Day 31: NaCreSoMo, the first ending

I had planned some back posts, to make up for the week+ I was sick, but then life got in the way. But that as we all know from this adventure is an excuse and one that may never end. So on this last day of NaCreSoMo, I would like to leave off with a few or not so few words.

First thank you all so much for participating. All of you who heard my crazy idea on the first day of this month and throwing caution to the wind, jumped on board with me on yet another one of my mad capers. All of you who were pulled along by a friend, by someone and thought why not and opened your works to the scrutiny of those you may know and others you did not. Thank you all for sharing and inspiring and just simply being amazing. I confess that I have not been as good of a facilitator as I had originally planned, but all of you exceeded my expectations and gave this project life. And for that thank you so much.

I started this project because I was feeling demoralized, frustrated. Questioning why even create, when I could not get better, when I could not get feedback, when no one seemed to care. So on a whim, on a dare to myself, I made this up. Made up rules, dared some friends to join me and here we are. 31 days later.

This first attempt may not have been the most successful. Not for many of us, and not for me personally. It is a little funny to admit that I failed my own challenge. However to that, I aim to do better next year. For there will be a next year. I hope that all of you participants of NaCreSoMo year 1 will help me over the course of the next 11 months on yet another adventure. I did originally base this idea off of NaNoWriMo, however I believe that a better creative interface can be created and in the next 10 months or so I would like to build it. I hope that all of you can provide me with any feedback on your experience this first time around and what you would like to exist for the next time. For I hope that you will all return.

From the posts that I have seen this past month, though I still have so many to catch up on, you are an amazingly talented group of people and I sincerely hope that we all continue to inspire, create, and help one another grow. Because I do believe many if not all of you will be famous one day. And if not, my life will have been made richer for knowing all of you and to have experienced each of your journeys in creating things.

Day 29: The Clockmaster

The Story of the Clockmaster

There was once a girl who said to herself, I want to quit the world. I give up. It’s hopeless you see to make heads or tails of anything. Right or left, wrong or right, everything is arbitrary, inconclusive. Everyone, it seems, is just milling about, filling in the mold. And so, would it not be easier to simply drop from that role? Out of this hole? Out from this game? Give up on this obtuse world? And with a laugh and a smile, she went off to sleep, head filled with thoughts swimming about and a heart in confusion.

Such a sad and lonely girl. The unwanted child. The silent injuries, the invisible tears overflowed into a pool of liquid silver light. Silvery strands bestrew its surface, wavering to a non-existant breeze as if to say come. It is safe. All will be well. So come. So she fell into the silence. The pool of sadness, of her sadness, embracing her chilled skin in frozen waters that burned like fire. And so she fell, for so long she fell.  Blind to the world, unnoticing of times passing of the distance spreading, she fell. 

Day 26: Explanations

As a few of you may have noticed, I have not posted in over a week or commented or really followed any of my own rules to this project. Yet I have to say that despite my absence I am so proud of what this project has become. Thus I want to explain why I have been missing. I got strep throat for the first time in my life and I have been at home sick for the past week.

I wish I could say I used that time well and created, yet there is a curious thing about illness and the slippery spiral of I’ll-do-it-another-day. So here I am back again. And however guilty and tired I may feel, gosh darn it I am going to post today.

The Sunday before last, I went to a Hackathon at Berkeley (last Sunday I was still sleeping off illness), the UC Ready Challenge, hosted by UCOP. It was both not as rigorous and more competitive than I thought it would be, in that not that many teams and despite being more pitch than working demo-based; in the 6? hours we had the outcomes were much further along than I had thought they would be. I am delighted to say that my team, formed in those 6 hours was one of the winners.

Team: U-brella
Goal: Connect students to those interested in mentoring them towards a future in college (or not).

Part 1: Pathfinder
Either Or (Hot or Not) game to find out what the student finds to be more important. Categories of choices include academics, lifestyles, interests, etc. Results of the quiz/game will be a profile of likely academic direction, possible programs, scholarship, activities, suggested mentorship connection, leading to…

Part 2: Mentorship
Post-profile generation students can register/sign in and retake the pathfinder to discover other options, get matched up with a mentor, who via virtual means, guide them through meeting deadlines, events, apps, etc, for what their student chooses. The primary intention being via pathfinder results to form pairings that will be lasting relationships and give students an anchor to someone who has the experience or resources to find the information they need.

Project Goal: Create lasting motivational relationships via mentorship and via gamefication encourage critical thought towards student’s goals, interests, and potential.

Some screenshots of the demo from my computer

Yeah, so maybe it’s not a whole lot, but a bigger component of this particular Hackathon was coming up with a cohesive plan. That and this is the first web-based type thing I have programmed in several years so I was re-familiarizing myself with web stuff and trying to fix the settings on my computer while making this… anyway in short, I really should get familiar with the new tools available for web development.

Day 12 & 13: Purpled Skies

A revolution beginning, in me, speaking up, sneaking out. That words, thoughts, not necessarily fitted between. In lines marching, dire drums beating. To the edge of a cliff, falling off. I see the sky.

Purpled overhead, blooming clouds. Wind, while falling, booming in my ears. The drums, though fallen, still beating. Thump. thump. Thump Thump. thump.

The hits come hard and heavy. Explaining, why I love the sound of rain. Heavy on the thinning apartment roof. Heavy on my skin. On my mind.

 

I need to be not afraid
Cloistered here, in arrays of self
Deceit, deafening, my self, pretending
Confidence, strength. Certainly,
Certain I am not, not afraid, that I
Bending on wires, maintaining
Facade-like wax candles dripping on,
Wrapped canvas hanging on, me
Myself, I, what, is existing really so wonderful?
In self definitions, declarations. Declared:
I need to not be afraid
Of mishaps, mis-adventures, mistakes, of
Feeling, caring, emotion. Of love, the
Belief that such could exist. Of trust, and
Fingers lingering warm, wet paths on icy
Reflections of captured clouds. The world
Wrapped up in conflating, congratulating,
Confusing, conflating judgements of worth
While guessing at our selves, ’til
The many layers, overgrown, now peeled
Away. Nothing but the seed, perhaps dead now
Inside. I need not to be afraid.

Day 11: Sudden Deep

At this point I can no longer whose (or the many who’s) post made me want to share/re-record this song (actually figured it out, it was Shana’s).

I am not sure why, but this is a song like many others that I recorded a temporary “this is how this should go” track and never really went back and re-recorded (until now). Difference is I listen to this song a lot. Every time I am feeling down and it makes me feel better for some reason. I really do not know why because I don’t see it as a particularly uplifting song. I’m not even sure it was ever completed, but I have listened to it so many times since that I can’t quite imagine it being different now.

Cannot decide if the background chair creaking helps the song or detracts from it (I’m not entirely sure if it can be heard on the soundcloud upload) but you can thank one of my temporary roommates for that. Also I really do want to thank (since I know they will see this) Jordy and Max for introducing/teaching me beatboxing.

Also please listen with headphones. I was playing with some psycho-acoustics ideas so it is designed for headphones. I am not sure but I feel like soundcloud stripped out/lessened some of the effects (I guess they think it is noise or artifacts of bad recording?) so if you would like to listen to the original file, please msg me!

Lyrics

Out of the waters and into the sudden deep
How does it feel to barely breathe

Outward sky looks so so pale
Compared to these depths so dark, so real

Out of the waters and into the sudden deep
How does it feel to barely breathe

How long do we have ’til we next fall down
How long do we have ’til we fall apart again

Cus once again it will start again
The ladder out of the well has yet another rung to climb to bend
And out of the waters is the depths of another hurricane

Out of the waters and into the sudden deep
How does it feel to barely breathe

Can’t catch your breathe no, not again you think
You try so hard now, but the sky’s not the limit

Day 10: Melancholia

I am not feeling creative today. Yet I feel that pre-cursor to creativity, that restless, floating, can’t quite catch the nagging feeling. The wait-a-sec there is something worth making, worth telling, that does not actually want me to allow it to come into being. That revels in sneakiness.

That little bastard.

And thus I am left to simmer. And snap. And bubble in frustrated annoyance that my mind will not reveal to me what sits at the edge of my comprehension.

Almost knowing, but not, left to long to linger, turns to rot. To red anger and frustrated opaque bursts out jagged pieces of unknown feelings.

To scatter in word bit pieces, slashes in fabric. Dark creases in the canvas later you will regret. But by then, too late, you are drained. And. That feeling. That gremlin of a feeling, wreaking havoc upon your mood. Your day twisted to its whims, gone. Like the reminder of breeze one summer’s day in DC. Caught sweltering in a swampy land of bits and pieces, misbegotten things, temporarily permanent.

In this aftermath. This place of chaos, flung feelings, shapes like Dali’s clock hanging, melting, becoming. Something worth finding. Worth making

That sneaky bastard.

Day 9: Remnants

Remnants

We are born broken, a little bit, inside
Little bits tearing, threatening, perceived
Whole, from birth, innocent, delicate
Pieces of random, of nothing, fitted
Together into a body of, that works
Symbiosis of parts meshing, matched,
Rather mashed, meshed together there
By necessity, over time, pulling piece by
Little piece apart, a part of us newly
Discovered, and returning
To the start, we arrive.

Day 8: A Bit of Color

I have decided to draw again. On purpose I left all my sketchbooks and most of my pencils at home, so that I will finally try drawing with my not-so-new tablet. I have used tablets maybe two or three times before this, but this is the first time using my own. Well I might have plugged it in once or twice before today and then promptly giving up because drawing with pen/pencil and paper would just be so much easier. After about an hour of messing around, current conclusions are 1. however great the sensors are it still just can’t beat the feeling of the actual tool (pen, pencil, brush) in your hand, 2. I love that I can layer and erase/color/draw over the same canvas without having to worry about the paper tearing through.

Still trying to figure out the brushes so this drawing derived more from me trying out more brushes than artistic motivations. Started with random stuff that made me think, huh, that kind of looks like hair, but here is the result!

Day 7: View in Case of Unhappiness

I love that NaCreSoMo for me has become as much a thing to challenge myself as it has become that which to be inspired by. Earlier I commented on Robert post for today that perhaps as a precursor to poor times, we should take a picture or some momento of the good times and put them in a box to “View in Case Life Brings You Down”. So I have decided to upload/process/share a few photos. For those of you bugging me about photos taken over winter break, yes that means they have now made the journey from the SD card to my computer.

Really I would just put all the pictures taken of friends, etc here, but as I am still uncomfortable with sharing photos of people who I know personally (yet I am ok with sharing photos of strangers?) I am going to be mostly using just the ones of non-familial-people. Thus photos to view in case of unhappiness (taken this past winter)!

Day 6: Discomfort

I am going to do something for this post that I am very uncomfortable with. I am going to share a vocal recording of a song that I have made up. Sorry it is vocals only, I have yet to get a keyboard and my efforts on the guitar sadden me. I am doing this because I really don’t want to, but I don’t want this song to die the way of most of my songs do. Lonely and forgotten.

So here it is, the vocal recording of the song that I started last week. I figured since I failed to perform at the open mic night this past Tuesday, I should do something that I was uncomfortable with but hopefully beneficial to my creative growth.

And at least for now, I am masquerading as Lily Forests on Soundcloud because amazingly Lily Lin and Lily Forest have already been taken. And technically my last name translates to either forest or forests. Also I rather like the imagery!