themightyten.com Blog

Yes, I know, I know, move on George! If it comes it comes but last year the end of the world was predicted and it was all over the news if anybody remembers: (from Wikapedia)
The 2011 end times prediction made by American Christian radio host Harold Camping stated that the Rapture and Judgment Day would take place on May 21, 2011,[1][2] and that the end of the world would take place five months later on October 21, 2011.[3] The Rapture, in a specific tradition of premillennial theology, is the taking up into heaven of God’s elect people. Camping, then president of the Family Radio Christian network, claimed the Bible as his source and said May 21 would be the date of the Rapture and the day of judgment “beyond the shadow of a doubt”.[4] Camping suggested that it would occur at 6 p.m. local time, with the rapture sweeping the globe time zone by time zone,[5][6] while some of his supporters claimed that around 200 million people (approximately 3% of the world’s population) would be ‘raptured’.

So yeah a bunch of garbage right? The world is still spinning round and round but was anyone paying attention at 6PM on May 21, 2011? You see, a fool like me was. I was driving through Plainfield NJ on my way to my postal box in Scotch Plains NJ and I was fully aware that it was after 6PM and it was May 21, 2011. Down this main street of what many would consider the inner-city of a typical New Jersey city.
What I first saw was the day laborers standing in lines on the sides of the streets, a typical sight actually until they all at once began looking up at the sky and some of them pointing.
Before I could turn my car around or stop to see what they were looking at, a HUGE gust of wind came out of no where and was blowing garbage and dust across the street!
Suddenly it got real dark and the wind increased to an almost gale! At this point I looked in my rear view mirror and really couldn’t believe what I saw, it was almost total darkness. Yeah, the weather is unpredictable in May and for the most part it was a pretty Spring day. I remember that because I will never ever forget this day!
I stopped my car and got out and as the wind and dirt whipped my face, I went to my backpack and pulled out my point and shoot camera that I always have on me.
What I saw will never be fully captured digitally as once again as it always is in real life: You Just HAD to be THERE! It was a huge black mass of clouds traveling at a ridicules speed. I really just couldn’t believe what I was witnessing and the knot in my stomach being totally unable to swallow was something that I will never ever forget.

I guess my first thoughts were like “wow, that bastard was right” and I looked around at all the Spanish people that were witnessing the end of the world with me and they were smiling and still pointing. Maybe they were think “wow that bastard was right”, too.

- What happened after this is pretty obvious. The world didn’t end. The day laborers went home to eat and the big sweeping “rapture cloud” went away. I think that maybe I was a little disappointed, went back in my car and drove away in slight dismay. When I opened this photo, I was very disappointed and that maybe I should have taken a movie. It surely would have been more dramatic with the sound of the wind and maybe some baffled Spanish faces looking up at the sky. The next day I tried to tell a few people but just got a few rolling eyes. The photo got lost in my endless layers of digital mayhem but I had to dig it out for this.
SOMETHING did happen that day and it was more then a freak rainstorm. I searched all the local news for anything saying ANYTHING about the 8 minuets or so that me and 10 Spanish men witnessed that day. Nothing. So this event just got lost in my memory until now. Nobody would listen and nobody cared.Because I do believe in magic, the afterlife, angels, God and maybe even a little bit of rapture. Amen!

The movie, "A Mask of Myself\" can be viewed here.
Interviewer: So are you comfortable?
N.Dusk: What? What? With my life? In this chair? Is this the first question? What?
Interviewer: In that chair.
N.Dusk: Oh, yeah sure. That light is kinda in my eyes.
Interviewer: Oh sure sorry. There is that better?
N.Dusk: Can we just turn it off and light a couple of candles maybe?
Interviewer: This is an interview not a romantic encounter.
N.Dusk: I know. I know. But I need to be in the right mood to say the right things…you know…I..oh forget it.
Interviewer: Uh, I will. MMmmm…so what happened to “A Mask of Myself”?
N.Dusk: Oh what a flop. It never had a chance.
Interviewer: Even with the Facebook exposure?
N.Dusk: Exposure? Ha ha ha. It had nothing to do with anything but being a very bad movie. Besides that I’m pretty clueless with marketing and YouTube has changed dramatically in the last few years.
Interviewer: How so?
N.Dusk: Well, first of all, it used to all the shit and now it’s just not even half of that.
Interviewer: Because of Facebook?
N.Dusk: Not just FB but Tweeter, Tumbler etc etc. YouTube has just become a link to social networking, it’s not really what it used to be. It’s all about proper marketing though. Everybody wants their stuff to get a million hits and ultimately….

Interviewer: GO VIRAL!
N.Dusk: Right. And the chances of that are like hitting the lottery.
Interviewer: So what was the inspiration for “A Mask of Myself”?
N.Dusk: Well I kinda mentioned that in the closing credits. It just started as a small spark. Glancing at a photo in an art magazine. Simple right? But my mind carried that photo away to another imaginative world and it went away for awhile but the spark never went out. I just kept thinking about that photo, how cool it was and what I could do with it.
Interviewer: What was the photo of?
N.Dusk: It was a photo of a man in front of a wall full on TV monitors.
Interviewer: That’s a pretty significant part of your movie.
N.Dusk: Well originally I thought the photo was sooo cool that I was just gonna steal the idea for my FB profile photo. Then while I was working on it, I thought about the whole profile photo idea, how important it is, how people worship themselves. I ended up doing a huge web research project on social networking as a whole. I started watching profile photos. Some people change them all the time, like me, and others can change every few months. I even had one friend for three years that NEVER changed it once!
Interviewer: Fascinating
N.Dusk: It really was to me. It becomes an exercise in “self-discipline” … for me anyway. As usual I over analyzed the entire situation and broke it down into ridiculous layers of ego and self worth.
Interviewer: So you like to “over analyze” ?
N.Dusk: Yes. That’s one of my problems….well, I guess it’s not a problem really. It can be good. I can say that I’m “deep” but most of my friends interpret it as me being an “over sensitive idiot with poetic eyes… delicate even.”
Interviewer: What else are you?
N.Dusk: Weird as hell.
Interviewer: What do you mean by that?
N.Dusk: For as long as I can remember, I have a taste for the ordinarily weird. Things that are right in front of me. Life is a series of weird moments. One weird photograph after another. One moment I can be in a room with the strangest combination of people making the strangest combination of statements to each other and twenty seconds later I will driving down a wooded highway alone, watching an amazing sunset through my windshield.
Interviewer: Wow.
N.Dusk: Are you being sarcastic?
Interviewer: What do you think?
N.Dusk: That’s exactly my point! You and 99% of the globe just don’t get it. You just take advantage of lifes everyday moments.
Interviewer: That’s not ordinarily weird it’s ridiculously deep.
N.Dusk: If you stop and watch what happens to you during the course of a day, you may be amazed.
Interviewer: Yawn. Ok, so, back to the movie. How do you rate it against all your other weird movies?
N.Dusk: This was actually the only movie I made that had some sort of plot or even a plan.
Interviewer: Is that why it failed?
N.Dusk: Miserably.
Interviewer: So, why did it take you so long to complete?
N.Dusk: Well first of all, it wasn’t easy. The movie is like 90 percent stop-action and that’s a lot of work…. secondly, I have no real free time. I love being creative and being in front of the monitor at work 10 to 12 hours a day takes it’s toll…..on my time and my creativity. I just HAD to do a project before the blizzard of work that comes Christmas time.
Interviewer: What is your fascination with animation?
N.Dusk: Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been fascinated by animation.
Interviewer: Hanna-Barbera ?
N.Dusk: Ha ha….well, yes, of course, and the roughness of Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse. But really, I started doing flip movies in books at a very early age. Now there is stop action at it’s rawest form. In the early days of the digital era I found Power Point.
Interviewer: Not really a great animation tool.
N.Dusk: No but with alot of thought and work it could be AND you can tell a story. But even bigger than that……you can add another huge element…….SOUND ! And by trial and error and many great “accidents” I was able to put some cool things together.
Interviewer: What’s next?
N.Dusk: After this movie, I need to get back into something totally unpredictable and spontaneous like I have done in the past. Starting from scratch with no plot, few ideas and some clips of cool music.
Interviewer: If you had super powers what would they be?
N.Dusk: Oh oh….travel in time for sure!!!
Interviewer: Favorite software besides Photoshop?
N.Dusk: iMovie
Interviewer: Greatest single influence?
N.Dusk: Vonnegut
Interviewer: Favorite song?
N.Dusk: Norwegian Wood
Interviewer: Comfort food?
N.Dusk: Currently? Olives stuffed with garlic from the ShopRite salad bar.

END.

A Mask of Myself

Hey, yeah. I owned a house once. I paid a mortgage, property taxes, and called Home Depot my second place to live. I watched that house being built. It was brand new. Basement, three bedrooms, cathedral ceiling, deck, fireplace, almost an acre of green grass, gardens, swings in the back and even a sprinkler system.
Watching that thing go up was, what I remember, the most exciting time of my life.
Then, within one year, had a baby and bought a new car. I worked my ass off as a Teamster in a refrigerated warehouse. I remember coming home one late Summer evening and the sun was an orange explosion sinking into the scrub pines of the cul de sac. I had the smell of a new car, walked past my beautiful green grass and up the perfect concrete driveway. When I walked in the house, I could smell the brand new home and the brand new baby. Beautiful smells, by the way.
I HAD MY OWN PLACE and I just fell in love with that feeling. I worked really hard, never turned down a minuet of overtime, worked nights, weekends and split weeks, never took days off so I could get paid for them at the end of the year and that made the FEELING of OWNING my own HOUSE the best feeling I ever had in my life. Work hard and you shall be rewarded. If not today then maybe 20 years from now. Be true to yourself, brush your teeth twice a day, build a house with blood sweat and tears and then maybe one day it will disappear like sawdust on a windy day -like it did for me.

Late. It took me four days to blow it.
Missing deadlines? Part of my life.
It is these dead gray sky days on the doorsteps of Winter that just depresses the hell out of me. I don’t want to be a manager. I don’t even want to be a grown-up. I hate Christmas because my job smothers the whole bell ringing season into a blurr of deadlines and fear. I want to be carefree again. A kid. A little boy. Laying on the top bed of the bunk bed and counting down the days until Christmas with my brother Greg.
GREG WHERE ARE YOU???
I miss you brother. I love you brother. I realize so many little stupid things now. The innocence of being a child. Under the shadows of our mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, Grandfathers, Grandmothers…they are all almost dead. Everyone. Dead.
Once upon a time life would go on forever and our parents would always be there. But not here. Not anymore. Maybe that is in heaven.

Hush a bye baby, on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock;
When the bow breaks, the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.
-

Not necessarily a desperate attempt at unblocking a creative block but more like an exercise in journalism and awareness. On the edge of losing my soul to the Christmas rush in my work. I need to step away from stress, deadlines and creative destruction. The cancer of repetitive production work. All families start to look the same. Dogs and cats are just dogs and cats. Every sunset is totally the same. Once lost in a movie, that I had to end. It was going on too long. I didn’t know how to end it. I loved it once. But now that I did all the cooking, I wasn’t hungry for it anymore. I missed my blog. Short projects. Different themes. Fresh ideas. Return to the journey. So here is my project. Ten photos in ten days. Simple and easy? Hardly. There are no excuses here. I have to do it. I have to think. I have to seek. I have to be alert. I have to share.

How can one not be inspired in this wonderful room. Is it the creaky floors? The feeling that maybe, beyond that old door, there may a pasture filled with grazing hungry cows? Maybe it is the energy in the lighting…so perfectly subtle and clean. The books of art on the book shelves? The endless cans filled with brushes and colored pencils. The miniature easels on the smooth white tables. The electrical charge of creative energy that one feels…the power to create…to paint…to draw..to write even. Only real passion for art can be harvested at the art house.