Vivian Ho
Café Neuro
The musical portion of my Senior Reflection piece is the least creative part of my project. I wrote the menu, produced the films, and mixed the drinks for Café Neuro, but the audio tracks were simply sampled from pre-existing pieces. At first glance, this characteristic may seem to reflect a personal lack of interest in music on my part – when in reality, it is truly indicative of the centrality of music to my creative process. Even though I dabbled in the fields of food, film, and literature over the academic year, music is the art form that resonates with me the most strongly. The songs I chose for each individual neurotransmitter in Café Neuro were the foundation upon which the visual elements, text, and drinks of the exhibition were built.
I’m still not sure why my brain soaks up music more than any other artistic medium. Upon hearing a song two or three times, I can memorize its lyrics completely. When I go on jogs, I’ll play entire playlists in my mind from memory, slowing the rhythm down or speeding it up to fit my pace. In some instances, a song will affect me so powerfully that I’ll begin imagining my own visual accompaniment to it. In the same way that a producer for a music video sketches out his/her vision, my mind selects characters, settings, and storylines to accompany the songs I listen to. For each film in Café Neuro, I began by listening to a variety of songs, and then choosing whichever one gave me the most robust and compelling vision. From there, I picked up a camera and attempted to capture what I had imagined. My penchant to view each song as a narrative saved me a huge amount of time during the storyboarding process, making it possible to complete Café Neuro in the span of two quarters.
Furthermore, while some songs made their way into the final exhibition, others were like the scaffolding of a building – essential to its construction, but invisible in the finished work. In an effort to compensate for this, I have chosen a short playlist of songs in order to narrate my reflection. Through each song, I discuss how my participation in The Senior Reflection gave me a deeper understanding of art, the creative process, and myself.
Track 01: “L.E.S. Artistes” by Santigold
“Change, change, change, change
I wanna get out up out of my skin
Tell you what if I can shake it
Imma make this something worth
Dreaming of”
I’d written essays, mixed drinks, and played music before starting my work on Café Neuro, but I had never made a film. My hands shook when I first picked up a camcorder, and my inability to master the zoom function ruined many an otherwise excellent shot. My first film was meant to evoke sadness (inspired by the neurotransmitter dopamine) and I knew that I wanted to create blurry shots that slowly came into focus. Fading in and out of the dreary Texas suburb where I was filming created a sense of loneliness and desolation – it encouraged a viewer to focus less on the minutiae of the environment, and more on the way their surroundings made them feel.
I’m sure there was some manual way to change the focus on the camcorder, but given my lack of technical know-how, I resorted to putting my hand in front of the lens for a few seconds, and then removing it quickly so that the camera had to readjust in order to focus on the scene. Over the course of my first filming session, I accumulated a variety of these rough approximations, cheap tricks performed by a complete amateur.
These shortcuts produced a few interesting effects, but they didn’t soothe the intense frustration that plagued me throughout the first filming. As mentioned before, I started filming each clip for the exhibition with a solid vision – I knew exactly what I wanted for each shot, down to the lighting and camera angle. The perfect scene would play over and over in my head, but the real clips I recorded never seemed to live up to my imagination. I had the inspiration, but my shoddy camera skills made it impossible to translate my artistic vision into reality. Part of me resented the hours I spent fumbling around in the field, knowing that a far more experienced cameraman or camerawoman could have finished the job much more quickly.
I had always considered the intensity of my imagination to be a great skill. I was proud of my ability to dream up whole narratives on a whim, to be deeply inspired by something as simple as a song. But being behind the camera was a humbling experience – I began to realize that all of the inspiration I had would be useless, if I didn’t learn how to express it in film. In essence, my first foray into film-making taught me that passion was necessary, but not sufficient, to create art. My ideas and ambitions made me feel like an artist, but I realized that I needed to seriously educate myself on the basics of filmmaking if I actually wanted to be one.
Track 02: “Read My Mind” by The Killers
“I don’t mind if you don’t mind
‘Cause I don’t shine if you don’t shine.”
I zealously defended my right as the final decision-maker on all things related to Café Neuro. While I deeply valued the opinions of others, I also recognized that, at the end of the day, my name was going to be the only one associated with my project. The entire venture was a creative risk, and I didn’t want to put myself out there for a project that wasn’t completely my own. This sentiment was echoed by the workshop-driven nature of our Senior Reflection class, where no one was allowed to make prescriptive feedback – instead of saying “You should change this,” a workshop participant would start their criticisms with “I wonder if doing this would be useful…” and so on. The general consensus was that art was an intrinsically selfish pursuit, meaning that it was better to pursue something that was unpopular but personally meaningful than to sacrifice one’s personal integrity for external validation.
However, as exciting and liberating as it was to hold full authority over my project, there were times when this selfishness felt awkward and out of place. After all, many people had lent their time and creative energy to help me with Café Neuro—my film mentor Nicholas Berger, the friends and family members who starred in my videos, and the fellow students who gave me feedback during the workshop process were just a sampling of the many supporters who made this project possible. In fact, none of the projects undertaking during The Senior Reflection were done completely solo. At several points in my project, I wrestled with apparent tension between the need to retain personal ownership of project, and the need to honor and appreciate those who contributed to it.
I struggled to be selfish when a valued mentor or peer gave me advice that I disagreed with – I felt ungrateful for turning down the input of my contributors. Even after the completion of The Senior Reflection, I still haven’t found a way to fully reconcile these concepts.
In the end, I’ve come to realize that the willingness to help an artist constitutes a very special form of altruism. My collaborators spent significant amounts of time and energy helping me, with no expectation of having any creative input in the final result.
Track 03: “Gifted” by NASA, featuring Kanye West, Santigold, and Lykke Li
“I’m known for running my mouth
I will not be accountable for what comes out
…
Ya’ll [censored] know who this is
I’m gifted
Merry Christmas”
Without really thinking about it, I’ve always believed in a loose formulation of karma, where people who do good deeds are rewarded with success. I don’t think I’m alone in this attitude either. We’d like to think that a lawyer who does pro bono work receives more praise and business than one who never does. My foray into artwork hasn’t altered my faith in karma completely, but it has given me some boundaries with which to set my expectations. Put simply – I realized that arrogance is an invaluable part of making art, to the point that I’ve come to understand why some of the world’s most brilliant artists are also ragingly conceited.
I had this epiphany in the office of a Stanford administrator, who had just turned down the application I had submitted to receive a grant to fund Café Neuro. Drinks, equipment rentals, and other supplies weren’t cheap, and I was desperately hoping for any chance to offset my costs. In the most tactful way possible, she thumbed through my application, pointed out my lack of experience in producing any artistic project whatsoever, and asked me why I thought I could accomplish such an exhibition. It was a truly legitimate question, and I had no clear answer. I could speak for hours about my motivations for the project, but had no guarantee that I could deliver. I managed to answer her somehow, but I felt my spirits deflate the longer we spoke.
Near the end of my meeting, I realized that this was a problem that any artist has to face. The process of creating something new is incredibly daunting – and by the very virtue of its’ newness, you will always be unprepared to do it. How could you ever have a background in something that’s never been produced before? If you let your inexperience wash over you, then you’re finished – you won’t create anything. The only alternative is to fill the gap between your artistic background and future aspirations with blind faith. I left the meeting without a dollar, or an answer to the question the administrator had posed. From there, I went straight to the film editing center a few blocks away, turned on this song, and got back to work.
Track 04: “Outside” by Childish Gambino
“I used to dream every night
Now I never dream at all
I’m hopin’ that it’s ‘cause I’m livin’ everything I want.”
Given the yearlong nature of the project, there were moments where my excitement seemed to fade. These moments were crippling, because my passion for the project was the only thing that kept me pushing through the countless logistical issues that loomed over me. Questions of money, performance space, camera rental availabilities, and more haunted me every time I worked, rumbling ominously above my head like a storm cloud. Furthermore, the project was unlike anything I’d ever done or seen, so I found myself constantly floundering in the unknown. I didn’t have any past examples of Café Neuro to go by, so I had to go with my gut. Whenever fatigue set in, I grew wary of my intuitions, making it impossible for me to take the creative risks I needed to.
There were weeks where I didn’t even have the energy to explain my project to people who asked. When I sat down to edit my films, brainstorm drink ingredients, or draft the menu, I suddenly felt drained, directionless, bereft of visions. Another excerpt of this song goes:
“There’s a world we can visit if we go outside
Outside, outside
We can follow the road.”
That verse was my reminder to leave the world of Café Neuro periodically, just to rebuild perspective and recharge my creative batteries. Whenever the sheer breadth of my project began to daunt me, or the fear of failure grew especially strong, I would switch gears and work on other things, often my classwork. By removing myself from my Senior Reflection piece and immersing myself in something more structured, I could gain the confidence I needed to start creating again.
Track 05 : “On’n’On” by Justice
“Before daybreak there was none
And as it broke there was one
The Moon the Sun it goes on and on
The winter battle was won
The summer children were born
And so the story goes on’n’on.”
After I finished my presentation, and my films were set to run on loop in Wallenberg to irritate nearby studiers for the next two weeks, I finally had some time to look to the future. With the wave of finals and medical school applications approaching, along with the bittersweet promise of graduation on the horizon, I wasn’t completely ready to fully unravel and understand what the implications of The Senior Reflection project would be for my future.
However, two ideas came to mind quickly.
First, I knew that I wanted to continue making films. The skills that Nick taught me were invaluable, yet they also whetted my appetite to learn more. Over the course of the year, I had already learned quite a bit – editing tasks that took hours during the fall were shortened to minutes by the spring. Nevertheless, I also recognized that there were still so many things about film that I didn’t know – but by slowly broadening the foundation that was given to me, I could accomplish much more. I already have plans for a new film, and hope to start soon after the frenzy of school subsides.
Second, I knew that The Senior Reflection would forever change how I perceived the artwork of others. Before this program, I divided art into two categories: like, or dislike. I liked art that is big, immersive, and simple at first glance – I am a big fan of modern sculpture, with its impressive sizes and smooth planes. I disliked art that is ornate and overly pretentious. Before taking an art class, the only thing I had to judge a piece of art with was my personal taste. Engaging in a long-term creative work such as Café Neuro taught me how difficult it was to produce a piece of artwork, and demonstrated that the final product of a creative task is only a small part of the experience. Now, I am much more likely to appreciate the technical merits of a piece of artwork, or details that demonstrate the artist’s commitment to the piece – even if it doesn’t personally appeal to me.
Together, these thoughts taught me that even though Café Neuro was a journey in its own right, it was actually part of a larger creative study, one that began when I was toddler who sang incessantly, blossomed when I became an older sister who loved to play make-believe with her sibling, and continued through Café Neuro and beyond. My work in The Senior Reflection was only a part of this progression, but it has deeply inspired me to seek out other avenues for creativity in the near future