in search of nirvana

in interviews you're just the heroin addict next door, the boy i always knew. but on stage you become something beside yourself, a energy conduit bridging human listeners and a spiritual whole. gosh i have the urge to paint some youtube stills.

mixtape

the soft crooning voice came on the radio and i realized that she had always been one step cooler than me in all parts of life. but it would be wrong to mistake coolness for happiness. or unhappiness for coolness, for that matter.

2 things conducive to lovers

1. portals that allow instant passage from one bedroom to the other.
2. portals that let you disappear into a nether-space in which time passes more slowly, while the rest of the world and their busy schedules stands still.

factoid

my given chinese name is a homonym for "walking on luck", idiomatic for "lucky". it is also a homonym for "walking on clouds". my parents had an inkling i would turn out to be a beatnik (or that my artistic production would thematically concern walking and broken homes AHEM). i also tend to view most developments in my life as consequences of fortune. most of the time, life is good.

for the first day of christmas my true love gave to me

a romance novel written by a conceptualist artist parodying the subject matter of one of my favorite painters (and paintings). he's a keeper.

also, because i was learning to fuse aesthetics, neurotic behavior and social justice at age 5

roommate: i eat red and brown m&ms first. what about you? i bet you eat the yellow ones.
me: well, actually, first i separate out all the m&ms out by color. then i eat from the colors that have the most m&ms in the pile, starting from the highest, until all the colors have an equal amount of m&ms in them. then i make rounds and eat one m&m from each pile in order* so that they will always have equal amounts in them, until the m&ms are gone.
roommate: wow.
me: you know what i was really into? skittles.

*this was not mentioned in conversation, but i used to also line my m&ms up according to rainbow color when i performed this last step. this process is an excellent insight into my larger way of functioning.

words of wisdom part II

"you will find yourself performing poorly at your regular job, because you are losing sleep most nights making art."

GOD, anthony baab (nee beard), how were you so right about EVERYTHING?!

stellet licht

silent light, carlos reygada, 2009

i have the sudden urge to take my view camera home and take mmm-mmm-chiapas-good images of the texas landscape. airport security will not like that. logistics are forthcoming. still, it's about time i started playing around with my sexy old-is-the-new-new toy!

and i mean, for all interested, this is the doodle i made at work the other day. whateva whateva. i am animating the last act of my current project. then epilogue! then credits! then away to new york for my postbaccalaureate show we go!

two dreams of late

1. that i was being trained as part of greenpeace's water-based demonstration crew as part of a save the killer whales initiative.

2. that i was running through interminable corridors of customs at benito juarez airport (mexico city) trying to make my flight to los angeles.

portrait of the artist at work

why am i making like an asian stereotype and wearing a SARS mask? because something in my room which may or may not be my charcoal animation has been sending me into asthmatic coughing fits for the past week. fuck my life. no, really. fuck it hard.

p.s. on a brighter note, don't i look like i'm at the height of my androgyny or what?

procrastination break!

i hereby declare today national layered stockings day. winter is good for two things: holiday cheer and a grunge-rock approach to layering. other than that life is same ol', same ol'. still animating, still reclusing. my happiest moment this week occurred when i realized i could multitask and get in some post-production work while visiting my family for the holidays. ARTIST FAIL.

NEW WORK contd

this is all i'm posting before the final edited version. ohhhh it needs to unfold about 2x slower and i'm sick. eeeuch.

when the grammy's are announced and katy perry feels so two years ago

so much of (post)modern life is spent trying to convince ourselves that things are new and exciting, every second of every day. with so many things happening at once, 365 days of distance often feels like 365 years of accomplishment, but is traversed as quickly as one forgets yesterday's pop song. numbingly spectacular, immediately gratifying, without any sense of temporal rootedness (maybe constancy is a less masculine-oriented word) - this is our generation.

suggested term paper topic

sweat, girls, and skateboards: 90's alternative masculinity in the music of blink 182

NEW WORK

i am taking a break from one of my jobs this month to make new work. which will most likely kill me and all. i've barely been alive (read: i've barely had time to squander my time on internet blogging) since returning from thanksgiving break. this is a short preview: