Squirrely

Birds do it. Bees do it. Squirrels do it in my yard. A lot.

I had opinions that didn’t matter. I had a brain that felt like pancake batter.

Ooooh, I was in sort of a black mood tonight. Big, nasty, monster dogs chased my cats through the yard, stepping on plants I just planted, Big Sir turned his nose up at the dinner I cooked, and then I spent close to an hour on the phone with one of those credit report places, most of it on hold. My security question was “what is the name of your favorite pet”? I had typed in my hands down favorite pet (living). It didn’t work. I typed in my hands down favorite pet (dead). Didn’t work either. So I was locked out of my account. When I finally got to talk to someone (India) they insisted that I name the damn pet’s name. I told them that both of my guesses were wrong. He suggested that I name all my pets. Now, I have had a lot of pets, with a lot of stoopid names. So I start naming names like Poopiehead and Loverbutterfacepants and Dingleberry Derek. Man, I started laughing my ass off and more embarrassingly he’s laughing his ass off too. The list was long and of course the pet I named last was the secret word. Ironically, it’s the pet I actually dislike the most. I must have been high to type her in as a fave. Or maybe she’d been kissing my ass that day. Who knows. I felt bad for the operator, having to listen to my sordid pet history so I actually let him roll through his sales pitch for like fifteen damn minutes. Ultimately, I don’t think he judged me that much. I’m pretty sure they name those sacred cows some pretty hi-fucking-larious names over there in that India. Or if they don’t, they should. Makes life more fun.

I do have some bitter disgust to pass on to the art world. As if it reads this. It doesn’t.
Please, please, please for the love of all that is pure and good in this world, cease and desist using owls, deer, and skulls in art. It’s not interesting. It’s not cute. It’s not ironic. It’s stupid. And boring. And totally overdone. And completely fucking lazy. Lazy because a person doesn’t even to attach meaning to these images to show them and sell them in important places. The meaning seems to be that everyone else is using them, which isn’t meaning, it’s lemming bullshit. For some reason this keeps getting celebrated over and over. Artists, please stop using these images. Gallerists and curators, please stop showing this bullshit, Collectors. For gods sake, stop collecting it. It’s not going to be worth a g-damn dime in ten years. It’s an insult to artists who are effectively using unique, thoughtful, meaningful symbols in their work. Gah! I get all frothy mouthed about this issue.

Alright, let us not end on that note. Really quick movie reviews. As it heats up outside, I hide in movie theaters more and more. Big Sir and an animator friend dragged me to Wall-e. I had zero expectations. Actually, that's not totally true. I expected to hate it. And I didn’t. I didn’t love it, but you know, Disney preaching to me about corporations that turn people into sloths… Well, that’s a little more than I can take. But, I really liked the first hour. I wish we could have stayed there. The deserted, lost and forgotten earth was really quite beautiful. The only other movie I’ve seen is Encounters at the End of the World. What a great movie for a hot day. I really love Herzog and although it is no Grizzly Man, it is quite beautiful and interesting. Basically you get to take a trip to Antarctica with Herzog. Which I totally would have, but he never called me.

Cliché quota met

Lately, Big Sir and I have been getting up at 5:30 in the morning to go running. Who am I? I don’t even know anymore. I’ve also been going to a yoga class once a week which starts at 9am on Sunday morning. And I show up on time and not hungover or anything. Last week were asked to loop our index fingers around our big toes, while standing, and swing the arm/leg combo out to the side. Try it, your leg will feel like its starting to leave your hip socket. Actually, don’t. It’s too crazy. I also have given up coffee. And TV.

This morning while we were running not only did we see a bird catch a worm, but we heard a rooster crow. It actually went cockle-doodle-do. I mentioned this to Gypsy Prince and he said, “Wow! That reminds me of the time I was hanging out with our friend J. She was on acid, and we saw a white rabbit”.

Give that coyote a one dollar taco.

My mom lives in an assisted living facility. It is a very nice one and she is actually quite happy there. The food is pretty good, they go on outings at least once a week, she has had suitors. The people that work there have been there for years and are very warm and caring. It is the best case scenario for someone with a chronic, debilitating disease, which she has. The one real drawback is that the people who live there, die periodically. When someone dies, they put a framed picture of them by the elevator along with any announcements of pending services. When I was visiting this week, I noticed a picture of a guy I call Patchy. Patchy was actually fairly young (late 50’s) to live there. He had the diabeetus and probably other things too. He still drank and smoked and had lost a leg and an eye, hence my nickname for him. He was always really antisocial and sort of had a chip on his shoulder. I’m sure he had his reasons for his moods. As a fellow moody person, I’m not judging. I said to my mom, “Oh wow, look Patchy died”. My mom says in this very ominous tone, “We all woke up Monday morning….except him”. It was as if she’s seen the cloaked figure of Death tapping people on the shoulder during bingo. Maybe she has. She is on a lot of medication. I signed her up to go see Iron Man to get her mind off of Patchy.

Last Friday we went to meet some friends at a new bar that has like hundreds of beers. It is sort of an arty/yuppie/NY lookin’ type of bar. It’s a little fancy for our side of town. However, it is located in the middle of a neighborhood that is currently involved in a fairly active gang war. We got there 15 minutes before they opened (8pm on a Friday!) and waited outside looking desperate for a drink. They had a large, newly paved (empty) parking lot that they wouldn’t let us park in. “Employees only” we were told. So, we get in there and I’m thinking, “Two strikes on this place”. We get our drinks, which are excellent, sit for awhile on comfy, cool couches, and have a great time. The music isn’t too loud, there aren’t too many people there, the bathroom has a butterfly theme. It’s all good. Our friends get hungry, and we are too tipsy to drive. The bar only serves bags of chips. We go outside and the doorman tells us there are tacos down the street. Huzzah! We walk about a block and we see a huge grilling table on the sidewalk. It’s actually an industrial grill like you’d see in a restaurant, except there’s no restaurant, just the grill and a table with condiments on it. We get some tacos (a dollar each!) and while we are waiting for them, we see a coyote cross the street, moving fast, nose to the ground. It was one of those moments, eating illegal tacos on a darkened street, in a gang ridden neighborhood, while scavengers skulked around us, that made me glad I live here. It’s exciting even when nothing is really happening. We get back to the bar and the bartender gets pissed at us for eating the tacos inside. The reason being, “It’ll smell like a taco truck in here”. Strike three!

I'm learning things about myself

Because I symptom google like a good hypochondriac, I learned that this one thing I have, that I thought was slowly killing me, is not only meaningless, it has an awesome name. I have Exploding Head Syndrome.

From Wiki:
Exploding head syndrome is a condition that causes the sufferer to occasionally experience a tremendously loud noise as if from within his or her own head, usually described as an explosion, roar or a ringing noise. This usually occurs within an hour or two of falling asleep, but is not the result of a dream and can happen during the day as well. Although perceived as tremendously loud, the noise is usually not accompanied by pain. Attacks appear to change in frequency over time, with several attacks occurring in a space of days or weeks followed by months of remission. Sufferers often feel a sense of fear and anxiety after an attack, accompanied by elevated heart rate. Attacks are also often accompanied by perceived flashes of light (when perceived on their own, known as a "visual sleep start") or difficulty in breathing. The condition is also known as "auditory sleep starts." It is not thought to be dangerous, although it is sometimes distressing to experience.

Exploding Head Syndrome. God, that makes me feel so much better. Now I can focus more time on my twitching finger.

What's up scro?

Here's a few unrelated things I've noticed lately.
1. If you drive in a big city with lots of traffic, a good way to get around traffic is to drive through the neighborhoods that white people won't go in. Chances are the neighborhoods aren't as bad as their reps and there is a lot less traffic. One tip: At red lights, don't look too closely at anyone in the car next to you.
2. When you go hear live music, and the drums are really, really loud, so loud that you can feel them beating in your chest and their rythym joins the rythym of your heart... That's a really good feeling.
3. There really isn't anything manmade that can match the pleasure of eating cold, ripe, summer fruit on a hot day.

on sight

Recently, we went to a park and made paintings. This is something that used to be at the center of my artistic process, but over the last five years, has totally disappeared from said process. What happened? The short answer is academia. But, who cares about short answers.

For me academia was a good thing. I am eternally grateful that I went back to school. It forever changed my life for the better. I had to rethink the ways I was used to working and question what mattered to me. This led to new and interesting challenges, which led to changes, which made more people interested in what I'm doing. Communication being the end goal. This being said, there are certain things that are frowned upon in a contempory, academic setting. One of them is making paintings that looked cutting edge fifty years ago. Which mine did. My process used to be, go out and make drawings and paintings of an area. Collect items from that area (mostly rocks and bits of things). Go back into the studio and make finished paintings by combining all these things. Sometimes I would flip the sketches over and tear them up and then reassemble them into collages that I would paint from. Sometimes I would superimpose the rocks and detritus over the landscape. I would be as complicated or as simplified with this process as I felt the piece required. Sometimes I would throw all the stuff on the ground, mix it up and make a painting. I sort of left it up to intuition. Looking back, this turned out to be the real lesson. I learned to hone and trust my intuition, which is invaluable to me now.

But sitting in a place, taking it in, really taking it in, was at one time, the center of joy in my life. I doubt my paintings from this time communicate this. Although I do think they communicated my loneliness and detachment from the world, which people only want to look at, if it mirrors theirs. Mine didn't. I was definitely more interested in staring at the world, than participating in it. Although I now know that this is unhealthy, a very small part of me still remembers the pleasure and freedom of checking out. I guess the reason I equate on site painting with detachment, is because I was a concentrating, solitary figure in a moving world. A part, yet apart. What happened is that there wasn't an exchange beyond my pure reaction to the world. Now that sounds great. Pure is good. Pure is pure. Pure sounds like something good, nay, great art strives for. But ultimately it is a closed system. The dialogue ends where it starts. Never reaching into our shared world. At least for me it didn't. And I stuck with that shit for about eight years, so you can't say I didn't put the time in.

I guess the major change was more me than academia. I grew up, got in touch with my shit etc... Academia helped me through it though. It holds you accountable or more accurately, it makes you hold yourself accountable. Especially, if you pay for it yourself.

I think we are going to make this a regular thing. The "we" componant also being the major difference. No more solitary figure in the landscape. Now there are two figures hunched over concentrating. And better snacks.

So we went and made paintings in the park. I had no ambition, except to savor the moment. We found a great spot. On the lip of a canyon, looking directly at the other lip, with the city peeking out from behind a spikey bush to our right. A red tailed hawk circled above us. A sunny day. I chose to paint nature instead of the city. All those plants, bushes, and grasses merging together. It was formless and uncomplicated in its spirit.