The Complex

So I figured I should post a dream or two. I haven't posted any of my dreams since I mentioned lucidity, and I feel like I should at least write down a few recent ones, while they're still fresh in my memories. Especially since I explicitly said I would.
As for progress. I still haven't achieved anything resembling lucidity. I still play the bystander role in my dreams, watching them unfold - there's never any deliberate action on my part. My memories still fade quickly, and sometimes I have trouble distinguishing my experiences in dreams from my experiences while I'm awake. Despite what Inception may have taught you about the latter, it's really not a terrifying concept. It's usually harmless, and after awhile it's just annoying more than anything.
I did advance a little though. I'm starting to remember the dreams I have during the week, short though they may be. I forget a lot about them, but at least I recall the general scenarios.

The Complex
I don't distinctly remember myself being in this dream. I remember about five teenagers my age being involved for the majority of it. All five are friends with one another. At least two were male, and at least two of the others were female. Two of the five were of notable importance, more so than the other three. I'll name these two Person A - Alice, and Person B - Barry.

How it started is a blur, but I remember a couple of details. Alice and Barry are in love, but they've recently had a falling out or something. The image of the two of them in a car comes to mind. They somehow manage to end up in a huge dark room, with a high ceiling and gray concrete walls. There are large windows, possibly a metre or two across and three metres high in size. The windows are far too high to reach, however. It reminds of me an industrial complex. It's late night outside, with a deep blue sky and a bright moon (the only source of light). I don't notice any doors, and I get the feeling that Alice and Barry are trapped.

I remember Alice and Barry speaking to each other in the darkness with hushed tones. They are sitting on the ground across from each other, but they seem hesitant to make eye contact. Their three friends are also inside the room, joking with one another along the edges of the room. I notice that they are standing and moving around. The joking is in the vein of making fun of each other, but they take it in stride. They don't seem to notice Alice and Barry, and they don't seem to be making any attempt to escape.

After some time, Alice and Barry leave the room, through a door in the corner (I don't recall it being there before). They're holding hands and leaning against each other, but they don't look much happier. I'm noting now that they look cute, but that's off topic. Anyway, when they leave the room, they enter a short hallway of more concrete walls. It's very well lit, as opposed to the darkness of the room. This is the last I see of them. And this is also when the dream starts getting... Weird.

The three friends poke their heads out of the door, which was left open by Alice and Barry. One of them immediately notice an Ice Cream Vending Machine (once again, I do not recall that being there). I'm going to mention that I get the feeling that these three people are idiots. In any case, they turn their attentions to the machine and fret over it for awhile, instead of moving on.

Something catches their attention at the other end of the hall, where Alice and Barry walked. They turn and I see some more of the building. I'll give both a diagram and a description.

They are standing in a short hallway that ends in a larger room (larger than the hall, not as large as the first room). I will call this area room2. It continues into an even larger room (room3), without any walls separating the two. All three rooms are built of gray concrete, and are well lit. I get the feeling that this building is exceptionally vast, but bare.

Room2 has another hall, to the left and adjacent to the hall in which the three friends are standing in. It leads to a darker area, but I cannot see it. I do not think Alice and Barry entered it. There is also a staircase leading to a 2nd floor on the right. The 2nd floor is dark. Somebody is sitting halfway up the steps, who I will name Cale. I'll go into detail about him later.

Room3 is a bit harder to identify. I do know that it's larger than the first room, and better lit than the second room. I feel like it may have doors or more hallways, but I can't seem to recognize them. I do feel like room3 is brighter than room2. Room3 has at least one window, much like the windows in the first room.

In the center of room3 is a blonde haired girl, who is looking up at the window. She, Daria, turns around, and I can't identify her face. She does not move from this spot.

Cale sneers wickedly. He is far easier to identify. He too has blonde hair and pale skin, with heavy eyelids and black, fierce eyes. His hair is short. I feel like he's Daria's brother, or related to her in some other way. They are both of my age. He stands from his place on the stairs, and I notice him clenching his right arm, which appears to be severed at the elbow. In place of his forearm is an axe, and the spot between axe and stub appears to be covered in... Blue ice cream? Yeah, blue ice cream. Make of that what you will.

Cale walks up to the three, and suddenly I'm in the dream, as if I've been here the entire time. He approaches me threateningly. The three friends cower at the vending machine. I somehow feel relieved about him being technically disabled, because that makes him less intimidating... At which point he swings out his left arm, which has been clenching this "severed" arm, only to reveal that he was hiding the rest of his right arm in his sweater, like a child pretending not to have a head. His axe (which somehow became a cleaver) is now in his left arm, and he's holding it in front of him with a grin as he approaches.

I try to take the cleaver away from him, but he flourishes it and tries to cut my wrists. I try again. He scares me back. I try again, and he repeats. We do it over and over again, exactly the same way, and I'm not making any progress. He hasn't managed to cut me yet. It continues indefinitely, and the dream ends.

Daria and Cale seem familiar somehow. I think I've seen them in some other dreams.

Second Sin

Our second day with Margaret, and our first day working with papier-mache (is it paper or papier?). I think we were a bit slow to start, but we eventually managed to organize ourselves into a short lecture on using the medium. It's pretty simple; we wrap newspaper into tight clumps in the shape of whatever we're building, then stick a few strips of tape onto it to keep it together (though mine personally is starting to look like a mummy, or a voodoo doll). She recommended that we make our batches of newspaper as dense as possible. To connect two separate pieces, we tape them together on all sides, then use a half-strip of tape (torn lengthwise) to wrap around the strips we've already laid down.

I decided to change my design, naturally. Sin is going to be less human than I originally planned - it's jaws and head will be larger, it's eyes won't have pupils, and it's hands and feet will be more reptilian. Virtue is still human, but will have more hand cuffs than it it used to. V's cuffs will link around it's wrists and ankles, while S's cuffs will link around it's neck. And maybe S's torso or thigh, whatever looks better. I want to give the feeling of restraint for both figures, but I'd like V's restraints to seem more natural, even dignified. S, on the other hand, will appear awkward and perturbed by it's bindings.

We spent the class with tape and newspaper, setting the framework for future classes with Margaret. I managed to get most of V done, but it still needs hair, a better shoulder, and feet. Not to mention S, who is entirely nonexistent save for a few balls of paper that might pass for part of it's head, or perhaps part of it's body.
I thought I did fairly well, time wise. But we don't have that much time before the workshop comes to an end (six days over three weeks), and as Margaret pointed out, papier-mache takes some time to dry.
In any case, we figured that the paper + paint portion needed to be done by Tuesday, when we next meet again. Some of us are taking our pieces home to work on them over the weekend to meet that goal.

Margaret also wanted us to bring some form of tray next time, to put the papier-mache in (can't exactly have that stuff laying on the tables, you know...). She needs it to be shallow, and she suggested a take-out box as a reasonable size. Something disposable, maybe.

Oh yeah! Margaret's going to be blogging too, her page is already up.

Crazy voodoo

First Sin

Today was our first day with Margaret - one of six. She showed us the work she posted up on the website, explaining her inspirations for each. It was nice to see somebody with real passion behind her art. She was initially pretty coy with what we'd be doing in the workshop, but she seemed to like the idea of us posting blogs about her. It was kinda funny seeing her reaction to what we wrote yesterday.

When we'd gone through her website, she introduced us to our workshop's topic: The Seven Sins. We took some time exploring the concept of each, then examined a couple of artists who worked around the concept. She told us we'd spend this first day coming up with 2D concept art, but I imagine we'll get a chance to work with papier-mache on Friday, if only to get a feel for it. At the end of three weeks, we'll be given the option to keep our work or donate it to be auctioned off for charity.

Margaret told us she was introduced to papier-mache in college, which I imagine surprised more than one of us. I personally haven't worked with papier-mache since... What, my second year of middle school? First year? Some of us haven't used it since kindergarten.
Incidentally, I really hope I can get accustomed to it on Friday. If I recall correctly, papier-mache isn't exactly the cleanest of mediums. Maybe I should bring some kind of smock.

In summary, we're obviously using papier-mache to make something related to the sins. That's really the only requirement. I decided to focus on the sin of Wrath and it's opposing virtue, Patience. It's pretty simple so far; Wrath is feral and in agony, screaming as it tries to move in one direction. Patience has attached a pair of handcuffs around one of it's wrists, with the other end wrapped around Wrath's neck. But as Margaret pointed out to us, it's not like I'm married to the idea, so I imagine I'll be tweaking with it. Maybe I'll even switch sins, since the whole restraint thing seems applicable to any of the sins. Better yet, I could just make the two figures "Sin" and "Virtue" as opposed to "Wrath" and "Patience."

I think I should rethink my figure skeleton frame. I've always used a large circle for the chest and the pelvis, but that doesn't seem that accurate. I once saw a student using a simple curved line instead of a circle for the skeleton, so maybe I'll switch to that for awhile, if only to compare the results.  

As for this picture specifically, I guess I should determine a gender. I didn't have any in mind when I drew this, and it kinda looks like it switches every now and then, 

  

Coofebs

Naturally, I've just failed to copy and paste my blog entry. CtrlZ and Back failed me. You'd think being asian would prevent these kinds of things from happening, or at least prevent me from accidentally deleting the entire entry.

The art group spent the day preparing for tomorrow's workshop. Read as: We've dubbed ourselves the Coofebs. I believe it's an acronym for something, but I can't for the life of me remember what it stood for.
I'm going to take a moment to elaborate. After a brief moment of lamentation at our lack of creativity in regards to naming ourselves (contradictory to being the "art" group), we eventually settled on Coofebs, a portmanteau of the names of two members of the clan. We're apparently depicting ourselves as chicklets. Baby birds. With monocles. 

Our group is going to be instructed by Margaret DeLima, a visual, psychogeographical, and a dialogical artist. The first piece I've seen of her is what she has on the frontpage of her website. It's apparently a self portrait, constructed of papier-mache, a simple wire frame, and candy. It's a nice piece, and I'm particularly fond of the posing she's done with it. The polkadot dress is cute.

Most of her work consists of self portraits, according to her artist's statement. They're usually 3D constructs of papier-mache, like the work aforementioned, against a 2D background. Some of them have pretty interesting construction; Geometry of Me consists of three students with rigidly formed necks and arms, displaying confinement. Their legs however, are free and jointed, suggesting as DeLima puts it "the potential for movement." Her other pieces also use their medium to convey their respective messages. One uses blue lined paper to show the structure in a child's development, while another uses deliberately fragile materials to exhibit the fallibility of both family and home.

I'm looking forward to working with her. I really prefer 2D over 3D, but I'm fond of what I descriptively called her "interesting construction." We still have stac art on Thursday though, so it's not like I won't be able to continue working on my own pieces.

Entry!

1/31

I'm starting a blog today; beats indulgently updating my facebook status every other day, I suppose. It's still pretty self indulgent though. Not that I have any problems with that. Anyway, I spent more time than I'd like to admit on the title, then wrote the assigned entry on the workshop prep (which I'll post shortly after this initial entry), and I'll be emailing the link to this blog to everyone else in stac by morning. My 365 blog is also up, but I won't be making it entirely public til I actually upload my work.

...Now that I think about it, the title could still use some work. Strange, it seemed like such a cool title at the time, but now it just looks stupid. Changed it. Naturally. It's going to look stupid to me in a few hours, I can tell.

This being my first blog entry, I suppose I'll be making up for lost time.

Five Dreams                    .
A few months ago, I came upon the concept of lucid dreaming. A lucid dreamer is somebody capable of complete and total clarity (or lucidity) during his or her dreams. By extension, a lucid dreamer becomes capable of not only recalling his dreams, but also of manipulating the events in his dreams as they happen. An accomplished dreamer can enter a Wake Initiated Lucid Dream on command, and recall multiple dreams a night. By contrast, an untrained individual is lucky to remember a single dream a month (I say "remember" because the average human has five or six dreams a night, but is incapable of recalling them).
Naturally, I'm in love with the concept, and for the last few months I've kept a journal of my dreams to help me remember... Unfortunately, since I usually have to rush to record my dreams (gotta get to school eventually), that journal is written on the backs of who knows how many dozens of papers scattered throughout my house. I'll upload a few every now and then, of course, especially if I find any new ones laying around.

As of this writing, I've recently rededicated myself to making regular reality checks and to recording my dreams. I never had a lucid dream as of yet, and my memories are still somewhat erratic. I usually have one well recorded dream every weekend, but I once managed five dreams over the course of five days during a break (which is pretty great by my standards). I'm going to try to keep my sleep schedule consistent as well, since that seems to help.

I also bought an ipod cable over Amazon for about 75 cents. So now I can actually use the itouch that's been gathering dust on my shelf for the last year or so. I uploaded a few songs to it and made heavy use of it's Notes app.

 Name, Ethnicity, Gender, Profession                      .
A manifesto is a public declaration of intentions and principles. It defines a concept and frees it of any perversions of misconception or misunderstanding. But few people can say they really have a manifesto. Few people can really define themselves, know themselves, and everyone seems to forget to take a good look in the mirror. If somebody approached us and said "Who are you?" we'd probably just answer with our names.
But a name is just a series of recognizable letters. A title of convenience. A number assigned to a prisoner would mean just as much.
Then we'd answer with, what, our ethnicities? Our genders? Our professions? Our cliques? Our friends? Our styles? But that's just another mix and match jumble of titles, names, and upbringings. We're more, or at least we should be more, than simple combinations of titles. We are not "Name, Ethnicity, Gender, Profession." I am not "Justin Coo, Asian Male Student."

A few days ago, I typed up a series of simple little rules for myself. It's not very interesting at the moment; it contains some modest things like "I will not swear and curse at random in response to irritation" followed by a short bit of reasoning behind the rule. At the moment, I'm only defining what I'm not, really. But I imagine that's better than pretending to know what I am when I clearly don't. And defining what I'm not is still defining. I fully intend to expand on it from now on.

A public declaration of principles (picked a couple as an example).
-I can have self respect without having to kill myself on the way there. By extension, I acknowledge that I can improve and critique my artwork without being self deprecating. I will never hate my art by merit of it being mine.
-I acknowledge that my appreciation for the sarcasm of others is not universal. I like having sarcastic friends, but that does not mean I should be sarcastic myself.
-I will never again make one of those stupid little bets with life for karma. I'm not a five year old high on Elmer's anymore.
-I will actively pursue at least one full conversation a day, with intent to increase the minimum requirement.
-I will not be petty. Pettiness suffocates all involved.