TAG_star's Xanga

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 01:54:33 GMT

Ah... So I went to St. Louis to visit my dad and my sister. Very surreal. There is a lot of talk about my father's death. My father is in poor health and there are many issues to be dealt with so it is a mind fuck to have to face these issues.

Anyway so I was doing good. It was nice to be out of Baltimore, in that Baltimore is a very depressing town. The poverty is astounding. While I was in St. Louis I heard back from a job I had a REALLY good feeling about. It was a video professor at Johns Hopkins. I thought it was my job to loose. So I set up an interview and was all amped up for it. It was yesterday. To my detriment I put too much stock in the interview and job. I thought this would be the thing to save me and turn my life around for the better. I did the interview and the woman dominated the whole conversation. I felt like I couldn't talk without being rude. Then at the end I was ambushed with stupid HR questions and references to insignificant collaboratives of "artists" (in the loosest term) that she was found of. At the end she told me that "even if we don't hire you I am still interested in having you show us your veejay work". I came home and slept for 5 hours.

I know I need to pick myself back up and start again but its hard. I just want a job. I am smart, and talented. I have two masters degrees. Why can't I find a FUCKING JOB?

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Wed, 16 May 2007 06:18:50 GMT

So I have taken a page from Sarah and Jamie. I am now exercising. I am up to about 50 pushups at once and I can run about 2 miles. Its nice that there is a high school right near my house. The walk to and from is a great warm up/cool down. I am amazed at how much better I am feeling.

Today I got my car back from the shop, to the tune of $1,700. Then I went to Ikea and got a chair and a bed frame. I will be sleeping with my bed off the floor tonight for the first time in 3 years. Holy crap I have been in Baltimore for 5 years. Anyway I am trying to make my apartment a home instead of a place to store my stuff which it has been for far too long. So now I am almost broke and no prospects of a job but my apartment is feeling more homy.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Tue, 08 May 2007 15:06:22 GMT

I just found out one of my best friends at KCAI, Claire, is married. I saw a picture from the wedding and it had all of my friends in it. I am a bit hurt that I was not invited. I'm not mad at Claire more mad at myself that I have the tendency to go off the radar. I'm sure she tried to find me but I have moved 17 times and changed phone numbers 12 times. I'm not sure why it bothers me so much but it does.

Anyway besides that today feels better. I have taken up a bad habit of smoking pot. I am now noticing that after I do the next day is terribly dreadful, like it was yesterday. SO I am going to stop. I think it is interesting how quickly things all go bad, and I have to pause and stand back and take inventory on what is making me feel so bad. Anyway, things are getting better.

Monday, May 07, 2007

Mon, 07 May 2007 23:38:42 GMT

Well today is kinda a crappy day. The depression is kicking up a bit. Last week I was up for 2 jobs which would have made me quite rich. Like go on vacation rich. But... I found out on Friday night that my new york gig pulled out and then I woke up this morning to find out that my Baltimore longer gig fell through as well. So I spent all day playing sim city and trying to look for jobs. Its funny how I can tell when I wake up what kind of day its going to be. Some days I jump out of bed and get right into the shower and leave and go do anything. Other days, like today I didn't want to get up. I didn't take a shower, and I didn't really leave the house. Well I went to the grocery store and made crockpot chili.

I contacted someone at the Depression and bipolar support alliance to get some help. I am interested to hear back. I hate this thing I have sometimes. I am afraid of doing normal things for no reason. Today I was afraid to do laundry. I don't have piles of laundry piling up, just thought it would be nice to do my sheets so I could sleep on fresh sheets. but I got a crap in my stomach when I tried to do it. So thats what I do when I get like this, I eat and watch tv all day. Now I am just babbling. I'm not looking for sympathy sometimes its just nice to have my thoughts become external.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Tue, 01 May 2007 21:16:28 GMT

So get this... my luck has changed for the better on a dime.... Christie, my girlfriend, had a friend visit from NYC. She brought her husband and he and I got along very well. We are both dj's and had a lot to talk about. He went home and since he knows I do freelance video stuff recommended me to his graphic design firm to do a video. The firm is on wall street, and the money is so good it is around 1/4 of what I made last year. Its only a 2 week gig. So I could be rolling in money.

Then later yesterday I went to the mailbox and I found my tax return check, which was almost $1,000 more than what I reported on my return. There was a note explaining why it was more. So it has been a good week so far. If I get all this money I am trying to figure out what to do with all of it. If I can establish a relationship with this wall street firm and I can get enough work, I would like to start my own company. We'll see.

Just spoke with Ultra and Tracey K might be coming to Sugar to perform. I met her in Miami she is a sweetheart. Look her up... my favorite song is "the cure and the cause"

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:46:19 GMT

WELL.... I found a job for program director for dance music at XM satellite radio. I applied. I would love to have this job. It would be a dream job of sorts, not knowing any of the details as of yet. The only downfall is that the XM radio building is in DC almost an hour from my place and almost 2 hours with traffic. We'll see what happens. Wish me luck.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 19:43:44 GMT

So... I have just come off a week shoot. Today is my first day off and the weather is perfect. Almost hot. So my new resolve is to get a real job. I am not digging this getting up at 2 and then worrying about where my next paycheck is going to come from. There are a couple places close to my house that I want to work at so I think I am going to drop off a resume or email them to see what's up. I would like to have my apartment where the living room, bedroom, and office area are not in the same room. So wish me luck.

By the way I think I am writing in here again because I was getting sentimental over Kansas City and Sarah and Dan and Jamie and most everyone else who reads this. It seems like a lifetime ago since I lived there.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Sat, 21 Apr 2007 02:09:01 GMT

I'm back.... We'll see how long this lasts. I don't feel like doing the catch up stuff, so I'll just start with today. So I am working on a documentary, have been for almost a year now. I am the production assistant, not glamourous but at least I am working in the field I want to. So the girl who is the camera person tries every bit of my last nerve. One of my tasks is to go get lunch (I have two masters degrees and I get lunch). Well I almost spit in her lunch today b/c she incessantly speaks to me as if I am stupid. I am quite intelligent and capable and do not need to be treated as if I am defective. I realized today that is is coming up on a year since I was fired from my full time job. I still have alot of issues about being fired. I think about it when I don't want to and it is still painful. Even though I hated that job and I am sooo utterly glad to be done with it. I think I am just pissed that I gave up so much of my life only to get screwed over in the end. I still have to hash this out. Oh... 11:05... I have to go to the club before everyone gets there to practice. I am trying to learn how to cdj. I even bought one, but it is hard to learn how to mix with them when I have to mix it into one of my turntables.

ciao

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 06:04:36 GMT

Its been a while huh? So.. I have a new job. I am the asst. art director at a special fx company. It seems that the art director is not long for her job I am am to inherit it. I was told as much by my boss. Anyway its nice to have a normal paycheck and taxes taken out of it. In about a month my benefits start as well. I haven't been to a doctor or a dentist in longer than I care to admit.

So my veejay carreer is in a bit of a holding pattern. House music is not very popular in Baltimore anymore, well not as big as it was. I lost my "high profile" gig at a club called sonar here. The club WAS an electronic music club but now it has changed over to an indie rock club. I was part of the last holdout for house music there but all is lost now. HOWEVER I do get to play with Louie Vega in acouple weeks and then Crystal Waters in a month or two. So that will be a nice ego boost. I am curious to see how much of a dick Louie Vega is. I have heard alot of bad stories. He is playing at Sugar as a favor to Ultra but sent a rider including things such as a blueprint of what the dj booth is to look like and a note that a mercedes benz class whatever was to pick him up at the train station to take him to the club. Mind you the club is within walking distance to the train station. Needless to say I will not be hurt if he does not shake my hand.

Work is getting interesting though. A girl named heather was hired the same day as I was, also as asst. art director. She is younger and straight from undergrad. I marvel at her unprofessional attitude. Youth and inexperience are on her side. She was sent to the Caymen Islands for a job and hooked up with a guy there and then actually expects that my boss doesn't know.

(Tag's rant time) We have a show in Philly on Tuesday for Ben Franklin's XXX birthday. We were going to go up to set up and such. She was asking me what the deal was because she had a friend she wanted to hang out with while she was up there. I told her that was a bad idea. It would give the impression she wanted to hang out with her friend instead of working, not to mention we would be getting paid to go up there and not to have a good time... priorities. So I asked my boss what the deal was and off handedly mentioned that she has someone to hang out with. He called her and was joking about how it wasn't fun time up there and that she could not see her friend. She got so mad she was crying. Then she blamed me for the whole thing. Which is reasonable right? Ah goodtimes.

Christie and I are talking about moving in together. More to come later.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 18:51:03 GMT

VJ Kicks
Video Artist VeeJay TAG Turns His Editing Chops Toward House Music’S Dance Floor

By David Morley

It’s early spring, jacket weather, on the late Friday night streets of Penn North. At Club 1722’s Sugar night, scores of dancers move to locally produced house music at the weekly party hosted by club diva Ultra Naté. She and Lisa Moody—the Sugar Girl Squad—spin records while people file in amid smoke and flashing lights.

On the south wall of the club, dancers are joined by a video projection of break dancers from Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, moving in looped time to the music. It’s funny seeing these dated figures dancing in the club, and after 30 seconds they’re intercut with elderly women in leotards who start doing leg lifts in time with the music, heightening the absurdity. As the DJ fades into a new record, one with a horn section, the break dancers and golden girls are supplanted by clips of Louis Armstrong, who blows in sync with the track, and M&Ms falling ad infinitum into a vat of liquefied candy coating.

At the helm of the video display is Thomas A. Gieselman—who goes by his initials TAG—a 6-foot-something, 27-year-old white guy among a predominantly upper-30s African-American crowd. He dances in place before his PowerBook G4, almost more into the music than the work at hand, a set of headphones over one ear, held in place by his left hand; his right hand works a mouse.

Gieselman maneuvers a few settings on his notebook, and Napoleon Dynamite spastically drinks from a bottle in 4/4 time. Gieselman takes his headphones off to chat briefly between sips of Red Bull. “What I’m doing is not all that different from what a DJ does,” he says.

Gieselman is a VJ—a video jockey—and not the kind that spins music videos. He strings video clips together from a variety of sources and incorporates them into his repertoire. He says his VJ work is a social commentary, a use of commercial images to convey an isolated and somewhat humorous perspective. But his video work also complements the house music at Sugar and of his other regular gigs at Shorty’s in Highlandtown, Sonar, and an occasional stint at Club Buns downtown.

Scenes from movies ranging from Tron to Singin’ in the Rain, shots from commercials, and appropriated clips from an online database form Gieselman’s repertoire, the short snippets a video homage to the early days of audio sampling. The images are familiar, but the performance takes on a different feel after watching Gene Kelly splash in a puddle and spin around a light pole a few dozen times.

Though it’s not his full-time gig (he works as a freelance video editor), Gieselman has been working to promote himself as TAG up and down the eastern seaboard, playing gigs at New York house party staple Shelter, and at Miami’s annual Winter Music Conference in March. He landed a residency at Sonar in June and gigs at Artscape and Sonar’s daylong Starscape festival at Fort Armistead Park.

While the higher-profile performances at Sugar and Sonar keep Gieselman at a certain distance from his audience, Shorty’s low-key atmosphere allows for casual conversation. After a few Yuenglings, he goes into a little more depth about what he does and why. And how.

The software he uses is one he co-wrote with his roommate, Steven H. Silberg, while Gieselman was completing his master’s in fine art in photo and digital imaging at the Maryland Institute College of Art (his first master’s was in digital arts). On the computer screen, his virtual display looks like a DJ’s setup. Instead of two turntables, he’s crafted two video monitors into which he drags and drops various video clips. Inside the monitors, Gieselman manipulates the start and stop points of the clips, as well as the speed at which the program plays them; the speed is modulated by a digital control that functions like the pitch shifter on a record player.

“There’s two turntables—or in this case, monitors—and a fader between the two,” Gieselman says. He offers the headphones to reveal a digital metronome that he adjusts to the beat of the music—this determines how quickly the clip plays through its length. “It’s just that I have different controls over what people see.”

He takes the headphones back and cues up the same M&M clip on Shorty’s four television screens at the back of the bar for its weekly Wednesday party, Primitive Sound. “Some clips are like some records a DJ plays,” Gieselman says. “You know that people will like it.”

A self-coined “bedroom DJ,” Gieselman admits his own flaws at spinning records. “I can’t beat-match to save my life,” he says. “Being a VJ allows for error in beat-matching,” because people aren’t dancing to the video.

Gieselman came to Baltimore with a love for house music and a hunger to make his contribution to the scene. “I’ve taken my two loves and I’ve put them together—house music and video,” he says. “It’s strange; [house music] isn’t a religion for me, but it’s a huge passion in my life. I feel like I have to make a contribution to it. But I’m a visual person, so my contribution is visual, not aural. Each time I play, I’m trying to capture the emotive force behind the music. I’m trying to visualize house music for people.”

It is paying off, he says: His regular local gigs and in other cities are evidence of that. He says he even received his first fan e-mail after gigging at Artscape, though he took it with a grain of salt. “It talked about what a hot body I had,” he says. “So I figure it’s got to be some kind of practical joke.”

Practical joke or no, his work is innovative: Not many have taken a sort of visual performance-cum-installation art staple and applied it to the club scene, save forward-thinking experimental electronic acts such as Germany’s audiovisual group Bauhouse. “It hasn’t really been accepted as a form [of art] in this arena,” he says. “It’s so new, it’s just not thought of.”

And since what Gieselman does is, like a DJ, both entertainment and performance, the possibility of flopping is very high, but he enjoys that tightrope walk. “I love failure; I love the possibility of failure,” he says. “It goes with the territory. If you’re going to do something like this, you have to be ready to fail. I think it was Brian Eno who said you’ve got to be willing to crash a plane and walk away.”