Miranda July's Blog, page 7

5 29 11

Some Things That Happened In New York

1. I was in a photo-shoot for a magazine called Nylon. The location of the shoot was an elementary school that happened to be The Brooklyn Free School. Have you heard of this place? It's a school where the children make the rules, democratically. They vote on everything. You can listen to a pretty fascinating radio story about it here. The shoot had nothing to do with the school, it was chosen for it's light and timeless look. But as I posed in pretty clothes and make-up I was of course also trying to take my own pictures of this messy, wild place that kind of vibrated with a lack of standardization.

These are notes from a meeting I should have had a loooong time ago.

The start of a poem that will be finished later? With extra yellow paper because the writer is sure it will be quite long? I already like it.

I tried to take this of myself in the Art Room. Paint all over the walls, a fucked up cardboard fort, it was the most hectic of the rooms, and of course all the art was ridiculously excellent like look out Whitney Biennial.

Thank you to Seth for hanging out with us while we put ourselves through our funny paces.

2. Another thing that happened was that I was the first person to ever feel exhausted and bereft in NY while wandering the streets waiting for a meeting. It was pretty shocking, a lot of people stared at me and my lack of direction or haste. I checked my email on my phone so many times that my phone was finally like WHAT. Then I saw this wall. You would. You would find a way to create a miniature crisis in exactly 45 minutes. You would then sit on the curb and ask yourself what is actually wrong and the truth would come tumbling out like hidden bagels. You would go get some lemonade pretending that you are your own child. And you would arrive at the meeting feeling much better, shaking hands and making the gestures and noises of a completely casual person, even showing them the picture on your phone of the wall, just for fun. You would.

3. I went to MOMA with MM and had a pretty ecstatic time with the Francis Alys show and a Thomas Hirschhorn piece. I also looked at this book, The Brown Sisters, in the bookstore. It's just one photo a year of these four sisters, starting when they're teens and twenties in 1975 all the way through 2005. By the end I was doing that thing where you look at the ceiling to make all your tears go back in your head. They are very pretty sisters, prettier than most of us, but I'm not going to tell you I was moved because they were so beautiful when they got older. I wasn't looking at complexity or emotion; I was only focused on physicality. Their skin thickened, their pores got bigger, their brows became furrowed, eyes complicated with wrinkles. I think I was crying because the images were so unfamiliar to me. The thing that should be the MOST familiar thing in the entire world was nearly shocking. I can't think of any original way to put this: all day every day I see young women, or old women who look young. Sure, I see my mom and the older people I know, but frankly they're not marketed to me very well and I'm very impressionable. Whoever wants to make an impression on me pretty much can. What I wished, looking at the ceiling, was that I had known about this from the start. That this book had been handed out in school when I was 17, maybe in flip book form, and that all of us girls had flipped through it again an again until we got it through our heads that this would absolutely happen. Then we might have set out at a different angle, creeping very slowly towards death, together, in some magnificent way.

I'm going to do my best to get started on this now, but honestly it's a little late in the game so I will need your help.

4. The real reason I came to NY was simply to be a very proud wife. Just one more week til Beginner's opens!

Thank you to all the people who made videos of familiar objects coming after them. Such great skittering, sliding, floating, and clunking. I watched them all, with a smile.

Coming Up: The Real Truth About My Co-Star Hamish Linklater.

5 25 11

Some Things That Happened in Seattle

1. I hung out in a mall while The Future played there as part of the SIFF. I was looking forward to how normal and boring this was going to be, but the mall failed me in this respect.

2. I signed things, including an 18 year-old girl's fake ID. She wanted me to sign it with my own name. I think this is legal because I'm over 21.

3. I posed. I try to think: you won't always have a body, at some point you will die and be a soul or ghost or maybe something even vaguer. So try to appreciate this era where there is physical representation.

4. Then I flew to NY. On the way we passed an iceberg, pictured below (we took the long way).

Thank you to Carl, the Seattle International Film Festival, and the charming audiences.

5 23 11

My character, Sophie, has a security blanket that's a yellow shirt named "Shirty". This shirt is based on my actual, real life security blanket – a much older, paler yellow shirt named, "Nightie".

I've had Nightie my whole life, and if I were to ever forsake my soul, as Sophie does, I know Nightie would come crawling after me. I used to be ashamed of it and hope I would outgrow it, but instead I outgrew my shame. I'll never forget the first meeting I had with the special fx guys where I had to demonstrate exactly how a security blanket t- shirt would crawl. Using my hands I made it move down the long table we were sitting around. And because this is their job, they all took me very seriously, they nodded and asked important questions like: what is Shirty's emotional state?

I Ask Of You:

If you were ever to forsake your soul, betray yourself, take the wrong path – what would come crawling after you? This should either be your security blanket/object, or any inanimate object you've had for a long time. It must know the true you. Make a 10-15 second video demonstrating the way that it would move. Only your hands and the object should be in the frame. If you want to get tricky you can use invisible wires, or puppetry, but that's really not necessary. Remember that each object moves in it's own way, so, like, if it's your stamp collection, then the stamps might follow each other, like ducklings do.

Along with the video email a caption that states what the object is (and it's name, if applicable) and how long it's been in your life.

A t-shirt, named Nightie, which has been in my life for 37 years. This is how it would come after me:

Respond here: http://thefuturethefuture.com/blogsin...

5 21 11

Allow me to point you towards www.thefuturethefuture.com.

When you go there you will see there is, among other things, an opportunity to receive advice from me about your future, on a bi-weekly basis. What qualifies me to give you advice? Well, I just felt pretty sure that if I tried really hard I could do it. This is allowed, for me, but if your therapist or doctor ever says anything like this to you, you should feel Uneasy. My other qualification is that often when I call my mom she says, "You must be psychic, I was just thinking about you." Maybe I really am.

There is a blog on the website too, which I plan on throwing my whole self into, repeatedly and often. For a limited time.

All these theatrics are in honor of my new movie, The Future, which comes out in theaters July 29th-ish, depending on where you live.

please visit,

mj

4 19 11

Do you ever play that game where you shut your eyes and pretend you're yourself as a 9 year old, and then you open your eyes and pretend that you've time travelled to 2011 and you have to quickly deduce where you are and how old you are without alerting the people around you? It's fun. First you discretely touch your face, look at your hands, and study the expressions of the people around you to gauge how well you know them and who they think you are. Then you have to jump in and say something, and hope that you're speaking in a way that's appropriate to the situation and your age. Once it seems like you've suceeded, and your friends are convinced (or is that your husband? He seems to think you're close), you have to decide if you're gonna stay, and live this new, older life – or try to go back. I usually decide to stay, because going back just seems anti-social. I've actually been playing this game since I was nine; I used to do it in the back seat of the car on road trips, generally overplaying my disorientation and staring at my mom's face with a look of horror at how she'd aged until she got annoyed. I bring this up now because my screenings at the San Francisco International Film Festival this weekend will be a really good opportunity to play the game. When I was a kid in Berkeley we usually only drove over the bridge to SF to visit my relatives. So the first thing I'll notice is that we're not at Uncle Paul's house. And my parents are staring at me from the audience and they're Uncle Paul's age, which means he must be dead and I must be my mom's age. Woah. I'll be doing my entire Q+A from this perspective, wish me luck.

The Future plays on Saturday, April 23rd at 6pm at the Sundance Kabuki Theater, and Sunday, April 24th at 9:15pm at New People Theater.

follow this with this video

3 18 11

Were you there?

MJ Incoporated (a board that consists of a candle, a sack of flour, a cracked CD, and a good intention) is gathering materials for an eventual, all-encompassing MJ Performance DVD. Something special for the truly interested. So were you there? Did you see Love Diamond, The Swan Tool, Things We Don't Understand and Definitely Are Not Going To Talk About, or any of early shows which may have included work from the CDs, Ten Million Hours a Mile or The Binet Simon Test? Yes? Then perhaps you have some pictures, vidoes, or memories you'd like to share with us, the board. We will discuss your contribution at our next meeting — by the light of the candle, flashing the cracked disc, snorting lines of flour, with a good, no – the very best of intentions.

Send here: mirandajulyperformance (at) gmail.com

Photo by Sir Ladd Halsey

3 9 11

Me: Can Austin come out and play?

Austin's mom: Austin's at his dad's house. He'll be back on Thursday.

Me: Oh.

Austin: I'll tell him you came by.

Me: Ok.

Austin's Mom: Anything else?

Me: No.

[long silence.]

Austin's Mom: Do you want to come inside and you can talk to me while I make dinner?

Me: Yes.

Austin's Mom: Ok, come in here.

——————————————

Yes people, that was my way of saying that me and my movie, The Future, will be in Austin, Texas at SXSW. We arrive this Sunday.

Also, we aren't quite done with the poster yet, so the poster above is a place holder.

2 14 11

Berlin

Where is the child in the red jacket, red pants and red hat going? Probably to daycare. What about the man zipping his coat? He is off to exchange his new cell phone because it's defective. They better not try to screw him, he's thinking while zipping. The woman with the blue scarf and red jacket is going to work, which is, awkwardly enough, at her ex-boyfriend's house. That is the problem with dating your boss. It wouldn't be so bad if he didn't work at home, but all day long she can't help but look for signs of someone new in his life. Like for example, since when does he buy kleenex in the decorative box?

Not today though, today she feels suddenly totally over it. As if it all happened 100 years ago. She doesn't even care if he notices how over it is she is. And that, she feels, is proof.

2 13 11

Looking at Music 3.0

February 16–June 6, 2011, MoMA, NYC

When we were 18 and making our fanzine did we imagine that one day we'd be 36 and showing it at the Museum of Modern Art???

Actually yes, I bet we did. Teenagers are pretty grandiose.

So come examine me and my best friend from high school's sliiiiiiightly embarrassing young xeroxed rants, along with some of the video work I collected in the 90s through Joanie4Jackie, and 70 other works by artists and musicians including the Beastie Boys, Kathleen Hanna, Keith Haring, Johanna Fateman, Christian Marclay, Steven Parrino, and Run DMC. Looking at Music 3.0, the third in a series of exhibitions exploring the influence of music on contemporary art practices, focuses on New York in the 1980s and 1990s.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/ex...

The cover of the first issue of Snarla.

2 10 11

For more than a year now I have had the great honor of being assisted by a diligent, courageous young man named Aaron Beckum. He makes movies, takes pictures, is a graphic designer, sings, plays guitar, and patiently explains things to me. He has also made me cry when I have asked him to make me cry, which is really going above and beyond the call of duty.

Aaron has recently completed a new album called Hologram. For a while it only existed as a cassette tape, and in order to share it with people I had to drive them around in my car with me. Now it is also in digital form, which is much better for the environment even though I have a Prius.

You can (and definitely should) get it here

Photo of Aaron, by R.J. Shaughnessy. I chose this one because along with everything else, he is modest.