BONES

The first look trailer for my short film/poetry project BONES is live! Watch it below.

shock, horror, anger

no words for the atrocity we have committed against our country. 

all I have left is poems. read the zine on my website.

spent my saturday in the bleached desert wasteland outside mecca, ca shooting my latest project: a hybrid of poetry & film called bones. more information about the project on my website.

the persistent sun left me quite sunburned, so I'm slathering myself in black tea & coco butter. I love the sparse strangeness of the california desert, the way it rolls out into the blue sky like sugar cookie dough.

now we enter post-production.

on skies + colours

Journal:

"Reading Daybook: The Journal of an Artist by Anne Truitt & thinking about all the skies I have seen, all the different types of air. 

Thinking about how the air looked in different places & how you might lay that out. 

The warm wet yellows of New Orleans.
The steeliness of Paris, grey almost like iron.
The cold blue/grey of London
The brownishness of Brooklyn. 

& Los Angeles is bright--like primary colours, with a kind of occasional yellowish twinge. 

Why I think I never went much into visual art is because I could never get the translation right between my head & the execution of it by my hand. I can think of the yellows, but I cannot make them."

letter on running

journal

"fall starts in two days.
another fall, more time passes. & me in exactly the same place.
I'm tired of standing still.

but it's as if my arms & legs have atrophied. they can't move. maybe they never could.

I'm starting to think that the only movement I've ever done has been running away.

I ran away from Oregon. I ran away from New York. I ran away from every place & responsibility in between. I've only run.
now I'm getting that feeling again. that tingling under my skin. I want to run. to abandon everything.
staying still feels like staying stuck & that feels like dying.

but maybe you can never really get anywhere if you keep running. maybe that feeling I've had--that my life doesn't add up to anything--is because nothing can build if you're always starting over." 

summer poem

the last day of august

& the sun curls
around my bones
like wet paper

but hotter than
the soup I
microwave
for dinner

I've waited
a thousand
years
for the sight
of these burns

making it

Excited to be working in pre-production again on a short film project I've written & am slated to direct & star in!

For a while I've been thinking about making videos for poems in the way we have music videos for songs. After a lot of pacing & deliberation I wrote a script based on a poem from my graduate thesis & am in the thick of pre-production! Storyboards done! I'm meeting with my talented friend, & the DP of 4B, Freddy Tang to talk logistics. We're gearing up to shoot mid-October! It's going to be quite the little adventure, a road trip out to location, & a hot summer day, but I think we can make something really rad.

studying again

A little over a month ago I found out I'd won one of the inaugural scholarships for 12 weeks of study at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, & I've been embroiled in scene study there ever since. Super excited to spend my summer working on my craft & hanging out with one of the best, most supportive communities of artists I've had the pleasure to know. I put up my first scene last night & had a great time, learned a lot, & have ideas on what to work on for my future scenes. It's exciting to be in a space where everyone is learning, & making mistakes, & figuring things out, & thriving. A nice way to transition to life after graduate school!

There are several other things a-brewin' for me this summer, so stay tuned! :)

everybody loves a blooper

4B Bloopers from Natalie Raymond on Vimeo.
Enjoy some tasty antics & outtakes from my directorial debut short film, 4B!

more info about the film: natalieraymond.com/4bfilm

post graduate life:

reading books, writing poems, working, watching netflix, journaling, going on long walks, meeting up with friends, laughing, making new friends, texting,  making plans.

here's a poem I wrote:

cocooned as I was
in delicate orange sheets
I barely remembered
the heat of the stars

A video posted by N (@natalie_raymond) on May 5, 2016 at 8:12pm PDT

graduating with my MFA on friday. 

idols

all our idols
are dead

their lean muscles curved
in on themselves like too long
fingernails beckoning
us to the stage made
of bones & blood sacks

our awakening
our funerary pyre

current listening: FKA Twigs.


new work published today on NoiseMedium.

night

Have been enjoying my time at AWP the past couple of days. Starting to feel, once again, that poetry is crucial. That sensation has been absent from me for some time.

In honour of national poetry month & AWP's final day I wrote a poem as I was exiting the subway last night...


taking the subway after sunset

I walk out into the night
my toes—
curled under my weight
like tubes of hot glass,
orange & oblong,
spinning at the end
of rebar bones

covering songs as poems

wrote a poem as a remix of my fave song ever: nobody's baby by sharon jones & the dap kings.


nobody’s baby

tired
of being asked
to bend round
over my spine—
it’s leaving time

won’t stay
can’t say
why—only that

that brand
on my back
don’t say:
“yours”

only says:
“mine”

journal, 2016

"curled under blankets ratty with age. I lean against the hollywood hills. perched like a gargoyle at its edge, I'm not making the climb yet but also not at the base.

it's a kind of limbo between the hills & the world below--not completely in either, not separate either.

do I feel a sense of belonging? have my skin & bones taken root here in the sand?


it clings to my ankles. exfoliates. I shed my skin around los angeles like a snake."

readings on film

Had such a wonderful time reading this past Saturday with some lovely poets from CalArts. Thank you to all who came out! Keep a lookout for information about our MFA Graduate group reading this May. Check out some video of my half of the reading below.

Next Words 2016 Reading from Natalie Raymond on Vimeo.

Reading some poems from my graduate thesis at Nue Studio & Cafe on 27 Feb 2016.

poems for the public

I am reading some poems THIS SATURDAY in hollywood at the nue studio & cafe.

 

special limited edition handmade poetry zines will be available to purchase for $1.  

more information.

all new all improved

after a lot of consideration (read: agonizing) I decided to totally revamp my website. the new natalieraymond.com is now live & ready for your viewing pleasure. still a couple of kinks I'm working on ironing out, but overall I'm super proud of how it turned out.

please bear with me as some links from older posts may no longer work. feel free to email or tweet me what you think!

-N

living in post production

thinking back on our time shooting my directorial debut short film now that I'm totally embroiled in post production. 

more behind the scenes photos on my website.

up the mountain

spent the afternoon climbing around griffith park & mount hollywood. blue skies as far as the eye could see.

a little altar space set up on mount hollywood.

the observatory & LA from mount hollywood.

making shorts

a little more than a week away from principle photography on my short film/directorial debut. things are coming together, falling into place...

there's a certain amount of delusional grandeur that's required to be a beginner at something. I remember thinking, all those months ago when I first started writing the script, that I'd just make a short film, that it couldn't be "that hard".

it's laughable now that I thought it would be something I could churn out in a weekend.

but after months of getting things together, planning & rewriting, we're finally on the home stretch of pre-production. we shoot the final weekend of January & then the new adventure of post production begins!

trees

weekly griffith park wanderings...

I like these trees, the way they curl & crawl
toward the sun.