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Friday Reflection – Everyday Life and Quiet Insights
This Friday reflection gathers a week filled with back pain, runaway cats, quiet moments, and thoughts that reached further than expected. Another Friday is here, reminding me how life keeps happening in the smallest, softest places. Read this post in Swedish -> Presence & Conversation – if you want to read more or book a session:https://malix.se/narvaro-samtal-boka/(A soft place to land —…
Friday reflection everyday conversations
This Friday, I’m writing a Friday reflection about everyday life and conversations – a week that has moved through life in its own rhythm.I carry a whole week of ordinary days, celebrations, talks, and small moments that stayed with me.As always, I gather everything in one piece, not to close the week, but to understand it. This whole piece has become my friday reflection everyday conversations…
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Blog refresher
This week we had a refresher session on how to utilise this blog effectively, as quite a few of us had some confusion about when and how to do so. We’ve been reminded to update regularly treat it as a recording of our activities and ideas throughout the IA4003 module, as well as any other research work we wish to post about. A such, I hope to make Friday afternoons and evening my new posting schedule for the blog.
Seminar reflection: The Performance
23/11/18
while my story was not one of those picked to be presented to the class, there are some key points that Jane has made to me in previous readings and mentioned to other performers.
- A strong opening and close are key; my openings are often interesting, the endings can sometimes feel a little short. - Sensory detail is incredibly important to pulling the reader into the story and making them feel part of the narrative. creating a tactile world through language is something Jane says I am quite successful at, but I sometimes make unnecessary reference or abruptly change focus which doesn't always work. - Avoid breaking character or prematurely taking us out of the moment; it can be jarring for the listeners/readers. - Think about use of personification and the non literal; what is real, what is metaphorical and what is the protagonist’s imagination.
23/11/18
This Friday we recapped the ideas we’ve discussed in precious sessions; what makes a good open, the concept of the heroes journey etc - as well as the short stories we were given to read and what made them so effective (as discussed in my previous post). For our final session next week we’ve been tasked with writing a short story that is roughly two sides of A4 based on the prompt “Tales of The Unexpected,” creating a story that deals with some kind of issue in a surprising way, taking up no more than 10 minutes. Having only written very short stories no more than a paragraph or so long, I’m initially struggling with this task but taking inspiration from “The End Of Firpo,” I’m interested in trying to write something from the perspective of a child on a darker subject, as its interesting to consider the way a young child views the world and copes with difficult subjects they may not entirely understand (such as Firpo and his lack of comprehension surrounding his own death). Drawing on my own memories from being younger I’m considering the plot to be based around the superstitious rituals of a child against some perceived, possibly real, evil.
In today’s story telling session, we looked at the importance of the opening for drawing the reader in and giving them an idea of the kind of story to follow. The opening is what makes the reader decide whether to keep reading or not.
Our first task was to write a story opening with the following guides: - Character = an ordinary person. - Setting = a small forgettable town in the UK. - Action = something terrifying, damaging. “Life changing in the most fundamental way”. Our second task looked at the idea of making anything interesting to read about, having to characterise an inanimate object in the room, in my case an askew ceiling tile. It was interesting trying to give personality to something without any to start with, to have to create a conversation from something largely ignored or taken for granted.
This week we started a new project, Storytelling with Jane Hankin.
Jane says that oral tradition is one of the oldest forms of story telling, passing them down generation to generation, and that storytelling is to “take something abstract and make it experiential.”
Initially we looked at what makes a story, the narrative arch and journey of our protagonist, the need for a protagonist or focus that is revealed throughout the story. We also discussed the misconception that a story must have a start middle and end in the traditional sense when much post modernist works have experimented with stopping or fragmenting the passing of time in their stories quite effectively.
For our first task we discussed in groups what sensations we would attribute to an emotion, in this case fear, expanding upon the obvious statement of the emotion for a more engaging description.
We also created instructions for a potion in groups and acted them out as a way to explore new worlds and fantastical ideas in a semi serious way.
Finally we wrote short stories around the prompt of “leaf,” mine being about a fallen leaf on the ground. Jane seemed to like my descriptions within the story but suggested considering more paired down phrasing on occasion.
Independently Jane has asked us to write a 100 word story based on the title “The Lonely Road.”
26/10/18
This Friday our seminar was hosted by former KSA Illustration Animation students on using our RSJs (reflective study journals) and visual diaries. Arguably the most significant point made throughout the talk was on the necessity of rough notes/drawings and not being precious. The point of these journals and diaries is not to be a perfect fully finished set of notes or illustrations but a place to record and document important information quickly for later use and improvement of ideas. In the case of the visual diaries creating faster looser drawings has its own merit, capturing just enough of what is needed for the image and often holding an energy that more careful drawings may not, using symbolism sometimes to present something ( similar colour rather than the exact colour for example) rather than trying to be perfectly accurate. Similarly, the point was made that our RSJs should act as a place to record our thoughts and ideas, not just the notes we make in our seminars and workshops. It was also suggested that we experiment with how we use these formats; different sized visual diaries could work better for other people and following the lines in our RSJs isn't necessary if it isn't conducive to how we record information and process it. This talk has been significant to how I treat my RSJ in particular; up until this point I’ve been using it to present a somewhat edited,sanitised, neater version of class notes. This particular talk has made me think I should use it as more on a live document of thoughts and ideas, to be less censored and careful with it and just write whatever ideas and concepts come to me in the format that works best at that time.
