Sunday, February 20, 2011

Quickie Post

So I went to a party last night, with a youtube theme. This did not mean that we watched youtube videos all night - we were supposed to come as a youtube character. I chose Lasse Gjertsen's drummer in "Amateur". But that is besides the point. The part of the evening worth noting, I will tell you first, then go on to the other stuff that nobody but me cares about.
I met this girl, her name was (and still is, in fact) Kelinda, and she was cool. She is an ex-gymnast, and a math major, so we got to talk about math and gymnastics and all manner of cool stuff. But you don't care, I know. Anyway, her youtube character was Daft Hands, so she had the words written all over. However, she didn't know the dance. I, on the other hand, learned this dance and amazingly still remembered it, so I taught her. Then I was bored today, so I decided to make a video of me doing Daft Hands and send it to her. I practiced once or twice, and then took the video - one shot, one take, and it is pretty silly.
You can find that video here
So that was my day, productive as always.
Actually, I don't want to write about the rest of my night yet. I'll do it later

Update: I have decided, at the suggestion of the aforementioned girl, that I shall cover other youtube videos, and that will be one of my "things." I am quite sure that I have enough projects going on at the moment, and do not have the time for such silliness. However, as anyone who knows me will say, why in hell would that stop me? Therefore, I shall continue my youtube covers, starting with The Evolution Of Dance, and I will get to it as soon as this term is over. It will be a spring break project.
Also, I am going to recreate through creative editing the scene in Stargate with the line "he's inviting us to go with him" where all of the speaking characters are played by me, at the request of my father.
God, school must be really boring for me to have to resort to these insane creative outlets.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

A thought of the moment

And the world spins madly on.
It's times like these that I find it useful to consult my tattoos.
It also occurs to me that I have never publicly explained them, so I'll give you a full description of them

The Fireball

There is a saying "whenever God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window." Now I don't believe in God, so this doesn't do me much good, but I do believe in the idea. Whenever one idea or opportunity is coming to a close, another is beginning. When one thing in my life leaves me in a flurry of fire, another is slowly growing its way into my life.
Additionally, the ball that is burning is first of all just a ball, because fire needs something to burn (and that thing is the thing in my life that is over), it means more than that on a completely different level. The ball represents what I do with fire. Additionally, it means everything I do with my art, be it fire or aerial or dance. These arts are all painful, and even destructive, but this fireball of art growing grass is my way of reminding myself that whenever I or someone else gets hurt because of the art, it is because they are trying to bring something new into the world, that even though our arts may cause pain, through that pain can come something beautiful.

The Wave

The wave, while a much simpler description is needed, is far more ingrained in me. The main wave is a reference to my old martial arts studio (we studdied Tae Kwon Do, Chung Do Kwan, which means way of the hand and foot, school of the blue wave) and in this school, there was a motto, simple, but elegant. It was "oh well." It represented the ability to let go and try something new. This idea became linked to water for me when we read something out of bruce lee's book. He said something comparable this idea. For me, water is an exceptional thing, it has the ability to conform in any container it is placed it, to feel the forces around it, and sometimes ignore them completely, and most importantly, while it is flexible and beautiful, it is also the single strongest natural force on this planet. That is the sort of energy I want to instill in myself.
The background is simpler - the waves in the background are curvy (as supposed to the main wave which is pointy) represent the crowd from which the one different wave stands alone - this reminds me to be true to myself, individuality. The blue gradient from dark to light represents the burdens and problems of my life that I learn how to solve as I grow - this is in short, growth and learning.

So yeah, those are my tattoos. So when I am feeling particularly torn between emotions, some bad things, some good things - I just look at them. Then I remember that in order to do what is best for me, I need to remain true to myself, and allow room for learning new things and growing as a person. I need to remember that while I must feel the forces around me, I can fight them, and while I can adapt to any situation that I need to, I am also capable of breaking out of them. I need most of all to remember is that whenever things are bad, they are not unfixable. However, if by some chance they are unfixable, I will always know what to say.
"Oh Well"
~David Lader

So those are my thoughts of the evening... Off to bed now - goodnight, and when you go to sleep tonight, try to figure out what you need to remember to tell yourself when things get bad. Acknowledge them, and remind yourself why you matter. If you have any tattoos, look at them and ask yourself what they mean to you, what they remind you to think about. Then, do your best to live those ideas.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Internal Familial Dialogue (not so internal anymore)

"Makes me glad for my folks' sake that in my
20s I didn't substitute my given name for something ridiculous my
buddies thought up."
"If you're Fenix, I'm Putz. They're exactly equivalent."
~My Grandfather

Since my family (Oregon and Eugene) are the ones who read this, lets open it up to everyone. I am pissed, and when I get extraordinarily upset during a week where things keep going wrong, I tend to have disproportionate reactions, and I am aware of that, and I am sorry.
So here is my e-mail I sent back to him.

Grandpa, my buddies didn't "think up" up this name. This name came into being through a lot of circumstances revolving around who I am and who I was - this name has meaning to me and those closest to me. Speaking of names that someone just thought up - "Connor" was just thought up - it means nothing. Also, ridiculous is a point of view. In your culture, William, Daniel, and Connor are "normal" names. In my culture, Haussatou or Kellyn or London or Kat or Braedon or Chahaylie or Vasha or any other names that I hear every day are acceptable.
In order, those people are: girl in my dance class, guy I worked with on Sedna, my circus partner, ex-girlfriend, roommate, friend, girl in the dance marathon last week. All of these are the birth names (or shortenings of birth names in the instance of Kat) and they are all accepted names in my culture. In my culture, your name is part of who you are - not just a combination of sounds that identify you from someone else. If that is all a name is, then we should all have numbers, and your number is determined through a mathematical formula involving your parent's numbers. At least that would identify you as their child - CONNOR IS AN IRISH NAME!!! (side note which was not in the E-mail, my descent is British and Moldovan, which is a small state that has been part of Russia and Romania at different points in history, but I am not Irish)
As a part of social convention, we are called by the names that our parents give us, just as it is social convention that I call you grandpa. However, Azim does not call his grandma such. He calls her (as close as I can represent in these characters without using IPA) "bumba". A TV character named Sheldon Cooper calls his grandmother "mee-maw." And why do they do this? Because that is what the family decided to call them.
side note 2: the name Connor is a name which was given to me because it was the only name my parents did not disagree on. Connor is not the name of someone in my family, or even of someone awesome in the past who I was named for. Connor is a name which represents not simply compromise, but the idea of LON - least objectionable name. Just so you are filled in on that one.
In English, you say "my name is bill"
In spanish, you say "me llamo bill"
The direct translation of the spanish? "I call myself bill"
That is how I choose to be recognized, not by "my name is" but by "I call myself"
So if you want to look at it that way, my name is connor, I call myself Fenix, and in respect for me, I would ask that you call me that as well, because that is the social convention.
Se llama Kat, pero su nombre es Katherine. Pero nunca se llamas "Katherine" porque se llama Kat y tienes respeto para su elección, y se llamas este mujer según al nombre que se llama.
I can say it better in spanish, but here is your translation: She calls herself Kat, but her name is Katherine. But you would never call her "Katherine" because she calls herself Kat and you have respect for her choice, and you call this woman according to the name she calls herself.
Her parents did not name her Kat, but we all respect that choice. Are you really willing to go and make that distinction of what someone is "allowed" to be called only if it is a shortening of the name? Is John an appropriate abbreviation of Johann?
My point, I suppose is this. You are not the decider of names - names have been evolving for thousands of years (and I might point out that 200 years ago, if my name were Connor and I lived in England, I would likely get the shit kicked out of me on a regular basis) and they will continue to evolve along with our languages, our cultures, and our ideas of social acceptability. As history has shown time and time again, those who resist change toward open-mindedness are trampled by the torrent of new information.
These people include those men who yelled "blasphemy" and were outraged at the first woman who decided that she didn't want to take her husband's name because she was not her husband. She was his partner in life, not his property. These are the people who were outraged that a woman was no longer a man's property. And you are the people who are outraged when a person wants to define themselves as themselves rather than letting their genetics define what they can and cannot do, including what to call them.
I was asked to calm down, and to let you go on your own and get your ranting out of your system but no. No more - if you want to continually insult me in front of my family and many of those who have chosen to accept my new name and those who have decided to make efforts to accept my new name in time, then I am going to yell and scream and show you how you are stuck in the past, and as history has shown a thousand times before: you will lose.

Welcome to the cyber age - if you hit someone like me with snide remarks that make no real point and are only designed to hurt my feelings, I will hit you back with everything I've got, and everyone will hear it.