Hang In There, Joan

"If for a while, the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart.

So it has been with the best people who ever lived."

— Jeffrey R. Holland

On Being Unassuming

My feelings have been a mixed bag as of late. Mostly in relation to art and photography and cinematography and the kind of person I want to be and the kind of person I am at this exact moment and the list goes on. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty has been on my mind constantly since I saw it the first time. It has since claimed its spot at the top of my list. Yes, I am the most indecisive person I know when picking favorite 'somethings' and there. I said it. My favorite movie.

It earned that spot in a lot of ways. The cinematography is beautiful. Visual imagery like that is my language. I may not be very good at Spanish, but I can communicate with cinematography. And I want to. That is what I want to do, career-wise. But there are a lot of other reasons I think it is beautiful. The music, the acting, etc. I think it's a beautiful thing when someone is so passionate about a project and a message that they are completely immersed within it—I find all the ways that this was  "a Ben Stiller" film to be inspiring. It's a magical thing when you can find someone that believes in something so completely in this wishy-washy world.

But more than anything I love it because of Walter Mitty himself. He is truly the definition of an unassuming hero. Those people are my kind of people.

I'm kind of exhausted of the loud heroes. Today, there is so much going on. And it's loud. And I feel like people have become loud. People are loud and they want attention and they want praise and they want credit and they want instant gratification and the want recognition and they want popularity and they want to be trendy and they want to feel better than other people. And that's what's glorified and encouraged. That is considered success today. It's exhausting. And that's not the kind of person I want to be.

Walter Mitty is an unassuming hero. 

Unassuming: not pretentious or arrogant, modest

Synonyms: modest, humble, meek, reserved, unobtrusive, low-key, unpretentious, ingenuous

Dear world, what is so wrong with being humble? Why does everyone need to be proud and loud and the world's definition of 'important'?

I really believe that the best recipe for success is found in that quote in the picture. Maybe the loud ones will get the credit or the attention or the praise today, but I believe that the sincere, kind, diligent ones will be happy. Because they are true to themselves even when the world says that they are no recipe for success. 

I think the words of a dear friend work well in explaining that being a Walter Mitty in a world of "Ted Hendricks" (played by Adam Scott those of you who have seen the movie) is beautiful and important: [the loud heroes] "are like running around with sparklers on the fourth of july, screaming with delight and loving every second of the bright light. But then after 30 seconds, the sparkler's life is over and the beauty is gone. But [Walter Mitty] is this light bulb. Reliable, reasonable, obvious, consistent, long lasting, and your beauty is different."

Notice that I'm referring to this type of person as the unassuming hero. Because they are heroes, just the same. I believe that If you aspire to be unassuming even after growing up in this loud, attention seeking world, you are my people.

One Of My Favorite Poems

They might not need me;

But they might.

I'll let my head be just in sight;

A smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity.

Emily Dickinson

Michael Bublé: Incredibly Talented & Unexpectedly Hilarious

 

"COFFEE FOR EVERYONE after the show!!! ...I was this close. I almost got you!"

"[To the string section] How many of you are Mormon? [About 1/2 raise their hands] Oh my gosh, wait. [To the audience of 10,000] How many of YOU are Mormon? ...I feel so left out."

"Most of you are proof that you don't need alcohol to have fun after all!"

"[Translating a Spanish sign to English] I love your fat baby that loves cake... Oh! I love you like your fat baby loves cake! That makes more sense."

"[After he went on a tangent and had 10,000 people sing the 83 year-old Phyllis 'Happy Birthday'] ...So I'm not really sure how that transitions into songwriting because I didn't write 'Happy Birthday'. Whatever. It's a crap song anyway."

My only regret is not getting any video footage of "All You Need Is Love."

My favorite part of the show (besides Cry Me A River & All You Need Is Love) was at 7:53 in the video when he sings through the evolution of the song Everything. All I can say is, can he release the first draft too? I love it!!

Also, for the encore, he came back out in a sequined tuxedo jacket. It was awesome. He actually sang quite a few more numbers which I'm convinced were not necessarily on the set list. He brought 5 kids on stage to sit next to him and sing "You've Got a Friend in Me" and no one would dance with him. The little girl sitting next to him wouldn't even look at him—it was probably the highlight of his night when he got her to give him a high five when he finished the song. "I finally won you over!"

I was simply blown. away. at the end of the show. I was literally in the back row of the farthest end of the stadium. He 'shhhed' everyone until there was silence and got rid of his mic, in-ear monitors, everything. AND THEN HE SANG WITHOUT ANY SPEAKERS. I'm convinced he's not human. I could hear him perfectly in the back row.

If you can go to a Bublé show, do it! It's the best performance I've ever been to.

I Can Do Hard Things

So one of my classes has been really difficult this semester. It's a prerequisite to applying to the photography program, but it's a design class that is mainly drawing. Let's just say I don't feel very adequate in that respect, especially because I'm in a class surrounded with pre-illustration, pre-graphic design, and pre-animation majors. I'm a pre-photography major. With no drawing skills. And sorry everyone, saying "you're so good, stop not giving yourself any credit... etc." doesn't really help (I know, it's sweet and well intentioned—it just doesn't make a difference when you [or maybe just I] feel inadequate.)

Anyway the point is that this class really difficult for me, not to mention that it's back to back with another class and gets out late at night. I dread it all week long. Also, it's held when my ward has ward prayer, which means I will never get to go. I'm not sure why I'm so bummed about this, but I am.

And then I realized something hilarious / slightly ridiculous.

Apparently I have really bad luck when it comes to Thursday night art classes. My senior year, I wanted to do everything I could to prepare for BYU's photography program, so I gave up taking AP psych (it's okay, I still took normal psych and loved it) and jumped through a lot of hoops to enroll in a photography class at the local college. I think I've finally recovered enough to find it (mostly) laughable now, but that was also really difficult for me for a bunch of reasons. I remember I would take a photo of these weird plants by the door to the building every week before I went in for class. Therapy.

So now whenever I see it, I associate this photo with Sister Dalton's phrase "I can do hard things."

So I guess the same goes for these late night shots at the HFAC. I can do hard things.

Although next semester, I'm going to avoid taking Thursday night art classes if at all possible. 

Let's not repeat history a third time.

My Favorite Photo

Or, at least one of them.

(Do they have holly trees in Utah? Just wondering if it will feel like Christmas...)

And a quote from Ever After to make you smile:

Henry: Well then how can you be certain to find them? And if you do find them, are they really the one for you or do you only think they are? And what happens if the person you're supposed to be with never appears, or, or she does, but you're too distracted to notice? 

Leonardo da Vinci: You learn to pay attention. 

Henry: Then let's say God puts two people on Earth and they are lucky enough to find one another. But one of them gets hit by lightning. Well then what? Is that it? Or, perchance, you meet someone new and marry all over again. Is that the lady you're supposed to be with or was it the first? And if so, when the two of them were walking side by side were they both the one for you and you just happened to meet the first one first or, was the second one supposed to be first? And is everything just chance or are some things meant to be?

A Line of Prose Stuck In My Head

it's the magic of risking everything for a dream nobody sees but you.

—morgan freeman, narrating million dollar baby

Progress

I had an interesting writing assignment the other day that ended up being an observation of how I perceive my own progress. I think it's so easy for me to only focus on the things that I don't know (that I want to know) and completely disregard and ignore everything I've learned. I also have a really skewed sense of time. Not hour to hour, but long term. A few months ago I had just started my computer art class and was barely learning to use photoshop; a year ago I was just hearing the words "aperture", "ISO", and "shutter speed" for the first time.

And since then, I've learned so much, including how to code this little page you're reading right now! A few months I won a contest with a design I made in Illustrator ---- 700+ people will be wore my art on their t-shirts at Relay For Life! A few months ago, I literally didn't have a clue how to use Illustrator. And six months from now, I'm going to look at my first roll of film that I just shot this week and smile. Because (I'm hoping, hahaha) you'll be able to see the progress. 

I'm just saying, it's healthy to remember to give yourself a high five sometimes. You're doing great. Just start where you are. That's one of the reasons I love keeping this little blog of mine. Go to the top right photo in the navigation bar and click that archive link. Seriously. (ugh the HTML code randomly stops working sometimes, so forgive me if it doesn't work...) And scroll down to those oldest posts. There's a reason they're still there. Progress. It's so important to recognize. Some [most] of that stuff seems laughable now, but I think it's a good marker of how far I've come. And who knows ---- the stuff I'm posting now might seem laughable in a few months. It probably will be. But I'll still be proud of it. The journey is just as important as your destination. Enjoy it. Embrace it. Love that evolution. Too often I think there's such a facade that hides the learning curve for whatever reason. Maybe people think it's embarrassing? Well, I'm not going to hide it. There's still so much that I don't know ---- there's so much that I've got no clue about. But just as importantly, there is so much I have learned so far. And that is so essential to remember.

PS, this: 

Cannot Be Useless

"So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age — the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night — are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.

— Victor Hugo, in regards to Les Miserables

 I discovered this quote in an old library copy of Les Miserables and loved it so much that I had no choice but to write it down immediately. Sometimes I wonder if I should be studying something else. Something more useful or noble or helpful... But then I think about it and the bottom line is simply how can you use this to help others? This quote just resonated  with me — books, words, music, film: they can all communicate to people so profoundly at times. It's all about what message you're trying to send, and as long as there is suffering in this world, "books like this cannot be useless." Nothing that inspires, gives hope, or expresses the beauty of human life can be useless if there are people that need to hear it.

More Gatsby Quotes

"As I went over to say good-by I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby's face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams — not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative person, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart."

"There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn't been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with it's own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again, through Daisy's eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment."

 "'I wouldn't ask too much of her, ' I ventured. 'You can't repeat the past.'

'Can't repeat the past?' he cried incredulously. 'Why of course you can!'

He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. 

'I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before,' he said, nodding determinedly. 'She'll see.'

He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy."

"'I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed. Good night, old sport.'

He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight — watching over nothing."

"We shook hands and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge I remembered something and turned around. 

'They're a rotten crowd.' I shouted across the lawn. 'You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.'

I've always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we'd been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time. His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of color against the white steps, and I thought of the night when I first came to his ancestral home, three months before. The lawn and drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his corruption — and he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them good-by."

"No telephone message arrived, but the butler went without his sleep until four o'clock — until long after there was any one to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream."

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made..."

"As I sat brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning ———

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Gatsby? What Gatsby?

"He smiled understandingly — much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced — or seemed to face — the whole entire world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Chapter III

Reading this makes me believe that Fitzgerald just understands people.