Being There

What a day. I feel like I’m walk­ing on a tightrope strung high.

Yes­ter­day, Mon­day April 12th, was my birth­day. It was also the day I quit my job, and the day the Inter­na­tional Cen­tre of Pho­tog­ra­phy accepted my appli­ca­tion for the 2010 school year.

I deliv­ered my two weeks notice at 8:45 am on Mon­day. I had given it a lot of con­sid­er­a­tion. The office pol­i­tics are grow­ing ever more painful and cut-throat as the con­fer­ence we’re orga­niz­ing approaches. As uncom­fort­able as that was (and still is), it was man­age­able. It was mak­ing me sick, but I would have stuck it out. I can sur­vive much worse abuse.

What really made me decide to leave was the oppor­tu­nity I have been given to take part in two exhi­bi­tions this sum­mer and fall. As the first two real show­ings of my pho­tog­ra­phy, they need my atten­tion. With dead­lines com­ing soon, I felt that I just couldn’t get every­thing done in time. Now I can. I was strug­gling to fin­ish my artist state­ment, a doc­u­ment that I have been writ­ing for eight years, more or less. Now I can. It’s a big step, but some­times you just have to walk the tightrope.

They held a birth­day party for me at work in the after­noon. My super­vi­sor didn’t come. My boss was unusu­ally silent. I’m not sure if they knew I was leav­ing or not, but the con­ver­sa­tion among my co-workers was unusu­ally sedate. We talked about squir­rels for some time, and I didn’t mind. There were eight tim­bits left over.

I applied to the Inter­na­tional Cen­tre of Pho­tog­ra­phy in Jan­u­ary. I received the con­fir­ma­tion email yes­ter­day at 5 pm.  The ICP is a small school in New York City. I am enrolled in the Doc­u­men­tary Pho­tog­ra­phy and Pho­to­jour­nal­ism One-Year Cer­tifi­cate Pro­gram. My class of 40 or so stu­dents comes from approx­i­mately 18 dif­fer­ent coun­tries.  The pro­fes­sors and facil­i­ties are top notch. It is a real opportunity.

It hasn’t sunk in yet that I am mov­ing to New York. I can do this, I have been build­ing toward it for a long time. Now I can do it. I am ready to go and the real work of actu­ally get­ting there begins. Phew! Overwhelming.

I spent the evening with my fam­ily and the peo­ple I love. We bar­be­qued, ate 1–2-3–4 cake, talked pol­i­tics, and lis­tened to pop music. It was a per­fect Ottawa night, loung­ing on the back patio. I need more of these.

Finally, as a birth­day treat, please indulge me a tune with some very funky “happy birth­day” singing:

Janelle Monáe, “Tightrope”

I love the con­trasts in this video. The stark black and white tuxe­dos against the muted insti­tu­tional colours, the high Pom­padour and short pants, the incon­gru­ous mirror-faced ghosts, every­thing is just the right amount of off beat.

And every­thing is per­fectly, beau­ti­fully crafted. The light­ing is sup­ple, the colours lus­cious (I think the RED cam­era, a super high-definition dig­i­tal video cam­era, was used) and crisp. I par­tic­u­larly like the begin­ning, where the two male dancers are sit­ting on a bench. The large, soft and direct light com­ing from the cam­era posi­tion is so smooth on the lac­quered tiles. The next scene, where Monáe dances down the light-filled hall, is a per­fect visual counterpoint.

This song is part of a series of songs about free­dom and slav­ery (and robots). The lib­er­a­tion of danc­ing is potent mate­r­ial for a music video. Thanks Janelle, for mak­ing ambi­tious pop music. I will walk your tightrope: