soul consomme

having a shit-tacular day at work today. luckily, these two never fail to cheer me up:

king of hearts

i had some downtime at work today so i made a pattern. it doesn't quite tesselate properly, but i'll tinker with it more next week, or whenever. in defense of my break from corporate productivity, i had already designed one retail announcement and two posters for the day, and my boss was busy photoshopping ties onto pictures of devendra banhardt.

i was thinking today about the difference between graphic designers and studio artists. graphic designers utilize mathematical principles such as geometry and repetition, which is correlative to a general sense of nerdiness and obsessive compulsive behavior in the profession. artists, on the other hand, disregard established systems and therefore are always cool. testing out this theorem finds us at this crossroad: if i am good at math and nerdy, am i doomed to be a designer?

excuse me, waiter? this salad has too many vegetables in it

most people exercise because they want to achieve a deficit in their energy intake. i am the opposite. i exercise because it enables me to guiltlessly eat donuts.

me, myself, and ikea candles

my car was towed this morning for being parked in front of a fire hydrant. i am successful at many things, but life is not one of them. head too caught up with dreaming. i rode the bus to the towing yard and aside from the unpleasant fine at the end of the bus ride, the day was pleasant. being warm and being in transit spaces are two things that make me feel alive and happy. i began reading cormac mccarthy's the road on the bus. a manifesto for a post-apocalyptic, post-beat-generation type of wandering.



i keep on wasting my stash of polaroid film on patches of light in my room. studies for a something something? i think i may want to make my next animation in the summer. in the meantime, i found a darkroom facility and my boss is showing me how to screenprint (ANARCHIST TSHIRTS HERE WE COME!). this week is a big drawing week - aren't they all? overall, i think i'm doing ok.

momentary impressions

coming home on a sunday afternoon. lighting a stick of patchouli incense. the smoke is too big for my room. lying in bed against cool sheets. my window faces a wall and is covered with an iron grate, allowing in a bare amount of bluish light. the neighbors are having a nonsensical argument about babies, paternalism and helen keller. the smell, the cool, the light, the voices remind me of china. memory hits me through a fall of charcoal and rainwater. i think that all my life i've been wandering.

the neighbor pauses and repeats a line. i realize i am living with actors.

seasonal cheer

regarding matters of the saint valentine, i've become less curmudgeonly. it's as if i'm aging in reverse!

2 drawings about flight

the unbearable lightness of being fig. 1


the last time i felt undefeated was so long ago. i was 20. i felt like i could was willing to do anything.

my old piano teacher used to tell me that after 20, it becomes physically painful to acquire new technique in your fingers. your body stops being pliable and spends the rest of its days stiffening into its final form. i think that's why i feel a more urgent sense of mortality compared to others.

oil crisis

whenever i'm in my car and have just narrowly missed hitting a pedestrian, the cure's "killing an arab" starts playing in my head. the conditions under which camus' meursault kills an arab and the conditions under which i can potentially run someone over are frighteningly similar. it is hot. it is by the beach. i am isolated from society in a metal box on wheels, and i answer to its laws (expediency, speed) rather than the laws of humanity.

then i get out of my car, walk into work, and hear some gangster padre tell his 3-year-old that if he doesn't hurry up, he'll shoot him in the face. quite casually.

when you think about it in reverse, everything starts to make sense

today i am gaunt

gaunt with inspiration! gaunt with distaste for corporate culture! i did a crazy today and i plan to carry the crazy out over the course of the next week, before it dissipates. stay tuned?

it's always sunny in california

let's try this blogging business again now that i feel less dejected about life (but also, less hostile to the idea of graduate school. the things i'll do for studio space!). on the left, what i currently look like - shaggy, sunny, and hoodie. on the right, an abandoned piano piece one block away from my apartment. i want to take it home and restring it in architecturally and sonically wonderful ways. why am i drawn to actions that will stink up my room?