physical fights feel so good. i think it's healthy to release the primal, there's so much tension in a day sometimes at the end i just want to throw up or fuck a lot or fight. tonight i want to cough until i vomit and then sleep forever with rich dreams that show me something. i don't want a morning or an afternoon but i want a night of madness.

portfolio class made me mad the english way. just listening to irena and that other dude and paul... it's like they're from a different planet. i understand everything they're saying but every atom in my body rejects it. i was convulsing inside. The huge rant about professionalism. i'm fucked. i always get personal. i put such an emphasis on the personal. i don't want to be professional, i want to pull people into my whirlwind and have them right there with me.
i like andy because he thinks about the individual and doesn't generalize a group. i need to work through some stuff. i've NEVER compromised a part of myself for anyone and it's going to be REALLY WEIRD to start editing myself now. i've always forced myself on others and made them conform to ME. now i shouldn't have pictures of naked chicks on a website or anything and it boggles my mind. is nudity offensive? I want to make transgressive art. i want to make things that challenge peoples' perceptions of what is appropriate. this is about my life. this is about how i see life. it's about sex, it's about getting out of your mind or getting deeper inside of it, it's about rock and roll, it's about getting wild, being primal, being indulgent, thinking about yourself and taking control of your life.
i'm confused.

it was really bizarre during the visiting artist lecture experiencing the tiny interactions between the artist and the illustration professors. it was like a bunch of sell outs chuckling. it was a little sad to me because i think that essentially all artists want to maintain their integrity of vision and not change their form of expression in exchange for some cash. and i find it sad that people let themselves believe that that's necessary.
call me naive
i just know that there are artists out there that DO unapologetically maintain their integrity AND are successful. and i know it's possible.

I think i figured out why i'm so weird when i talk in class. i think it's my shyness coming through in a new way. i think i'm pretty socially awkward, well, i know i am when i'm not one on one. so i think that's what's happening especially in Degree Project or when i'm really blunt.

Becoming Lucid

I don't feel so free.

i just want to think. i finally feel like a true artist.
listening to some of my classmates talk, it is overwhelming. i cannot think the way they think. i need to separate myself because it confuses me. my life path is different.
i am not afraid of anything. this is because i believe in myself. not as anything but as myself. i am not one thing but a compilation of things that exist in a completely different way--i am memories and i have been love, i am millions of atoms, we just accept to exist. my flesh is a history that belongs to everyone i've ever met.
i don't give a shit about living in illusion. but i want to live the illusion, awake.

everyone has the same dream as me.
I'm struggling with that because I don't like being the same as everyone else. yes, maybe i will be different because i will break through because i've got that weird spark inside of me. I suppress any doubts because they are poison. so i continue to search for what will make me different.


what is not different: Preoccupation with death and the simultaneous weight of trying to experience


You are your own reality and we have millions of realities to choose from
I want to feel everything
i want to smile as i die. there. that's a goal.

change

Listen to your body.

Does your throat hurt?  Have you lied to someone lately?

After every third bite ask yourself if you're still hungry?  Are you drinking enough?

Not feeling anything about a situation does not mean that it invalidates the situation for what it was, or that you don't respect the feelings you once had.

Simply thinking about the situation is a way of honoring it in all of its complexity.

Letting go is recognizing that life is change.

Ritual is an outward manifestation of your intention to move on and allow change its path.

It externally supports an interior acceptance and is valid.

I normally never listen to this kind of music, but I turned on the RADIO this morning (88.9) and for some reason these three songs felt perfect at the time.

Blitzen Trapper- Furr  i like the myth.

The Clash- Straight to Hell

Cat Power- New York  i normally HATE her.

Then I went on a new music discovery binge and leafed through the Amoeba booklet and wrote down music that sounds intriguing.

I already am familiar with this album, but I highly recommend it: Roots of Chicha

The climax of Cheap Thrills last night was Bo Diddley's "Mona."

Being Back

Good things:

dancing to (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction with Emily, singing it like we mean it.  a girl pulling me aside and telling me i'm the best dancer, she means it.  purchasing those dark green velour hot pants with belt loops.  wearing them with my cougar belt buckle and platforms.  Yesterday finding a carbon copy of the vintage fake fur jacket Alicia and I shared when we went to go see Orange Sunshine.  not eating as much and enjoying not having a stomach.  walking a shitton.  listening to Hawkwind right now.  changing his mind and behaviour pattern just by being me YEEah, baby!  feeling wild again.  walking all day in San Francisco, partying every night in the ballroom.  the neon lime green vintage micro Emily brought back from Australia for me.  drinking jack daniels from teacups.  my cousin taking it on as a personal mission to smoke my sister and me up with the best CA has to offer.  Being an animal and biting lips.  the bruise under my right shoulder.  riding a motorcycle with my kind of driver down the great highway and experiencing the most sublime happiness i've ever felt (well, tied with orgasms and Orange Sunshine shows).  living in delusion that this isn't boston.

bad things:

being real nasty to guys that i think are lame.  wanting the plane to crash coming into boston knowing i'd at least die happy.  deciding that i don't want to illustrate.  hurting one of my friends and getting the saddest poetic e-mails from her missing me.  having a terrible time writing my research report because so much has changed.  realizing the technical impossibilities of my installation.  not being on the west coast.

raw nose

margot says i need to find a way to make it fun again because otherwise i'll graduate and i won't want to draw. i know this is true. but for it to be fun, there needs to be less thought--more intuitive, because she is right again, it is a strange sort of fear that manifests as procrastination. but now i am afraid, because my degree project is the actualization of my progress towards this goal, and it is nothing like anything i have created that i would show people, it is supremely imperfect, and i'm dreading standing beside this strange bulky set-up--an element of a larger element of an installation, an appendage.
an overhead projector, a sketchy ink and pencil, a collection of watercolours and writing.

Psychedelic poster art was my first influence, and remains my main inspiration, and if i can approach an assignment with the mentality of poster design, it feels as if there are infinite creative paths, and i can draw the imagery that i love and the colours are so fun to mix, and i can experiment inside of them while i am painting.




Problem: the center bird. there are too many birds. i need to depict crows. i had a Yaqui symbol in the center in the original sketch, but it bore too much resemblance to the iron cross, and i cannot find any further Yaqui iconography anywhere on the web. Andy suggested molding it kind of to a heart, but that doesn't really have anything to do with the book, and yeah, i do think that's a little cheesy. suggestions?

so for now i'm just going to paint everything but the middle. i'm painting the organ pipe cacti right now.

ain't no easy way

i'm screwed on cupcakes, though.
i'm also getting less sick

Okay

Andy Fish has inspired me to do some self-reflective contemplating through his post on his art school daze and the e-mail he sent me.
I'm a very passionate person, but this passion can progress or regress in the same intensity, especially when fueled by negative feelings. It gets dangerous so fast. If I feel like someone is challenging me in the slightest, everything goes to shit.

heavy heavy

DO YOU LIKE THE EDITED BIT? YES or NO?




I feel like everyone carries around this immense sadness. It sits around us, hangs off our limbs like some fucked fog.

I'm beginning to SEE what I want to do with degree project.
I'm doing an installation, and there's no space on the 11th floor that's all that conducive, so I might have some work up there, but have my REAL thing somewhere else in Tower. If in Tower.
I hope that the location doesn't discourage people from checking it out.
My group in class was really helpful and I felt inspired after talking with them. I'm definitely going to project STUFF on top of other stuff and I want to make a teepee or some sort of structure people can go inside of and feel really peaceful amidst all of the sound and visual stimuli.
I want to make a headdress and matchbox altars.

On another note,
here are two more pictures of the unreal fabulous Lady Jenny





AND Heaven by Dead Meadow.

I just want to skim right off the radar for a while.
New York City

overwhelmed. escapism is always the answer

well i sleep to get back to you

yeah i sleep to get back to you

well in the daytime, i can't find you

in the daytime, just don't know what to do.

well i sleep and i couldn't dream of you

from "Sleep" by Cheval Sombre

Today I met Charlie and we talked for over an hour about his musical history and tours and at the end I asked him about muses and he says it's a drive, the need to express yourself.  That especially performing music, because there are people in front of you.  That's what separates live music as an art media from visual art, it's what makes it so much more pure of an expression.  He had me hold one end of my necklace chain and we held both ends, taut and he said this is Time, between us, right now.  We are only not alone when you and I are here right now.

rider

final compositional sketch for Detour:

colour study (see left margin):

Also did a lot with my werewolf motorcycle rider piece.

Linda says I should just set out and do one thing and that I'm thinking too much, and I should just not even think about all the other stuff until I'm done with one thing.  I really needed to hear that, and I've been really productive since.  She also mentioned the possibility of taking a couple incompletes and finishing the work over winter-break.

L.A. seems so close.

I bought a street map and tacked it up in my studio so that I can learn the neighborhoods and it will inspire me to work as hard as I can.

At the bookstore I was looking at Annie Liebowitz' American Music and there is this amazing photograph of Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry after a show at the Cow Palace in San Francisco in 1972.  Bo's carrying his own cases, and a girl is hanging around Chuck's waist.  Makes me think of the magic musicians have.

I'm listening to Fleetwood Mac's album "Then Play On," the Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green, before Stevie Nicks came into the picture.  I remember playing this record on the vintage red Braun record player in Delft with all the lights off except for the red light.  

I can't help it, I'm a very nostalgic person.

I'm feeling a little dejected.  From a number of things.  I've felt pretty isolated lately, this year I made the conscious decision to be more open to people, because I'm pretty unfair when it comes to that sort of stuff.  I have ridiculously high standards for people I take into my life, and I sort of "test" people before I bother getting to know them.  Well, I've been thinking a lot about the concept of elitism lately, and I'm definitely not done thinking about it, but it plays into this.  The thing that's bothering me is that I feel like I've made 2 or 3 good connections with people, but when I try to take the acquaintance up to the level of friendship, I end up feeling rejected.

I've never understood the concept of acquaintance, it reduces humans to Filler, to convenience to your own comfort.  You don't really learn about yourself or others through this type of relationship, it's essentially useless and superficial.  Thus, I've eliminated it from my life prior to this exercise in openness.

I'm feeling frustrated right now because this is kind of proving to me that the method I was employing before was the right one.  Acquaintance relationships leave me feeling even more alone.

Another possible factor might be that I come across as too intense, or that maybe I'm too fast.  I prefer working in a small amount of time, because I skip the bullshit.  I was talking about that with my sister.  How the concept of waiting to kiss someone or have sex is dumb; if you're feeling it: do it.

So what is it?

Does it have to do with the East Coast?  Does it have to do with my intensity or speed?  

letting go

today I had degree project and it was a really strange experience.

I came an hour late, because i'd rather go to class late than unprepared.  we were presenting our test pieces.

I felt completely railed against, and then i had to tell the backstory.  all my pieces DO have concepts, I'm still bitter about the one professor who did my semester review and wrote that my concepts are weak.  I've got concepts, you just don't have an imagination.  I guess I really like telling pieces of stories, isn't that what we're doing, anyway?  I don't know why people "can't understand" what's going on in my work.

Does that mean I'm a bad illustrator?  That I'm not communicating?

Do I care?

I don't know.  Those are all valid questions.

ANYWAY, I hate talking in front of people, and my stories are pretty personal, so I started getting really frantic and nervous and the story kind of stumbled and fell out of my mouth in this blubbering heap and I was so embarrassed by the end of it and a couple people said, "wow."  And I wanted to disappear.

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY:

That I need to let go.

Actually, I think that's the lesson of this year for me.  I don't trust people, and I guess now I don't trust myself?  I was so sure I did.  Damnit!  Maybe I just don't trust myself with art.  The big complaint in Degree Project was that my illustration did not match my experience whatsoever.  It was very fine ink work with watercolour.  I know it's true.  That's not how I approach anything else in my life.  

On a related note,

... I don't know if I'd go so far as to call myself uptight, but I know I'm definitely not laid-back.  I pretty much always want to be doing something.  It gets worse if I haven't danced lately.  I'm probably the least biggest fan of "just chilling" in existence.  Like on Friday, when Liz was taking acid with her roommates and forgot to call me and then when she did and I went over, they were all just sitting in the living room.  One girl took a blue crayon and drew an arch on a piece of paper and showed it to Jeff and was like, "Look how cool this is!  It's so beautiful!"  And he looked at it and said, "Why is it pulsating like that?"

HM LET ME THINK..MAYBE 'CAUSE YER ON ACID??

and Liz was just having Sevi teach her guitar.  I thought I was going over to party with her, you know, drink some wine, smoke, put some records on and dance in her living room till we're down to our knickers.

Nope.

The evening got even more thrilling when 4 or 5 of them left to go to the liquor store and I stayed behind with this guy who started meditating and intermittently would explode with anger at the cat, who was playing with a bell.  The worst of it was when he tried to TEACH me how to meditate, I am so adverse to being taught things without my consent.  I find it incredibly condescending, even when I know it's meant well.  THEN he told me that my body language was melancholy.

Liz' roommate Jessica came in and she's one of those girls who squeel their hiii's and I kind of cringe and throw a hey at them and pray that they go away but for some reason they decide that I am just SO COOL.  So I went to the bathroom and cried and hid in Liz' room until they came back.

Fine.  I was feeling melancholy.  But that totally wasn't what I was intending to communicate.  Plus, we'd watched a movie about letters Vietnam soldiers had sent home during the war in my 60's class that morning and I had a lot of stuff on my mind about war and what it does to people.

Eventually we ended up on the roof listening to some shit indie sleep band.  The girl was doing sexual yoga with glowsticks, Liz couldn't stop hula-hooping and was the center of attention of the guys who WEREN'T (a) withdrawn and staring at the wall, (b) goddamn meditating.

I observed this and couldn't stand it anymore.

I need to find a way to let go in a way that I won't feel compromised.  I need to extend the way I feel at shows to the way I feel when I am making art.

but how?

on muses

I think of myself more as a collector of images than an artist.  I'm not sure if I like thinking of myself as an artist, I don't really like the sound of the word.

What I aspire to be is a muse.  Lilu wrote me this:

"I was reading some of your writings lovely.  

and I have come to the very serious conclusion that some of your best pieces were inspired by men.  

now I'm very serious about what I'm going to say next so don't laugh.

I know you imagine ourself a muse to great poets, but I believe with every inch of my heart sug that you yourself were meant to find yourself a pure muse so that you may grow and use them to become a flaming success.  no use is a bad word.  you require a muse so that they may inhabit your mind and you their soul.  without one I certainly see no real hope for you dear.

Great artists who struggle to know their own potential need a muse.  someone of purity, a non-passive soul that serves only to excite.  I believe this is what you need.  

I believe you want this.

you want someone who makes you see shining stars rain down and who sends shivers to and fro round your body.  muses do this love you know that better than all.  perhaps everyone needs a muse."

The seed of this heavy realization had surfaced in my mind earlier the same day.  I realized that all of, what I consider, my most successful writings were all based or inspired by men.  Maybe that's true of my visual art as well.  

So in aspiring to be a muse to others, I need to find my own.  A muse must be self-sufficient and Create on her or his own.  S/he cannot be dependent on being an inspiration to others to feel self-satisfaction.  I think that perhaps The muse is love.  Not just romantic love, but isn't it essentially love that motivates all of us?

I must create to satiate my need for self-expression.  And I want to be a creative force to be reckoned with.  I know I am in other facets of my life, but I want it to be that way in visual art as well.

And this semester, for the first time in my life, I've decided to dedicate myself to my visual art.  In the past I've relied on other sources of expression, but I've come to realize that I just need more confidence and then I'll be able to express myself through my art the way I want to, and I'm not going to gain confidence by not taking risks.  And I need to make myself vulnerable and draw ugly things and make haneous colour choices, etc.

whatever.

all of that is boring.