Saturday, May 30, 2009

Back to the Tube

Through out the week, I confess, I still watch the Susan Boyle YouTube video of her first performance. I find it, or rather the first version - not this still slightly truncated one, to be almost the quintessential perfect story. It's just over seven minutes, has great background, asides, characters, music, heroic figures, the hero's quest, tension, drama, emotion, and a surprise ending. What more could you want in a story?

The second round I found disappointing both musically and as a story. It's distant, isolated, non-interactive and unresolved. It's a let down. I've seen it once and mostly likely never again.

Tonight I stumbled upon her "final" performance just posted on YouTube. I was 324 to view it - sort of like having a low license plate number I guess. It still has that distant feel to it that their level of production and staging makes. She sang her original song from Les Merisables and it was good, though I felt her first performance had much more character. In her interactions on stage afterwards she seemed on the edge of coherence, less certain, caught in the spotlight in the worst sense of the phrase. Not that I could do any better. In fact she seems to be doing much better than I would ever manage. I think I would have passed out by now from fright. Sort of like wondering how Jack Bauer can actually live through the day with that much adrenaline in his brain. But in my mind it does seem to highlight the artificial nature of that "professionally packaged" level of performance. You can't really see anything on stage from the glare of the spotlight - it's all black beyond a few feet and that emotional wall or distance seems to kill any spontaneous interaction that she exhibited at first. That "cheeky grin" and head shake that the crowd roared to. It's all deer in the headlights and stammering prepared quotes that don't exactly fit the question. But it's not her I dislike, it's the situation she's in. It's not real. It's fake and uninteresting.

Even the judges and the two guys on stage all seemed less interesting, less likable, more packaged with odd clothes and too much makeup. It was unseemly - unpleasant. Simon, unusually, was much more philosophical and tried to contextualize the situation the most with phrases of "no matter what happens", alluding to the fact that she, in fact, might not win the show, but would beyond all doubt still be a winner.

So, again we can ask, what's this really all about. It's classic. It's the contemporary intersection of commerce, talent-scouting, vaudeville, media in the form of both old-school TV and semi-new-school YouTube, and just people. People transposed out of their normal lives into environments unknown and not well understood; put up both for their own benefit and the vaster benefit of others to be poked and exposed on a scale that should cower most of us and certainly alter anyone.

Other than Susan Boyle's performance I've lost interest in the show, but I do miss that ungainly Scottish woman who sang the first time. I wonder where she went to and I wonder how she is. I wish her well and hope that woman gets to sing for the Queen. They both need it.

gunther

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Graduation, Celebration and the New Liebling Center

That bitter-sweet, happy-sad time of students finishing their final year with a flourish - speeches, applause, hugs, handshakes, tears and goodbyes - was mingled this year, as if that wasn't enough all by it's self, with the opening and dedication of the finally finished Jerome Liebling wing of the Film Photo building. This year held an unusually friendly collection of students who have all turned into friends and fellow workers to be missed most now, just at the height of their abilities - as their work shows.

Also sandwiched into all of that was an alumni weekend with older and wiser graduates returning for still yet more hugs and handshakes. Their stories of life and projects sounding bigger and bolder than we could have imagined interspersed with the hint of children unknown and travels previously unmentioned while eating, laughing, talking, drinking and more laughing all under a large tent.

The commencement speakers sheltered under the biggest tent of the day were official (president Hexter), funny (Bob Goldwaith), and deeply interesting (Ken Burns). Seeing the students so well dressed standing next to people who look much like them only older - of course their parents - made the day rush by and merge into the final ceremony under still yet another tent, of thanks to donors, praise for faculty and admiration of the new Liebling  building as a shrine to photography and workspace for media.

I've seen the Liebling building grow from drawings and ill formed ideas stumbled over in meetings to foundations, steel, sheetrock and doors. Only days before the halls were still littered with conduit, ceiling tiles and buckets of paint, yet you could see how nice it was going to be, but when the track lights came on and the floors finally swept clean it seemed even more impressive - quite nice indeed. Then the surprise. Robert Seydel and a troupe of students started hanging the photos. Suddenly - what a change - we're all working in a museum quality space. A really great museum in which I have a small office. Wow. I'm actually impressed.

So now all of us have to "up our game" to measure up to what the building demands of us. It's a real tribute to Jerry who we all have admired for so long both as a working photographer and as a teacher. It isn't just a building anymore - it's a feeling -  a spirit but it is a tangible reminder that what we do is important and substantial. Seeing the alumni photo work on the walls makes that direct connection from the past to the present to the future. You stand there and see current students looking at the work and you can read on their faces the wonder and the power of images and the stories that we tell through those framed prints. Earlier listening to the alums talk about what we all were thinking decades ago also reminds me that the uncertainty of that time was much like the uncertainty of this time. We didn't know then where we would go or how we would really live and oddly that seems to be closely reflected in our current time - a disappearance of certainty and a discovery that not only don't we control our world as we thought, but that we may barely know how it works.

gunther