(SINGS) Bamboleoooo. That was called Bamboleo. You are very beautiful. You enjoy how I play guitar and sing at the same time? You are very pretty. I see you arrive on the beach with Alejandro. He is gone now, no? It is nice he let you stay in his house, alone. I bring my guitar to keep us company. There aren’t many people in Cabo Polonio in the winter. But no matter I am here, now. I wonder why you come to Uruguay. You are American, no? So far away. Well no matter we have many days to learn from each other. Oh I see you are painting. Perhaps you paint me while I eat a bowl the wonderful polenta stew I smell? You are so beautiful, your eyes are deep souls. You make it very romantic here with candles and wine. Is my idea or perhaps you know I come to visit? No but I laugh, you don’t know I come tonight. I wave hello from across the field, you see me and wonder who is this man, no? I see you smile. Very beautiful your smile. When I see you I think, I will take my guitar to the girl and play for her and sing at the same time. Your glass is nearly empty. It will be lonely for more wine. Don’t be shy, my glass has room for more too. In Cabo Polonio it is normal to barter many things. Fresh milk is traded for wood, a story for a cigarette, a song for some wine. Very nice to have such a beautiful woman pour wine for me. You are very fast painter. I see myself already. Oh the candles are burning low. No matter. Darkness can be very romantic. I learn to play guitar in darkness. You learn to do many things in the dark when there is no electricity. It gets darker, perhaps we open another bottle of wine before the light is gone. Oh I see my last cigarette has disappeared. It would be nice to share a smoke with such a beautiful woman. Ah no matter if you don’t have any. I play for you anyway. My voice a satin cape around your ears, your lips around your smile can fill my soul. You know my hair hasn’t been cut since the last time I fell in love. After I play for you, perhaps you predict if it is time to visit Armando the barber in Valizas, it’s not far, a town away. Not expensive. No matter, I show it to you some day soon. There is much to show you, in the light. But for now it grows darker. I see a box of chocolate biscuits on the shelf, bring them and I will play for you and sing at the same time, while you can still see my lips and I your eyes. “Ooooh, hey mambo, mambo Italiano, go go joe,”

The Cabo Polonio Guitarist, in watercolor. By Katarina Kojic May 2002.

What I love about watercolor, is I’m never concerned about perfection. I find myself open to enjoying the experience of it. When I graduated from improv to writing monologues, I enjoyed the world around me on a different level. My trips on the subway became anthropological inspiration for character monologues or sketches I would write with fellow students. Rather than feeling annoyed by the teenager loudly shuffling her feet across the subway platform, I jotted down the character trait, and chuckled to myself, slightly less concerned than I ought to be that I was turning into a lunatic muttering and laughing to herself. New York is a fascinating place and especially in my early days of experiencing it, I found myself more often than not turning to someone who wasn’t there, to check in if I was to believe what I was seeing or hearing or experiencing. My trip to Cabo Polonio was a solo side excursion. A departure from a trip with a friend who had unexpectedly fallen in love and gotten married while we were there, to someone from Argentina. Passing the evening with the Cabo Polonio Guitarist.

—–

The above story is slightly inflated of what actually I experienced while having an adventure in Cabo pull on you or away. Sometime after I came back I had the great fortune to group up with other talented and smart interesting people under the tutelage of Mona Mansour to do some new writing. She had worked through the artists way and shared some techniques with us. When we first all got together her guidance suggested write your future write out the visual get dramatic about it. Don’t worry about how it gets done. It was the first time I had heard such a thing and so I imagined. Before I should say she had us make a list of all of our various skills everything we thought we were good at I included things like being really good at pretending to know how to dance really well. Also being able to embody almost any kind of a character through a empathetic and loving I. I included things like couple era Improv of course and Fitography. When I started to picture. It’s what I thought of my future I imagine a giant audience at Carnegie Hall perhaps. My photographs projected in huge form and peoples other images interspersed between images grab by the audience. Improvisation or actors would join me on stage in executing stories and inspired by the photographs. When I started to think of what that actually looks like I decided to put together a show to celebrate my 10 years of living in New York. Are used it as an excuse and an inspiration to get me to print my work and share it with other people. In classical me style I left a lot of things to the last minute underestimating how long things were to take but in the end I’m very proud of myself because it was something I achieved to some degree anyway. They were technical difficulties and opportunities that were missed. But ultimately it got me to experiment with a new format a new performAnne. It was called in a black box dark room black box show I took some images that I had taken and wrote a monologue to go along with them this is one of them I had other people perform at Bill Mejia performed this. I’m so grateful to people like Holly Mandel and Mona Mansour and all the other Improv and teachers and partners and teammates I’ve had over the years they pushed me to be and try different things and create different ideas I’m always amazed by the creativity of people it’s so exciting to see all of the minds that are coming together to help figure out this COVID-19 in all different areas. In the end hopefully this is a great equalizer and shows and shares peoples humanities I really pray there’s no stories of taking advantage of all these opportunities in a grotesque way

This combination of improv and photography was executed in a few different ways. The people who I worked with to execute it allowed me to see my photographs in a new way. It is a magical experience.

My ability to be expansive and creative is magnified when other people are involved. There’s often a fear of letting someone else idea take over. When you can practice the feeling of taking the risk of going with someone else’s idea, and then are rewarded by an interesting story or new direction and continue to see their ideas as great and how can you make sense of them, go where you are needed. Sometimes lead sometimes follow. You will gain new perspectives that make room for your work self company fill in the blank, to grow.

I have been struggling with how to explain how hello gorgeous, a photography business, is connected with doing improv workshops. The connection is story telling rooted in authenticity. I love comedy and learned from my uncle vips, who died from MS when I was young, to find the joy and humor in the every moment. He was joyful and demanding of my grandmother who cared for him until he passed. I think she was 83. In some ways he passed the torch to all of us to make fun and poke at the pain Ina way that both recognized and deflated it by calling out the truths and agreeing that it sucked. It’s that way with my mom now. She has PSP and is ever more getting worse and worse and getting harder and harder to care for. This time has allowed me to be with her and help her in all aspects, it takes me a long time to make a change but little by little I am seeing how I over think things.

The connection between improv and photography is it clear. Draft 2?

Jul

30 Strangers. PDX

After I did 30 Days 30 Strangers in NYC, I knew someday I would want to do the same thing in other cities. It was invigorating to talk to so many New Yorkers and I felt a greater connection to my city after doing it. I was so proud of how many of our “busy, pushy, rude” citizens agreed to be photographed. I had an 87% success rate of people I asked who said yes.

A few years later and here I am, Portland, Baby. I have been spending a lot of time here this year and have been missing my friends and have missed seeing the diversity of faces and people in New York City. I am super excited to start my new challenge of 30 Strangers in Portland and get to know this place that celebrates Weird.

Guidelines
1. 30 strangers. A stranger is someone I have never met and was not set up to meet thru someone I know.
2. I have to ask their permission. They’ll be asked to sign a model release.
3. Ask each person the same questions:

Where are we
Name
Profession
Age
Nationality / Origin
Favorite thing about Portland
Least favorite thing about Portland
What does success look like?
What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

4. Perfection is the death of completion. To this end I will shoot/blog on the same day. Additional details, edits or links may be added later. This is a project in motion.

DAY 1

I packed up my bike with my questions, my camera and a few bits of gear and started riding to find inspiration for day one. I wanted to start with something iconic and as the sun was rapidly setting over the hills, I pedaled over to the Burnside Bridge. I had pictured setting up the shot with the iconic White Stag Sign in the photo. I didn’t like the images I was getting and the sun was going down so I quickly reframed and waited for someone to pass by.

A moment later, friends, Rin and a shirtless Dead Letter, passed me on the sidewalk. I loved their look, and when I asked if they would let me photograph them, they were immediately game and wanted to help welcome me to Portland. They were on their way to kill time looking at art before meeting friends, so this was a great substitute.

I loved talking with them. They were a great start to this project and I could have spent hours talking to them. Strangers 1 and 2.

Meet “Rin” and “Dead Letter”. I loved talking to these two!

Best piece of advice you’ve been given: “Shut the F%&$ up it’s not about you.”

1. Rin at the Burnside Bridge.

Name: Lorin, “Rin” to his friends, Lorin to his clients
Profession: Marriage and Family Therapist, mainly serving the LGBT community.
Age: 35
Nationality / Origin: German/French/Swiss/Native American

What’s your favorite thing about Portland? It gives you lots of permission to be weird. You can be a weirdo in all these crazy ways. Like for me being queer, and being non-monogamous, and all that shit– started in Portland. Getting introduced to the burning man culture and all these other things, started in Portland for me. It gave me permission to not be normal in a lot of ways.

What does normal mean?
It means something different in Portland, but for me it meant fitting in with the people around me in Arizona, which meant a lot of financial success a lot of fitting into the norms of being married the norms of having a house and dogs and kids and all these things.

Would you say that their definition of success didn’t match your own so you felt out of place? Yeah, and I didn’t know what else is out there.

What is your least favorite thing about Portland
That you find out over time that there’s permission to be weird but it’s all the same kind of weirdness. There are Norms within the weirdness -which is kind of uncomfortable thing. So it’s like- the acceptance of being in anyway traditional is real low out here. If
that makes sense. The liberal people haven’t really learned how to help each other or support each other and there’s no helping people that are not considered to be kind of like neo-liberal and queer and you know whatever thing that people feel politically connected to it, they kind of get polarized against the opposite thing.

What does success look like?
When I was not feeling successful, success to me felt like, having a house, being financially able do to the things I wanted to do, and now that I feel more successful I think it’s more about connecting to wherever I am at the moment, being with whoever I’m with and experiencing what I’m experiencing and that feels more successful to me.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
“I need to shut the fuck up because it’s not about me.”

Do you remember who said it to you?
Yeah, actually, it was my practicum supervisor and she is amazing. Basically as a therapist, especially you’re always trying to get in there and make people happy. So you’re trying to make people happy and they’re not, they’re sad, but therapy is more effective when you can be sad with the person. So it takes a long time to learn to kind of put yourself on a shelf and not try and change their mood, but just be with them and whatever they’re feeling and where they’re at. and I think that’s good advice for friendship or whatever is -that most of life is not about you and once you accept that it is easier to handle your distress over it.

When you say it’s not about you, do you think the pull to wanting to have a solution to a problem is your ego going, I’ve got the solution and I’m right?

Yes, always. And it’s not just for therapists, we’re all trying to force other people’s experience into our narrative and it doesn’t work, most of the time.

Dead Letter “I have a cantankerous old man yelling at me from the end of my life.”

2. Dead Letter at the Burnside Bridge.

Name: Dead Letter
Age: 40
Profession: Building Slave for Creative Space and Industrial Arts Factory
Nationality / Origin: I’m a Jew- Descendant from the Vilna Goan.

What’s your favorite thing about Portland?
The Bridges, everybody loves the bridges. And passive aggressive-ism.

What’s your least favorite thing about Portland?
Portland is filled with amazing, caring, leftist liberals who have not yet flipped over to actually helping each other, rather than fighting against something.

What does success look like?
For every person success is moving up a quantum where you have more, time, money, and energy than you did in the quantum before.

Best Piece of Advice?
Two things. 1. Embrace all information flow. (People come at you with something; you say, yeah absolutely instead of nu, unh.) and 2. Everything takes 5 times longer than you think it will.

Do you remember who said it to you?
I did.

So that’s not really advice, is it, since it comes from yourself?
Mmmhmm. I spent years crafting it so I could have one pin within which to frame all of the rest of the stuff I was trying to say.

And was there anybody else that influenced… that contributed- I get what you’re saying, there is the zeitgeist, where suddenly everyone the kind of same…Was there anyone else that influenced that, where the advice was similar.

I’ve met a lot of other me. And they have other versions of the thing I have that I’m trying to work on in my PHD work and all, very similar. And many a times they go, “I INVENTED THIS!” and I believe, probably not. I didn’t invent it. The best one can argue is that one made a localized compression. A localized way of saying it that fit now and was crisp. And so, I do agree that everyone is saying the same thing. The phrasing is something I worked on to help me note that everyone was saying the same thing. There is an on-going embedded conversation all over the left and all over the right. Which is, How do you talk to people so they do stuff? And to answer that one has to ask, How does a group of people learn stuff? So “embrace all information flow” was the first prescriptive that says, if you want to meddle, take what’s there without resisting it.

I wanted to offer a clarification on something you were hearing. Men, specifically, have an impulse to meddle. And the sitting with and allowing, isn’t so much the way you were phrasing it as-Is it ego? It’s not so much that you think you have the right solution, it’s that you can’t just let it be without fucking with it. That everything needs to be changed!

Right, like something is wrong with it, something is inherently wrong here.

And the phrase that goes with it, is “To change the world, change oneself. Cause this is what you have access to. So in therapy, to change them, change me. Sitting here. Change my demeanor, change my behavior in the room. Cause then they’ll change. Versus, telling them to change, inhibits their own motor control, their agency.

I am on the other hand here to meddle.

I have a cantankerous old man yelling at me from the end of my life. And so if I don’t do it, then my angry old man yells at me. I live in what’s called past future perfect tense. In the future how will you feel if this happens now. How will you feel about this later.

….KatarinaKojic.com