Made 37 years after the book was written, this was the first film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Marvel at the special effects of 1903.

It’s really cool that the British Film Institute put this on YouTube. Otherwise it would just  gather dust in their archives. Well done, I tip my hat off to you BFI.

Funnily enough, Cecil Hepworth, one of the directors of the 1903 film, cast his wife as the Red Queen. Just like Tim Burton did for Helena Bonham-Carter in the most recent Alice in Wonderland.

I saw it over the weekend. It was AMAZING! To be completely honest, Burton doesn’t have to do much to amaze me but this film was so magical and colourful, my mouth was agape for much of it.

Oh, and about the video above, the scene at 4:05 mins scares the bejesus out of me. Still does. I’ll probably have nightmares tonight.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been writing a list of things I want to do in this land of opportunities. And since I, like everyone else alive, likes the feeling of accomplishment, I included some of the things I’ve already done.

Most of them involve food, and 80% of food cravings come from the Simpsons or other American films, but hey, don’t pass judgement on my needs.

If you tasted American bacon, you would go ape shit for the crazy food combos too.

So with pompous glory, I present to you, my list of American things to do before I leave the country. Stuff I’ve done is in orange.

• Shoot a gun at something that is not alive.
• Make red beans and rice from scratch.
• Watch Alice in Wonderland. That’s not really America related but important nevertheless.
• Check out all the photog stuff at B&H in New York.
• Finish the largest Big Gulp known to man in one day. Be walking distance to a loo.
• See the Grand Canyon.
• Visit every Smithsonian museum in D.C.
• See Obama, at least from afar.
• Buy lots of Halloween shit to take back home.
• Have the best cup cake in the world.
• Learn conversational Spanish.
• Play a game at Chuck E. Cheese.
• Eat at In-n-Out.
• Have a true blue American chopped salad.
• Go to a Unity Woods yoga workshop.
• Eat a peep.
• See Ballet at the Kennedy Center.
• Have a New York style pizza slice (that is hopefully bigger than my face).
• Go to a basketball game.
• Go to an ice hockey game.
• Eat at White Castle.
• Send a postcard to PostSecret.
• Go to New Orleans.
• Spend at least another day in New Orleans.
• Eat at Taco Bell.
• Have a cocktail named after an American president that I don’t know.
• Visit the theater where Lincoln was assassinated.
• Hike through Great Falls park.
• Go to a goth club.
• Have dinner at one of those places where they dress up as knights, serve  medieval food, talk funny and then fight each other, to the death, all for my amusement.

© Michelangelo

I always thought you had to be like the exotic Yoko Ono to be classified as an artist. But then I remembered that painters like Goya, Da Vinci and Michalangelo, that had to make portraits to get by, and would even charge extra to paint hands and now they’re considered timeless.

In my mind, up until recently, you had to be a painter, sculpture or writer to be an artist. Musicians, photographers, designers and software developers didn’t even come into it.

Now I think everyone creates art. We have to, it keeps alive that part in our brain that despises repetition, doesn’t think in a straight line and keeps alive our imagination. You create art when you put in a bit of effort into how you present food, when you plant in your garden and when you take on a personal project at work, for the fun of it.

The whole concept of art is a completely human element. It doesn’t ensure that we live longer, eat better or keep warmer. It makes the world prettier. Our relatively large brain and our concept of time allows us to predict our own death, we will die, it’s just a matter of when. And our fear, our instinct, copes with this by creating things that will remind our predecessors of us. Building the pyramids didn’t make the Pharoahs immortal through the number of objects they carried into the afterlife, it made them immortal through the sheer size and artistry of their tombs. Thousands of years later, we remember them.

That’s what every artist tries to accomplish. All we really want is not to be forgotten by the next generation, and maybe, just maybe, the next thousand years.

What do you think? Do you create for fun, for timelessness or for both?

Pre-Chrissy in NYC from Tash Jayasinghe on Vimeo.

Aruba from Tash Jayasinghe on Vimeo.

I feel like I need to comment on this because it’s the closest I’ve come to city-wide chaos. Supermarkets are empty, you can’t drive anywhere, schools and work places are closed and my darling partner had to travel for work for the last two snow storms, so he’s had flights cancelled. We have tickets to see Buddy Guy and B.B.King tomorrow night but I don’t see that happening.  But it could be worse. There’s a roof over my head, I’m warm and perhaps, as bad as it is to admit it, I have internet access and that’s keeping me occupied.

So, rant over, here’s my link love.

• Katelan Foisy wrote a How to on self-promotion.
• Fake it. A blog post on how to act confident at the start of your career by the American Society of Media Photographers’ blog: Strictly Business.
• Sam de Brito from All Men Are Liars wrote a bloody clever article on rage and narcissim.
• Ella Morton talks about the internet and self-obsession and why sometimes, your mother thinks it’s showing off.
• I am not a tortured soul by Kim from Cupcakes and Mace. She continues to amaze me.
• Blake Andrews wonders if the ease of digital camers has changed the nature of photography.
• Jamie Oliver’s Christmas Veggies. Cause it’s winter, it’s snowing and I need comfort food.
• An Awh video from Le Love.
• Yay for 4 hour work week case studies! Motivation if you’re caught in a work hump.
• How to grow a pear in a bottle.
• Scar Tissue that I’m glad you saw by Sarah Von. An oldie but a goodie, because I love her.
• Sophie Can Walk. Seriously, watch this. Awareness of this disease is power.

Claude Monet took two years to complete thirty paintings of the Rouen Cathedral. Keep that in mind the next time you’re feeling stuck. Two years, thirty paintings.

See some of them: http://www.learn.columbia.edu/monet/swf/

© www.oldpictures.com (I kid you not)

I’ve been going to a lot of museums this past couple of months and I’ve noticed that some* photographs made around 200 years ago aren’t necessarily good per se. They just withstood the test of time and are now being shown around the world.

The images that we consider landmarks in our history shape our consciousness because they weren’t destroyed or lost and were eventually recognised for what they’re worth. So take note. Back up your shit. Make double copies. Whatever you put your soul into, make sure there isn’t only one copy in the world. Give a carbon copy to your Mum in case there’s a fire in your house. Do whatever you can. The next three generations down the track might love you for it, even if the only one seeing your art right now is you.

After enough time has passed, your photograph stops being an image of a woman in a red dress (shameless Matrix reference) and starts becoming a representation of your era. You’re instantly capturing how you view this world in this time, it’s hard to take such a big step back from everyday situations when you’re in it, but 2, 20 or 200 years on, it’s damn well fascinating.

I have a Western Digital drive that has two drives and Time Machine set up. What do you use to protect what you love to do?

*I say some in italics to prevent tomatoes being thrown at computer screens and general booing as you read this on your couch.