He's Mr. Vain, Part Deux

So I got my hair done again by Lexi, The Great and Everlasting Goddess of Hair. I now have a dark red streak. It's a bit...strange, but I think I'm going to have fun with it. So far reviews have gone reasonably well (also known as, several women and gay men have said good things about my hair.)

Lexi recommended I head straight out to the bar after getting my hair done, to go pick-up ladies. Alas, meeting people in bars is just about my definition of Hell on Earth, right next to parties where I know at best a few people. I'd rather be shot, and I'm not sure if that's hyperbole or not either.

So what's the best thing I can do with new hair? Make some self-portraits of course.

It's funny, about a year back I had been considering doing a fairly large self-portrait project. It was going to be my break-up project. All my major break-ups have a project, and they tend to be some of my best projects. I don't know if that's good or bad, but it is. It was going to involve each image having a large number of images combined to make one image of my face. Each of the smaller pieces of the larger was going to be slightly different and help create a somewhat torn and fractured portrait. It's an idea that had some legs to it, I still think it does. It never happened. I found, or more accurately it found me, another project, a project that was so much better and expressed my break-up in a way I never anticipated, and helped me see it more clearly, see me more clearly, and helped me grow. The new project was about excitement, joy and freedom and the self-portrait project was about pain. The joyous project won. Great.

But I'm still me, and sometimes, as with all visual artists, I think, I like to do self-portraits. What's interesting is what the self-portrait reveals. I spend a lot of time analyzing myself, and the world in general (read, sitting in traffic). What I find in the self-portrait tells me some great things about myself that I don't find by just thinking.

When I do these I set-up the camera and the lights, do some testing and go. And when I say "Go" I mean "Go". Have the camera take a new photo every two seconds for 50 continuous frames, maybe more. It's not enough time to think, just act, just release. And that's the key, sometimes items must be thought out, thought through, but sometimes, just letting go, and flying, feeling, says everything that needs to be said. Thought gets in the way of feeling some days.

So apparently, I'm not in all that serious of place, though part of me wonders if I'm also partially in a place where I can't face myself. Only time will tell which of those is true, but currently I prefer the not being in a serious place theory. It feels...good.

This kind of self-examination is also why I love (and for other reasons loathe) the growth of the cell-phone camera. Sure I may do self-portraits, and I may set-up a bunch of stuff to do it, hell, I can, so why not? But people everywhere are taking self-portraits all the time now, so much more than at probably any point in history. And well I may use them partially to self-analyze because I've been taught to, I'm hoping others use them to do the same, even if not so pointedly or seriously as I do.

Nothing wrong with a little more self-reflection in this world. And for me, I'll just enjoy being ridiculous human being.