Jes Lee

Long days

I know the days are shorter in the winter here, but the last couple have seemed quite long. Perhaps this is the reality of working from home every day? Or just a feeling I get from knowing I don’t have a car (with heat) readily available for me to leave on a whim? Yesterday and today I have plugged through, feeling like I wasn’t accomplishing much, but getting to the end of the day and realizing that I have accomplished way more than I thought.

Today was spent on applications. Nothing of much interest to tell you about, dear readers. It is one of the tedious aspects of being an artist, sending out applications to be in shows or get gallery shows to show your work, sending the same images to different places in slightly different formats, each one labeled in a different way. yada, yada, yada. But, what amazed me today is that I am already applying for and planning for events in May. MAY. It seems to me that is the reason the years seem to go by so fast. When so many things are planned so far in advance, it is hard to not feel like time is rushing away.

Oh well. Two applications done today. Fingers crossed.

house small

Where do I start?

Looking back, I’m not sure how to even begin to describe this week. Hard doesn’t seem to even begin to describe it. Yet, I managed to survive.

There are many things on my mind this morning, but none of it is cooperating and forming words. Perhaps I just need more coffee.

Tuesday morning this was posted. A friend to many and a member of our instant film group on twitter died this month. She had been fighting breast cancer for a long time. I chatted with her here and there on twitter – she was so sweet and always had something kind to say. There were times when we wouldn’t hear from her for awhile and it was usually because the chemo was tough and she wasn’t feeling well. It had been quite awhile since we had heard from her. I tried a few times to find out more, but never did. I’ll certainly miss her and her avatar appearing in my twitter timeline with new photos and anecdotes.

It has made me think a lot this week about the relationships we have. The internet has added so much to that. I have friends all over the world now, and many that I feel just as close to as some of the people I know in real life. It is amazing, and very cool, and at the same time a bit sad. When things like this happen, you don’t always have a real world connection to find out any more about what is happening, or where they have gone. That topic has been covered many times in William Gibson cyber punk novels, and I don’t think at the time I really understood the depth of it. I do now. I don’t think these relationships are bad, quite the opposite actually. It is just different.

On a different end of the thought spectrum, I was thinking a lot last night about applications and deadlines, and this application came up. You apply to have a photo show in a shipping container. The show lasts a few days. This is another point where a tiny part of my brain screams at me that here is another part of a William Gibson novel that I am living in (yes this happens frequently)…though I don’t think any of his characters went to or had art shows in shipping containers, but it would fit with the plot in a few books. I wonder where they set up this village of art-in-a-giant-box, and why don’t more artist’s do it? Are there often that many shipping containers that aren’t being used to…ship things? What would it take to set up an exhibition of these?

Big thoughts for a sunny day.

Time for me to go work.