LSD is one helluva drug and can be fucking insane but it can be quite amazing as well. I’ve never seen such beauty, life, and color come out of a plain white wall. Anyway, can I go explore the MFA?

Boo, so I was asked to research graduate programs. I was interested in attending SVA’s MFA program - Illustration as Visual Essay, but the deadline was back in January. I hadn’t decided if I wanted to keep going to school or just start off with a Bachelor’s.

Now I just have to gather recommendation letters and wait until next year to apply - I already asked 3 professors for them. I hope I can find jobs before then, then perhaps I wouldn’t need to go back to school. My Mom just thinks it’ll help me in the future. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what happens. It would be cool to say I have my master’s though… but I could tell already from reading the course descriptions that I would absolutely hate some of the classes. I don’t want to write poetry for sure because I suck at that. Hmmm…

Tracy:

Writing is great and stuff but I should get out more, you know, hang out with my boyfriend when he calls, and answer my guy friends’ messages instead of letting them go to voicemail.  I should keep my promise to go to SoWeBo with Brad and I should watch Katatonix and not make up excuses about why I have to lesson plan and do my bills- when all I really wanna do is write.

Muse:

Yeah but you can do all that stuff in your story.  In fact if you wrote about SoWeBo and how you made some wimpy excuse to go home and do your email, then that would be a start to something longer.  Think about the rain, think about spending money, think about the people smoking and making you wanna start again.  Sit behind your typewrite at home.  Get started.

Tracy:

Michelle says there’s this really cool festival this weekend called the Transmodern.  There’s going to be this whole exhibit from MICA students who have set up shop.  Weekends is playing and they are doing a crowd surfing show.  I think I should skip submitting this third piece.  It has a lot of work that needs to be done and I’m starting to shy away from face-to-face conversation.  Lately the only kind I do is from behind the keyboard on my phone, or IMing or on Skype.  I should get out more.

Muse:

But think about how behind you are.  Member all those MFA kids from Goucher?  They’re light-years ahead.  That guy called the Ranting Chef gets an average of 100 Likes on every post. Catch up!  Did you read that article on blogging Tim sent you?  You didn’t did you.  Well you should.  You should stay home and you should read it, line for line.  You should open yourself up to better ways of writing.  And how can you do that when you’re around people all the time and boxed wine?  Drinking over exaggerates your stories by the way…

Tracy:

But I miss the jukebox at Club Charles.  And I’m starting to have to make up excuses to Brad when he calls and asks if I wanna see a “The Sound of My Voice”, an independent movie.  Writing can wait.  I don’t need a studio.  It’s not like my doors are locked at certain point.  I’ve missed MadMen for the fourth week straight and this time I wanna pitch in for the Old Fashions.  It’s just not the same watching it on reruns without a room full of girls that like a cocktail that tastes like fruit punch.

Seems like a way to pad a portfolio out with a bunch of boring extras. How about doing a “project” of nothing but greatness? 

The worst are the “projects” created after the fact because these damn portfolio reviews steer everyone towards the “project” model. Santa Fe, Aperture, Portland, NY… they all arrive at the same solutions - and it makes for easy, fast reviewing! One size fits all. Worse than an $100k student-loan MFA. Just another trend extended towards photo editing, probably because people can really churn a lot of stuff out with their digitals and the internet. Meh, most of it shouldn’t get past the Flickr stage. 

Bruce Davidson did a “project”. Robert Frank did a “project”. The crap I’m looking at is just stabbing to see what sticks. No confidence or attitude, those over-educated eyes. They’re so timid and whipped that they can’t even say something is true, much less beautiful. Hell they’re even scared to be ironic. Just stand back and document anonymously, cold as death. 

The blog I saw today was comical because all the photographers had to be privileged children… one guy shot his family’s resort cabin… “full of memories”. An undoubtedly cute girl tip-toed into the Ghetto to find young men with grills. Someone documented their traveling salesman father flying first class, the “last of his breed”, her dear old ~Dad~! Of course it’s all upper-middle class white kids shooting and it’s bland and predictable as fuck. But maybe they shouldn’t feel so bad since I’ve seen many internationally-recognizable shooters not doing much better.

It all looks like people are calculating what they shoot, forget the emotion or intuition. Photographing in such careful accordance of the expectations of academic art lacks integrity to me. The elements of chance and rebellion are essential to photography, yet it is difficult to find portfolios of inspirational photographers willing to take chances or counter the prevailing aesthetic. 

So where is the good work? Who isn’t pretending they went to Yale?