And she took off with two pairs of socks and a mission...

comehomecows @ 2008-12-30T13:47:00

2008-12-30T21:48:00Z

comehomecows @ 2007-07-25T23:28:00

2007-07-26T06:32:08Z

Kuala Lumpur
Budapest
Cape Town
Nairobi

but maybe

Ougadougou?
Rabat?
La Paz?

I was led on by a Canadian NGO who turned around and crushed my dreams like nothing else. So NGO #2 came by to pick up the pieces and hold my hand 'til I find my very own little developing country and all will be well.

I'll be back in Montreal next week.

Yikes!

2007-07-11T04:45:16Z

So here goes:

I'm going away again. I'm doing a NetCorps internship this fall with Human Rights Internet. I'm leaving Vancouver in early August for Nanaimo, will be in Ottawa and Montreal at the end of August, and then I take off to Another Country.

According to the NGO I've been talking to, I'm qualified for a few of these internships, and it's up to me to narrow down my choices. I think it's fair to give them my top three, even better to give them a Number One. Where shall I live and work for 6 months of my life? Here, my worldly friends, are my choices:

Budapest

The only option where I've been before. Beautiful city, difficult language, art, culture, the ex-pat life in Europe. Probably the option with the least amount of culture shock, but also cold winters and no ocean.

Kuala Lumpur

It's cheap and modern, and easy to find vegetarian food. It's a stone's throw from Indonesia and Thailand. Not terribly far from Vietnam. I could spend my winter along emerald waters. Oh, and people are friendly and the city is safe.

Cape Town

From the age of 14, I've always been fascinated by South Africa. I have this little dream to find my old pen pal in Durban, but that's not the reason I'd go. Cape Town sounds beautiful, and the internship I'm looking at would have me visiting farms in the Western Cape. People tell me South Africa is dangerous though, but maybe only to those with no common sense. Also, English will get me a lot further here.

Nairobi

Kenya! Safaris and animals and baobabs! I've been reading the blog of another Netcorps volunteer in Nairobi, and she pretty much sold me on Kenya after she'd travelled from Ethiopia to South Africa in her time off. There's apparently a sizable expat community of UN workers and other do-gooders.

Banjul

Where? The capital of the Gambia, Africa's smallest country. The town is small, the people are friendly, and it's said to be quite safe, although I'm to expect a lot of marriage proposals. Probably not so many other westerners there like the other places. But the ocean!

I'd have to decide by Friday. I'm open to allllllll suggestions.

Let me make some sort of statement about the "winds of change"

2007-05-13T19:39:16Z

You know, the tides are turning, a new day is born, those kinds of things.

I have a month left of classes here at Concordia, and the class is all about film and video production. I've got use of an old Bolex and we're going to make a nice little 16mm silent film about a miner's insomnia and all the hallucinations that result. There'll be animation projections, hand-built sets, and good ol' slapstick violence. Then there'll be a couple videos about somethin' or other...

In about six weeks time, I'll pack up EVERYTHING and make a run across the country and call Vancouver home. Unless I seriously fuck up the telephone interview on Tuesday, I'll be interning at ACCESS Artist Run Centre and working on an independent study built around the democratization of software, anti-aesthetics, diy design, using a pirated copy of Flash MX 2004 as my medium.

There's a possibility of renting a room in July for $150, but I'll probably just stay with my brother. In August, Eden and I should secure something to call home.

Matilda enjoys a beer as the duck looks onward

2007-04-07T01:16:19Z

That Matilda, I tell ya!

2007-04-06T23:34:57Z

I've been burning through days, ticking off priorities and projects. I've probably had a combined 7 hours of sleep this week, and I have a 1 minute animated video to show for it. "Matilda Enjoys a Beer as the Duck Looks Onward" has not been uploaded on to YouTube yet, but perhaps I should just put it on to my server space(FYI, www.bethfrey.com = mine!). I premiered it at our class party last night in Hudson, and had several glasses of white wine, and came to work at 9 am this morning quite hungover. It was alright, because I got to sit on the softest couch in the world and watch David Adams Richards talk about Lord Beaverbrook on a plasma flat-screen TV.

Now is the time to catch up on sleep and dream about dreaming.

I threw together a submission to a local zine called "Ms. Guided", something about women and travel. You may recognize this story from a post last summer:

blocks books crooks cracks

2007-03-08T20:20:36Z

I like the library here because I get one of those nice green lamps that sits overhead. I get to gaze out at the view - oh, but the view is just that of a decrepit bus station - no matters so long as the windows keep being big bright and clear.

I like the old men who mumble as they climb the stairs, the hip hop boys who sing along with their diskman in the audio section. I like sitting next to the shelf about ancient Egyptian art, even though I'm not going to be reading about Egyptian art anytime soon, I like the energy Tutenkhamen's mask brings to the foray.

They gave out little brochures about how we should speak quietly and turn our cell phones off and instructed us to put the brochures back into a plexiglass box. I don't really understand how this is the best way to keep the library quiet. A lot of waste, I would say.

Last night, I unleashed about a year's worth of pent-up feelings, and today I deal with the emotional hangover. I tried counting the lines under my eyes, but it was still pretty blurry. There's this new sense of freedom now, in this new honesty. There are talks of cross-country convoys in July. Like a half-dozen of us and a half-dozen's worth of belongings needs to make it to Vancouver.

I guess so.

my first animation!

2007-03-04T06:20:27Z

now if i only knew what kind of sound to add...

it's low-res, but it's done.

2007-03-01T00:47:41Z

The Cast
Sean Frey
Noah Keanneally
Eden Veaudry

Music composed and played by Eden, arranged by me.
Acropolis painted by Brendan Birkett.
Everything was shot on my li'l ol' digital camera purchased in an underground Turkish electronics shop, edited using iMovie (which came free with the 'puter).

the Assembly

2007-02-21T16:32:36Z

Indyish has had seven filmmakers make seven films based on seven scripts based on somebody's rock opera*. After the seven films are made, they're getting seven musicians to create the soundtracks. All at random (i.e. you can't choose which film you're making). They're creating a zine documenting the project, and needed seven artist to provide illustrations for each of the scripts. Although I didn't completely understand it, I knew I wanted to draw a crow:

(to be published in 2 weeks?)

Now, back to my regularly scheduled reading break activities:

(1) Read Mediated by Thomas de Zengotita, and write a 10 page review.
(2) Compose a score for my Orpheus video.
(3) Phone the NFB to follow up the email I sent re: interning
(4) Start myself on McLuhan.

*Eden, I have something funny to tell you about this! Unless you already know...

r.i.p. ryan

2007-02-17T03:33:10Z

Ryan Larkin is dead. He didn't get to finish his comeback piece, Spare Change. I guess we were all rooting for him to bounce back on track, and maybe started on the right direction before he left. I'll forgive him for the time he yelled at me last fall because his movies were just so beautiful.

These are the only video clips I could find, sorry.

Orpheus and Eurydice

2007-02-14T19:43:55Z

There's a storm in Montreal right now, and rue St-Viateur is covered in snow and rose petals. They seemed to lead not from the flower shop, but from unassuming rotisserie where one can be jealous of the chickens and cows on the spinning on the spit over the hot fire.

This is my homework assignment. We were to create a 1 minute web video composed of two one-minute shots taken on regular digital cameras. Mine got funny pixelated, but it kinda adds a nice effect. If you have any fun suggestions for its soundtrack (I'm thinking of composing a ragtime-y version of "Take my Breath Away"), your comments are more than welcome!

Movie Still

2007-02-12T18:34:04Z

iMovie is great, although nothing like FinalCut. Here's a still from "Orpheus and Eurydice" that I'm making.

black is great too

2007-02-05T15:28:32Z

but red makes me laugh.

mondly

2007-02-05T14:52:39Z

I'm not out of bed yet, but would you get up if you had a fuzzy orange cat lying next to you? Energy's been up and down and the radio tells me it feels like it's -35 degrees out there. But "out there" has so many other things besides the cold, so I think I have to make it at some point.

I'm learning Photoshop. We had a self-portrait assignment in one of my classes, and I remembered that I'm not in art school anymore. Anyway, I think I can have a lot of fun with this new medium. Had tea with Eden yesterday, and we both came out with a photshop buzz. So I stayed up 'til 2 playing with old pictures of my hands and slept in, missing that pilates class once again.

Everybody's moving to Korea, the weather's getting cold, and I'm being paid to research the positive effects of hallucenogenic drugs, as well as Montreal's smallpox outbreak in the 1880s.

Lastly, I wonder if Helsinki is the new Tokyo.

comehomecows @ 2007-01-26T18:10:00

2007-01-26T23:14:18Z

I went to Paul's the other night to discuss our movie; we watched clips of Wings of Desire and made a plan: Pre-production? Post-production? Storyboard? I'm glad he knows what we're doing, because this whole thing is new to me. I don't want to say too much to jinx anything, but we're making a movie!

And then... just days later, I'm offered a job with a small film production company here in Montreal. Just part time, and mostly clerical (some research/development), but still! Weird how life swings one direction or another...

Procrastination

2007-01-24T05:32:12Z

It's after midnight and I should be reading C. Wright Mills. Instead

my vanity leads me to the vanity and I play with mirrors for an hour

(This is, of course, following an anti- "owls-in-art" conversation on Saturday.)

Today I:

(a) Went for a swim at the Y.
(b) Learned about torrents and downloaded Photoshop and 3 albums (Fionn Regan/Peter Bjorn & John/Bob Dylan)
(c) Ate a grilled cheese and raspberry jam sandwich and drank orange spice tea.
(d) Did a load of laundry and neglected to take it out of the dryer.
(e) Found myself in a dire financial situation after finally checking my bank balance.

I did not

(a) Read C. Wright Mills

bootsy

2007-01-23T16:53:44Z

I really need to get some winter boots. I thought I had it right last winter when I spent $150 on made-in-Quebec sheepswool waterproof boots, but when they fell apart in March, I realized that maybe I was wrong. I'm alternating between three pairs of footwear right now, all of them decorated with white lines of salt, and veering towards fall-apartedness each day I take them out in the snow.

Last week I walked into Pitt, a shoe store that smells like the vinyl shoes that stack up upon their boxes, and fluorescent lights that make me forget where I am. I found the $10 rack, picked up a soft waterproof pair, and slipped them on. Decision made. I looked at my cold soaked hiking shoes, felt the resulting cold soaked feet, and stomped over to the cash register in my big boots. The saleswoman held out a plastic bag where I deposited the hiking shoes, and cut the tag off my new purchase. I reached into my pocket to pay, and muttered "Shit, shit" to myself when I realized I had left my debit card at home. I took the soaked hiking shoes out of the bag and hesitantly handed back the $10 boots and headed out into the 30 below weather.

I've opted to stay inside for the most part. I'm half-heartedly looking for a free copy of Photoshop, and I'm trying to tell myself to go for a swim at the Y. And then there's the movie I'm making with Paul Neudorf, something about The Orphanage of Lost Thoughts, and the super-animated brainstorming sessions we embark on. Next time, I must come in costume.

You know, I've realized how difficult it is to write when I'm listening to storytelling podcasts. I'll make sure I listen to music next time.

Dreams of Flying

2007-01-15T08:48:03Z

Jan van Holleben makes the cutest photographs ever. I remember seeing them in some Turkish arts magazine, but forgot his name the further I travelled.

The Greatest Game in the World

2007-01-09T16:26:22Z

October 2006

January 2007

New

2007-01-08T17:56:40Z

It's January, and I'm making lists, not resolutions.

(a) 1 drawing per day
(b) 10 pages of recreational reading per diem
(c) join the Y
(d) nudes (the other side)
(e) monthly projects, new challenges
(f) unearthing "love"

BTW

2006-12-31T05:41:26Z

This is how my family spent Christmas morning (I'm the one in the pink cape).

theft and moorage

2006-12-29T20:42:17Z

On Boxing Day, I found out that my credit card had been stolen and nearly $1000 had been charged on it. I felt guilty for not reporting it as soon as I'd had the slightest suspicion that it was missing (yes, three weeks prior) and dreamt that night of a life in prison for parking violations. The following night's dream involved a white van somersaulting on the highway, broken glass headed towards me. And last night, I slept on a boat.

But really, this time.

It's cold, but I keep a heater by my feet. I feel a little bounce every so often when a new boat enters the harbour and a wave swells Dee-Light around. A trip to the washroom involves climbing onto the icy dock, past Bernard the marina-duck, and up the hill. If anybody's looking for me, that's where I am.

comehomecows @ 2006-12-11T00:30:00

2006-12-11T05:30:56Z

I'll be in Vancouver tomorrow night.

Spontenaiety

2006-11-28T20:59:36Z

Walked in, bought computer, walked out.

Guy thought I was crazy for asking what they had in stock and taking it righttherethen.
It's the only way to live life, baby!