The Harbor

My friend from Berlin, Anne-Christin, and I spent the other day at the harbor in Aarhus with our flashes. I thought some of these came out alright. I included a portrait I took later that night of my friend Ingebor from Norway. Just some faces that are familiar to me for you to see. Anne, Ingebor and I went down to the seashore and found this Circus tent and did some portraits there using the headlights of Ingebor's car. I'm still editing these takes, but I thought I'd make up for the blogless days. Let me know what you think. Hope all is well with each of you.

A couple weeks ago I visited City Hall. The building was designed by architect Arne Jacobsen, known quite well for modern Danish design (you'll get the idea, http://www.arne-jacobsen.com/neobuilder.20020207200336520000001846981104.html).

City Hall is kind of an eyesore, I just try to ignore it; marble exterior, rectangular in shape, with a phallic tower just sort of shooting out, while on the inside it's all wood. He did however, have an amazing adeptness for natural light. Anyway, no one cares about my naive attempt at explaining this.

The tower is very tall. The view is good. You can see where I live.





and inside City Hall...






Oh, the photo above is the "Wedding Room" (where you get married, quick, and then have your portrait taken for the record against this wall- I want to just have a collection of portraits against this wall). No matter how expensive the wood was, the room is wood-paneled not unlike many a ranch-style home basement circa 1970. No matter how respected in architecture Jacobsen is/was, he still painted atrocious bouquets of flowers with ivy borders, not unlike a tacky stencil, on the wood-paneling (each wall having a season theme, here we have "Summertime"). Tacky but retro and so 1944.

A $3 cup of coffee...

I apologize for the undisciplined posting. I've just spent the last week (and the last six months) staring at a computer screen from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. in an endless realm known only as Photoshop so I've taken a little break to explore the "outside world", also known as "living". It's a bit too much at times, the whole post-production/editing thing, but also addicting. I have self-diagnosed myself as a workaholic. But I got my CPR number (the card you get for free health care in Denmark; yeah, you probably wouldn't know about it) so I have access to an optometrist. Although I get this guilt, I mean, I've totally done this to myself....

This posting will probably be off a bit with the lapse of time, but then again so is being here...

Today I went to a flea market by the sea. It was pretty similar to any flea market in the States. They did have a "Western Store" that was pretty stereotypical. I took some photos but it was raining off and on. I met this very eccentric geologist, very interested in my breasts, my Spanish ancestors (I told him repeatedly I had none) and wondered innocently why I was going to the worst journalism school in the world. The exchange was quite amusing.

He carried with him bag upon bag of maps which he frequently pulled out, meaning they were in some order, to show me places he thought I should visit. Places where sunbeams break a certain way on the horizon, a vantage point that I could view Sweden from on a clear day. In fact I now hold one of the most unique maps I have ever possessed (and I really like maps). On a map he had of Zealand, a region of Denmark, he marked all the rocks thrown by giants in Norse mythology, specifically the ones Fin (from Finland) threw at Denmark ages ago. I have no idea if this is true or not, the locations I mean, but I really treasure it.

people. Everyday I try to meet someone new, get their portrait, something, someone. Language IS a barrier. Directions, conversations = multiple interpretations. I am a rare one here, the "Monolingual".

The other photographers/journalists here all seem very nice. I don't believe there is one female Danish photographer though. The critiques have been more than I could ask for. Seriously, we spend an hour on each take (eight students). In SF we would have an hour and a half for twenty takes. Everyone shoots so differently, it's quite interesting to see the processes. The Danes seem more lax with what is "photojournalistic", too. For example, I was talking with this Danish photographer, Tobias, about telling stories without people; just their environment, waste, architecture, etc... For my first assignment I thought I would try to incorporate some of that into three expressions of a place. No faces. Only shadows, silhouettes, "left" spaces (which I also define as spaces that the viewer expects/feels should have people but are empty such as locker rooms, amusement parks or stores after closing). In San Francisco this is unheard of. Kobre would have thrown his book, "On Photojournalism", at you and failed you ( ah! the masochistic reverie!).


My friend Ingebor, from Norway, had a potluck the other night and Paul and I made sushi. One girl had never had sushi before. I prepared a piece for her with a bit too much wasabi. The expression on her face while she chewed (very, very slowly, her cheeks bright pink, nose flared ) was priceless. She was so sweet too, saying "okaaay, it IS very interesting".

Food is expensive here. A cup of coffee is $3 on average. I have sort of given up on it - cigarettes, too. For me that's quite a revolution. And still the Danes consider themselves to have a cafe culture. In my dreams I am at a Stumptown or smoking cigarettes in the back of my house in SF. I'll just keep it all there, I guess. I figure here with the new beginnings and all I can just try out new behaviors (such as what to do with my hands in conversation without a cigarette, I didn't realize just how much I gesticulate).

Okay, pictures...

Den Gamle By

First Day of the Program...

Last night we had a "Meet 'n' Greet" a full on skip through childhood with games such as the one where you have to go around the room with thirty other people remembering there names and a fruit with the same first letter. One, I stop listening about three people in. I have not been on a roll with names for a few years now. By the time it gets to me I finished this giant glass of Leffe, somehow mumble through each person's name (actually it's each person telling me their name, and rolling their eyes, their prideful fruit of choice... i.e. Pineapple Patsy, Mango Mary, Apricot Anne). I go with Daikon Dana. The controversy ensues...
"What is a daikon!?"

"Uh, I don't know, a radish...a Chinese root... or Japanese."

Of course there are two girls from Hong Kong there.

"WE HAVE NEVER HEARD OF DAIKON!" "AND...WE'RE FROM HONG KONG!"

Whatever.


D. For what? I still can't think of a fucking fruit. Why has this game suddenly turned into a issue of correctness? It's a child's game. There was one guy, "Coca Cola Carl", c'mon.


Meet with the photo professor. He seems really nice. He invited the group to an opening exhibition of his in another town. I really appreciated seeing his work. Some professors I've had in the past were very elusive about their own work.

But even more interesting, the guy only has one "seeing" eye. The other is crystal blue glass. What? And how come?

The university architecturally is bizarre. I'll have to post photos at some point...

I was going to say how warm it has been, but today it rained.

details

Some shots of the show....

Six Organs of Admittance show at VoxHall, Aarhus

Six Organs of Admittance, from San Francisco, played the other night. This photo is what I thought of the opening act, which was in fact taken during the opening act. They had such a nauseating light show I had to find something station in the room to focus on. My head was spinning like I was wasted. But check out: http://www.sixorgans.com/

Arhus Domkirke

Arhus' Center.

Danish foilage...

Strange suburban architecture. I believe a futbol field is right under this thing...

A very old Church (circa 1749, you can see in the photo) near the place I'm living.

The best of American culture can be found in Denmark.

Goddag.

Lightswitch

Arhus: A True Winter

Blogging commences. I suppose I'll explain the title, since all I've really been doing is sleeping and wandering, thinking and reflecting. Since this blog will mainly contain reflections on the wander-ponder, I thought I should start with sleeping... This excerpt is attributed to wikipedia.com...

A false awakening may occur either following an ordinary dream or following a lucid dream (one in which the dreamer has been aware that he or she is dreaming). Particularly if the false awakening follows a lucid dream, the false awakening may turn into a ‘pre-lucid dream' (Green, 1968), that is, one in which the dreamer may start to wonder if he or she is really awake and may or may not come to the correct conclusion. More commonly, dreamers will believe they are awake.

A false awakening has significance to the simulation hypothesis which states that what we perceive as "true" reality is in truth an illusion as evidenced by our minds' inability to distinguish between reality and dreams. Therefore, advocates of the simulation hypothesis argue that the probability of our "true" reality being a simulated reality is affected by the prevalence of false awakenings.

Certain aspects of life may be dramatized, or out of place in false awakenings. Things may seem wrong: details, like the painting on a wall, not being able to talk or difficulty reading (purportedly reading in dreams is difficult or impossible; see Green and McCreery, 1994, Ch. 10, for a discussion of this topic). In some experiences, the human senses are heightened, or changed. For instance, one may be able to see things in greater detail, or lesser detail, or one may feel an intense burst of fear and anxiety, or possibly pleasure

Because the dreamer is still dreaming after a false awakening, it is possible for there to be more than one false awakening in a single dream. Often, dreamers will seem to have awakened, begin eating breakfast, brushing teeth, and so on and then find themselves back in bed, begin daily morning rituals, believe that they have awakened, and so forth. The French psychologist Yves Delage (1919) reported an experience of his own of this kind, in which he experienced four successive false awakenings. The philosopher Bertrand Russell even claimed to have experienced ‘about a hundred’ false awakenings in succession while coming round from a general anaesthetic (Russell, 1948, p.186).

Dreams are extremely personal, intense and lucid for me. Dreams, whether daydreaming or sleeping, induced, have held so much vision, prophecy and inspiration for me. In a way strange experiences too that perhaps can be manifested or compared in reality but where concocted in our heads to such detail so that we used each of our senses to such degrees - it seemed.