palette of a cloudy day

it's rarely cloudy here. so much so, that the sight of overcast, gray like the particles of smog that make their way into your daily layer of sunscreen, becomes a pleasant surprise. the air is crisper. no longer blinded by the sun, the birds gather on telephone poles outside your apartment.

los angeles freeway system: a haiku part II

single bicyclist--
beware, beware! my car nears
ever so slightly

also i made another mudra. because i think that, in trying moments, difficult moments, sometimes there are no words except for the humility of symbolic action. scale intentional.

public service announcement

i updated my site to attempt a slightly more organized front for ahempotentialemployersahem. it makes me realize that i have been up to quite a bit since graduating, but i still feel unfulfilled. i mean, i wanna like, read books and stuff, and i haven't done any of that. lately i've been having conversations with a certain person about our sixteen-year-old selves. how young, how predictable, how hopeful our bodies were. one thing was certain: i read a lot then.

name and be named

on a whim i looked up my name in a baby name dictionary. carol. english for song, german for man. a free man, but a man regardless. compound this with my middle, or given chinese name, a homonym for music that means an inner ladylike grace. the former chosen by me on the cusp of being naturalized as a united states citizen; the latter chosen by my mother on the eve of my birth in china. i don't think i quite believe in god, but i do believe in fortuitous constellations of events, and it seems my identity as a music-obsessed gender dysphoric was determined from the very beginning.

thinks this is the most embarrassing sketchbook i've kept in a while

my head is concerned with outer space most of the time, or the los angeles freeway system. i miss having studio space. i want to make narratives about my mother.

retrofuture

in the 1982 film blade runner, the los angeles of 2019 is a dark, sprawling dystopia. judging by the los angeles of 2009, we have yet to fulfill ridley scott's expectations. yet, when harrison ford walks through an abandoned warehouse, perusing photographs that provide a substitute for robot memories, the photographs are printed from film. polaroid 600, even. curious that the makers of blade runner could imagine the degradation of the planet, biomorphic technology, the conquest of space--yet they could not foresee the obsolescence of film photography.

most science fiction films of the 80s and prior temporally locate their narratives between the years 2000 and 2100--years that our generation now have the potential to live through in its full reality. a strange temporal disjunction, then, occurs when watching these older science fiction films. you look into the past, for a future that you will not live, waiting for the year 2020, at which time this unrealized 2019 future will have been relegated to not only your cultural but your temporal memory. because these films occurred before the advent of computer special effects, there's still a common physical quality to the interplay of light and gravity that makes these events seem tangible, within our world and yet so far away.

control yourself

swim, shower, blade runner, sleep, public art conference call, blade runner storyboards, new pornographers illustration, dinner with will, sleep, and then we will have reached sunday.

content of my 2am conversations with god

i want to be able to live in the present. [...] thank you for helping me not get a parking ticket.

taking back the femme

italian male intern: i love beautiful women. they should make a movie in which anne hathaway and angelina jolie just stay there and don't talk for the entire time.
me: really? because my perfect female fantasy involves angelina jolie kicking the shit out of me, after which helena bonham carter grabs my neck and drinks my blood.
italian male intern: that's fucked up.

some sketches 'n stuff

(the best descriptive for the type of imagery i want to create, i think)



it's been wildfiring here in los angeles and michael jackson just died so, you know, i'm a bit out of sorts.

death by camera

the heat was unbearable. i was walking out onto my third floor balcony, gingerly peering to see if the pool had emptied so i could take my midday dip, when i saw him. six foot four, bleached blonde boiling lobster of a man sprawled out beside the pool. he wasn't dead, but he wasn't aware either, thanks to the earbuds planted in his ear. i crept back into my apartment and grabbed my polaroid. the camera clicked loudly, and i ran back before he could raise his head and see me, clutching the piece of developing film, victorious.

red, two ways

doubt

some days are more difficult than others. hormones? heartache? the oppressive lethargy of one's apartment on a 100 degree day? saving graces appear in the most miraculous of places, like when you look up to see your film thermometer, unaware of all the troubles that surround you, diligently recording the ambient temperature.

think about it

does someone ever say 'i love you' the exact same way you mean it to them? the way you mean it to the universe? the way you mean it to a photograph of a casual but treasured acquaintance with whom you haven't spoken in a while, when a jolt of joy and sadness runs through the surface of your skin all at the same time?

lately this is how i spend my friday nights

drawing of the gulf coast, about a band whose music i firmly believe is about the gulf coast. and no, i don't ever shut up about the ocean. next up: nirvana and the white stripes. open letter to people with whom i'm in correspondence: i'm sorry, i'm horrible. this week has been hellish and i am waiting for the right moment when i'm not physically exhausted, working, or being neurotic about art to write you. <3.

july 4th: a retrospective

independence day typically defines a new year for me. new year's day always felt too anticlimactic, a cold afterthought tacked onto the end of a gluttonous christmas season. but independence day, signifying the birth of our national consciousness, always filled me with a similar hope about the coming year as the fireworks exploded over me and my family, our bodies recumbent in the cool summer grass. i spent this year on the shores of santa monica next to the pier, drinking wine with one of my best friends from college and watching firework displays occurring down the southern california coastline. the fireworks this year felt like pinpricks, their light eclipsed by the glow of neon from the pier which lit the ocean with an eerie effulgence. it felt appropriate to my current state of living. here i was, staking out my meager picnic blanket shelter at the edge of a desolate ocean with one other human being, our existence submerged beneath a towering hodgepodge of plastic lights, our eyes feverishly watching the fireworks crackle in the distance.

playlist suggestion: songs which include the word 'heart'

heart of glass, blondie
cheated hearts, the yeah yeah yeahs
listen to my heart, the ramones
heart shaped box, nirvana
metal heart, cat power
this heart's on fire, wolf parade

for extra credit, please provide a paragraph analysis of each band's symbolic interpretation of your primary central organ.

the miseducation of carol why zou

telling a co-intern today that i could never want children like she does because my work is my children. listening to the lonelyhearts and thinking that the ecstasy of music will always, always surpass the ecstasy of sex. wondering what to make of this new development in which i conflate all my compartmentalized drives (procreative, libidinal) with this thing called "art", without yet having found an adequate expression. meeting people who are well meaning and practical, and strongly desiring conversations about truth and beauty.

los angeles freeway system: a haiku

today, a car crash
traffic halted, slowly passed
like silent mourners

thinks that tengo que buscar mi propia pasion en la vida, de nuevo. they say that art is a private moment made public. so it sucks if you're shy.

and, you know, god

i really need to investigate the possibilities of making my own band t-shirts. been wanting to guerrilla screenprint my own dresses. mummy keeps yelling at me to find a j-o-b (to which i say, baby steps! one illustration and one desperate plea at a time!).

zero

finished my submission for the yeah yeah yeahs' t-shirt design contest, along with a hidden layer in which i proclaim my everlasting love and admiration for the band, complete with david bowie references and adjectives invented from transitive verbs. i know, i know. now life can return to normal, aka drawing more pictures of bands and pretending that i'm friends with them. elizabeth peyton's orisha, is that you?

also, drawing nick zinner's hair is lots of fun, and should be attempted by everyone at least once. i knew i had a reason for digging guys with big messy hair. RAWR!

superstar

oh, you know, just another day at the costume house picking out props for the boss's impending photoshoot.