Consequence of Sounds

Hanging around Katydid's apartment in Chicago. This morning we discussed our favorite albums of all time. Tough list. Imma tackle it.

Top Ten (in no particular order because that's too difficult):

1. Regina Spektor: Songs

2. Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks

3. Neutral Milk Hotel: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

4. Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes

5. Beirut: The Flying Club Cup

6. The Black Keys: The Big Come Up

7. Islands: Return to the Sea

8. The Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs

9. Modest Mouse: Building Nothing Out of Something

10. St. Vincent: Actor

I feel like half of this could change in a year or so. People change though, it's inevitable. Currently, however, this is it.

Tim, I Wish You Were Born a Girl

A few things you'll find in my notebook:

1947. 273 Female Servant of Offering Bearer

Middle Kingdom, late Dynasty 11 or early Dynasty 12

2050-1900 B.C., wood with painted decoration

"on the patio."

a drawing of a mermaid.

To Do:

read for English and blog

philosophy paper

philosophy online quiz

Design & print

Brainstorming for Philosophy paper:

The Treasure of Sierra Madre

Nature of Man

Howard, Fred Dobbs, Curtin

Brainstorming for PostSecret:

I can't believe I missed out on that threesome!

I miss making out with girls.

I know he'll leave. This is my preparation.

Themes:

mustache- party, self adhesive, Mark and analyzation, silhouette, Kara Walker, becoming my father

potato- tattoo, carving

November 2, 2009, 10:53 AM

Dear Jasper,

I am writing things I've been thinking but cannot say to anyone.

We've been here before, we'll be here again. I know what we should be but it is unlike the lifestyle we both lead. We are both travelers with opposing paths. I could handle it because my trust in him is unbearable. I have never written this way before because I've never felt this before. And so young. We found each other early. I am not fond of the concept of fate but how can it be so otherwise? How did all of this just fall in my lap? Had I never dated JR I would not have transferred to UC. Had I not transferred I would have never met Jake. I wouldn't have met Lauren. We'd never get the apartment. What if we'd signed the lease the first day and ended up on the first floor? It would never be leased to someone else in that 24 hours and we would have never seen Loft D. And I would have never met John. Then what if I never posted on craigslist? What if Miles went away like he planned and never told me about John? What if I had never decided on contacting him again?

And what, then, when he leaves?

I will have to let him go as I'd want him to let me if I were the one leaving.

This week: Tues 6:30-10:30, Thurs 7:30-10:30

"I'll play a tune for thee and you'll do the same for me. Let's be the needle on each other's vinyl, the laser on our hard discs."

"within 20 seconds she tore up that corner, throwing around the wooden and metal stools like, 'Gotta get this pwrpnt going NOW!' she even threw her scarf over her shoulder 'defiantly' as if she meant business."

Brainstorming for Unhealthy Obsession project:

-illegal music downloading

-coffee

-baking

-collecting for collage

-bruises

-scribbling/doodling

Am I Dimmer Every Day?

A few things:

1. I am 20 years old today. Life goes on.

2. This past Saturday night changed my life. I experimented with perception again. John read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to my while I painted an egg carton. It was one of the happiest moments of my life and I realized I'd like many more like them.

3. I severely dislike football and most sports in general. I cant stand how mindless society can be. I understand the sense of community but I wish we'd all gather around something more substantial.

4. The world is a very large place and I am not a very big person. I hope I can explore it and take care of it and express my appreciation for it somehow, someday.

5. One day, I want to sell all my materials and condense my belongings to a medium-sized backpack.

6. Psychological egoism or something like it seems most likely real.

7. He's got eyes like Oklahoma.

8. Imagine a bakery that uses ingredients from an organic farm owned by the same person!

9. Coffee will never be out of style.

10. I am beginning to recognize books and movies as incomparable entities. Each are their own art form. Thus, the phrase, "I like the book better." seems silly to me.

Thanks for listening.

Currently:

Listening to Bishop Allen

Sitting in the DAAP cafe, as usual

Anticipating Burger Madness with John this evening

Reading Wiki articles on bands and whatnot

When You're Loved Like You Are: Spike the Senses, Disconnect the Dots, and Climb the Ladder

This Monday a few things will occur. At 1:17 pm on this monday, November 16th, I will turn the age of twenty. No longer a teenager yet confused to all hell like one. I will also be displaying the fourth project of my Methods & Concepts class at the Contemporary Art Center in downtown Cincinnati. It was a group work that I will not attempt to explain other than it had to be a response piece to the contemporary artist currently showing there, Anri Sala. Our project involves an eight-minute video that will loop on five screens in rounds for two hours.

here is the video: Love & Communication.

This past weekend was one of the best in my life thus far. I experimented with the depths of my perception on Friday with Lauren. The large walk in "closet" in our apartment contained stacks of cardboard boxes thrown in there after we moved in. Each and everyone ended up covered in paint. My abstract eye took over, my appreciation for line weight and color has never been so immense, and i made prints with orange halves like a kindergartner. It was magnificent! I don't think I have been that creatively liberated or productive in my entire life!

"But what if one of these days your heart just stops ticking and they sorta don't find you til' your cubicle is reeking?"

On Saturday John and I went to the middle of no where in a park in Kentucky and set up camp in the woods. We built a campfire together and crammed our bodies together in the smallest tent known to man for warmth. Sunday, we woke up and did yoga on flat rocks in a creek nearby, then went hiking back to civilization. Afterwards we made it back just in time for our coed soccer team's (the obsequious sycophants) first match. We lost, miserably, but it was great exercise and tons of fun.

"The world that has made us can no longer contain us and profits are silent then rotting away."

John and I had grown up talk next to the campfire and on the rocks just before yoga. I have concluded that I do not want to finish art school. In just the first quarter I have watched many creative souls be crushed and squashed and become humiliated and debilitated. I have watched art being butchered. It is not a very practical degree in the first place and I do not feel I need the schooling to develop myself as an artist. Instead, I would like to go to school for something that will require training and be somewhat of a challenge rather than somewhat of a clusterfuck. I'll finish out the year but by next fall I hope to be attending Cincinnati State for the culinary institute, specifically the pastry arts. I'm gonna get a degree in baking, gosh dern it.

"Imagine you go away on a business trip one day. When you come back home your children have grown and you never made your wife moan."

I simply want a degree as soon as possible so I can get out of this city and start venturing around this beautiful country, and possibly some other parts of the world. I dream of organic farms in Arizona and Alaska. I also dream of more schooling later on, around the age of 24, when I have become an independent so I can receive a full ride to Marharishi Univeristy of Management in Iowa. There, I hope to study for a bachelor's degree in sustainable living. and study abroad!

"And everything is plastic. And everyone's sarcastic. And all your food is frozen and needs to be defrosted."

I may not be getting much from my books and power point lectures but I am certainly learning about myself this year. I have never felt so in tune to my passions and desires. I have never been so at peace with who I am and what I am growing in to. Simply put, I have never been so happy.

Currently:

Reading The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Listening to Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust by Sigur Rós

Munching on a banana

Snuggling with Mr. Morris

The Ancient Common Sense of Things

Currently:

Listening to Return to the Sea by Islands

Studying for an Art History Midterm

and simultaneously dancing around the apartment in my underwear and ninja turtles t-shirt talking to Mr. Morris about "corbaling" and "black-figure" and Phidias.

drinking lots of coffee and eating a fried egg.

excited for friday night and camping tomorrow with John

in love with this motherfucking world!

downloading illegally songs that have the word, "willow", in them for a 'willow' themed mix

worried about my BFFF because she caught the H1N1

sweeping up cat litter and dust bunnies and beads and feathers (from the peacock costume this halloween)

still in my underwear

on a bra boycott

danced at Baba Budan's yesterday evening, just John and I on the dance floor in front of a lot of black guys. Thought it was dance night but turned out to be open mic, which is a freestyle free for all, we got up and danced all alone and let them judge us and didn't care and I twirled around and shook my hips in a little black dress. silly white couple.

can't stand school but can't live without it. keeps me going.

considering the Social Contract and what makes a 'good' ruler and if the masses are fit to pick that ruler

concerts coming up:

bishop allen NOV 17 and The Pixies with BFFF NOV 20

designing a 'self portrait' compiled with references to my favorite webcomics, japanese artists, cartoons, and children's book.

Things on my fridge spelled with old-school letter magnets:

non ascoltate

daijoupu desune

it is time

pensez en francais pour toujours

KILLING THESE FUCKING FLIES DAMNIT. fly guts on the walls.

so tired of baths. need to get that fucking shower head fixed.

jimmy. daniel. rebekah. mariam. brittany. jenn. new friends.

celebrating the election. levy for issue 7 passed! libraries still in tact!

WHY would we get rid of libraries? why is it when cuts need to be knowledge and arts are always first to go? people don't realize how important the arts are. Can you imagine a world without artists? No one to design your clothes, your furniture, your house, your books, your advertisement, your stores, your internet!

no music.

a free access to knowledge. a whole beautiful edifice filled wall to wall with shelves of thoughts and facts and information and poetry and illustrations to help you understand.

why would we ever want to get rid of that?

you know what is beautiful?

indian restaurants on every corner and the smell of curry to wake you up in the morning.

roads. roads just like rivers.

parks.

children in graeter's.

cat hair all over my bed. changing the sheets every few days because of it.

maps.

Lauren's record player and Bishop Allen turning on it.

Jake dressed as Max, King of the Wild Things.

Jack Nicholson acting like a crazy person.

the woodwork studio in DAAP.

a just mopped wooden floor reflecting the posters on the wall

torrents and the sharing of music

a postcard from Aunt Joan

THIS TOWN IS YOURS TO TAKE.

Moon, I Already Know and We Squirm and Lost Wisdom and Goodbye Hope

Let me lay it down real smooth for ya:

I hate college. The school part of it. Do I fit a stereotype? Not the one you're thinking of. I do not dislike school because it requires work and dedication and time. I have those things and I am completely willing to give those things to earn a decent education. however,  WTF is my money going to? My art history professor has a degree in fashion design. She got her teaching certificate and graduated from DAAp which is apparently enough to let her teach an art history class. Sense? None. Her knowledge of ancient Etruscan art? Less than mine. I don't expect her to know everything, just more than me. It's frustrating! Plain an simple! 

My other course is Methods & Concepts in which my professor is a crazy perfectionist who only gives a certain amount of A's each quarter, meaning 3. I can already tell you now I am not one of her A students this quarter. I will most likely be a B. I can't stand this because she constantly claims that nothing an artist can ever do will be good enough. I'm not kidding. She has said this, on numerous occasions, "Your final should never be final. You can always make it better. You have to recognize that it is never good enough so you are always hungry for being better." I do SEE exactly where she is coming from but sometimes I want to be proud of my work. I want to stand back and admire the things I have done. She also has a tendency to contradict herself by instructing us to always exceed the lines of the box but anytime I have done this or witnessed another student doing this she seems very close-minded. I realized that she wants us to exceed the lines of HER box and she has trouble accepting the boxes of others.

Finally, there is design class. I have spent so much time on the most worthless projects I can't even express how awful it feels. First, I designed a whisk on illustrator. Next, I designed a praying mantis on illustrator. Now, I am working making a collage that creates a sort of self-portrait...on illustrator. Well, first and foremost, I am SICK of illustrator. I can use the goddamned pen tool! And, what's worse, I really did not need a paid "professional" to "show" me how. It is pretty self explanatory. Pick up a book and teach yourself. I can assure it isn't difficult at all. Everyone treats this class like a joke because it is. I have trouble working hard in classes I don't respect. It's as if...the easier the class is the worse I do. I would not be surprised if I get a C or D in this class and I have not received a grade like that since freshmen year of high school when I was an angsty punk (yuck).

I hate art school. I can't believe it. But I hate it. All i want to do is finish up this degree and GTFO. I pretty much know what I want to do from here and college sure as hell isn't helping me with it. I sigh because I feel like I can do nothing else. I sigh and I sigh and I know what is coming.

Her Freezings and Thawings

I brainstormed my favorite artists the other day with my grandmother. I had to condense it to 25 otherwise it would grow too long to be a respectable list. Here they are:

Yoshitomo Nara: fantastic painting AND sculpture

Chuck Close: a concept of color very few could ever comprehend

Cy Twombly: layers and emotion and the monumental size of the work, this man makes me wonder why one would ever work small.

David Hockney: surrealism doesn't get much better

Jean-Michel Basquiat: and his first art teacher said he'd never amount to anything...

Marc Chagall: goats and roosters, that's all I've gotta say.

Edward Gorey: the gashlycrumb tinies, the doubtful guest, and Old possum's book of practical cats? Read me a bedtime story and make it Gorey!

Rene Engstrom: best webcomic out there, for story and artwork the old-fashion way-w/o a computer!

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec: always ambiguously beautiful

Lynda Barry: best damn graphic novels out there, impeccable collage work 

Miranda July: This lady does it all. direction, acting, music, archiving, performance art, screenwriting, and fiction writing. she's also in a badass Blonde Redhead video. And directed a badass Sleater-Kinney Video.

Travis Lampe: takes a collection of styles and makes his own goddamn style. and he's got the greatest sense of humor i've ever seen in an artist. Now that's class.

Gregory Crewdson-The most eerie, bone-chilling, goosebump-inducing photographs out there. This man treats his photos like a movie set, no kidding. The amount of work for ONE PHOTO is incredible.

Paul Klee: i'm addicted to color and shape juxtaposition. what can I say?

Wassily Kandinsky: this man knows his shapes.

Joan Miro: I don't have words for this one. My biggest inspiration for the type of work I do.

Saul Steinberg: he's not a cover illustrator for The New Yorker for nothing.

Gary Baseman: fantastically creepy.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude: nature and space and color and...oh my.

Satoshi Kon: i don't think any animator can top this guy. HE DRAWS IT ALL HIMSELF.

Hayao Miyasaki: this should be the new fucking disney/pixar.

Takashi Murukami: I simply wish I could live in this guy's head for a day. Does everyone look like an adorably colorful bear thing to him? Do flowers really grin in his world? Is that what an orgasm is like for him? If yes to all of the above, sign me up.

Robert Rauschenberg: collage work with transparency! Just too clever.

Vincent Van Gogh: detail was this crazy man's middle name. here's my favorite and it hangs in Cincinnati's own art museum!

Gustav Klimt: this hangs in my apartment and I'd get it tattooed to my body. nuff said.