abby walsh

2012-01-22T13:59:00.000-08:00

I know it has been at least a year and half since I sent an update... but everything moves so much faster here, and I have already been 10 different people since the time I wrote last. The world is so much larger than it seems in the generalized world of academia, and so much more real than I ever would have guessed.

I was a figure model for a year in Richmond, VA, than moved to NYC and modeled for another fiscal school year at somewhere between 7 and 9 institutions, and saw many different faces and systems of belief in the hazy world of "art". One of the institutions I learned the most at was Grand Central Academy, a small atelier that focused on classical realism, and the ability to draw and paint true to life - we know that it is cheating to use a photo, as it does half the work for us by removing the 3rd dimension we have to struggle with, as well as the subtlties of working from a living breathing object that constantly shifts in space. It turns out that the illustrators of the 80's have found themselves without many marketable skills in the current state of the industry, and have flooded the market for fine artists that spend their entire lives learning to paint from life, and with their illustrator tricks (like the use of reference) can produce quicker, easier results that in a gallery space fall under the same category that sell at the same rate... I can see both sides of the issue, but hold true in my heart something theil said once - if they can just take a picture, why the fuck would they pay someone to paint it?

Than I was asked to take over the Art Direction of an Independant Narrative Short, which landed in a handful of film festivals, including the Rio International Film Fest and the Austin Film Fest. I have maintained a strong collaborative relationship with that director, and have since been involved in music videos for a children's performer, performance art projects with various organizations in the areas of ass't direction and makeup design, designed feature movie pitches and some animation experience through her passionate efforts and vision. I ended up being asked to ass't direct a documentary revolving around a performance artist, and a performance she was building towards, and during the filming ended up getting involved in the building of the massive staging structure that was to house the 120 models for the performance... and within a week the staging company had hired me, full time and salaried.

So I just hit 7 months with this company, and I build the stages for everything important that happens in the entertainment and fashion industry. I have had to wait for Lady Gaga to get out of my way, Beyonce and Nicki Minaj and Mary J Blige have shaken their asses across my stage thrusts for benefits, on Good Morning America, I stood 10 feet away from Stevie Nicks while she did a sound check... I could go on forever. But those aren't even the best parts. The physical reality of my job is that I 'flip' steel trusses with a sheet of plywood that weigh more than me, with a couple of guys (my crew) who are twice my size, scaffold style brace large steel structures for the safety of actors and audiences, I know every freight entrance in the city, from Broadway theatres to hotels, I stop traffic on main throughfare to back my trucks into sites. As supervisor on a majority of the sites I work on, I am often in charge of anywhere from 5 to 20 men from various labor unions, not all of whom are sure how to handle answering to a small fiery redheaded WOMAN with a fondness for the f word (as I'm sure you remember). Women are a rarity in the situations I am in on a daily basis. I would never have known how much fun it is to load trucks, or the supreme pleasure I get out of being dropped off at my apt by flatbed trucks who rule the road due to their size. I am master of the underbelly of the city, of the entertainment industry. I also am a wicked forklift operator. Recently I have been spending time in the custom design side, rather than rentals, as there is an ebb and flow on both sides of work coming in, and have been welding and working with the building of truss, and will be trained in vectorworks soon, so have fallen into a more engineering path. I build things. Isn't that all anyone ever wants?

In the past 7 months, my body has changed so drastically, I look like a body builder, but not cosmetically - from the intensity of what I do at work- and I am more physically capable than I have ever been in my life. It is so drastic a shift from the mostly intellectual plane I have existed on primarily in my life, and it is fascinating, what comes naturally to the crew I work with (former demolition crews, warehouse workers) I have to pause and figure out how to make my body function the way my brain wants it to - just like I spent 4 years learning how to make my hand do what my eye was taking in, or my brain wanted it to do. My whole body is activated, from the engineering the subtle metalworking and leveling large scale surfaces in unpredictable spaces, to the physics of letting weight displace itself naturally in a way that lets me shift things heavier than myself through space with little to no assistance, down to utilizing the muscles and instincts we are all born with to their fullest capacity. I am flipping decks with men twice my size, and pause and pant less than they do. It is so amazing to feel so in control of my own physical space and reality. And what a drastic contrast from the helplessness and fear I felt my senior year of college. I will never be afraid again.

And change was among the stars.

2011-10-11T19:16:00.000-07:00

It has been a lifetime since I had the energy and space in my mind to sit for a minute and postulate about all the things that are moving and folding and stirring around and inside of me.

I have so many thoughts, internet world.

I started writing on this blogspace in an intense need to articulate the feeling of asphyxiation from hitting a vast and lonely standstill, upon graduation, and in a devestating relationship...

But I am free now.

Everyday I rise with the sun to be a crucible, to be within a crucible, everyday I fall in to bed exausted from the hard work of making real things, streaked with dirt and bruises from a holy war against my own fear of not being good enough. And I am satisfied.

I work with steel. I work with my body. I build things. That is all I have ever wanted, all anyone ever wants:

To build something.

-

Actin' like a good guy.

2011-05-05T14:28:00.000-07:00

Been mastering the art of the 10 to 30 second gesture, since we all move so much here, in the heartbeat of America.

and they gnashed their terrible teeth.

2011-04-28T10:37:00.000-07:00

I tore an article out of the New York Times the other day that struck me as a quintissential battle between moving forward and remain stuck in outdated grooves... and it was about Pope John Paul II, the first non-italian to do the job, and upon his death, apparently the adoring fans across Europe that responded to the pope of a different color fought for an earlier 'sainting' than is typical. But is the customer always right? The article further concludes that his popularity was unfounded, as Pope John Paul II watched a massive windfall of sex related crimes committed by high ranking members of the church, spread out across Europe be brought to light and publicly denounced, and merely turned his sainted cheek. Professing conservative views, and ignoring injustice seems like a quick way to lose your fan base, but maybe having a Pope who's face you reckognize due to modern media coverage, whose lineage suggests things are changing... is enough to incur devotion.

At a dinner party earlier this week, a heated discussion evolved about the prevalence and power of the media to affect the public's view in a way that has little to do with the ideals underscoring the individuals seeking power over us. I was asked who the last bald president was, suggesting that starting with the Kennedy Era, we have considered the attractiveness of our presidential candidates as a most important part of the selection process. While I can see the possible vailidity of that statement, and its relation to the powerful impact social media had on Obama's campaign... I see different similarities in the two (D) Presidents - both were agents of a new order, when an older way no longer was serving a purpose to the American People. If we were so easily controlled by the media as a society, than maybe Donald Trump's sensationalist temper tantrum would be taken a lot more seriously. The adage "there is no such thing as bad press" is being liberally utilized by the floundering extremesits that vaguely attach themselves to the Republican Party... but in this case may not be true. Yes, we also discussed Senor Trump, but witnessing the embarrassment of conservatives - at this private gathering and on National Television - makes it pretty obvious that people are getting pretty tired of the 'Birthers' pointless and unpatriotic ranting. Yet I find Trump's public spectacle and whatever interest it may have inspired to be a signal of the lack of focus in the Conservative Party as a whole. Ironically, there have been many references to Obama being the most conservative Democrat in the party. Honestly, the President has a much bigger job that pandering to the wants of Parties, and something that younger Progressives have figured out that older generations can't understand, is that 'Traditional' economic needs and wants have shifted, and the current Democrat/Republican Parties are clinging to values that no longer address current socioeconomic expectations. Donald Trump is just serving to further splinter the notion of 'conservative' and his argument is as petty and unfounded as making racist comments - by attempting to undermine the president about something he was too busy being born into this world to deal with personally, trump is adding to the unrest and discomfort of an already depressed economy, and distracting from the understated brilliance and strength of Obama's actions on recent global disturbances.

How did the American Public turn from 'hiring the best candidate' to a public Firing Squad? From the very beginning the nation seems interested in the idea of Obama's campaign, but it has proved deeply unreceptive to the actuality. 'Change' is cute when heard in a slogan, inspiring even to the previously apathetic youth and college population... yet when changes are attempted, entire sections of the public are up in arms and screaming in defiance. I hated going to the doctor when I was little, too, but we go because people older and wiser see the necessity. Unfortunately, we have not reached nirvana, or Eden, respectively, and current institutions have proved to be imperfect. I am a vehement believer in female reproductive rights, in free condoms and univeral birth control, but I can also respect that funding cut from planned parenthood will instigate some reorganization, new methods for raising funds and awareness, has inspired people to fight complacency... you have to trim back nature for it to flourish. Planned Parenthood is an institution that will only become more important as we move forward, and the Progressives begin to take the reigns. They aren't going anywhere, I can promise you that. I grew up with Welfare, and it was as much a boon as it was a trap, and I can understand the intentions, but I will honestly say it has many many kinks that will take stress and painful fine tuning to better serve our current populace. Change as deeply necessary to redirect big business, to trim away the fat in major corporations, and to evolve the sophistication of the job market to better suit a media heavy, technical and creative workforce that did not previously exist. In the face of our nation's ridiculous temper tantrum, and demand for instant gratification, Obama is calmly undoing the damage done by decades of headstrong and impetuous presidents who chased ratings by starting wars and padding their friend's pockets and sending our men and women off to die while they distract the public with 'Patriotic' Outrage and much wrapping themselves in the flag, telling tall tales of villians with beards and accents and different traditions than ours and instilling a deep xenophobia to replace the fading of racism and McCarthyism to band us together out of fear. Deftly reweaving the tapestry of ideals and mending the chasms between 'us and them', the cautious restraint and respect that Obama showed in his reaction to Libya is a light in the dark of our cultural history. Our collective memory doesn't even recall anymore a time when our presidents were cautious, that it took direct attacks on America to insight our involvement on WWI and WWII. By following the principles he outlined in his heroes of economic and social philosophy, and hearkening back to times when our presidents thought before they acted, Obama is doing everything he promised. And yet we are still unhappy.

Palin's response to the Libya airstrikes were as typical and scary as any racist redneck with a five minute spot on national TV - along the lines of MARCH IN THERE, ATTACK ATTACK!... when this battle in a foreign country had nothing to do with us. It isn't up to us to be the police over other people's moral point of view, and no one wants to invite another Afghanistan - where we swoop in and do everything, so an economy is dependant on us and requires lengthy occupation and trillions of lives/dollars to support a people because we didn't give them the strength or opportunity to do it themselves. We can barely even balance our own economy - who the fuck are we to try to have a say in how other countries handle theirs? The American people have created a conundrum, and impossible situation, where it doesn't matter if our president is gung-ho siding with his own party and getting nowhere, or making concessions and trying to establish a middle ground to move forward with support from both sides, because we will roar our terrible roars and gnash our terrible teeth. Nothing will be good enough for us.

I noticed some scribbled graffiti on an ad whilst riding the subway, and witnessed the voice I hear in my head, the same sentiments that are repeated amongst the progressives, the conservatively creative youth calmly waiting to be handed the megaphone. The bic pen scribbles were telling the disapproving viewer to wait, to be calm, to let enough time pass to see the flowering of Obama's highly questioned political moves. It reminded us that every presidency begins with cleaning up from the previous resident, and that the most important element of economic recovery is TIME.

Don't worry, Mr. President. Some of us continue to have faith.

Where the truth lies.

2011-03-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

Staring at a patch of reflected light on the red brick and black detailed facade of a building's fifth floor across the street from the room I sat in, perfectly still, the sweep of blond streaked bangs slowly made its way into my line of vision. I don't really SEE the patch of light, but am listening intently to the old ladies who are scratching on easels clustered in a semicircle around me. They are describing the tones of my skin, the arch of me browbone, the perfect red to make the shape of my hair. They are discussing with the teacher my gesture, the length of my limbs, what parts of my body line up with others, of overlaps, that I am thinner, my hair more multi faceted, my shoulders broader, eyes larger, mouth more unique. I am hearing myself be constructed out of visual references and colors, through the words of teacher student interaction, and I am stricken by how exotic and strong I seem in their word choices. Gorgeous, the teacher tells them, and I am excited for these elderly folk, to be acheiving brilliance at something so late in life. Inspired, she says, and I feel like I have brought a gift to these folks in the uniqueness and earnest quality of my pose. For the first time, I am curious to see what they have produced, as I never am ih classes where my years of learning make me keenly aware of deficiencies in their training and ability to reckognize what is actually present before them. When my break finally arrives and I unwind myself from my pose and nocholantly wander to the opposite side of the room...

I am horrified. They look as all paintings do at this stage of learning and age, like they are painting for the first time. The painting closest to me shows a figure with heavy breasts that are both larger than the sad little head. My "gesture" looks in most of these painting like I might vaguely be related to Quasimodo, in others, my prominent nose and poise reflect the features and stance of a gargoyle that might grace the sloping facade of notre dame. In classes before, I have been asked if I was a dancer, I how overwhelmed students with the intensity of my body's natural curves... but I never expected their work to be brilliant, or even necessarily informed, so I was never quite so taken aback by the performance that I witnesses during critiques.

When my break was over and I climbed back into my pose, my eyes finding the patch of reflected light across the street, I remembered a similar, but more devestating reminder of the difference between perception and truth, a lesson sharply taught during a recent first-time excursion to Boston.

"History is everywhere" I had been told, by US History professors and past lovers, friends and books I read about what Boston had to offer the curious individual. Quincy Market, after being talked up on the food network and previous boyfriend as a culinary haven was little more than an extended fast food network that seemed to me to descrate the idea of what it had been to the first american citizens, the city's center and central market for all goods and necessities, the major port for political discussion, influx of new ideas, and intimate instigator of the crown, as taxes on imported goods were caustically realized in this arena. The Commons, where everyone grazed their animals, and later revolutionary soldiers practiced, home of the Liberty Tree before the symbol of freedom of speech was torn down... well since it was February, it was empty, and the snow so deep that everyone just circumvented it. I know it must be different in the spring and summer, but everything still smacked of a social propriety, and after the intense feeling of community that Central Park in NYC inspired in me, I feel nothing but disconnected to the purpose of this sprawling little space, in the shadow of its IDEA.

After three days of stomping around in the freezing cold, desperately searching for whatever it was that moved the people I spoke to about Boston's wonder, or to FEEL the revolutionary spirit that made this the birthplace of America, and home to an incredible amount of Ivy League colleges that should be housing America's next leaders... I was hard pressed to find anything that wasn't commercial, let alone a single bookstore. After passing my third Urban Outfitters and Crocs store in the university district, my travel companion finally begged me to do "something historic".

Nothing horrifies me more than looking at the jacket of an individual who existed at some important point in time, like there is some permeating remnant of their soul and ideas in the decaying fabric. Museums remind me of tombs, holding on to the flesh and material existence of something, when the important part that suspends it in history, the animation and the idea have moved on. Just because I saw a bayonette, doesn't mean I know what it is like to insert it into another human due to the intensity of my belief of a cause. Just because I saw a moth eaten and shabby red velvet jacket that may or may not have belonged to John Hancock, doesn't mean I know why he was significant, why he was even remembered. That jacket is no more real to me than Prince Charming's red velvet costume piece in a parade of Princesses at Disney's Magic Kingdom. But, obviously, I consented, and we explored the old State House, where the Boston Massacre happened outside in what is now a busy intersection in the business district of Boston.

But I did learn something in the walls of this building, and it had everything to do with ideas. It also sparked in me strong emotions, which I had never expected. This tiny, boring museum, as average and typical as they come, unabashadely explained the reality of the Boston Massacre in a way that I have never understood it from US History loving professors, and the US History loving historians that wrote our textbooks. I have discussed the power of context before, and again, it strikes me like lightning that I am slowly beginning to compile truths underlying the development of our nation. Nothing is so profound as when you are physically present and are faced with your expectations of something greater than yourself, and come to awareness that everyone has misunderstood the reality. The events leading up to the Boston Massacre were fully provoked by an abusive crowd, and was an act of self defense, the kind we would vehemently fight for in this day and age... and every article written and conversation started by a "patriot" in the days following, completely lied about the foundation of the altercation, and it was upon this lie that the final spark of revolution was sprung. We came together as a nation, based on a lie we wanted to believe justified our urges, we took action on an emotional reaction that was not founded in any sense of fact, and that is the basis of this great nation.

If this was the founding of America... how has it lead us to what we are today? It is all there, presented without humor or chagrin, but with simple honesty for anyone who travels forth to this mecca to witness. But why is no one else fearful of what that means about the legacy of justice in our country? About the truth of man, and our willingness to confuse our emotions with what is right and wrong?

The idea of Ben Franklin's "Join or Die" statement fascinates me, as I have a deep respect for the idea of loyalty... but I do not confuse loyalty with outdated doctrines and ends justifying means. I am no longer innocently accepting of the ideas our nation was founded on, because there is little truth in any of it. I do not say the pledge of allegiance, but it has nothing to do with the fact that God is mentioned... it has to do with the fact that I do not believe my leaders to be infallible, and I refuse to give away my freedom to disagree with their motives. My loyalty is to justice, and to basic human rights, but I will not overlook them when my government finds it expedient.

I pledge allegiance to my own sense of morality, my ability to see right and wrong, and will never willingly give up my ability to act as I feel is right. But I am a lone individual, just another face in a sea of tourists who press their faces to the glass enclosing John Hancock's jacket, and take pictures of a sad, dusty white wig that used to mean something, but what it is, they don't care. They have a picture that proves they were there, that they ate at the Red Lobster in Boston, and it was just as good as the Red Lobster in Times Square, NYC, and just as good as the one in their hometown.

And somehow, that is enough for them.

Because we need each other.

2011-03-17T12:44:00.000-07:00

Please consider donating to Shelterbox's For Japan With Love fundraising campaign. They will be sending family-sized boxes filled with disaster relief equipment, including blankets, water purification devices, stoves, cooking supplies, etc.

Me the terrible.

2011-03-16T11:27:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think about the men who have loved me, or the ones with truly earnest intentions that I didn't have the time or compassion to notice. Sometimes I consider all the 'What-ifs' like worry beads, worn smooth from replaying, but profound in their perfection because they will never be shattered by the brutality of existence.

My conversations with a female professor this evening make me sharply aware that while my foray into same sex relationships may possibly have been a brief adventure, I have gained access to a much deeper respect and intimate knowledge of other women, and I feelit in the connections I am making. I have come across a few interesting women that I feel almost mystical interest and attachment to, but are devoid from a sense of time or distance, and offer a freedom of objectivity and lack of judgement in each other, coupled with a profound sympathy in our femininity. Considering the complete lack of sexual interest, but a more invigorating bond than any relationship I have ever been in, I remembered that prior to my recent bloody relationship, I once explored my sexuality without any sense of jealousy or requirements about seeing other people. It wasn't that I wanted to claim anyone... I was searching for something I thought was to be found in physical intimacy. I realize in retrospect that I craved exactly what I had recieved this evening from this teacher, and it had more to do with the quality of our conversations, and intimacy that had little to do with physicality. It has to do with respect.

Perhaps it was my confusion between the two that allowed a professor that I sought learning and respect from to misinterpret the quality of my need from him. An artist with a family and struggles of their own that I had no interest in being involved with, and I saw my student loans as sufficent funding for recieving the kind of training in artistic skills that would net job security, and any attention he recieved from me was soley based on the hopes that he would come to respect my artistic ability as much as I did his. The week I graduated, he finally admitted feelings for me... and in the throws of a painful relationship and the excitement of starting my career... I didn't really know what to do. This wasn't what I had wanted from this person. But maybe it was born out of my strength and ability? I didn't want to dishonor his feelings as a man, but abhored that he could have a wife he was lying to about his feelings for her, as I had been experiencing the reverse the entirety of my senior year. I at the time was still in love with someone who was constantly lying about their attention on another person. No one should ever have to feel that pain. I had a lot of grievences about the personal beliefs of this professor, even comments he made about my family and lovers, but I saw that as separate from the ability to teach a necessary skill for my toolbox of survival... and it wasn't until he stated that he would feel the way he did whether I could draw or not that I realized his idea of love had nothing to do with respect. His attention had never been about my talent, even though he recieved money through the school that I will carry as debt for years... and he didn't even respect me. Didn't want me to move away and succeed because it meant I would no longer be there. He loved me for my weaknesses, for the intensity of my need, and was completely disinterested in my strengths. Suddenly I was aware of the crude comments he had made to me about other professors I was extremely fond of, relationships he was threatened by and sought to stifle, the negativity he fed me about the things I was inspired by, like the idea of New York City, where I am starting to build a real career. He approached my the night I graduated to give me a gift. I was so excited about my future, to which his reply was 'keep telling yourself that'. He handed me a mariners compass, the kind of thing that inspires my imagination, and for a second I found a connection resurfacing. 'In case I get lost' I mused aloud, as the metaphor suited me. 'No', he said, 'So you can find your way back to me'.

I walked away and never looked back. Later that evening I flung that thing as far out into the ocean as my body would let me.

I have come to terms with what I have always sought from people, and it is amazing when things that I have fought and begged for from people I loved or respected are simply and gracefully given to me by random strangers, free of requirements. I recently discovered that my bloody relationship was born out of the same confusion between respect and sexuality, and things I needed in a partner I was recieving from every person I sat next to on the subway, but never once got from my lover. My body has always very clearly known what it needs, I will spontaneously crave spinach, or grapefruit, and when I have worked myself to the bone, I suddenly manifest a craving for chocolate. I drink lots of coffee, but because it is the closest thing I do for myself in the way of reward. A cup of coffee is a deep quite space in the rush, a deep breathe, a massage of my insides and my senses. This week was hard, and I found myself having to get a double espresso just to physically make it from work to the train before meeting a client and staying up all night to meet their deadline... and this may be the first time I pounded coffee for the express purpose of staying awake. People do that in college, but when I was dealing with all the trauma my senior year of college, I had to take benadryl to forcibly knock myself out, because I lay awake in the dark and worried myself to obsessive pieces. I also couldn't bring myself to eat senior year. Just like now, rushing from gig to gig, I find myself listening to a craving much deeper than food that explains the arduous journey of my sexual and social awakening to where I am now, in love with my life. Respect for my professionalism and abilities, for my boundaries and space fill my soul with such depth and sweetness in a way the act of consumption could never replicate. It roots me to this earth, to this time period, to my adulthood and validates every choice I made along the way.

Sometimes god lifts the veil just long enough for us to glimpse the singular thread that weaves throughout the entirety of the tapestry of living, and illuminates an important pattern in our lives.

When death is coming- the mockingbird doesn't sing, but speaks with his true voice.

2011-02-22T15:54:00.000-08:00

I was reading a potential client's manuscript on a Zombie novella to be turned into a graphic novel, and I was stricken by the similarities of all zombie subject matter I have come across... and even more deeply stricken at the inner discussion I had with myself whilst trying to find value and meaning in the idea of undead cannibalism. Lots of undead creatures and their storylines carry romantic notions and deep seated stereotypes based on human/animal tendancies, just as comic book super heroes are born out of a social outcry for superhuman profoundness hidden in the everyday life we all drag ourselves through. But who has given a Zombie depth? Being defined by emptiness, they are silly and horrifying and utterly disconnected from everything we know to be true about human and animal nature, and the subhuman dysfuntions that twist the two planes of existence together to enfold the genre of horror... and here are some of the interesting visual + philosophical conclusions I came to in my line of questioning:

So the basic framework of any story is based on 3 variations of conflict: Man versus God, Man versus Nature, and Man versus Himself.

Prior to reading the manuscript, after having perused the descriptions, I find the director/writer is focusing, or actually assuming that his conflict is Man versus Himself, as both the fighting with the ranks of unaffected humans and previously human attacking the remaining human. To me, the conflict is highlighted/triggered by Man versus Himself... but is really a profound discussion of Man versus Nature. What defines us as different from the rest of the animal world as a race of mammals is a certain level of conscious thought. We draw the line between cro-magnon humanoids that shared the planet with us, and our actual ancestors/earliest civilization by the first primitive death rites - the act of burial and marking the resting place of former loved ones (as well as ancestor worship). Pretty much everything that was considered "magical" throughout our developmental history has through science and medicine been defined, ie. pregnancy and birth, disease, weather, fire, domestication and agriculture as a way of always having food, and we have ceased to have magical illusions and associations with these things. We don't pray for a successful hunt and honor mother nature for the gift of fresh meat, we walk to the store and buy it. So the one clear mystery that persists, along with very specific culturally defined rites that follow it, is the concept of death. Why am I telling you stuff you already know?

1. I passed by a ghost bike the other day (you know, the white spray painted bikes that are chained to places where someone was killed in an accident?) and it struck me for a couple of reasons: by marking the spot where the life/soul/whatever animates us left the body, it shows a modern evolution of rites relating specifically to the loss of consiousness rather than the physical body. If we were suddenly placed in a reality where the person died but their body remained suspended in animation - how do we mourn? would we not feel compelled then to mark the place where their individual conciousness ceased to be? This ghost bike phenomenon is interesting also in the fact that we all see it and instantly reckognize what it symbolizes - and businesses, police, hobos do not touch them, either out of respect, cultural acceptance of the act, or superstition. I feel like a society suddenly focused solely on dead/undead trauma as a constant reality would manifest symbols and markers and become a common phenomenon in a decaying landscape. So in a modern society, I think we should consider what kind of symbol could be used to illustrate that, and how it could be visually effective in representing loss in the number of deaths as being overwhelming, and potential danger.

2. So if what separates us from animals is our consiousness, what then is left behind in a body when that is no longer there? I have two answers for that:

First I would say is the animal insticts, particularly smell. But when considering how perfect a machine the human body is, I would also argue that there would still be lingering muscle and mental memories that begin to fade as the body eats away at itself. And smell has an amazing ability to trigger emotional responses. If young animals separated from their mothers can follow the intimate knowledge of their mother's scent, why wouldn't a baby zombie be able to follow its (living) mother's scent? And it is situations like that which really shake us to the core in a supremely deep way. In a similar manner, I could absolutely believe that an old, old man who took an early dawn walk every day for 55 years down the same path, would still feel the muscle compulsion to continue certain habits that the body has repeated for years and years. Like a scratched record, like a footprint left in space and time.

And second, I would say, like wearing a wedding band for years and years and removing it for some reason - death or loss of some sort, I'm sure there is a very profound sense of having a physical hole where it used to be, where you'd feel the empty bed like a bitter and lonely void, that maybe you yearn to fill with what used to be there, but nothing will ever fill that exact shaped hole in your life, heart, space or time... imagine how a body would feel if it suddenly lost all consiousness. We never see zombies eat a body down to the bones. They never do more than take a bite and move on to the next thing. I feel like the act of consumption could represent a hunger/yearning for something else, something that living people have that they no longer do. Something that disappears the minute they bite into the living, so they are no longer interested and move on to what still possesses it. If it was a matter of blood and muscle and flesh, there is plenty of stuff out there for "dumb" creatures to consume. I think the idea of the zombie started as something very different and has been blown out into something that makes no sense. The closer we bring it back to something that we could almost believe, the more poignant and devestating the effect will be on the audience.

Here were some of my extraneous thoughts on treatment of the story and characters/wordplay:

I like the metaphorical play on consuming - we as a consumerist society buy the next big thing, take a bite, and once the newest/better version of it comes out, we toss the original and move on, never satisfied, always hungry for whatever is next. I'd love to suggest that by littering the environments with ads we reckognize universally, like Haddon Sundbloom's Santa Clause that Coca Cola used to define what Santa looked like to the rest of the world, particularly the US. Utilizing ads from older time periods is both ironic (suggesting how it lead to a land of zombies) and helps us to obscure the time period.

When breaking down the action of the story, and what needs to be shown, I would root out sequences that can be suspended in time, imitating slow motion for anticipation purposes. The movie '300' was not a perfect one, but I still watch it for one reason: the fight sequences. In that particular movie, the fight scenes move from body parts flying to an abruptly intense pulsing slow motion, and the movement of body and fabric ripples and flows across the screen. The underwater oracle dance is equally mesmerizing to me. Also consider Muybridge's animated horse sequence, broken down frame by frame. By isolating action (while subtley shifting composition for dramatic effect/reveal of dangerous situation or character) we can control the pacing so it doesn't lack moments to breath or focus. We'll basically be mimicing camera moves, slow pans, slow zoom outs and such while breaking up the flow of the story to agitate the viewer.

Throughout history we have used many different ways of marking a distinct separation between "us" and "them", like the nazi symbol, and the yellow stars for the jews. I would consider developing a symbolic marking that separates the military, doctors and civilians. That offers other ways of insinuating disloyalty or making unspoken allusions.

Just some thoughts I had.

There is no such thing as American History. Only a frontier.

2011-02-01T14:15:00.000-08:00

I am a huge advocate of reason, reason relating to having a purpose. The problem/statement defines the medium for transmission. Popular film/the movie industry I find often reaches to pinpoint particularly strong... undercurrents manifesting in society, and sitting in a theatre the other day, I was filled with goosebumps and a pregnant feeling of some greater, throbbing issue as the trailers flicked by. Having been a recent college grad, I could tangibley feel the frustrations and misconceptions surfacing in the subject matter of this spring's movie line-up. "The Adjustment Bureau" are men in grey suits, making sure we all fall in line and keep with some greater "plan", pulling directly from The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, the idea of The Businessman that has evolved from the 50's, a society of business men trapped in social rules they cannot escape, and I have watched my peers walk out of school into a workforce expecting to be handed a suit and a job, to fall in line and pick up their 60,000 dollar job as they were led to believe that is what awaits them. Another trailer was of a lost creative soul being led into the life of a higher powered business man, only to find there is a debt he must pay for being given the means to advance so far. We are struggling with a social sense of helplessness, directly connected to loss of morale and vision.

What causes such a massive inferiority complex?

I've been noticing in the NYC Daily newspapers a pervasive influence that seems to have superceaded the purpose of governments and imposed a higher moral standard on other societies as well. Months ago Google pulled out of China, to protect activists from forced remission of the right of privacy. That is a huge moral statement made in full knowledge of the loss of money and relationships, to what may be the biggest market available... by an internet company. Not a political figure, not United Nations... but a voice of the technologically advanced generations who are beholden to no one but themselves. Yesterday I read a Google executive is directly involved, possibly through his own heritage (I'm not sure) in the civil protesting in Egypt... and I am stricken by the reach and effect of a group making a moral statement that spans continents, while our own political leaders are crucified for showing even the slightest sympathy to a cause or idea, hands tied by some bizarre stanglehold the public seems to have on government leaders. Wikileaks have made hackers worth noticing, as political activists and internet assasins, as they took down major credit card company websites, one after the other in outrage, that a man would be condemed for seeking truth from politcal leaders and simply taking it as his due when truth is not what he discovered. Again, an internet company comes to the floor, fighting this time the establishment in the US of A - Twitter takes our government to court over the incarceration of Julian Assange, fighting the good fight and redefining morality through the nation's own system of judgement.

According to the papers, I have also noted that there has been a large influx of young college educated Irish immigrants, a very different place then when they previously came streaming through our borders. Egypt's unrest is partially attributed to college educated joblessness and homelessness as well. I ripped a long article out of the NY Times about southern Europe's lack of professional opportunities and college grads moving into their 30's still living at home and working a plethora of unpaid "internships". Seeing "The Social Network" for the first time, and remembering how powerful a force Facebook was during the Obama election, how it reached the previously unreachable college population, it now is another key in expanding our frame of reference across time and space. Along with proof of its importance as just that - a social network - and Mark Zuckerburg's status as the youngest billionaire in the country, it seems that while the younger generations are unable to step into the realm of politics, they are more than sufficiently equipped to reach farther than the boundaries of this economy, and its sad status updates. The greater and deeper this alter reality in which we organize and communicate, the more we interface with other cultures, hurtling globalization into instant karma for the generations who still hold the reigns of this country, the generations who still hold and feel the dregs of racism and unliscenced hatred for change. So while they continue to stand for their lack of realistic beliefs based on rules that have become past-tense, we, the progressives, who claim neither liberal or conservative views, as both are a drain on our resources... we are issuing global directives, making proud statments of morality according to a truth based on simple human rights, and we are manifesting words and ideas and jobs out of the hopelessness that the masses choose to feel. Our society has become the landscape of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", a people that have expectations and needs, but not the craft or skills and the perserverance required to teach us those things, a people who "deserves" more than they create, and expect a president to come with a magic wand that makes everything instantly better than it was. As the older and younger generations are at cross purposes, we are split, staring each other down across the chess board and listening, waiting for the ticking of the timer to tell us it is our turn, that we are ready to try to clean up the messes of the older generations, that we have solid beliefs based on a new horizon whose dawn is breaking as we breath, as you read this, and there is no stopping it.

"King's Speech" takes us back to a time when this was required before, for youth to take the reigns, declare a new foundation for right and wrong, to mobilize the hearts and imaginations of a ready body of people. This profound movie looks at a slice of history and imbues it with a sharp, painful wit, sardonic and surprisingly sweet humor... and the kind of real emotional connection to a part of history that we could not feel in a classroom taught by teachers who are fulfilling deadlines. Sometimes humanizing the past, bringing it back to us through movies is what it takes to remind us that while we have fought these battles before... and while the frontiers are new, we still respond to the same things. There is no stopping the call to arms. Life is not a rise and a fall. It is a million different undulating emotions and truths that weave into the melody of living, it is the blood coursing through a million veins and years all at once to the sound of a heartbeat. No one is NOT apart of the pulse of civilization - We never stop moving through history.

Wake up. It's already here.

You can only turn your face up and let it rain down.

2011-01-13T13:41:00.000-08:00

What is winter to a child of the tropics? A myth, a figment of my imagination?

Here I am, daughter of the sunshine state, listening to the boozy old school jazz pumping through the speakers in the starbucks overlooking downtown Jersey City and all of the piles of snow that have drifted and swirled and delicately poured forth from the weather gods in the sky. Winter here is real, and serious, just like the NYC summer - people die in NYC heat. Summer in NYC is real too, and more serious than any summer I ever experienced in my childhood on the shores of perfect blue-green 95 degree water.

In this harsh reality, that same blue-green water and baby powder sand haunts my dreams, and homesickness strikes at the most inopportune moments... like when I am posing for an art class, and I can feel the blush of warmth creep up and redden my body on the model stand, laid bare before an audience, and the brightness of tears standing out suddenly in my eyes. But that too seems now the stuff of dreams, something larger than life, like the tall tales of my childhood - memories of my life as told to me by the other people who experienced them, from when I was too young to remember.

Yet, it is sweetly exciting to walk through the gentle, friendly flakes, wet little kisses on my face. It is profound to look out at the street in the morning, and see the trash and cars, even the black, ugly asphalt given a new leash on life, the traces of man hidden by an perfect blanket of crystalline innocence. A cup of cocoa simply isn't as beautiful as it is during an intense snowfall, and nothing is more exciting than waking up and realizing that you are trapped, so work is out of the question. We are all children during a snow day, like playing hooky from responsibility. We inherently know the trouble that comes later, dealing with the plows, unburying cars and bikes, trudging through the gray sucking slush that finds its way into your shoes, no matter how prepared you thought you were. The gritty crunch and slip of the rock salt to melt the snow that melted, that refroze into treacherous pools of slick and sly ice. We know it will suck later. But however inconvenient it may become, it seems to have fallen with the best intentions, to baptize us new, to give us a fresh start.

I can't help being fascinated by this bizarre phenomenon of snow, like turning 21 and finding yourself surrounded by alcohol for the first time in your life - how could you say no to exploring its affects, and savoring the pros and cons?

Florida has a much different mood in the way of weather gods. There is no silly sweet magic in the air currents. Our rainfall may last a few minutes, but it falls in a flood of bitterness, every second as obscuring and wounded as a first love, before disappearing into a memory almost as soon as it started. My anger is often the same way, invisible till the moment my heart breaks, and suddenly everything is ok again. But I wouldn't call the malevolent mealstrom of the Hurricane as real as summer and winter in the north... it is such a massive and pregnant form, leaving a path of utter destruction. It is the stuff of gods and titans, and it is like a cosmic act of war. You don't hope for a hurricane day, you evacuate a week before its projected arrival, before it is impossible to escape on the clogged roads. You try to get as far inland as you can to avoid being swept up in floods along the coast. There is no hiding from something so massive and heartless. It isn's pretty. There is no way to protect yourself, or those you love.

All you can do is hope and pray it will be fickle in its path. That it will hit someone else, ruin other people's lives, not yours. That it won't make it to the warm blue-green waters of the gulf, the rich salty womb I swam in before I was born.

So I fortify myself against the icy wind. I rip off the blankets in the morning braced for the inevitable shock of cold. I step outside everyday with a 'fuck you' to the early morning chill. And I weigh my options.

Life is slippery. Here, take my hand.

2010-10-25T08:51:00.000-07:00

We all have those days, born from the frustration of merely existing, where we experience the most bizarre and upsetting realities. Everyday, as I walk the streets of New York City, I pass the writhing, dirty masses of the underworld, of a subterranean landscape of mental illness and social irresponsibility. We can walk by, walk away, but no matter where you turn, it finds you and confronts you. Humanity is a twisted souless thing, and the depths the mind will go in sickness and the effort of running away from expectations... are unfathomable.

I watch it, I consider it, but sitting in the midtown library, at 40th street and 5th avenue, I have been graced with the profound and terrifying and cannot turn away. I find myself paralyzed in mutual fascination and horror, as a woman in her late 40's plopped her unwashed body across from me, and has slowly acted out complicated and overlapping story lines. It is like watching one person act out a kipling short story, a cut away from alice in wonderland (including graphic descriptions of brain tissue being ripped out and losing herself in her cerebral cortex), an argument with a wheelchair bound dead father (how dare he try to steal an elephant's identity and give pieces of her brain away to other people to utilize), be shocked into sobs, inform herself there was no wicked witch's castle, because the wizard and wicked witch took up residence in allison's labia (which was only for her husband's use, privately), manifest a british accent, discuss the depravity of the british royal family, asking to be removed from the russian crown and turning down 100 billion dollars, of tits being ripped off, being in a courtroom pressing charges for attempted rape, sodomy, and murder, and dictating someone's foreign policy in regards to saudi arabia. But to be clear, she did state that she does not want to live with her daddy in the 1950's. She wants to live in her own time period. I can understand that.

The power of her conviction, the breadth of the stories being acted out in her helpless frame... shock me. That something can bubble up so concrete and perfectly formed from the recesses of our brain, entire lifetimes of non existent memories can wrack one person's body like truth...

And I sit here, as the stories continue to pour out of her ample, impassioned, and pungent frame. Accents, sobs and physical blows shuddering out of her as she plays every single role, from a dead father figure to phantom almost-husbands, sisters, judge, lawyers, royal families... and I actually sit here, bearing witness to this. This is the stuff of nightmares, of a bygone era where writers spent their nights in opium dens and their days obsessing over little girls, to eventually write stories about them delving into other-worlds of childish fancy with Freudian overtones... the power of the human brain to manifest realities, to hold on to pieces of information and weave together elaborate contexts and torture the uneducated and lost soul sitting before me with a cacophony of other people's imaginary lives.

In the lunacy of this day, there is a woman wandering around loudly and tearfully distraught over her lost library card, like a child had been ripped from her womb, and an insistent sound of a bullfrog I finally realized is emanating from the old man using the typewriter at the end of the table I sit at in a state of shock.

This is reality folks.

The Collectively Dismissed

2010-08-11T06:30:00.000-07:00

Stephen Hawking and a number of biology and physics theorists have come to the lofty conclusion that " the whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired". The subway taught me this. Life has taught me this. But when reading the theory of relativity, which redefines reality as consisting only of contextual truths, which perpetually vary according to our mass and speed in space and time (which has conceptually become the same thing in science, aka spacetime) I begin to wonder what then becomes of Memory.

The proposed 4th dimension, if we were all to travel at the speed of light, exists as a continuum where time=light, so by moving at the speed of light, we are also moving at the speed of time, and the future is behind us, with the past at our fingertips in front of us. If history is possible, time travel must be possible. Perhaps the laws of inertia are in play with humanity, and we simply haven't ricocheted in the opposite direction into Unhistory. But if we had the profound ability to go back in time, would we hold on to our memories and relics of passing ages and people? Is this proposed 4th dimension somewhat of a key into the Collective Unconscious, that there may be an overlap that hints at the future experience? However scientifically learned we may become, one serious thing cannot be accounted for by space and time and quantum physics. This aspect of reality is as contextual as any other aspect, and reading the flow of history, of movements and recessions, temperature fluctuations and the resulting human reactions, we move with a force and depth of emotion through spacetime that makes the powerful evolution of a river much more appropriately used to describe history from its emotional/human side than for the Time association of the word History. OR maybe they two are intimately and inextricably connected. If Time heals all wounds, speed of time changes according to our emotional output, that it is possible to wait forever and remember forever, it seems Emotion is also a definitive aspect of our definition of reality, an ethereal quasi-component to the dimension we exist in: EmotionalSpaceTime. Emotion+Time=Memory. History is a Byproduct of Memory. Without the ability to remember what came before, we would not exist in Time. If we didn't exist in Time, which is equal to SpaceTime, we would not exist in Space. Without our emotional context, we would not exist at all.

Keeping that in mind, my recent New York explorations brought some interesting questions and observations to the surface. I recently moved off the island of Manhattan to the very close Jersey City, overlooking the spiky New York skyline and I quickly became aware that Ellis Island lay within a quarter of a mile of the New Jersey Coast. My history classes never mentioned New Jersey during the decades of Immigration booms, no book I have read has mentioned the obvious proximity to the rest of the country the short ferry ride to New Jersey is, and that only the immigrants bound for NYC actually traveled from Ellis Island to New York. Everyone else was shuttled through NJ. The Gates of America are in New Jersey. Why is it so important for us to believe that New York was the major port for immigration? Ironically enough, the Island itself was a tiny little thing that was increased through landfill as it grew to be able to hold the massive numbers coming in through its gates, and after the 30's and into the 40's, when immigration dwindled in the face of America's Great Depression and Wartime Era... it was simply abandoned. Forgotten. A profound symbol for so many of freedom and citizenship was stripped away by its lack of prescence in our Collective Memory and became what it truly was when looked at with no emotional context. It was a fancy building falling in on itself, floating on an island of trash off the Jersey Coast.

Ellis Island started to draw photographers in the late 60's and images from the rotting walls and remnants of beautiful architecture from another time began to surface, spawning a new interest in this important axis of our history. It was rebuilt to its original splendor and turned into a museum. The bizarre part is that what came from this place was profound amount of ethereal Emotional things... there is an overwhelming lack of physical objects, because you can't SEE citizenship, or joy, fear or freedom. We seemed to remember that Ellis Island was an important piece of our cultural development... but walking the empty halls, it seems like we have forgotten why.

There were some interesting three dimensional graphs about the number and types of immigrants, and obviously, to fill the space they had to be really creative - these graphs will be something i will never forget, due to the power of their symbolism and ability to impact you with a sense of the weight of what they were there to show. There was a number that did jump out at me, one I have never encountered before. According to the map detailing the (forced) influx of slave labor, it appears that the amount shipped to Brazil is HUGE in comparison to the amount that came to the states. Huge. Have I ever heard in a class, read in a book that there was even slavery in Brazil at all, let alone probably the most massive number of forced immigration in the America's history? No. With that startling revelation, my profound respect for the power of context strikes me particularly hard. Passing thoughts about our obvious sense of guilt as a country is apparent in our intense focus on our own slavery history, versus memories of talking with brazilian exchange students when I was in high school. I remember during one conversation I mentioned the Holocaust, and these exchange students, seniors in high school, had no idea what I was talking about. Images from the Holocaust are burned into our developing minds starting in the sixth grade, and American school systems make that a required section of every year of our education until graduation. Who defines what is important? History itself depends on the person telling it. There is so much bias and emotional context, History is a constantly fluctuating line, and just as me and my brother have differing memories of the same events in our life, History is a grand Memory. What is truth? We can all talk about God, but his face in our minds would be different to every single person due to their frame of reference. He will have a deep rumbly voice like someone's father, kind crinkly eyes like another's favorite Santa Clause, the one they went to the mall to see every year. One is black, or has almond eyes and dark lashes, a pot belly, is loud or gentle, embracing or stonelike and stoic.

Coney Island is going to be torn down - another relic from desperate times. P.T. Barnum and his contemporaries were the light in the darkness of the Great Depression, their bullshit and cheap thrills the only thing that the masses of poor had to lighten the monotony of starving and working and having nothing. I'm surprised no one has stepped forward to save some piece of this rich thread in the tapestry of American History, embarrassed when I saw how dingy and silly and falling apart it looked in comparison to the grand vision that resided in the recesses of my Collective Memories. Another symbol of the stuttering heartbeat of our culture, being washed away by the flood of people and their Greater Needs. What happens when we erase these pieces of history - the egyptians defined eternity through memories, and to wipe away someone's potential for eternity, they merely had to erase every picture and mention of that person's name from their records - when there is no emotional context, people who could remember these places and why they meant so much are gone, these places do not exist in space... will they cease to exist in time? Will they cease to exist at all? To continue on towards impending future and create new memories from our own context instead of just from a previous context of the people who will be phasing out during our lifetime, do we have to let certain memories go?

I recently saw the World Trade Center site for the first time. That is an event from my context, the images from that experience burned into the Collective Mind's Eye of my entire generation. A freshman in high school, my classmates and I spent the day wandering like zombies from class to class, sitting in silence, watching in horror as the trauma continued to unfold in front of us - every TV in the school stayed on. And we watched, and watched. It was not a Holocaust. It was not a Great Depression. But in our young lives, it is the only, the first and the closest context we have for the politics of horror, and the powerful feeling of helplessness that are the definition at the base of all of those things. They are building a museum on the site, and I am stricken with an odd sense of futility and devastation. We are consciously letting go memories of the light in the darker times of our development as a country, but forcibly declaring our priorities on remembering an act meant to strike terror in the American people.

And I wonder what will go in this museum for 9/11. Pieces of desks and unidentified human remains? Melted glass windows, and post it notes with meeting times that somehow survived? What is it that we are really looking to remember, and like Ellis Island, what physical objects could possibly convey the powerful emotions that surround the events of that tragic day? Like everything else, I imagine it will eventually fall from society's context and no longer be reality. It will be replaced with new memories.

Watch the sun rise, say your goodbyes... off you go.

2010-07-03T19:55:00.000-07:00

Listening to the resounding vibrations of the Tibetan Bowl that concludes every session at Yoga to the People, attempting to melt into the floor as the sound washes over me, I contemplate the quote of the evening. It seemed unusually long, and discussed/described the nature of love as being like the plant that grows in the warmth of love, and ripens with its sweetness, is cut away from its roots and ground into flour to become a part of something more beautiful because of the pain and growth, the questioning of our roots and our acceptance of the form we grew into stripped away by the stone that grinds us into something infinitely more malleable, and with new ingredients and compromises added to the new structure of our beings, we finally take our place in a broader scheme of things, to be partaken of by god as we have partaken in each other, a vague cross referencing of compounds and molecules that unite us in metaphor.

Wave after wave of pulsing washes over me and I am contemplative at my inner stillness, reflecting, I suppose on the parts of me that have indeed felt all of those things: blossoming with the power of being loved, and feeling invincible, because I knew that no matter what, when I turned around, there would be that one person there; I pause to extricate myself from the heavy tangles of my perceptions and the roots I had become so accustomed to and their expectations; My own self definition was being pulled apart and examined thread by achingly tender thread; My sense of self was lost with the love I had expected to be there; I found myself again amidst the crumbled pieces of who I was before, and have found myself in a new and exciting phase of my life because I was FORCED to grow.

And I appreciate and am grateful for every moment of it.

I know I am much more capable than I had ever realized, and finding my way back to a place of love and tenderness brings me to it with a core of strength and self acceptance and tolerance that came when I became a brand new loaf of me, and the fantastic new ingredients that are working to make me a whole person.

As people begin to slowly pull themselves up from the floor and weave through the remaining meditative students, I pull myself together and head out. I have things on my mind, but I choose to focus on my breathing, my swagger, the dampness of my clothes from the sweat. I eat, shower, halfheartedly listen to music. I've put off my work until the morning, and claimed this day for me, listening to the sound of my own breathing.

And I begin to remember who I am.

sudden silence, sudden heat.

2010-06-22T15:00:00.000-07:00

i'm drowning. i can't. i can't find someone who needs my skills and talents, i have no reason to create, no reason to draw, i feel like i have no voice, like i could scream and scream and no one would hear the sound as it echoed off the walls and my immense talent and passion slowly dried up like the sound of my voice fading from the air. almost as if it had never been.

you asked why i led you to the back of my neck, with my head bowed to your chest. maybe i led you to the top of my spine, to the throat chakra, so that your lips, so gifted, so appreciated in their skill, so powerfully communicative might somehow clear my metaphysical blockage, free my voice that the world can hear me speak.

i have spent so much time trying to make everyone else happy, to create things for other people, to fulfill someone else's wishes and needs... it's time to stop and really think about what I want to say. maybe in college i had it wrong, i was so focused on giving teachers what i thought they wanted... i never paused to ask myself what i enjoyed doing, or what i wanted to communicate. maybe in the year since graduating i have developed a voice, and it is fluttering and beating at the walls of my body to get out. but reality and inspiration cancel each other out. who am i to draw and paint and design, when i should be applying, and sending out resumes, and scraping together money to get by? who am i to use my expensive art supplies, when i can't afford to replace them?

why am i here?

what am i supposed to be creating?

this whole hip hop scene is fascinating. I have never before heard such subtle genius and eloquence, before i met these impassioned wordsmiths. maybe that is a part of my epiphany, watching the evolution and movement of language into a powerful medium to communicate their thoughts, but at the same time, the words become complex sounds that throb and pulse, meaning surfacing randomly out of the flow of staccato rhythm from the highly trained and symbiotic instrument that fills the lungs... their voices.

voice.

that what this all comes down to, right? same theory and composition, different medium.

so while i sit here, writhing and choking on my growing voice, but not letting it tentatively make a few interesting points, or argue for the value of its existence, i have nothing to show should an opportunity arise.

maybe, if i start to speak, to feel, to paint, to have a conversation... the opportunities will avail themselves to me. i guess it's time to stop caring who would or wouldn't like what i have to say, who i offend, who has hurt me in the past, or stopped loving me because they wanted me or my work to be something i'm not, to take a stand, to finally pause...

and listen to the sound of my own voice.

maybe having a voice is what i was missing this entire time.

"I am the ghost of a corduroy child- never listened, much too wild."

2010-06-15T12:43:00.000-07:00

Tagging along with my sometimes lover and passionate best friend, who always leads me into fascinating experiences and surprising depths of emotions, I once again found myself facing the heavy gray door of the Drilling Company in the early hours of the morning, scraping up tape and painting over a myriad of scuff marks, baptizing the tiny theatre's stage new with a coat of black semi-gloss latex paint. My partner in crime was designing the lighting for the theatre's newest experimental production, to which she only vaguely described to me as being "organic", indefinable, possessing no book... and I painted barefoot in the night, with lights of different position and hue coming up and down, fading in and out in bursts of varied speed and color as she flicked through cues in her head. I wore patches of black paint as we stumbled home in the early dawn. It had been a year since I had painted a stage, since I had been up all night painting a space that would be brought to life by bodies moving across it. A year since I had to fiercely scrub huge parts of my body to barely remove those patches of paint, and I covered them as much as I could with sassy heels for my afternoon interview. Only later did I discover the parts I had missed on the backside of my right arm. I am what I am, sir.

That evening I was a part of the crew, one of the gang, I overheard bits and pieces of a runthrough, I was ready. It was a cool subject, cool group of people...

I had no idea what was coming.

A sassy waitress slung around drinks and coin change, the M.C. for the evening took names for the poetry slam that was supposed to take place. As the audience stumbled in a group at a time, a few people did come forward and speak with the M.C. before finding their places in the audience. With ease and familiarity, with subtlety and nervous energy, the intimate space quickly evolved into an interactive, all encompassing evolution, a tempestuous and vaguely uncomfortable transformation from the stereotypes we all hear, we all know to something we cannot escape. At first these social grenades are achingly brought up from the interaction of the multicultural cast, in artfully earnest and organic personal discussion with each other, that quickly escalates into pointed, witty commentary on the origins and perceptions of those stereotypical thoughts we all pretend to disassociate with. We as the audience are suspended in the perceptive dialogue, each of us responding to a different wealth of assumptions from the outside world, agreeing and disagreeing in our heads, wholly sucked into the Cypher...

what is the Cypher?

according to dictionary.com, the word cypher:
ci·pher also cy·pher (sī'fər)
n. The mathematical symbol (0) denoting absence of quantity; zero.
One having no influence or value; a nonentity.
A design combining or interweaving letters or initials; a monogram.

and thesaurus.com states:
Cypher Synonyms: device, emblem, figure, hieroglyph, letter, logo, mark, monogram, number, numeral, rune, sign, type, answer, clarify, decipher, dissolve, elucidate, figure out, illuminate, illustrate, make plausible, make reasonable, puzzle out, resolve, solve, straighten out, tidy, unfold, unravel
Notes: character is what one is; reputation is what one is thought to be by others

One of the actors described it as being in a circle with no end, a literal translation of the numerical character we know as zero. It is also specifically associated with a code, and the cracking of it, or, as the last line of the definition vaguely describes as "a design combining or interweaving", letters or people, the act of multiple "characters" folding in over each other multiple times is a deft allusion to our lives and perceptions and experiences overlapping with other people's, that we are inextricably linked to the perceptions and experiences and evolution and epiphanies of the others caught in the cypher with us. So as the actors spit rhymes and make poetic and striking allusions to different forms of racism based on stereotype, the flow is periodically interrupted with a clinical/encyclopedic discussion of what skin really is: the history of evolution evidenced for us on our bodies. At the same time, we are reminded that biologically, once past the initial melanin content that floats on the surface, we are constructed alike, with membranes and tissues, muscles and nerves, emotional reactions, blood, sweat and tears.

The piece closes with the characters being reborn, baptized new with tap water and awareness, as they first investigate what they see on their own skin with fresh eyes: color, metaphor, experience, emotion. Reaching forward into the audience to describe what they see when they look at the individuals in the audience before them, the room resonates with words like "honey", "mahogany", "earth", "open", "cinnamon", "cream", "golden". Suddenly, these actors are speaking the language of my artist soul and heart and hands. No person's skin color can be found in a paint tube, all luminous and convincing skin is painted with equal parts light and shadow, warmth and coolness, subtle combinations of dioxazine purple and lavender reflections, of sienna and ocher and cadmium red, oxides and cerulean and titanium white, just as we are all colorful reflections of our environment and history. The actors find in us, the audience, the broad palette of colors and emotions that an artist begins with, all of the colors that will build a final product, a creative incarnation, a child born of inspiration and passion.

Just as this piece was born from the intellectual coupling of brilliant, inspired and passionate people.

Welcome to the Cypher.

Prayer for the dying

2010-06-02T05:37:00.000-07:00

What is there to say? Taking the biggest scariest risk ever has been one of the best choices I've ever made. I dropped, left, threw away everything I couldn't carry, and moved to New York. No job, few friends... only the knowledge that somewhere out there, someone needed exactly what I have to offer. I now sell a designer's jewelery on the weekends at a beautiful street market and am interviewing with companies like Polo Ralph Lauren.

A beloved professor told me about his experience in NYC, before I realized the desperate reasoning that our conversations really consisted of, described a feeling of being packed in with commuters, of rushing on mass with a large body of other people, unindividual, faceless, pointless.

Like a mirror, we choose what we see.

Since being here, I am constantly enthralled with the flood of individuality that surrounds me. Every once in awhile, there are the ghosts of people I've known in the past, specters with faces I sharply remember, from high school, from college, people who might know private, vulnerable things about me, but are merely dopplegangers, look alikes, God chuckling as I am being reminded that I am connected to some larger fabric of the universe.

I have found, in this beautiful city, everything I need to live my life to its depth and breadth. Constantly stumbling on more of the quaint, bizarre, modern, profound, having so many random interactions that spawn connections, revelations, direction, purpose...

but there are things happening in parts of the country that are a deep part of me the rocks me to the core. Yesterday was the first day of hurricane season - and the gulf is a minefield, a disaster, choked with oil that refuses to capped off. Hurricanes are the earth's way of cleansing, exfoliating... with the steady increase in the water temperature, they have grown to consistently massive sizes in the last decade. How will they respond to the current state of the gulf? We already deal with the red tide, the algae that was spawned from run off polluted water from the mississippi and now rocks the gulf coast by sucking up all of the oxygen from the water and killing all forms of coastal life. How will the beaches of my childhood, where I swam while still in the womb, the only place I truly deeply call home... how will they look after this disaster?

how my heart behaves.

2010-04-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

Rich dark coffee and rich, crooning 50's style music throbbing through the coffee shop. A profound sexiness fills the air, screaming with electricity and independence. It is overcast and moody outside, surprisingly autumnal after the summery days of the previous week, and the coming thunderstorms are metaphorically foreshadowed by today's bizarre intensity. One of my favorite people in the world, a most daring and independent individual decided to call me, further tickling my sense that the wind is changing, and beautiful mysterious things are around the corner. And I knew she would appreciate how Audrey Hepburn in Funny Girl I seemed today, I often think of her when inhaling a dark, perfectly made latte with a delicate lacy design floating on top. I feel the strength and sexiness of being alone, of being strong and quiet and powerful to the core of my scorpio self. Something has been asleep, afraid, I'm not even sure, but I feel it waking now, and calling opportunity to me like an irresistible force.

I'm ready now.

Come, Michael Buble, let's croon together, you and I, while I make manifest my seductive lifestyle plans for a fast approaching future.

Cry me a river... oh cry me a river. i've cried a river over you.

2010-03-30T19:53:00.000-07:00

Surreal to wait for a bus in the deep southern darkness, reminded me of a Miyazaki like image. I can see how he came up with the idea of a spirit bus, as in the darkness, each pair of headlights flows past me, gliding like twin souls. Waiting and watching, jumpy and pacing, the behemoth buses are silent in the distance, orange streaks of light hurtling towards me, but looking like slow motion, like an afterthought, the bodies of them blocking any headlights behind them. They move through the traffic like gaping holes in the flood of concrete and winking lights, with alien shaped strings of light floating towards me, everything with its own little halo, thanks to my poorly cleaned glasses and tired eyes.

In New York recently, with my lover and best friend, we groped through the fading light through harlem, hoping to find her new apartment before the ghosts of the homeless and mentally ill came seeking us out. Coming up on a park that descended steeply before us, I looked out and saw a body of water stretching out before me, the lights from the buildings winking at us from their reflections in the water, writhing playfully in the dark. Extremely confused, I stopped in frustration, as we were supposed to be heading inland, not towards the hudson, and we had already dragged our luggage through the subways and on a cab.

When I paused to express my severe annoyance, the vista changed, as my eyes caught up with my brain, as Christina laughed at my mistaken identification, as my visually trained perception clicked into place. we were standing over a late night rush, and the silent ebb and flow of the traffic had at first registered as water and reflected light.

Big City Survival Guide from a small town girl with big ideas.

2010-03-30T13:04:00.000-07:00

RULE #1:

ALWAYS assume the people around you are crazy, until they exhibit some obvious form of coherent thought.

i.e. people sitting next to you on the bus, that guy drinking his starbucks, those annoying guys that hand out coupons and follow you through times square talking about your eyes, the crazy fucks that post random personal bullshit on your professional blog...

RULE #2:

Just because they write "homeless" or "veteran" on their ridiculous pieces of cardboard, doesn't mean they don't have a perfectly lovely home and beautiful family they go back to after you've coughed up your pity change. *

*please see the section referring to stepfathers

anyway my dear little phoenix, feel better soon and try not to have so many regrets

2010-03-27T15:04:00.000-07:00

invaded. i feel deeply hostile and invaded that my tool for accessing the collective, my creative discussion with myself that i have used to define my writing style and direct a professional body to consider my writing as a skill set i have to offer has somehow been misunderstood for some tortured desperate plea for a hero, in the shape of a figure i exorcized years ago.

Awareness. it begins with self awareness, a most elusive creature. the fabric of the universe has fallen into a most compelling pattern, bringing the sewage to the surface, laid bare and unapologetic before all of us. these times are not for the fragile hearted, and i hope the country comes out scrubbed clean of delusions and more sure of our priorities. love is not enough to sustain us. it can fill us and invigorate us, give us purpose and passion and joy, but its very existence demands a glaring awareness that when it is gone we will be empty, bare, less than we were before we knew it. so we hoard it. we try to bottle it up for a rainy day, build a fortress of jealousy and questions to protect it from an atomic blast of reality, and in doing so, like a flame, we take away the very oxygen it thrives on - spontaneity, freedom, lightness of being.

i always knew my past would bubble up and threaten to eat away at my sense of wholeness. I have been stocking up for that time, building an elaborate defense against a villian and a vanity that i barely remember. similarly, in love, i found the minute i stumbled gracelessly and passionatley upon it, i began the terrified countdown for when it would eventually eradicate my sense of self, and with that , my existence.

i believe this is a love letter. the love letter of a cynic.

i don't believe in forever, words that made me cringe when they fell so easily from her perfect, unappreciated lips. i know forever is a joke, a ploy, a simplistic human creation to hopelessly define the smallness of our existence in the universe... but quixotically i fathom the intensity of my passion in that same term; something i feel i could never find a match in, the depth and breadth of my emotional commitment. part of me can see the dance of our souls and see her for what she truly is: my soulmate in so complete a form that lifetimes and human lovers and simple words will never have the capacity to define. that part of myself knows no fear, and has unending faith in the truth of that fact... but some deep unapproachable, illogical part of myself that i have refused to acknowledge reacts to the reality of my humanity in so sharp and fast and painful a voice, i am helpless to the tidal wave of my hideously human emotions like a thing possessed. jekyll and hyde must have been written by a similar soul.

i've been caught in a psychological mirror for the first time in my life, presented with the reality of who and what the world was seeing... what the love i had so vehemently protected... i finally saw the fortress of my love for the cage it had become. i exstinguished the flame by which i was trying so desperately to see by, and the voice of an equally strong and powerful woman fell deaf on my ears. i didn't know i lost the light, because i was blind.

so maybe the mirror was there the entire time... but what good is a mirror to the visually impaired? what good is words of love or hate to a person who cannot hear?

that elaborate fortress has served me no purpose. i sit here broken and empty not from a lack of love, since i had long since lost it, but broken from what i finally saw when i opened my eyes and gaped in horror at the reality of my fears manifested. like an alcoholic in a 12 step program, i want to reach out and ask forgiveness to those who were swept up in the deluge of my obsessive, controlling destructive love, more powerful as its own entity than i could ever have guessed. i have somehow missed that this romantic misanthropic beast had filled my form and consumed all of my relationships, its hunger and greed deeper than an uncharted ocean, fathomless. it seems everything i touch crumbles away, receding like a nightmare, like light from the day, turning into night horrors as the words fell from my lips.

i have met the beast finally. the doppleganger that robbed me of my joy, and consumed the love that filled me like oxygen. for fear of unleashing the monstrosity of my fear and jealousy, all i can do is walk away. walk slow and steady, ignoring the ache in my soul that i left with her. i can't look back or i'll lose my nerve.

all i can say is that i did it out of love. for love.

still love.

forever.

god, women and fairytales

2010-03-19T20:58:00.001-07:00

wandering lost and heartbroken through the west village, trying to lose myself and this profound sense of loss in its quaint beauty, i walked past a shop window and paused. the cat statue in the window looked so real that i had to double back and really look at its suppleness. it was real fur, but had none of the stiffness of a stuffed creature. that is one skilled taxidermist, i thought to myself. then it blinked.

leaning back to see what the establishment was, much to my amusement, i realized it was a psychic's place. interesting, cause the word psychic was nowhere to be found. just the neon script in the front window that read: past, present, future. never has something felt so cosmic or meant to be. i rang the doorbell. a scrunched up old lady pushed the cage looking door open and squinted up at me. i asked what she offered and her prices, which were extremely reasonable compared to psychics i've encountered in the past. with nothing but a check card to offer, she sent me across the street to an atm. i took out 40 bucks.

the reading that i chose was a double palm psychic evaluation for 25 dollars. she spoke with a slightly foreign, but strongly new york accent and demanded my right palm and cupped gently, looking into its shadowed crevices. than she began telling me my life. my two crippling relationships, the seriousness of my feelings for my recent lover, the depth of my pain, the intensity of the baggage she carries with her, my recent decision to change my life and move to new york, the resentment towards my one parental figure, towards all my parental figures, my inability to connect with men so strong and clear that she paused to ask if i'd ever even been with a man sexually, my struggle to find a voice, that i opened myself up to the wrong people, untrustworthy people, my stagnation in the environment i was currently living in, even she saw a trip i had been considering the possibility of quietly in the back of my mind. she also had some intriguing comments about the next few months that are exciting to contemplate.

"she loves you very much" she told me. i know, and i don't know. "do you believe in god?" she asked. yes, in my own way. an answer to which she chuckled at. "you are so talented, but you are disconnected from your spirituality. you want things so strong that they come to you, but they always end badly and you don't really know where it is you lost the thread." i couldn't speak, i was too busy sobbing. "you have felt like you have no purpose, haven't you? you are happy on the outside, but on the inside it is not so."

"but i can help you. let me think and search, because i do not believe this bad karma to be your own. someone somewhere gave you there emotional scars, their negativity has damages some of your chakras, you know what chakras are? and there is scar tissue lingering still." funny, i grew up speaking of chakras and auras, tarot and karma, and it seems she can read my comfort with the language she speaks in. i haven't spoken these kinds of spiritual words since i started dating my last roman catholic girlfriend, and it was like greeting an old friend.

"i charge for this service only 75 dollars." amused, thoughtful, i could only honestly say i didn't have that much in my bank account. she told me, she would take what i could give her, and she would give it all back if she couldnt figure out how to help. so i left her the 40 i had taken out, and left with specific instructions. i was to locate a yellow rose, cut the stem short (the length of a pen), get in the shower, and meditate under the stream of water while i held the rose to my solar plexus. my sternum, the place in between my breasts where my girlfriend snuggled into when she woke from nightmares in the dark.

interesting, the revelations that come when you pause to really think about something, with no fear, and no remorse, when you hold out your arms and ask for help, to the empty room, the steam from the shower swirling around me, from the small piece of sunshine cupped to my chest that swooned open in the heat as it gracefully collected the rivulets of water and my burning, salty tears.

so i was there the next morning, to bring her the rose that meditated with me in the shower, and slept under my pillow, soaking up my tortured dreams, and handed it to her when she asked for it. "i will take it with me to church" she says, "and i will pray over every petal, while the wax from the candle drips, you understand?" yes. i am not about to question this intense, loving mysticism. "this weight you carry is not from god, if it were, i would not be able to help you. it is from a person, and i will find it so we can clear away the scar tissue." she's looking for someone who hurt me... but to be honest, there are so many sad insignificant instances that could lead up to the trauma she describes. she asked if something dark happened on my father's side, a suicide maybe, but i have no answer for her, as my grandmother with 7 different husbands in her lifetime, the gifted astrologer who taught my mother everything she knew is little more than fairytale to me, a myth i grew up hearing about. aside from her, there is a sister that ended up in an insane asylum, and my father who fancied himself a warlock and disappeared during the early years of my cognitive development. it strikes me sometimes, how bizarre and mythical my life sounds, especially when so much of my knowledge was fed to me in the form of glorified and emotional memories. it often seems that i've had to construct my early childhood from someone else's loves and disappointments, fears and romanticized way of dealing with their reality, so it didn't seem so lonely. i'm not surprised this scrunchy old lady sees other peoples hurt weighing me down. that is, in utter truth, the story that is my life.

she sends me away with more homework. she pulls out 4 sage leaves, pale and soft with a fine downy white coat of fibers, and instructs me to light 2 tonight and cleanse my aura, and to do the same with the next 2 the following day. sage was used by the native americans to chase away dark spirits and purify the atmosphere. the leaves burn like incense, and emit a strong herby odor, that is usually combatted with burning sweet grass at the same time (as my mother haughtily reminded me, a running critique that interrupts my explanation of my experience.). once again, i am struck by the familiarity of this act, like deja vu almost, and i am momentarily sad that i let so much of where i had come from get forgotten. for however fabricated my evolution and existence might be, and subject to the whims and memories of emotional and absent minded people, it is all i have that ties me to this world, and this lifetime.

the mormons have become my friends, and they stop by in their rounds and kindle my sense of being connected to some community. they broke up the loneliness and monotony of my first few weeks in richmond. recently in our talks, one of them asked a favor of me. he wanted me to ask god if he loved me. i immediately informed him that i had no doubt of the reciprocity of a greater power than myself, i do not fear a lack of faith in being a natural part of a powerful being. "no" he said. "please ask." ok fine. whatever. but later, in the stillness of my room, reading a book filled with jewish mysticism and kabbala, i contemplated that strange request. the room was suddenly filled with a stillness so deep i was falling into it, everything was saturated and every single texture was perfectly discernible... and i was so terrified i couldn't voice the words. so when this ancient and earnest little lady tells me i am not spiritually connected, i have to stop and think... i have heard this before.

just so stories.

2010-03-16T15:04:00.000-07:00

oh sunshine. it has been a long cold winter. i dream of the beach, and curl up into a tight little ball without the warmth of my girlfriend to stretch out against.

exausted and overwhelmed, i've decided to lie low during my trip in NYC for this one decadent evening... responses from publishing companies, work i will be going home to... i'm just going to let it go. be just another human being for the evening.

hand somebody else the world i have on my shoulders for a few sweet moments, and just enjoy the fading sunshine.

girls and burlesque

2010-02-19T12:24:00.000-08:00

breakfast and puppies.

2010-02-13T11:19:00.000-08:00

sooo got a few things on my plate at the moment, but here are the pieces i sent up for a show in new york. i was kinda rusty, but i got it done and sent out. we'll see how it goes.

girls in tight dresses who drag with mustaches.

2010-02-13T11:09:00.001-08:00

this is the way, it's the way that we live.

musings from santaland

2010-01-19T18:48:00.000-08:00

what kind of childhood experiences lead a person to grow up and follow the path of professional santa?

not all santas take it seriously, often it's just a job that comes up for a few months every year... but not my santa.

the first few weeks after thanksgiving, we had children arrive in short bursts, with lots of spare time for coffee runs and chats with st.nick. it never ceased to be fascinating, watching a cantankerous old man making snarky comments to us and overheating in a vermillion suit suddenly become that jolly red cheeked man that haddon sundbloom painted into history on every coca cola can in the 1950's. he was santa clause, and bells on the roof, and gingerbread smells, and presents under the tree, and christmas lights, and he was Magnificent. reaching forward to take chubby little hands into his cheap white gloves, i was always humbled as i watched the children see past the worn costume and pretend leather boots to the crinkles at the corner of his wintery blue eyes the looked out over his wire frame glasses perched at the end of his pink nose and see the magic hiding within his earthly body. his ability to guess the children's ages accuratley as they stumbled, giggled, bounced, ran up to him was impeccable.

santa has a similar bizarre effect on grown ups too, coming to us through the touch and go of the masses. old broken men wandering through the mall came to tell my santa about their surgeries and survival, old women came out of the woodwork to flirt, and to sing to him, to make him bear witness to their age and the generations they gave birth to, adults found themselves confessing, touching, laughing to this crotchety old man from colorado.

he's magic.

sometimes, we get lucky. sometimes everything is ok.

2010-01-13T13:20:00.000-08:00

Walking through the crumbling museum district today, on a crazed search for coffee in perfect temperatures and golden sunlight filtering through the lush growth of monument avenue... I've found the best cup of coffee in Richmond, at a weird, shifty corner, across from a 7-11. Nothing makes one's day better than being handed a beautiful cup of coffee with a delicate creamy foam flower floating on it in perfect shades of pale mocha and rich browns. I forgot to worry about the dingy atmosphere, cause it took me back to a memory much preferred:

I was in the young professional quarter of Washington D.C. a few months ago, on a road trip from LBI to Richmond, crashing overnight with a friend and her roommates. She doesn't shave anything, doesn't feel the need to, wears loose fitting thrift store finds, and has an obvious chest tattoo that escapes delicately out of her shirt. Everyday she rides her bike to work at a government office dealing with green design and environmental technology... I think she edits descriptions of the stuff that goes on, or something along those lines. She is hysterical, and it excites me to no end that our government is becoming progressive enough to accept nontraditional individuals into their workforce. She directed me and my travel buddy to a coffeehouse on our way out of town, before she pedaled off into the morning fog. We pulled up to a shack. A shack where we were heckled by a homeless person across the street as we walked up warped boards through a door... And it was heaven inside. An ocean of warm, shining mahogany flooded with morning sun, large white coffee cups all with intricate floating designs atop fresh brewed espresso. And we were the only ones there who weren't sporting a security badge on our hips. What a seductive, titillating atmosphere.

On my walk back to the apartment in Richmond, I walked past a jam session of the jazz kind, pouring out of an ancient row house, took a breath, smiled into my coffee and felt like all was right in my world.

let the sun shine in.

2010-01-13T07:43:00.000-08:00

meet dudley and lucky. Two of the most spoiled, adorable and slightly annoying in a good hearted way dogs being raised in the west end. we very much appreciated spending a week in their multi million dollar house with them while their owners were away.

I absolutley loved lucky's long legs, but when the munchkin, dudley chose to roll around in slow motion on the carpet, in the sunshine... i couldn't help pulling out my new camera and snapping some glamour shots. in most of these pics, dudley looks like a muscular little badass, but in truth he has a droopy little whiner that liked to steal dirty underwear and chew the crotches out.

Santa was very against the idea of pets. he told me a story once of the neighborhood cat man at his home in colorado, and how all of his cats started using the sandbox he built for his very young grandson as a gigantic littlerbox. what did he do? he set up huge lobster traps and drove into the mountains and deposited all of the cats in the wilderness. when the catman came by looking for his cats, santa just shrugged his shoulders and told him to start keeping them in the house.

i guess pink cows make strawberry milk,

2009-12-29T13:06:00.000-08:00

and that santa clause has to die eventually.

so finally i have a few sweet moments to recount how got to the here and now. i'm sitting at a granite ocean of countertop, surrounded by the trappings of a multi million dollar house, while its human occupants are away. we are babysitting the dogs actually. i can't remember the last time i was surrounded by so much quiet... and it is marvelous.

back in october, awaiting the return of my passionately unresolved and briefly estranged girlfriend, i was desperatley searching for jobs. having given up on the fancy corporate design jobs that the pedigree of my degree states that i deserve... i had resorted to searching temp xmas work on craigslist. yes, not only can i say it without flinching, i also check it on a weekly basis now. my work as a nude model for the plethora of art institutions was wonderful, but i knew the winter break was approaching fast, and i didn't want my relationship to suffer from my potential neediness of support in the winter months, but no matter how lowly seeming the jobs i was applying for were, the more the complete lack of ANY response was wearing at my feelings of being worth anyone's respect. until i recieved a craigslist forwarded to me by my girlfriendish.

santa clause? like, be an elf? um... i'm still young enough for it to be acceptable, and its potently ridiculous nature made it clear to me that not only was it something i should do be for i die, but that the time was now.

here are my exploits in santa land.

On paper, the universe should be empty. But it's full of stars and planets and charming French villages and so on.

2009-10-04T14:33:00.000-07:00

"A theory called supersymmetry could account for this: It states that every fundamental particle had a much more massive counterpart in the early universe. The electron might have had a hefty partner that physicists refer to as the selectron. The muon might have had the smuon. The quark might have had ... the squark. Many of those supersymmetric partners would have been unstable, but one kind may have been just stable enough to survive since the dawn of time. And those particles might, at this very second, be streaming through your body without interacting with your meat and bones. They might be dark matter.

By smashing pieces of matter together, creating energies and temperatures not seen since the universe's earliest moments, the LHC could reveal the particles and forces that wrote the rules for everything that followed. It could help answer one of the most basic questions for any sentient being in our universe: What is this place?
Most physicists believe that there must be a Higgs field that pervades all space; the Higgs particle would be the carrier of the field and would interact with other particles, sort of the way a Jedi knight in Star Wars is the carrier of the "force." The Higgs is a crucial part of the standard model of particle physics—but no one's ever found it."
- national geographic article on the god particle

remind anyone of golden compass?
it's the facilities to test this kind of theory that aid 2012 fears of creating a black hole- high powered particle collision. to try to reacreate the conditions of big bang seem similar to eve partaking in the apple: she was reaching for the knowledge that god had... and the vanity of that craving according to the bible is why they were expelled from heaven. is that a simplified metaphor for the audacity of recreating big bang conditions? punishment for seeking forbidden knowledge?

so we backtrack to our most original conditions to see if we can't recreate those reactions that have brought us to where we are... i wonder if that doesn't somehow find its mirror in popular culture as we are reconsidering the stories that lead our childish, early cognitive brains and fears to where they are now as we are adults, by recreating things like "Where the Wild Things Are"... which promises to be a deep discussion about the reason and psyche of a child, which we all have been at some point in time, it is impossible to imagine that something of this nature wouldn't affect absolutely every audience who experiences it.

in other news, i really want to make gourmet truffles.

she's so thirsty, she'd even drink my tears.

2009-09-30T14:43:00.000-07:00

what can i say? life is pretty f'in sweet right now. modeling makes me feel strong, and feminine in a way few other things i've felt can. bossa nova jazz speaks to a sexy place in my soul, and now that i have my mac back with its new hard drive, i can play the radio stations of my choice through the miracle that is itunes.

i can feel my rapport with the artistic community growing, my life is now filled with a myriad of momentary critiques and random conversations with illustration giant, sterling hundley. it was interesting modeling for his class yesterday, but i am hesitant to say i agree with his approach. like my feelings on the illustration academy, i feel like his approach is one that works for some... but i wonder if his methodology doesnt put the cart before the horse, so to speak. the class was focusing on silhouetting the human figure, to really be sensitive to the nuances of the form one is looking at, you have to be able to SEE them. when looking at the figure, in traditional figure drawing classes, you begin by drawing the large shadow shapes, and learning what muscles lie under the skin to create the peaks and valleys, the bony landmarks and such. the longer you look, suddenly the more you see, the BETTER you see what is really there, that the human figure is rife with so many subtle variations of planes that give birth to thousands of subtle shadows. but how do you know what to look at when you haven't been asked to look for those things? the illustration academy is a stronghold of already accomplished artists with a firm grasp on what they are asked to look at, so i could well understand how people like hundley's approach could be an ultimate experience of freeing the learned from the constraints of their schooling, but like any language, one must learn the structure and rules before they can make poetry.

i have found a lot of the students on this campus really focusing on the contour, the outside line, as i have commented before... i suspect that more than one teacher is communicating the importance of the shape of the outside.

in other news, i might be teaching some workshops at the virginia museum of fine arts in the spring. we'll see what kind of curriculum i can pull together and submit. it's interesting that i've managed to avoid the economic implosion by latching onto the one part of america that will always exist: the school system. there will always be parents who will pay whatever it takes to get their kids a degree, as one final lesson before kicking them out of the nest. so i can always bank on a modeling job for that reason alone. it is big business. i walked away from school with a tremendous amount of skills under my belt, but not a lifetime of life experience or a shiny new job handed to me. i have to fight and dance for it, get lost and rediscover myself, but thanks to the security of the american university and their often useless art degrees, i will be secure in their need for figure models.

ever since i met you on a cloudy monday, i can't believe how much i miss the rain.

2009-09-24T08:55:00.000-07:00

finally, stilted and cringing, i drew yesterday. stiff fingers, and bizarre painful yearning, i wanted to. i wanted to record the poorly put artwork on the wall of the coffee shop, and the cheesy guy that wishes he could be a mac ad. it was too beautiful not to.

its been hard watching these students draw, and know what training and skill is inside of me, but i wonder now if a sketchbook was always an entire novel of images that could become the worst weight i've ever experienced: failure. i never drew for me, i drew for other people, i drew to remember things, i drew cause i had to achieve a grade, or study a form for later painstaking illustration, but never for me. just because i saw something witty, and wonderfully human, something that struck me with its wry sense of tragic comedy, to capture a moment, a whisper of mortality.

these art students have it wrong. the ones i'm modeling for are so concerned with the contour, the outermost edge, the vague outline of what makes a pose what it is, not the form, the sense of weight, not the power of a thoughtful, contemplated gesture.

its about looking for that particle, that line, the subtle crease that makes the whole drawing, the scene, the charcoal or pen on paper... finding the moment in a gesture, the shape of being human.

so its coming back. the discourse finding its way to my fingers, the truths i know about illustrating life awakening in my hands that have been numb for some time now. since i have no one to seek favor from, no grades to fight for, i can let go of my intense fear of failure, of not having the best, most skillful drawing to show, and think and observe through my hands, rather than my terrified heart.

a throne fit for a tyrant, a lost soul, a woman-child.

2009-09-15T13:17:00.000-07:00

i feel a little like alice almost everywhere i go, but at this stage of the game i feel like i'm looking into a slightly warped mirror, where all the aspects of my schooling that were so rigorous and seriously approached, are still earnestly being sought, but by people with a slightly skewed aesthetic. i can't tell if it's comical or scary, but along with the shock of my personal life enfolding viciously on itself, i find this skewed viewpoint wherever i turn, whatever mirror i happen to glance in, warped in so subtle a way it feels like i have no control of any of the elements around me. falling, as it were, tumbling head over heels into my own rabbit hole, my personal version of hell, where i have been given responsibility like a poorly beaded necklace, and have merely tangled and broken the string that held the pieces of myself, and the aspects of my world around me in some vaguely organized capacity.

this is my life now.

on the floor of my soul, scrambling around trying to scrape all these lost aspects of myself into some cohesive place of organization and prioritizing.

somewhere there's my fancy new degree, trying so hard to feed my body and mind, to be a light in this stupid, blinding darkness. but that is not all of me. that is not even half of me. my creative expression isn't simply bound by the context of my fancy art education, and my skills are much broader than that curriculum implies. i open the windows and sing like a fucking disney princess as a way of calming my soul, i model cause my body has a rough strong grace and fluidity that always craved the freedom and control of dance. i write with a fierce coyness, and make sharp stinging points, but where do i go to entertain those atrophied parts of myself?

after four years of college, i have to find them all, express them all. and like any body part that falls asleep and is slapped back to life, it hurts. i am more than just my degree. i am me with or without it. i am more than my looks, i am more than my fears. i am not just part of a human being. somewhere, at sometime, i was a whole one.

plasma gasification facility

2009-09-14T15:08:00.000-07:00

was asked by a not for profit group to do an architectural concept sketch of this particular kind of waste processt, in accordance with the sudan project, or some such group. was also asked to develop a concept for a school to be built in sudan, as well as some of the logos involved in branding aspects of the project. this was done wih the paint bucket tool in photoshop.

food for thought.

2009-09-14T14:54:00.000-07:00

there are whispers of one in the works...

hello jack skellington, do you mind if i am nude?

2009-09-10T09:08:00.000-07:00

apparently not.

an awkward life drawing class, to say the least, i found myself posing next to a worn down, sunken in and popping out skeleton like those from an anatomy class in the 70's. snickers from the students (exacerbated by my facial expressions i'm sure) were completely unnoticed by the professor as she struggled to twist the ancient skeleton into a vaguely human stance... the feet really wanted to point to the ceiling no matter what she did... and then she had them draw me, then superimpose the bones of the skeleton on their drawing of me. and she told them to start at the shoulders. THE SHOULDERS. not with large body masses, aka the rib cage and pelvis to establish proportion and correct body gesture, not to pick out the bony landmarks on my body that show you what bone structures lie underneath...

wtf.

later, she brings out a blocky planar sculpture of a very masculine head/bust and has them draw it. are you ready for this? she then had them draw my sharp, feminine features on top of their drawing of the uber masculine facial structure... let me share with you one of the better renderings in the class of this exercise:

i grinned and took it all in stride, as the maniacal comedy that is my life, and waved nonchalantly to the people in the parking garage that is level with the huge open window i was facing on the third story of the fine arts building.

especially when i apologized for all the charcoal from the floor that had covered my feet and smeared itself all over my legs, because for some reason the professor was inspired by my annoying black soles, and asked me to scrunch up so the students could draw my black feet, face and hands in the same drawing/pose. i'm not gonna talk too much about the footprints i left on the wall, or the continued pinkness on my buttcheeks. at least you could tell i was wearing bottoms when i got sunburned.

cup of coffee and a calendar.

2009-09-06T15:35:00.000-07:00

these are photos via the phone of the entrance, side, and inside of the sculpture class i've been posing in. thursday was an interesting amalgamation of experiences. from the starbucks people who didn't know what a latte was and ran around like chickens with their heads cut off while i described it, to the vegetarian burrito one of the kids sculpting my nude figure handed me, to finding myself at the PRIVATE opening of sterling hundley's first show where i conversed with inlaws and listened to crying babies, to ending the evening out with the gallery owner and a small group of close individuals...

i had an awesome discussion with sterling's grandmother, a tiny, proper speaking woman in pearls,clinging to a fancy teal walker. we discussed geneology and sterling's paintings, looked for faces in the random spatters and considered the beauty of grafitti as it continues to evolve. sterling's work was an interesting exploration of principles i've aways been fond of looking for and talking about, and our pointed communication followed those veins of perception and discovery, the abstracted study of design seems to be an interesting turning point, and i can't wait to see how it affects his commercial illustration.

too bad i came the night before a ringling reunion took place. sterling assured me he'd tell them how sad i was to miss them.

so i'm in north carolina for the holiday weekend, and promptly layed out on the beach and burnt my buttcheeks. it hurts to sit, but i'm hoping i'll have tan cheeks by tuesday for my next modelling session.

a pink hotel, a boutique and a swingin hot spot.

2009-09-03T09:47:00.000-07:00

I was called in on the fly, cause a model bailed at the community college. cool. on it. until i shaved my legs with the crappiest razor on the face on the planet and my legs swelled into painful ridiculous things pretending to resemble limbs.

by the time i got there it was ok.

my first gesture class were i wasn't the one drawing, it was actually a lot of fun. the professor reminded me uncannily of my favorite teacher in college, but about 20 yrs his junior, you know, not quite to the tearing work off the wall and crumbling it up stage.

so this evening, after my sculpture modelling session, i was contemplating attending sterling hundley's gallery opening, and i've heard some whispers that a ringling compadre, animator turned inspired illustrator francis vallejo might also be attending.

sounds interesting.

we'll see how today turns out. i've been told that the sculpture class gets pungent, particularly since they use the same clay the entire semester and wrap their projects in wet t shirts that they take off for their once a week class... throwing up wouldn't be an attractive move on my part, so i'm going to try to refrain.

ta kids.

you and me should be friends.

2009-08-27T21:28:00.000-07:00

tried the whole theatre thing, found the politics and the passions not to my liking. I come from a more subtle background, one where i was expected to be more conceptual than workhorse. let's just say i wouldn't recommend summer stock. so after having my fill of fake cowboys elusive responsibilities, i find myself here, in richmond, modeling for the virginia commonweath university whilst i reach out my feelers and see what this art scene has to offer me. Residing in a beautifully ancient apartment in the crumbling outskirts of the fan district which has since become the student ghetto, i find myself in a bizarre time warp where i am still running on school time, meeting with teachers, walking into clssroom studios...

My first class was sculpture, something that was never really explored in my undergrad due to its... personal interperative nature. a tiny room, stands on casters, the 9 students and professor circled me, never more than a yard from the small square i stood on in the middle of the room. if for some reason there was a blemish on my backside, or potential wiff of sweat from booking it across town midday in overwhelming heat, well, they were well aquainted with it all, i assure you.

i enjoyed it.

and i tried to keep my inner critiques just where they were, inside of me.

women's film fest test run

2009-07-30T23:28:00.001-07:00

2009-07-30T20:54:00.000-07:00

2009-07-30T20:37:00.000-07:00

retake!

2009-07-30T19:43:00.001-07:00

2009-04-27T11:10:00.000-07:00

2009-04-20T16:53:00.000-07:00

ain't no sunshine when she's gone.

2009-04-11T17:24:00.001-07:00

2009-04-11T17:23:00.000-07:00

2009-03-29T15:14:00.000-07:00

2009-03-29T12:19:00.000-07:00

2009-03-17T19:11:00.001-07:00

2009-03-17T18:24:00.001-07:00

2009-02-27T11:52:00.001-08:00

2009-02-20T17:05:00.001-08:00

2009-02-20T17:01:00.001-08:00

2009-02-20T17:00:00.001-08:00

2009-01-18T16:16:00.000-08:00

2009-01-18T16:11:00.000-08:00

2009-01-13T19:13:00.001-08:00

Ferdinand the Bull

2008-12-04T10:05:00.000-08:00

2008-11-23T19:11:00.000-08:00

2008-11-02T19:31:00.000-08:00

tiniest sketchbook in the world.

2008-10-23T16:35:00.000-07:00

Woman in Black Theatre Poster

2008-10-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

donkeys and panthers are politcal statements.

2008-10-14T10:56:00.000-07:00

me as cheshire cat.

2008-10-09T10:04:00.000-07:00

obama

2008-10-09T10:01:00.001-07:00

self study...

2008-10-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

venus flytrap...

2008-10-09T09:39:00.001-07:00

retouch.

2008-08-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

2008-07-23T17:43:00.001-07:00

2008-07-23T17:39:00.000-07:00

2008-07-22T12:10:00.000-07:00

2008-07-22T12:06:00.000-07:00

2008-07-15T13:54:00.001-07:00

2008-07-15T13:52:00.001-07:00

2008-07-15T13:13:00.000-07:00

2008-07-15T12:54:00.000-07:00

kids summer theatre

2008-06-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

summer in gainesville

2008-06-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

2008-04-30T16:34:00.000-07:00

last figure painting of the semester!

2008-04-25T12:22:00.001-07:00

no one has any idea how happy i am to be finished with this class.

previously this semester...

2008-04-25T12:20:00.001-07:00

character design

2008-03-24T14:34:00.000-07:00

hot sauna guy

2008-03-04T11:52:00.001-08:00

child

2008-02-22T08:30:00.000-08:00

women with fruit that decided their fate

2008-02-06T08:55:00.000-08:00

turban

2008-02-05T06:44:00.000-08:00

2008-02-04T19:43:00.000-08:00

sketches done in class, but will ultimatley be used as the profile picture for my professors next couple of books that are being published soon.

Sauna Guy!

2008-02-04T19:39:00.000-08:00

2008-01-15T16:19:00.001-08:00

2008-01-15T16:18:00.002-08:00

2008-01-15T16:18:00.001-08:00

sketchbook silhouettes

2008-01-15T16:16:00.000-08:00

2008-01-08T16:19:00.000-08:00

sculpture for anthropology class i did on the subject of scarification.

sargent master copy

2008-01-08T14:20:00.000-08:00

2007-11-16T16:48:00.000-08:00

2007-11-16T16:42:00.000-08:00

2007-11-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

2007-11-02T17:49:00.000-07:00

detail

2007-10-28T16:53:00.001-07:00