Postmortem photography research

Dear reader--

We meet again...

I was thinking the other day about how I blog, this is my blog, yet I don't really read other peoples blogs. So why do you read this? Do you find what I say interesting? Or are you bored and you've just now come across this delightful Internet campground full of rants, random essays, poetry here and there, and every now and then, a cute photograph of my pet(s)?

Anyways, this is usually where I inquire to whether or not you'd like to know what I've been up to. Interested? If you are, keep reading--if not, skip to the next blog because this is a focused post (not allowing myself to ramble on, oops, I'm on a tangent)--so I've previously mentioned I've been writing a research paper on postmortem photography: art versus reality. I did a very very very small study in-class on the response towards postmortem images (Image 1 was a Victorian postmortem image, Image 2 was Margaret Bourke-White's photograph of a South Korean holding the severed head of the North Korean (1952), Image 3 was Ambulance Disaster from Andy Warhol's 1963 Death and Disaster series). The results were, lets just say, astounding. My plan was to categorize the responses as emotional or intellectual, but I needed a consistent method to measure each response. So I thought, and I played around with how to decipher the responses, and I thought some more and then the light bulb…I analyzed each response based on whether or not the response consisted of nouns and adjectives! Nouns are concrete: people, places, things. Adjectives are descriptors. Ergo, nouns correlate to intellectual responses and adjectives correspond to emotional responses.

My preliminary research, in which four of my Google+ followers were kind enough to participate, showed that there were two types of responses according to my method; a mixed response (the response had attributes of both an emotional response and an intellectual response) and a purely intellectual response. The results from the in-class study show that these two response types exist. To cut to the point, not one respondent in either study responded to either the concept of postmortem photography or the visual stimuli purely emotionally. My hypothesis was that people respond toward reality-based and artistic postmortem images differently and in fact, this is true. In Study 2 (in-class study), every respondent viewed Image 3 (Warhol's work) completely intellectually. My reasoning for this is because art is representational, the death in the artistic image is representational--this causes a detachment between the viewer and the piece and the response reflects this detachment. My reasoning for my people only have an emotional response in conjunction with that of an intellectual is precisely because the subject matter makes people uncomfortable (it could potentially be too upsetting to allow oneself to respond fully emotionally). This could be related to subconscious versus conscious and the filter…anyhow, that's a separate topic of study.

Fascinating huh? I think so.

The best title I could come up with

I haven't blogged in a while. I know.

School has been overwhelming. One class in particular, a 'nonlinear documents' class, a.k.a photography course, has proven to be tremendously time consuming. I've been working on a research paper on 'postmortem photography in relation to art and reality' for photography class, as well as two other research papers for a film course (Editing of Fritz Lang's M versus Classical Continuity Style Editing and Soviet Editing) and a reception history of Bruce Chatwin's novella, The Viceroy of Ouidah, which hasn't actually been started...yet. In between reading research and writing research papers, I've been working on an idea for erotic fiction. I only have about 2000 words, so it's only an idea at this point. I haven't worked on writing poetry lately (sad face). I've also been going through one of those in-between phases. I guess the best way to describe it would be the scene from Sideways where Miles (played by Paul Giamatti) refuses to drink merlot because he'll go to the 'dark side' or if you prefer Cold Souls, the scene where he says "My soul is a chickpea?!"

Well I guess I've been there for a few weeks now; my motivation (to start anything) is at a very low negative one, that's right, it's beyond zero. I can't sleep and when I do, I wake up every few hours (e.g. I woke up last night at 10:46pm, then 1:30am, 4:54am, 6:30am, 6:57am). All I want to do is bake, watch movies, read, write and sleep. Some day's I worry about my future, the next, I'm pretty much like 'fuck it.' I don't want to be a consultant or travel (unless it's to actually travel to see the world, travel and work is a big fat lie). Any-ways... and then there's the bit about the guy. I watched Benjamin Button and started crying because Benjamin goes away and disappears...it's a reminder of a loss of friendship (or was it not?? Friends don't just disappear when things aren't all smiley faces and warm, fuzzy kittens so in that case, we had nothing but an illusion of a friendship, my fault for misunderstanding), what if's, wants, all that crap you know what I'm talking about. I go from angry to sad to sadder and then saddest of all. I don't open up to people often, it takes years, and I took a risk and I did and it just hurts. But I'm working on letting go, moving on and jotting down whatever comes to mind, in case I get a poem or two out of all of this. It may be surprising (probably not) but I'm good at expressing myself through text, hence the poetry, but I don't share my emotions so well verbally. I come off cold, insensitive and unfeeling if I feel things such as disappointment, sadness, emotional pain, anger, etc. Apart from feeling crushed and slightly heartbroken, I'm still functioning at a relatively high level.

I think I've rambled on about nonsensical things enough now that it would be the right thing to do to let you go back to being productive members on the Internet. Live Long and Prosper.

Get Over It!

The wonderful thing about law is that it has nothing to do with emotion  Just because you feel a certain way, well I'm here to tell you that doesn't mean anything. A fair trial is what you get here. If you don't like the system you're free to pack up your shit and move the fuck out of the country, absolutely no one is stopping you. I'm tired of hearing people complain that the justice system is unfair and it doesn't work. Seriously, you're an idiot that reacts emotionally without thinking if you actually believe that. Just because you are unhappy with a verdict does not mean a trial was unfair! 

Learn to accept and let go because just because you feel entitled to have things that you have no control over go your way, I'm here to tell you, you don't. I have three words for you: get over it.