Desolation, 2006, Oil on Panel, 24x36I received the DVD of my interview in the mail on Friday and I guess it has been airing in the Berkshire area for the last week or so. After getting over the initial shock of watching (and hearing) myself on the television (I have spent the last 12 years since we got a camcorder either filming or slipping quickly out of the room if Doug was filming) I thought it turned out quite nicely. The director did a great job of editing my comments and I actually seem, well, thoughtful. The things that I thought sounded stupid, even as I was saying them, surprisingly made some sense and I spoke at a good pace rather than too quickly which is usually what happens when I am nervous. I think that I did trip over my words a bit but all of that was magically edited out.
This was a really good way to get my feet wet doing taped interviews even though I sincerely hope that I will not be asked to do this again. Heh. It was very low key and the director, Patti, was lovely to talk with. Even though she was taking care of the technical aspects and was off screen, she was very responsive to my comments and we really were having a conversation. Well it was kind of stiff and formal on my part, but still.
I finally did some painting on Monday, which was so great, but I will have to discuss that later-today I am off to jury duty!
8 comments:
My wife has a thing against getting photographed or filmed also. She seems to think she's not very attractive, and that she photographs badly. Which is true.
Just kidding. Of course she's beautiful!
Here's the thing I tell her, though: Years from now, someone's going to want pictures of her. Her kids, her grandkids, me, we're going to want to be able to look back and remember what she was like. It's important for her to get in pictures.
And if every time someone goes to take your picture you make a face, or try to run away, or hide your head in your hands, well, you get a self-fulfilling prophecy: You'll never look good that way.
We have hardly any home videos. We only owned a camcorder for a brief moment last year before I managed to leave it somewhere in Virginia, and let me tell you that I not only miss the camcorder and the five hundred bucks it cost, I also miss not having it mentioned at least once a week that I'm such a bozo I managed to lose a five hundred dollar camcorder.
Years ago, back when William was still a baby, about nine years ago, we borrowed a friend's video camera for some reason. The lone home video I took with it sat unwatched for ages -- we don't own a VCR. But a little while ago we borrowed a VCR for some other reason, and just to see what was on it, I put the old home video in.
It's a video of William as a baby while Dawn is pregnant with Corinne. And I recorded William wandering around the kitchen, getting a bath, and just fooling around. And throughout the entire video, Dawn is complaining to me. "Turn that thing off," she says. "Get away from me." "No one wants to see this." "What are you doing?" She's just incredibly cranky.
And here we are, almost a decade later, and it's so wonderful to see what our lives looked like and to be reminded how much William has grown. And the kids love the video. It's like the best thing they've ever seen.
"You see?" I say to Dawn. "You didn't want me recording at the time. But aren't you glad I did?"
And she is.
Wonderful painting. I hope that you had Dylan playing in the background as you worked.
Hi Chris (the case got settled so I am home) I think as a regular person it is really hard to feel like I look good in photos. We are surrounded by beautiful pictures of everyone in every kind of media and it is hard to compete with that. I look in the mirror and think I look fine, but when I see a photo of myself, even if I am not doing anything dorky I still think I look bad, or at least not myself. I struggled with this when I put together our photo albums because there were quite a few years where I was really overweight and I was embarrassed to include the few shots that I allowed. I did though and still cringe whenever my kids politely note that I look different now:-)
We did the typical thing with numerous kids. Endless photos and film of our oldest, less of the second and our youngest, poor thing is begging to see the videos of herself, of which we did very little. Things were just so hectic!
We did manages to hang on to our camcorder for 12 years though, unlike some people, ha, though it is like an ancient relic at this point.
Thanks Ed, definitely could have been inspired by Dylan! I am really liking his new album, by the way. Tom Waits too.
Tracy, you should upload the video on YouTube!
Jim, I thought about that but the director said she preferred that I didn't and so I agreed not to.
Tracy
this is fab ... really, really, really.
you just get better and better.
(and I love reading about your life too!)
Hi Tracy,
Thanks for your comment on my blog. I've been looking at your paintings and I really like them. You have a unique style...love your colours. You obviously march to your own drum.
Thanks Lesly, What a nice compliment!
Thanks for visiting, Louis. And yes, I guess it's true that I do my own thing. That has turned out to be more helpful to my art than my personal life!
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