Yidstock 2005
long long long long update on the recent
okay.
i guess it goes back to getting a phone call at 11pm this past wend. night from my freind's brother who i'm also friends with: yumi simon. basically he'd just been told that he was in charge of getting video cameras and people to man them at a concert this past sunday (yesterday) in order to get on film as much of the happenings as possible. so he's calling me up frantic "where the hell am i supposed to find all this stuff."
now i'm mainly into photography, but i WAS apprenticed to a video-ographer for a few months this year and so i have a little experience... and because of the photo/video connection... i have a network of people to pull strings with.
so thursday/friday i was racking my brain helping him come up with all sorts of possibilities. friday, late afternoon all we'd gotten was two cameras, one tripod, and himself doing the shooting.
so the concert yesterday was called "yidstock" it was a jewish concert supposed to be resembling woodstock a little, with the mostly bigger jewish music groups out there right now. (i happen to also know the people who put it together but thats a total side point) it was starting at 9am and the last band was going off stage at about 11:30pm and festivities were expected to continue till about 2am... basically it was a 17 hour festival.
so it wasn't even just a matter of getting one person per a camera, because simply put NO ONE can shoot for 17 hours straight... eventually their hands will start shaking which will mess up the video and they won't be able to help it.
it's friday afternoon and i dont know what to do more to help him. most of the things we'd thought up had fallen through etc etc.
in the meantime, my friend sprintza comes home earlier from minnesota from this learning program there then i'd expected her to come back. she's a VERY good photographer and while she's never used a video camera before anything is better then nothing. so i was talking to her about hypothetically the two of us going up and helping yumi out.
so you might ask "why would i give a shit?"
yumi simon is one of the greatest friends i have. he's bailed me out and saved my ass multiple times. for example the time the chabad on rutgers gave me a list of 450 people i needed to research in the rutgers alumni data base to get updated information because they were sending out post cards informing them of the upcoming chabad alumni reunion. the format the list was sent on wouldnt open properly and yumi spent a few hours with the help of some of his friends organizing the list so that i could do my work. there were more emergencies but hey... i'm not here to admit my low points...
friendships are two sided, they balance each other out. he's always there for me and so i was going to help him any way i could.
friday night comes... i forget about things, have other stuff on my mind. saturday passes the same way. saturday night at 10:00pm i get a phone call from sprintza: "i got us both a ride up, we're going..."
that means i have 15 minutes to throw shit in a bag and get to the train into new york because our ride left sunday morning from queens and i hate traveling late on public transportation... safety reasons and all.
so then i was sitting on the train still confused as to how i had gotten there.
it was great, i hadn't seen sprintza all summer. hadnt done much of anything all summer... been working all these little shitty jobs, putting my soul into them and getting very little back in terms of money.
so sunday morning instead of leaving at the proposed 9am our ride leaves at 11:15 and we're off... only first we go 20 minutes in the wrong direction. and then her car starts stalling and the brakes are barely working so we end up at the side of the road waiting for her insurance company to identify the nearest town to us and send someone to pick us up.
in the meantime i call my friend shayna simon (yumi's sister) who comes with her friend, drives 20 minutes out of the way to come pick us up.
while we were on the way up, i get a phone call from yocheved sidof, the woman i used to be apprenticed to, who's a professional videographer. we'd tried to get her to come up and shoot for an hour in exchange for getting in for free but we thought she wasn't going to be able to come. only then she was coming... and was going to save our makeshift operation.
in the end things went pretty smoothly. we were all rotating with the video camera. i got some really GREAT shots.
but besides for the simple videoing... i had an amazing time!
see originally i'd thought about going, but changed my mind, not really interested in seeing a lot of people i knew from the brooklyn area and other places. i don't listen to jewish music normally so i wasnt "impressed" by the bands playing there. i was trying to cut off a lot of things i've encountered.
but i did go. and i'm SO HAPPY I DID!!!
it was funny, all of those "brooklyn" people i was trying to avoid... they saw me and were so happy to see me and gave me huge hugs and it was a very warm feeling. i cut my hair short last week and had it in little braids, and i was wearing camoflouge pants... (however thats spelled)
when i wasn't videoing i was dancing. i danced my heart out. i've always been to self concious to dance in front of anyone. yesterday i was breaking a lot of defensive walls... and while no i don't know how to dance... i said "FUCK IT, MY HAIRS IN BRAIDS SO I CAN DO WHAT I WANT" and i did just that. and the funny thing was, many people actually came over to me and complimented me on my dance style. i guess when you're just expressing the music it really isn't about the moves. it's about the heart and feeling the energy of the music. i was dancing for me... (AND NOW I'M REALLY SORE BUT IT WAS WORTH IT AND I'D DO IT AGAIN ANY DAY)
the music was great. one band played Jimi Hendrix's song red house. another band's guitarist played Jimi Hendrix's song star spangled banner, mixed with a jewish song...
for all who know about my constant woodstock fanatics... yes i was in total awe!
i remember the lyrics of one song, something along the lines of just freeing your soul and letting it fly up towards heaven... and i was so moved... unfortunantly then i felt pain because i turned to one of the boys standing next to me and was like "DID YOU HEAR THAT" and he asked "hear what?" so i repeated the lyrics... and then in a distant voice he said "i'm sorry i'm too fucked up right now (i forget what he said he'd taken) to comprehend that"
so yes things like that upset me. but you can't let that affect your disposition as a whole.
the concert definately made me percieve things a little different. (obviously there is a LOT more but hey i figure this is long enough of a rant) i learnt a couple of lessons there, things like letting other people learn things for themselves... (speaking in terms of learning to back off and let me friend get the hang of the video camera instead of jumping her because she's used to photography where you wait patiently till the moment happens where as video you have to constantly be moving and create the moment)
at 10:30 my energy waned off and i caught a ride into manhatten, although from what i heard it was still going on hours later.
i'm glad i had the oppurtunity and it was a great experience and all i want to do right now is rewind and do it all OVER AGAIN because it was so much fun.
i met all sorts of people... and ran into all sorts of people i knew... and just ran around with my braided hair and army pants letting go...
(i forget why i was doing it... but i punched a bunch of guys in the chest and upper arms a lot... and they seemed to be okay with it... kind of odd i dont have that bad of a right hook)
so for all of you who have been waiting for me to find time to update, this is it! this is the SHIT! :-) now smile and say thank you...
long long long long update on the recent
okay.
i guess it goes back to getting a phone call at 11pm this past wend. night from my freind's brother who i'm also friends with: yumi simon. basically he'd just been told that he was in charge of getting video cameras and people to man them at a concert this past sunday (yesterday) in order to get on film as much of the happenings as possible. so he's calling me up frantic "where the hell am i supposed to find all this stuff."
now i'm mainly into photography, but i WAS apprenticed to a video-ographer for a few months this year and so i have a little experience... and because of the photo/video connection... i have a network of people to pull strings with.
so thursday/friday i was racking my brain helping him come up with all sorts of possibilities. friday, late afternoon all we'd gotten was two cameras, one tripod, and himself doing the shooting.
so the concert yesterday was called "yidstock" it was a jewish concert supposed to be resembling woodstock a little, with the mostly bigger jewish music groups out there right now. (i happen to also know the people who put it together but thats a total side point) it was starting at 9am and the last band was going off stage at about 11:30pm and festivities were expected to continue till about 2am... basically it was a 17 hour festival.
so it wasn't even just a matter of getting one person per a camera, because simply put NO ONE can shoot for 17 hours straight... eventually their hands will start shaking which will mess up the video and they won't be able to help it.
it's friday afternoon and i dont know what to do more to help him. most of the things we'd thought up had fallen through etc etc.
in the meantime, my friend sprintza comes home earlier from minnesota from this learning program there then i'd expected her to come back. she's a VERY good photographer and while she's never used a video camera before anything is better then nothing. so i was talking to her about hypothetically the two of us going up and helping yumi out.
so you might ask "why would i give a shit?"
yumi simon is one of the greatest friends i have. he's bailed me out and saved my ass multiple times. for example the time the chabad on rutgers gave me a list of 450 people i needed to research in the rutgers alumni data base to get updated information because they were sending out post cards informing them of the upcoming chabad alumni reunion. the format the list was sent on wouldnt open properly and yumi spent a few hours with the help of some of his friends organizing the list so that i could do my work. there were more emergencies but hey... i'm not here to admit my low points...
friendships are two sided, they balance each other out. he's always there for me and so i was going to help him any way i could.
friday night comes... i forget about things, have other stuff on my mind. saturday passes the same way. saturday night at 10:00pm i get a phone call from sprintza: "i got us both a ride up, we're going..."
that means i have 15 minutes to throw shit in a bag and get to the train into new york because our ride left sunday morning from queens and i hate traveling late on public transportation... safety reasons and all.
so then i was sitting on the train still confused as to how i had gotten there.
it was great, i hadn't seen sprintza all summer. hadnt done much of anything all summer... been working all these little shitty jobs, putting my soul into them and getting very little back in terms of money.
so sunday morning instead of leaving at the proposed 9am our ride leaves at 11:15 and we're off... only first we go 20 minutes in the wrong direction. and then her car starts stalling and the brakes are barely working so we end up at the side of the road waiting for her insurance company to identify the nearest town to us and send someone to pick us up.
in the meantime i call my friend shayna simon (yumi's sister) who comes with her friend, drives 20 minutes out of the way to come pick us up.
while we were on the way up, i get a phone call from yocheved sidof, the woman i used to be apprenticed to, who's a professional videographer. we'd tried to get her to come up and shoot for an hour in exchange for getting in for free but we thought she wasn't going to be able to come. only then she was coming... and was going to save our makeshift operation.
in the end things went pretty smoothly. we were all rotating with the video camera. i got some really GREAT shots.
but besides for the simple videoing... i had an amazing time!
see originally i'd thought about going, but changed my mind, not really interested in seeing a lot of people i knew from the brooklyn area and other places. i don't listen to jewish music normally so i wasnt "impressed" by the bands playing there. i was trying to cut off a lot of things i've encountered.
but i did go. and i'm SO HAPPY I DID!!!
it was funny, all of those "brooklyn" people i was trying to avoid... they saw me and were so happy to see me and gave me huge hugs and it was a very warm feeling. i cut my hair short last week and had it in little braids, and i was wearing camoflouge pants... (however thats spelled)
when i wasn't videoing i was dancing. i danced my heart out. i've always been to self concious to dance in front of anyone. yesterday i was breaking a lot of defensive walls... and while no i don't know how to dance... i said "FUCK IT, MY HAIRS IN BRAIDS SO I CAN DO WHAT I WANT" and i did just that. and the funny thing was, many people actually came over to me and complimented me on my dance style. i guess when you're just expressing the music it really isn't about the moves. it's about the heart and feeling the energy of the music. i was dancing for me... (AND NOW I'M REALLY SORE BUT IT WAS WORTH IT AND I'D DO IT AGAIN ANY DAY)
the music was great. one band played Jimi Hendrix's song red house. another band's guitarist played Jimi Hendrix's song star spangled banner, mixed with a jewish song...
for all who know about my constant woodstock fanatics... yes i was in total awe!
i remember the lyrics of one song, something along the lines of just freeing your soul and letting it fly up towards heaven... and i was so moved... unfortunantly then i felt pain because i turned to one of the boys standing next to me and was like "DID YOU HEAR THAT" and he asked "hear what?" so i repeated the lyrics... and then in a distant voice he said "i'm sorry i'm too fucked up right now (i forget what he said he'd taken) to comprehend that"
so yes things like that upset me. but you can't let that affect your disposition as a whole.
the concert definately made me percieve things a little different. (obviously there is a LOT more but hey i figure this is long enough of a rant) i learnt a couple of lessons there, things like letting other people learn things for themselves... (speaking in terms of learning to back off and let me friend get the hang of the video camera instead of jumping her because she's used to photography where you wait patiently till the moment happens where as video you have to constantly be moving and create the moment)
at 10:30 my energy waned off and i caught a ride into manhatten, although from what i heard it was still going on hours later.
i'm glad i had the oppurtunity and it was a great experience and all i want to do right now is rewind and do it all OVER AGAIN because it was so much fun.
i met all sorts of people... and ran into all sorts of people i knew... and just ran around with my braided hair and army pants letting go...
(i forget why i was doing it... but i punched a bunch of guys in the chest and upper arms a lot... and they seemed to be okay with it... kind of odd i dont have that bad of a right hook)
so for all of you who have been waiting for me to find time to update, this is it! this is the SHIT! :-) now smile and say thank you...
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