31)

"So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end--not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart." While some thought the essay was somewhat negative, I thought it was purely true. Despite your attempts to shield out all sadness and heartache, you will eventually experience something that breaks down that fortress, and subsequently, you'll experience beauty. I don't think these are such cautionary words about the delicateness of hearts, but the inevitability of experiencing something achingly beautiful.


This essay made me think about some of my favorite human experiences, as such:

Whenever you're running that last bend in a race, you think about how easy it would be to just stop and walk. And everything is telling you you're right-it would be easier to just walk. But then your heart is beating so hard you're worried it might burst out of your chest, and your team is cheering you on and you're taking your final stride, and it doesn't burst. And once you're holding yourself up against the fence to find your time, you smile to yourself. You realize you've always felt this way. Even when you're not running.

Or the way you feel when it's midnight on a Tuesday; the world is silent, all except for that song that never fails to make your heart break a little. Memories are flooding you at a paralyzing rate and you're powerless. It's a school night, and you know you're not getting out of bed at six.

That time you heard from a friend you hadn't talked to in years, someone you thought you'd never see again. He marveled at how wondrous it was that you'd been apart for so long and still managed to remember your inside jokes.

Or those days when everything is golden. The world seems to be on your side, the sky feels so big you think it might swallow you whole, and you can't help but grin. You don't even think about the impending pile of homework waiting to stress you out. All you can bear to do is sigh and sing a little. Your heart is swelling and you're happy to the core, but not in that this is the best day of my life-way. Just in this is right where I need to be. 

"Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime." And I like how I've spent mine so far.

The Quotables (#30)

Our favorite quotes can give us a lot of insight into where we are in life, who we are as people, etc; you connect to words that are relevant to you.

I saw Lost in Translation during winter one year, and since then it's stuck with me. There are so many memorable quotes from it, and it's an overall beautiful film. Also, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are in it, and it doesn't get much better than that.

"The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you." 






















I found this next gem on Tumblr. Needless to say, it's beautiful.

Pretty much everything in this poem makes my heart explode, but that one line,"This is how you make me feel...like honey and trombones." That gets me. The imagery is amazing; his voice, piercing, and the minimalistic strumming makes it all sort of magical.

What Did You Learn Today in School? (#29)

In algebra I learned that even the seemingly flawless use cheats sometimes. And I kind of really love math. In gym I learned that you’ve got a guaranteed A if you give your teacher chocolate-covered pretzels. And there’s something really gratifying about your gym teacher calling you Trin after you’ve run the mile, like “Oh, I’m so glad you feel like you’ve gotten to know me well enough to call me by a nickname I never approved”. But really. It feels good. In english I learned... In French I learned that sometimes all it takes is a little tugging to get even the hardest teachers to come around to you. I mean, it’s alright. I can conjugate verbs now, so. In history today I learned that every time you try to make an argument about the double standards women face, there is always a comment immediately afterwards that justifies feminism. Always. And Jimface will never not be my favorite thing. In art I learned that some people like to live up to preestablished stereotypes. And I still suck at sculpting, as much as I remembered. In music and media I learned that if you read American classics, you will gain a legion of adoring teachers. Also, group projects are the worst. In science I learned that if you laugh at a teacher’s corny jokes, they’ll love you forever. I will always be the bossy science lab leader. And in Rogate I’ve learned more than I can put into words.

That’s not to say I haven’t learned a lot in each of these subjects. But the experiences I’ve had in them sometimes seem to outweigh learning how to construct an open-ended response. I can’t wait for college when I’ll be able to take courses that I’m truly interested instead of having to think, Oh I guess I’ll learn that next year. I still haven’t figured out how to look attractive while eating a burrito, so I guess that’ll be a goal for high school.