I don't know why I felt compelled to title this post that way. Maybe because my head and heart are spinning at the moment. I've just been by Patti's 37 Days blog...and she's done it again, at least for me. She's created a brand-new 37 Days Challenge. Actually there are two parts to it this time--an immediate action and a movement over 37 days. All to do with our shadows.
From Patti's blog post: "Most of the shadows of this life are caused standing in our own sunshine." ~Henry Ward Beecher
During my last year or so in the islands I began to occasionally photograph my shadow. It gave me great pleasure to do it. I don't know why--maybe because I don't like having my face photographed. I typically look horrible in photos. I'm not being self-deprecating--the camera loves some people, but it doesn't typically like me. Years ago I had to stand-in for a celeb host on a shoot we were doing while the gaffers tweaked the lights. Our director told me later that I looked good on camera--that I really popped. Given that he was a friend, I thought he was just B.S.'ing me. But maybe still photos just aren't my medium--maybe I need movement. Although that was 15 years ago--I suspect that at 52 I'd just rather not capture my image anywhere. :)
But I am going to start capturing a daily photo of my shadow as part of Patti's new challenge. And just to get the ball rolling, I pulled some old photos off DVD's and started a new "shadows" Flickr set. I'm not going to count them as part of my 37 days of shadows--I put them there as a reminder that I've already dipped my toe in and that, yes, the water's fine.
The other thing that's had my head spinning the last few days is Keri Smith's new project, Wreck This Journal. (I've already posted about this at Ning.) She has a book by that name coming out in June. She's created a new site for the project and is posting assignments and allowing participants to suggest instructions. And as wild as one's imagination can get visualizing some of those ideas, even better is that we can see what participants are doing because Keri's started a new Flickr pool where participants can post phots of their Wreck This Journal pages. Check it out--there's some fabulous stuff there.
But what is Wreck This Journal, you might be asking? And why would someone want to wreck a perfectly good journal? :) Read the story on the Wreck This Journal site where she talks about creative destruction:
The intent of creative destruction is to move beyond aesthetic
judgements of whether a mark/alteration is good or bad, but instead to
allow the mark to exist as documentation of a physical experience or as
kind of expression. While the term “destruction” has historically had a
negative connotation, in this context it is used to imply simply
“alteration."
Maybe it's just me, but these two projects--Patti's and Keri's--seem like wonderful companion pieces. Shadow as a counterpoint to light...destruction as a counterpoint to creation. I can remember sitting in a diner with Jeffrey late one night after a gig years ago and telling him that one thing I'd begun to learn as part of my (sobriety) recovery was that if I embraced my dark side, I wouldn't have to live from it. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone but me, but both of these projects call out to me for the act of embracing that which we sometimes innately turn away from.
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I've got a busy weekend. Ciara has a championship basketball game this morning. Her team of 9-year-olds is undefeated. Rumor has it there's a pizza party afterwards. My folks are in town for the weekend. J and I will be heading to Mill Valley (one of my favorite California towns--Marin is my old stomping grounds) later because he has a gig at Sweetwater tonight. (It's a club I first started frequenting 27 years ago.) ;) Regular readers will recall me mentioning Bonnie Hayes. She plays Sweetwater tomorrow night. Her old pal Vicki Randle is also on the bill. (I just have to plug them when I can because they're both so talented and I've loved their music for years.)
That's all just to say that I think I'm going to pass on Sunday Scribblings tomorrow and focus on these other projects this weekend. The prompt this week is "in the kitchen"...something I know very little about anyway. ;) But I do want to congratulate Sunday Scribblings on hitting the 1-year mark!
Have a wonderful weekend.
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