Book Bound Girls Photoshoot 1

Interview 1: 21 Questions With john

So I had been wanting to do some interviews on this blog, because I really enjoy the idea of getting to know another person. This is just the first one that I did, so it's not quite perfect, and I'd love to interview anyone who would be interested in it. I feel like by sitting down and talking to people you can really ask them questions that otherwise you wouldn't know the answer to even if you have been friends for awhile. 

Interview type: Person to Person, 21 Questions

Tuesday July 7, 2009

11:30pm

Interviewer: Alyson

Interviewed: John G. 

1. Do you prefer pens or pencils and why?

Blue pens only because I like the idea of permanence. 

2. Do you want kids when you grow up, and how many?

Yes. Under three. I think children are important. I don't know. I like kids, and I want kids because I think I could raise interesting people.

3. What is your craziest dream for the future, personal or otherwise?

Moving to another country and losing contact with everything I ever knew before. By country, I mean Paris.

4. What is your pet peeve, something that other people do that annoys you?

Making noises while eating, food sounds. Drives me up the wall.

5. Who is someone in real life, or a fictional character you feel you are most like?

J. Alfred Prufrock

6. What is the biggest mistake you've ever made in your life?

Convincing myself not to like onions because I would enjoy a lot more food.

7. If people were to gossip and say negative things about you, what would they say?

That I am bossy, gay, boring and vain.

8. What is your favourite book?

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf because it is a lot of things at once. 

9. If you were an animal, what animal would you be and why?

I would probably be an opossum because I'm often out at night, and easily forgettable. 

10. If you had the ability to change your life right now, what would you change?

My appearance, my location, my intelligence, my confidence, my relationships, my life. All of it. Not to say I'm not happy, but given the opportunity, why not?

11. If the world was ending in 20 minutes, what would your very last playlist include, songs or artists?

Joni Mitchell, Belle and Sebastian, Grizzly Bear, REM, and you.

12. If you could, would you choose to be instantly famous?

No, I don't want fame.

13. What is your greatest fear?

Being alone.

14. What are 5 words that you would use to describe your childhood?

Typical, wholesome, gluttonous, spoiled. I want to say creative, but my childhood wasn't so much creative as I built things.

15. What is the nicest thing someone could do for you?

Tell me the truth.

16. Do you believe in God?

I believe in magic.

17. If you could be anyone else for 24 hours who would you be and why?

I would be a 16 year old no name boy from Illinois. Why not? Someone different from me. I don't think fame is important.

18. What was the happiest day of your life and why?

I don't remember.

19. What do you think is your greatest talent?

Listening/Pretending.

20. What was the last thing you made for someone and why?

I made Alex Bull a tape in early May because it was her birthday.

21. What is something most people like about you and your personality?

I don't really know. I ask myself often. I think that's something people often ask of themselves. "Why do people like me?"

The extraordinary adventures of book bound girls

So today Sandra, Natasha and I got together for some bookswaps and a photoshoot. We decided that today would be a good day to start our club. I won't go into all the details because I believe that some things must remain secret, but we plan to meet regularly and discuss. 

Myself having an unhealthy obsession with photoshoots and a love of facepainting, decided that we should do something I had always wanted to do, and do a real photoshoot together. Real meaning facepaint and wearing random eclectic pieces of fabric and sheets and scarves that were grateful to be removed from their stuffy homes in cardboard boxes and closet shelves. I am really happy with the way that the photos turned out, and I would love to do more photoshoots. Just putting it out there for you, my 3+2 should you ever feel the desire to model and or act crazy for an afternoon.

Anyways, I haven't yet gone through all of the things we photographed today, but I'll post a few photos of the process of the shoot, and hopefully tomorrow I can put up my favourites, and maybe get some suggestions from the other girls of the ones they liked as well. 

Scarf to keep the hairs away

Getting paler. 

Sandra the master of painted liplines, hair and sheet dresses and much more.

Taking a break. Eating pizza with a knife and fork to save the facepaint. A truly dedicated model.

Pulling it all together:

More photos to coming soon. 

Savoir Sunday

Hung out with Natasha and Sandra. We celebrated Natasha's birthday and watched Let the Right One in. It made me realize that Swedish is a very beautiful language that shares some french words (the movie was Swedish with english subtitles). I also realized that it had been a really long time since we had been together just passing time, and it was nice to do some exploring and walking outdoors. 

We've decided to do a bookclub this summer, hopefully every Monday. Swap books that we have read that we own for books that we have not read and own. Maybe do some creative photoshoots and things to that nature as well. 

Point and Shoot

The concept: I am going to take all of my photos on my memory card in one day, 504 (I think). I remember when I had film cameras as a kid I always got so annoyed with not being able to capture everything I wanted and taking only 24 or 27 photos when I wanted to take hundreds.

Then the digital camera came, and I find myself taking maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the photos I could take, and still having so much space to take more. So I'm going to photograph until I can't photograph anymore.

The rules: 

1. Take all of the photos in a 24 hour period. I think I am going to start at 9:00am and end at 9:00am the next morning. 

2. No doubles/extremely close photos. I am going to try to be original, and try to keep it fresh. (But since it is more about the quantity than the quality, I may not stay 100% true to this.)

Sharing: I am going to pick the 10 best photos and post them larger on here, but try to include smaller sizes of all the photos I took. Maybe a large collage like thing, I don't know.

Start: Sometime next week hopefully. I need to set aside a day where I can do some bussing around and get up a little earlier. I won't say when, but will post after the fact. 

J'ai fini.

So it's been a slightly interesting and productive evening. I didn't do much but finish my quote jar with some records in the background. When I start something and get caught up in it, I have to  it. I literally have nothing new to post about because its all I've been doing. I actually started another one, a smaller one and I had to get that finished sooner. 

I love quotes, and some of them have stuck with me through this process. There have been 465 in the larger, and 214 in the smaller one. 679 in total, and I dare not even count the hours because I would feel embarrassed by the amount of time I have spent on this project. 

When I made up my first quote jars, I decided that there are 3 things that a person has to do with the jar in order for it to work properly. 

1. Read the quotes in moderation

Don't read them all at once, read one or two a day, because somedays people need more than one quote. Or read them every few days, because I think that you can't really let a quote stick with you if you read a hundred.

2. Don't put them back.

Don't put them back in the jar because you have to move forward, and you can still reread the quote, but you can't let it get in the way of the others who are waiting to be read.

3. Don't throw them out.

Part of not throwing them out is because it takes a lot of person power to make something like this for someone, and throwing them out just seems a little unfair. I encourage people to keep them, maybe make art out of them, or give them away, use them as bookmarks, leave them on bus seats. 

Anyways, after all the writing, here's the finished work. I didn't take a photo of the small jar because I literally finished it, and then the person who it was intended for came over within 20 minutes and it caught me off guard a bit. The large jar with 465 quotes.

Quotes in a pile.

Quotes spread out so you can see how many really fit in a jar like that. 

I'm glad I'm done, so now I can turn my focus to music and other projects that I would like to start.

Quote Jars

I have been obsessed in the past few days with two quote jars that I am in the process of making. I have made them before, but never in the way that I have begun to make these. The gift is not just the words, the inspiration, but the time spent writing out every letter, and the folding and the cutting of the paper. In the process I'm also trying to use up some of papers and string that I have lying around. The kind of things you tell yourself "I'm going to use this someday so I had better keep it." 

Cut up pieces of paper. 

Picked some quotes I liked to share. 

Folded them up. 

Tied them with string. I didn't do this last time, but I really wanted to use the string I had because I've had it forever.

This is what one of the little guys look like.

Put them in a jar I bought from the dollar store. I almost bought a tin, but then its easier to forget what's inside. I still have a long way to go. 

Hopefully I'll finish soon, and I can show what they look like done. If I have time I might count them because I'm curious as to how many will fit in there.