First off, thanks everyone who commented on my other posts! This wordpress thing doesn’t really allow you to respond to people in comments, does it? Oh well.
Yesterday a friend asked me out of the blue to go take Argentinian tango lessons with her. I was going to say “No! I can’t dance! I’m afraid!” but then I thought, well, it’s February, fuck it. So I went with her today, from 1 pm to 2:30.
It was really stressful! I was trying super-hard to enjoy myself and relax, but, the thing is, everyone there knew how to tango already… or, if they didn’t, they’d done ballroom dancing, ballet, salsa… I have never danced in my life! Except for a summer of ballet lessons when I was like seven. And that doesn’t count. Plus, I get kind of freaked out when I have to deal with a large number of strangers. — but fortunately my friend was there, so that helped.
For a first lesson, it was pretty basic, too. We spent a while walking in circles around the room to get the feel of the rhythm, then we did this weird thing where you stand in front of your parter without touching them, and sort of… stare intensely at their clavicle? And by doing so, you try and sense what they’re about to do. It’s all about picking up cues and so on.
So we sort of rocked back and forth and then stepped back and forth and then stepped all around the room. Very exciting! Unless you fucked up, as I did from time to time, and then you run into people. Which kind of makes it even more exciting. I kept apologizing profusely to my partners. I couldn’t help it! I was very flustered. To their credit, they were all very sympathetic.
Will I go to the next lesson next Sunday? Hm, I don’t know. I’ll consider it for a week. It was kind of fun, but, on the other hand, when I learn things, I really really need to go at my own pace, or I get stressed out and then I don’t make any progress.
I also did a little drawing thing. About an hour to draw, an hour to color. I didn’t mean for it to be involved at all. Actually I intended instead to draw about my tango experiences, but that didn’t work out. I had also wanted to gouache — but — I will try to do that tomorrow instead.
Anyway, it’s just this character from a comic I’ve been writing in small chapter installments that don’t really go in any kind of chronological order. She’s — um — she was found fully formed rolling around in a bog by these small optimistic gnomes, and they brought her back to their ziggurat and worshiped her as a deity and fed her plums and cucumbers all day. And she’s ambivalent about it. Sorry the coloring is all sloppy and bad! I hope future projects will be more constructive.
[media : micron 01, micron 005 in cachet sketchbook, scanned and colored in photoshop cs2.]
Click here!
My friend Molli in an afro wig and cowboy hat.
A while ago I started working on a flapping wing mechanism using voice coils taken our of hard drives. To drive them I built a set of boards based on the Atmel tiny45. After getting the basic motion down I wanted to use a light sensor to detect motion so that they would only move when something was around to watch them.
