Odilon / Taking a break from fine-tuning a tiny piece of a painting for the past 3 hours

Odilon Redon is the inspiration for my dream painting (an assignment for class) which is taking forever.












It is Saturday afternoon after Open Studios, 34 Stuyvesant is the spectacle of a post-house party, empty beer cans lining the stairway, wine cups lying morosely in the puddles outside.

It's a quiet day, a cloud-soft day, and the painting studio is dark. Sleet slants the view from the studio windows onto slippery grey rooftops. the old fans give a whirl whenever a breath of December air reaches through their withering teeth. The guards didn't want to turn on the lights in the building in order to save electricity when no one's here. moving the easel next to the window is the best one can do.

It is easiest to be conscious when the world is hungover in bed or unconscious at four in the morning. Because everything that is usually shared--with roommates, peers, strangers--the sidewalk, the studio, the couch on the 4th floor of Barney, your thoughts, your attention, your concentration--is now fully, completely, yours. Your attention can be undivided, you own it as you did before but now it is easier to keep it.

Everyone's coming in to paint now, clip clopping boots and heels, washing brushes, putting on iPods, talking, moving, dividing, scattering. the guards have turned all the lights back on, as though to say, "Party's over, kid..."







On that note, BACK TO WORK!

So does this mean I have to get a Twitter now?

We were told today in lecture, during the "Future of Journalism (?)" panel (I applied the dubious question mark here, because some people say journalism as a career is in a crisis, while others say they are optimistic about its future), that, as aspiring journalists, we should all be "becoming experts" on a topic that interests us, and writing beat reports through blogs.

I saw many heads in the 300+ student lecture bow over their little desks, hands furiously scribbling. Hmmm... Now everyone's going to go home and start a blog.

"You write a story for a beat every day, and you see what other beat reporters are writing, and you keep up with it, and you do this for 2 years and see what happens."

I am guessing the every week-and-a-half posts I've been doing just won't suffice if I want to be a real pencil.

That means I have to get a Twitter, right? If I want to keep up with the times? (Seriously, though, The Times actually has a Twitter and it's a pretty important part of their future as a news organ, along with Facebook.)

But guests of the panel, which included Jennifer Preston (Social Media Editor of the NYTimes), Adam Ellick (writer/multimedia for NYTimes), Edward Felsenthal (editor of the Daily Beast), and Jay Rosen (NYU Journalism professor/"blogger"), also emphasized the point that bad journalism starts with lacking some of the basics:

1. Get your ass off your chair and get on the street.

2. Talk to people face-to-face. Preferably not PR people (which is what Twitter and Facebook are mostly used for).

But of course, my favorite quote from today's panels (I <3 journalism panels):

"If you want to be a real journalist then you better know what the hell you're talking about. And if you don't know what you're talking about, then don't talk."
-Jay Rosen



Most recent article in WSN: http://nyunews.com/life/2009/nov/29/galleries/