Briana Johnson Writing and Photography

Seester’s Senior Pictures

Bri — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:39:32 +0000

Between the Trees

Bri — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 02:33:59 +0000

Doing a bit of networking this evening. I want to give a shout out to one of my oldest friends, Calen Rhome, who’s interning at Bonded Records in Orlando, FL. They just released Between the Trees second album Spain yesterday. For those of you who haven’t heard of Between the Trees, they released their debut album The Story and the Song in 2006. The band is made up of vocalist and guitarist Ryan Kirkland, guitarist Jeremy Butler, and drummer Josh Butler. Their sound resembles that of The Fray, and while they run in the Christian band crowd, their lyrics exude themes of romance and relationships. Check ‘em out.

http://bondedrecords.com/

Bailey’s Senior Pictures

Bri — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 03:49:44 +0000

Lake Eufaula

Bri — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:46:50 +0000

Second Person Narratives

Bri — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 05:21:27 +0000

I started out my evening with a FB status update about the confusion between third person and first person updates. A clever friend suggested I stick to second person to avoid the dilemma. However, such a suggested prompted me to do a bit of research on second person narratives. Seeing as I am an editor and writer, things such as this interest me. So, I happened upon a novel that received high accolades from an anonymous subscriber to answers.yahoo.com called If on a winter’s night a traveler. I’m now five pages in, and I love it. It’s the most interesting thing I’ve read in a long time. The perspective isn’t just a mundane thing unnoticed by the reader; it’s the point of the narrative, and a new challenge for me. But before I get on with my challenge of writing a second person narrative, I want to leave you with a quote from chapter one of If on a winter’s night a traveler:

In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop pas the thick barricade of Books You Haven’t Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn’t Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:

the Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages,
the Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success,
the Books Dealing With Something You’re Working On At The Moment,
the Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case,
the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer,
the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves,
the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified.
Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time To Reread and the Books You’ve Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It’s Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.
With a zigzag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books Whose Author Or Subject Appeals To You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you), and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new you seek in the new).

All this simply means that, having rapidly glanced over the titles of the volumes displayed in the bookshop, you have turned toward a stack of If on a winter’s night a traveler fresh off the press, you have grasped a copy, and you have carried it to the cashier so that your right to own it can be established.

You cast another bewildered look at the books around you (or, rather: it was the books that looked at you, with the bewildered gaze of dogs who, from their cages in the city pound, see a former companion go off on the leash of his master, come to rescue him), and out you went.

Wow! Weird huh? You’re hooked now, too, right? (See, I’m doing it already.) This is the most accurate description of being in a bookstore I’ve ever read. I’m in love with a novel and a point of view. Also, I’m encouraged to build a career around second person narratives. Few have done it. I will. You watch and see.

Easter Weekend

Bri — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:26:16 +0000

Easter weekend was full of activities for Fourtwelve youth group. Friday night we stuffed Easter eggs with candy for Saturday’s egg hunt, and Saturday Curtis and I took the kids to the Veteran Center in Norman for some Easter community service. It turned out to be the highlight of the weekend. The kids had so much fun they want to go back next month.

Most of the residents were with their families for Easter, but we did get to meet Tom, Hank, Gary, Bill, and Lila. Lila was not actually a resident. Her husband Bill was, but she comes to eat lunch with him every day. They were very sweet and had been married over thirty years. (I love old couples so much. They make me smile.)

The above picture is Tom, who introduced himself to the kids as “Tom, T-O-M. Not Thomas, just Tom.” He’s a picture buff, has a really nice camera, and had us take the picture of him with the kids.

We also met Hank and Gary. I didn’t get to talk to Gary much, but I met Hank in the diner with Bill and Lila. He’s hard of hearing but such a jokester. He introduced himself to me as “Mahikalaka,” but then said, “I’m just kiddin’! My name’s Hank.”

Overall, it was a super successful venture, and I’m so glad the kids were enjoyed the community service aspect of the weekend. Volunteering to help with the youth group was intimidating for me a first because I felt like I was too young to do something like that. Now, I’ve been doing it for three months, and I love the kids so much. We’ve gotten so much positive feedback from the parents as of late, which is encouraging. And after this weekend, I got a little bit more confidence that God is using me in a powerful way. I’m truly blessed.

Novel Tab

Bri — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:50:10 +0000

If you’ll take a look at the top of my blog, there is a new tab titled Novel. I’ve finally mustered up enough courage to post Chapter 1 of my first novel. The End. I’m nervous. Be nice. But also, be honest. I don’t want to spend a year of my life writing something that no one else finds interesting.

BBBC Foundation

Bri — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:42:42 +0000

I just set up a website for my dad’s non-profit organization, the BBBC Foundation, at bbbcfoundation.wordpress.com, so you should all check it out and give me some feedback.

Too Young to Marry Spoiler Alert

Bri — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 21:33:07 +0000

I’m a big fan of Lifetime and other made for TV movies, so I was really excited to finally have a free Sunday afternoon. I watched a little bit of SOAPnet’s Breakfast in Bed and then flipped over to the CW to watch a movie called Too Young to Marry. It started out great:

A teenage couple, Jessica and Max, with plans to go to Harvard together want to get married. They manage to convince their parents to let them.

From that point on the movie basically chronicles the first year of their marriage. She gets into Harvard, but he doesn’t. He takes a crappy construction job to support her. She pushes him to keep applying to schools for the spring semester. He thinks that means she’s ashamed of him for being a construction worker. They stop communicating. They start fighting. There’s another guy involved at one point. They go home for Thanksgiving. They end up getting back together. The end.

Overall, disappointing. I kept waiting for something big to happen, but it never did. There’s a point where they’re lying in the middle of the street and Jessica says, “The first time we did this I was so afraid we were going to get run over.” HUGE foreshadowing, right? Wrong. At another point Max is drunk and he says, “I should not drive home tonight.” Another foreshadowing, right? Wrong. Later, still drunk, he shows up at Jessica’s friend’s dorm and decides climbing the lattice to the window would be a good idea. Maybe I’m just being a Negative Nancy today, but I was sure he was going to fall off and die. Logical, right? Wrong. (Reading back over that I sound really morbid, but I swear the movie gave off those vibes.)

Examining this movie in terms of plot—it sucked. There wasn’t enough conflict. A kiss and a hickey and a lack of communication—pretty bland if you ask me. Also, the timing is all confusing. She’s supposed to be seventeen until December. No one goes to college that young unless they’re home-schooled. There’s this whole other side issue where her parents are divorced and fight all the time. Basically she hates her father because he’s a big flake. Does that conflict ever get resolved? Only by her saying, “I get so mad at my dad for walking out on us and then that’s exactly what I did to you.” Enough resolution? I wasn’t satisfied. The ending was abrupt and left you hanging.

The Moral of the Story: it was a great self-esteem booster. I know I’m capable of writing something better. Let’s just hope I’m lucky enough to find someone who agrees.

Inspiration

Bri — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 06:20:18 +0000

Have you ever been so inspired by a single phrase or image that it changes your entire perspective of the world around you? Several years ago I was puppy sitting with Jacob for a doctor who lived across the fairway from me. In this doctor’s house was an enormous painting by Edgar Degas. I’m unsure of the name of the painting and have been unable to find it online anywhere, but it remains etched in my memory. It’s a sole dancer with her left leg raised. She’s facing away from the viewer and the detail is so great you can see the tendrils of her hair. She’s dressed in blue against a rusty, orange backdrop. It’s truly exquisite. I wish I could find it. I can provide a similar painting as well as a recent photo of a friend that evokes the same emotions in me. It is not quite as awe inspiring as the one I spent over an hour starring at that day several years ago, but perhaps they came from the same collection for the share numerous features. Images like these make me wish I’d been a dancer, that my mother had forced me to stick with dance as a young girl. It’s so beautiful to watch. It makes me want to do something great like be a painter and create something that evokes incredible emotions in people. Then I remember that I never honed my artistic abilities either. Ever heard the phrase ‘jake of all trades?’ That would be me. Name any hobby and I’m sure I had a brief stint doing it. It makes me sad to think that I never became great in any of these fields. Now I’ve chosen writing as a profession. My hope is that through my writings I can bring out something emotional and inspiring in my readers. I hope I can bring tears of joy and laughter to my readers. I hope I can change someone’s perspective on their world–even if but one someone. I want my readers to stop and say, “That is the most profound statement,” or “that is a beautifully described scene.” I don’t want so much for my name to be remembered so much as my words, thoughts, and opinions. This next image is of a friend of mine at a castle in Europe. Obviously it’s been altered via Photoshop, but in doing so, it’s given the image a fairy-tale-like feel. Can you feel the breeze blowing through the wild grass? Can you smell the ocean nearby? Can you imagine the history a fortress such as this has experienced? Do you feel like the prince or a pauper? I’m curious to know the difference in seeing a place like this and in seeing a picture of a place like this? Is it truly as romanticized as it seems? Or perhaps is it just a castle ruin? Am I just a hopeless romantic over glamorizing things? I hope not. I’d like to think that there are others out there who see the world the way I do. Until next time, dream of exotic places and life-changing experiences. Bri