i was frustrated at work today and all i wanted to do was step outside and take a smoke.
(i did get to take a nice, brisk 7-block walk. but this was pre-frustration.)
this obviously stems from my inability to express — either verbally or visually — something that adequately represents heavy metal bands from sweden outside of outright mocking. but isn't that the appropriate response? let's just slap on some blood and some rips, tears, and dirt, and we've got a veritable work of art.
today was one of those days where i retreated into my armor of elitist tendencies; my inability to connect to the essence of teenager idiocy was masked by a marc by marc jacobs jacket. taste, i have it, and i wield it with maniacal force. that is, until it strangles my job performance. the role of any graphic designer is to understand the visual minutae of some particular substrata of society and to reproduce it in some way. i'm failing on both counts right now.
i understand beautiful jackets and mocking irony; i just can't get behind reproducing the spirit of an album cover with man floating with one hand dipped in blood.
at the end of the day, i can't really complain. i'm not trying to boil down the essence of a third-world dictator who murders babies in 2500 words; i'm just monkeying around with a couple of pages on a bunch of scandinavian guys who like to play really, really loud music
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Monday, February 4, 2008
on a uniquely californian town
i live in a town of peculiarities & eccentricities. a town that exists on the precipice ne plus ultra; a town that limns existence and utter destruction. a town without definition, with porous and illegible borders.
q: where does one town begin and another start?
a: when the green sign says so.
it is a town that attempts, in fits and bursts, to be a city. a town of "almost one million," yet a town with no logical center.
blat, blat, blat. the small child goes by, nary a clue about the special town in which he resides.
there are places in this town where time simply stops, where history ceases to be written and the mere suggestion of temporal accretion is ludicrous. where one gets lost into the old prune and peach orchards. "historical farm," the sign reads, as if sustenance is yet another annoyance done away by the wonders of progress. there is nothing historical about a place where one can forget the past hundred years; i would call it a miracle, or a figment of my imagination.
Eureka, I have found it. i suppose it's part and parcel of the state where this town resides.
i ask the "curator" (there are no farmers in this wonderful place) what his job entails. "can i just call you a farmer?"
"no, i'm on PERS. i undergo performance reviews."
so that's what separates a farmer from a curator — a public pension.
i zoom back down the "west valley freeway," signed CA-85. past the ticky-tacky "spanish colonials," the ads for home builders seemingly unaware of the past three months. monuments, perhaps, to the heady days of last year.
the traffic & its utter refusal to follow any predictable pattern annoys me; i have hit the roads during the time of mass migration, from the valley hills to the bayfront. unlike the highly educated men and women around me, however, this is a situation largely created by my own failure to plan.
sheer terror strikes me when i spy from my rear view a speeding f-150 merging into my lane. i hate pickups, a reminder of the idiocy of drivers from the lone star state.
this place defies logic & categorization in its heady, inexorable existence. a town not glamorous enough to warrant critical thinking like its neighbor to the north, yet filled with more people — and more importantly, more capital, more venture capital (venture separates the valley from the tip of the peninsula, a paean to the entrepreneurial hubris of the region) — than that oft-mentioned neighbor.
i turn onto the guadalupe expressway — the moniker "expressway" seems to mock my movement through traffic — and I turn off onto a street with an article in front of it. "The Alameda," as if the English article converts the formerly Spanish colonial road into an arterial.
i drive my car into a parking lot to grab coffee, and a woman passes by, muttering to her partner, "yeah, i know, the entire city's a fucking redevelopment zone."
redevelopment. the promise of something different, something new to replace what has existed before. "blighted land," the planners call it.
as if locusts have flooded the land.
maybe that's what makes the "historical farm" so ahistorical to me; it negates the possibility of the new, of redevelopment. it stands in perfect opposition to the rest of the city, with its constant focus on venture. just add an "ad" and you've got a veritable indiana jones story.
of course, i drive by a huge billboard ad for an AM catholic radio station. an anachronism for a state so rabidly atheist, I think.
'till next time,
didion
q: where does one town begin and another start?
a: when the green sign says so.
it is a town that attempts, in fits and bursts, to be a city. a town of "almost one million," yet a town with no logical center.
blat, blat, blat. the small child goes by, nary a clue about the special town in which he resides.
there are places in this town where time simply stops, where history ceases to be written and the mere suggestion of temporal accretion is ludicrous. where one gets lost into the old prune and peach orchards. "historical farm," the sign reads, as if sustenance is yet another annoyance done away by the wonders of progress. there is nothing historical about a place where one can forget the past hundred years; i would call it a miracle, or a figment of my imagination.
Eureka, I have found it. i suppose it's part and parcel of the state where this town resides.
i ask the "curator" (there are no farmers in this wonderful place) what his job entails. "can i just call you a farmer?"
"no, i'm on PERS. i undergo performance reviews."
so that's what separates a farmer from a curator — a public pension.
i zoom back down the "west valley freeway," signed CA-85. past the ticky-tacky "spanish colonials," the ads for home builders seemingly unaware of the past three months. monuments, perhaps, to the heady days of last year.
the traffic & its utter refusal to follow any predictable pattern annoys me; i have hit the roads during the time of mass migration, from the valley hills to the bayfront. unlike the highly educated men and women around me, however, this is a situation largely created by my own failure to plan.
sheer terror strikes me when i spy from my rear view a speeding f-150 merging into my lane. i hate pickups, a reminder of the idiocy of drivers from the lone star state.
this place defies logic & categorization in its heady, inexorable existence. a town not glamorous enough to warrant critical thinking like its neighbor to the north, yet filled with more people — and more importantly, more capital, more venture capital (venture separates the valley from the tip of the peninsula, a paean to the entrepreneurial hubris of the region) — than that oft-mentioned neighbor.
i turn onto the guadalupe expressway — the moniker "expressway" seems to mock my movement through traffic — and I turn off onto a street with an article in front of it. "The Alameda," as if the English article converts the formerly Spanish colonial road into an arterial.
i drive my car into a parking lot to grab coffee, and a woman passes by, muttering to her partner, "yeah, i know, the entire city's a fucking redevelopment zone."
redevelopment. the promise of something different, something new to replace what has existed before. "blighted land," the planners call it.
as if locusts have flooded the land.
maybe that's what makes the "historical farm" so ahistorical to me; it negates the possibility of the new, of redevelopment. it stands in perfect opposition to the rest of the city, with its constant focus on venture. just add an "ad" and you've got a veritable indiana jones story.
of course, i drive by a huge billboard ad for an AM catholic radio station. an anachronism for a state so rabidly atheist, I think.
'till next time,
didion
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