you were chosen to walk through the fire

driving down the freeway with the windows rolled up and all of a sudden you smell smoke through your car ventilation. your heart pounds as you sniff out each individual note of the smoke, wondering if your greatest fear--barbecued tire--has finally dawned upon you. but no. the smoke is too redolent of hickory and not rubber for that. you look ahead and realize the world is covered in the haze of a southern californian brush fire. relief is quickly tempered with foreboding. the ground, you feel, could rise up at any moment, burn up through your tires, and become absorbed into the relentless sunshine glaring through the fog. the apocalypse is near, and it will strike first in southern california. it is then you realize that the road to hell is probably paved with concrete highways.

my one complaint since moving to los angeles is that, for a city built on the film industry, no cinematic representation of los angeles seems to do it justice. all the movies shot in los angeles are too generous with their use of open space. the colors are too reserved and saturated, not blinding and washed out. the people are rosy-cheeked and happy, not tanned and determined. i want someone to make me a completely unromantic film which, i think, is the only way to fully capture the romance of this place.

a different sort of e.k.g.

it goes like this. the first time you are so desperate to cling to anything that you love everything. a puppy! a flower! the world is new and full of possibility. then after a few more failed attempts, dejection sets in. you will never love again. you had the one; it's now floating somewhere out there in the morass of your blackened past, and it wasn't really that good anyway. but you persist, because, well, how can we not? fortuitous encounters chip away at your hardened will, and gradually you decide, hey, what's one more ride on the true love express? after all, you've done this so many times before; you could do it with your eyes closed. and thus we settle into complacency.*

three times in my life i have been told that i think a lot about love as a way to structure my work. each time i have felt fully childish and denuded. but denuded in the sense that it is both a moment of shame and a moment of victory. a victory over a society that doesn't know what to do with itself as it stares, agape, at you dancing around in your most basic form of being.

*note: this graph has not been considered with the inclusion of a z-axis variable: intensity of love; regardless, the idea may prove fruitful for future analysis.

built to thrill

so, oh my god, so like, my ridiculously hip label job gave me free passes to this ridiculously hip street festival in this ridiculously hip neighborhood and i thought how ridiculously hip would it be if i reinvented myself as a 35mm street photographer and plastered REALLY OBNOXIOUSLY LARGE photographs of my endeavors all over the internet? the answer is, i'm sorry. but i think these are nice to look at.


(the band is built to spill)






(can we marvel for a moment at how blatantly self unaware people are at concerts, when they believe that everyone's attention is turned toward the stage? naturally i find them to be more interesting subjects than the band itself. that, and i enjoy watching people make out.)



and now for someone who had a better time than all of us combined:

some thoughts on the ocean

new phrase

the aesthetics of intimacy. i think that will be a good way to describe my work from now on.

playlist shenanigans return: songs about 'home'

go home - bad veins
there's no home for you here - the white stripes
homeless club kids - my favorite
subterranean homesick alien - radiohead
homecoming - the teenagers
please take me home - blink 182

allow me a moment to regress into thesis mode and note that home is always a distant longing in these lyrics, never a physical place before your eyes. it is the negative space to your positive body.

andando sin ti por la tierra

one thing i've never been able to fully explain to myself is my fixation with medieval sailor and soldier imagery. you know, the kind that flourished back when indulgences were few and bleak territories were many. there's something really nice about how a protective coat of arms is made up of all the things most important and interior to you. my coat of arms contains black birds, blue rains, white flowers, and vagrant ships:


with that, i think i open up a new and wild chapter in my life. apartment hunting! glass tables! artmaking, my way.

faith love rock 'n roll

some days are shit. they lay on you like the muggy summer that has continued too long and drive you, in tears, to your computer typing your heart out to the one person in the world who understands you--your former therapist. other days fortuitously come together, and restore your faith in some cosmic order of things. i picked up seven rolls of film today which reinforced what i can do, and what i want to do with my work. i walked into my last-ditch attempt at employment only to have the recruiter veer off the topic of telemarketing for peace, and onto how much he liked my website and art. then the kindly old guatemalan parking attendant carried on a thirty minute conversation with me en my beloved espanyol, before wishing me luck in this unforgiving city. last but not least, i was trolling craigslist like i do every day, so desperately looking for employment, and instead found a local photographer selling a beautiful vintage camera system for broke young artist prices. now i have the night off to myself, and i think i will draw and swim. tomorrow night i'm cooking dinner for the first person in two years who, under no narcotic influence, is willing to say 'i love you' to me. so you know, we persist. we persist. i'll scan some of my fo-tos tomorrow.

when one door closes another one opens

my life right now is like one of those wall-sized windows with multiple wooden shutters hanging off it just waving back and forth, waving back and forth, with an urgency similar to speed at which a hummingbird flaps its wings, each shutter unconcerned with the pace of the other. just when you think one shutter has closed it swings open again as the eye of the one you were propping open yawns shut, leaving you to wonder when one will stop, lead you through, and the world can be quiet.

portrait of a day off

cleaning my shoes in the bathtub, assessing my dependence on the chuck taylor hipster money making machine, and generally contemplating what it means to chase a beatnik dream.

it happened like this

they hadn't spoken in weeks. then he promised he would see her before he left. she knew that the bus leaving the country departed at noon. she didn't know where he was. at 11:45 she sat at the base of the clock tower overlooking the stretch of hill waiting for her phone to ring. at 12:05 she wrapped herself in a sweater, walked to the nearest tattoo parlor, and asked how much it would cost to have the broken half of a whole inscribed into her upper arm.

metaphors about unnameable feelings

-like glass crushing under a cushion
-like a gunshot lodged in featherdown
-like a scream building under your skin
-like saltwater collecting in your mouth

also

still life with floating ladybug carcass; or, a meditation about death.

portrait of a usps postal worker

her name is caroline bull. caroline bull on the government-issue nametag, caroline written on masking tape stretching across her well-worn stapler. her countenance is, in fact, bullish. large eyes in an unmoving face with bristly hairs lining the upper lip. she thinks i'm mildly retarded at handling mail, but cracks a smile at the fact that i, like every other working class los angeles citizen, am not immune to the misfortune of a pay-by-mail parking ticket.

re: playlists about 'love'

compiling a playlist of songs containing the word 'love' is expansive and daunting because, well, all rock music tends to be a running meditation on love--its highs, its lows, its bittersweet remains. a more contained project would be creating conversations out of song titles about 'love', with results often seeming like a scene out of a melancholy new wave film. imagine:

person A: hello, i love you (1). do you love me (2)?
person B: i love you (3).
person A: it's true that we love one another (4).
person B: love will tear us apart (5).

artists featured:
1. the doors 2. kiss cover, nirvana 3. the dandy warhols 4. the white stripes 5. joy division

combination of factors

i had just come back from a day trip to san diego. i lounged about the apartment, watching top chef and then reading an experimental food blog from one of my favorites. i had lettuce, tomatoes, and burnt cashews with homemade lemon-tahini dressing for dinner. i thought a lot about how i became date-able material during my post-dinner walk. somehow, this confluence of events led me to purchase the following when i went to my corner armenian grocer:



which, in belarussian (the birchful country of origin), is spelled like:



it tastes like the water runoff from the sweet fermented rice my mother used to make back in the day, but intentional. ethnic grocers--your prime go-to destination for food and fascination under $20!

portrait of a saturday morning

eric roberts and chequers

being 17, riding 141 mph down the highway with the windows down, feeling so much possibility in the world and wanting everything--these are all things i think of when i listen to mr. brightside by the killers.

excerpt from a cover letter

"i think about privacy, cinema, and the silent beauty of everyday life."
no, really, i do. i just need to understand how i want to speak it. gmail is probably not an appropriate medium.

when in doubt

put on some eyemakeup, put on some mgmt, throw yourself a camerafone dance party.



i made a really good drawing last night (chillingly, sylvia-plath passive aggressive good) but i have not had access to a scanner to show it! ARRRRRRRRRGH, my sound of pirate discontent at the realization that nothing is free in the great state of california. that was my art for the night; now, flannery o'connor.

(don't worry, i'm still freaked the fuck out about my work situation. even though i, uh, have a work situation.)

playlist suggestion: songs which include the word 'star'

black star, radiohead
starlight, muse
ziggy stardust, david bowie
andy, you're a star, the killers
lucky star, madonna
starlett johansson, the teenagers
starman, david bowie
lady stardust, david bowie
starstruck, santogold
superstar, the carpenters

david bowie clearly has the market cornered on this one.

p.d. i feel super vampy today

i don't know what it is.

glimpses from the driver's seat cannot be photographically recorded

so words will have to suffice. i was on my way to that modern invention, the carwash, when i saw a car by the side the road far dirtier than mine, on whose back windshield implored the words, 'was me'. 'was me'. not 'wash me'. thrilling how a simple spelling error can transform a car into an existential agent with subjectivity and regrets.

tonight there were several accidents down the four-oh-five:

red and white jewels
set in a concrete necklace--
the highway at night

honey and hay

i've always found people with artistic manifestos curious and admirable. actually, i also find them very stubborn and stuck in their ways, especially if they are modernist painters. the reason being that art for me functions as a basic need, a lack if you will, whose formal and conceptual terrain shifts with the changing of the ground and circumstance below your feet. i've been thinking a lot about what being a young, broke, relocated artist means in terms of the work i produce. i've been taking stabs at artmaking here and there, but ultimately finding myself frustrated and a little frightened by how foreign everything feels in this new context. put simply, for someone whose art is based on lack, i now lack different things. in los angeles, a sun-baked hyperactive megalopolis teeming with media images and uncertainty, i need solitude. i need sustained, repeated actions that will restore my dwindling attention span. i need a return to materiality as a counterpoint to the visual superficiality around me. i need to be able to articulate a stable, spiritual body. i need achromatic color palettes. which is why i'm looking into the possibility of ordering some hay.

in terms of life, i have a boyfriend. i have an art friend. i found a part-time job working for a local record label assisting their art director on packaging and web graphics. the office is cool, and they give me free merchandise and buy me vegan lunches. i think it will tide me over for a few months while i look for a more permanent situation, although my life seems intent on its commitment to instability. in general, i'm wrapping up a hectic and delirious summer, and ready to head into a quieter sense of autumn.

PABLO NERUDA AND SWEATERS

when in a funk about your current state of art/body/being, revert to older modes of being. this is a relic from a sleepless but formative semester involving land art, lithography, large format cameras, and long hair. why did i cut it again?

bread

i am taking the night off to myself. for the first time in a while, actually. possible courses of action involve: cleaning my room, watching art 21, watching andrei tarkovsky, reading dickens, reading camus, graphiting, painting, doing my dishes, and/or lying around senseless listening to my bloody valentine and pretending i am a thousands-year-old mummy plotting the moment in which i throw off my embalming linens and make a triumphant return to the stage.

watch for a somewhat solidified life update after monday.

venus in warehouse districts

oh, you know, just another day hanging out at an industrial-goth fashion warehouse.

more haikus about the los angeles freeway system, composed while changing lanes somewhere between the 110 and the 405:

in los angeles
don't worry about speeding
police do it too

&

after driving this
lawless harrowing morass
nothing unnerves me

oh, and you know, job thing, but trying not to jinx it by saying too much yet :).