current project

orange you glad i'm not an apple?

oh, you know, just another day hang drying clothes at home.

preliminary sketch regarding hyperventilation

poor lighting. this was not intended to be frightening.

photography is the construction of fiction, not fact

being in the photo pit for the silversun pickups last friday was probably one of the more fun experiences i've had courtesy of the workplace. and now i am saddled with avoiding photo editing and the sad fact that i need a new lens... anyone, anyone?

photo editing awaits me in my personal projects as well. BLECHHHHHH!!!! THAT'S HOW MONDAYS MAKE ME FEEELLLLL!

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?

the sky is beautiful today

first 5 minutes home

dad: yeah, so can you give your brother a hand with his college essays? his counselor wrote him the worst recommendation. your mom read it and got so mad. she said this is how the counselor ruined your life!

they're still bitter that i only got into cornell.

remember the days when this would seem normal, because we were in art school?

boss: what are you drawing?
me: oh, well, see, there's this band radiohead, and i'm currently obsessed with this video of their song fake plastic trees...
boss: alright.
me: ...and, um, so thom yorke actually has a lazy eye, but in this video he just acts completely autistic, and the still frames are so funny and amazing.
[boss looks at screen; thom yorke is freeze-framed staring out from within a shopping cart]
me: ...so, i thought i would just make a drawing of the still frames. you know... during my downtime ...
me: ... and that's what's happening at the front desk today.
boss: alright. [walks off]

non-objective art of the day

instructions: look at an area of reflected morning light in your room. appreciate it as you would appreciate a moving picture.

lately been struck most by vito acconci's following piece and tino sehgal's performances. harrell fletcher is always on my mind. people who tell supporters of objective art to ess-tee-eff-yew, as i have lately been too busy navigating traffic to consciously go to any art museum, and appreciate "art" as we know it. but afraid to relinquish the art object altogether, or to become one of "those bastards" who make purely self indulgent conceptual work. hmmmm? woke up this morning to the sound of airplanes nearby. thinks in warzones there are more bulletholes.

shostakovich shakes the soul

lately the term 'russian' has been bandied about me as a catch-all adjective. 'oh, that's so russian. please, make that russian', people would say with equal amounts of vagueness and conviction as to the word's meaning. the meaning began to click, somewhat, when i heard a very russian performance of gershwin's 'rhapsody in blue', the iconic piece about ambulating through new york city. what was so russian about it? the syncopation was present, but not at all jazzy. each note was struck with measured rigor. the most surprising midtones were emphasized, bringing out notes and flavors, street corners and alleyways that never before existed in the skyline of the melody. the entire piece felt full even when quiet, and always stopped short of hitting a dramatic high or low due to the force that reigned throughout. move over, dorothy, because we're not in new york city anymore. this is not your mother's leonard bernstein directs the new york phil, to which you've faithfully listened since age 11. it was like watching the planes and colors of your favorite kandinsky painting get rearranged into something strange and striking. bravo.

sometimes (actually, all of the time) i wish i had more seriously pursued music.

forgive me for writing about your life

at my other work i work with teenagers in a gang, poverty, and violence affected area of los angeles. one of them handed me his college admissions essays to review. the first is about the three churches in his neighborhood, and how much their rites annoy him. after three scathing paragraphs about the inanity of religion, he concludes that he has become a tolerant person through having to put up with religious fools. it's nihilistic, it's blunt, it's not really the stuff of conservative college admissions committees. in the second essay he writes about a car accident that sent his father into a coma for two months, during which he was estranged from his family and sent to live with his aunt. in his own words, he was a nine year boy become a nine year old man. reading between the essays, one wonders if this is why he doesn't believe in god.

moments like these take me out of my own life, and into the amazing strength of others. success is relative to what you have to overcome, and so many of us are walking out there with eyes so wide we're blind to what we never had to experience. here in los angeles, where any value can become superficial and glib, i find myself drawn most to people who display the strength to survive through life--and survival occurs in the most unexpected and overlooked of places. it lives under highways, over gravel, and in the interstices between our two clasped hands. what does this mean for a world which seems to arrange its values otherwise--values such as intellect, creativity, entrepreneurship, none of which are necessarily bad, but somehow incomplete on their own? i don't know.

this is getting rather fiona apple about things. this world is bullshit, but this world is also pretty beautiful and amazing.

pffffft

the impossible project announced today that it will begin manufacturing polaroid film again in 2010. i have one word for all you digital naysayers: schooled. the polaroid apocalypse came and went before the sky even started falling. in honor of that, and in honor of me figuring out how to work my workplace's copier scanner thingamajig, here are some polaroids from last night:







a friend had succeeded in bullying me into attending an lgbt mexican dance party in downtown los angeles (friends: best and worst ideas ever). there were all flavors of transsexuals there from mustachio'ed to be-bjorked. my feet stomped tirelessly in medieval torture device shoes while my body seemed far away. i was undercover, not quite hazy enough for my liking, and for the most part, bored.

more miraculous sightings today

white dresses, office depot

bum bum bum bum bah bah bah bah

oh, you know, just another day hulahooping at work.

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:

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.

portrait of a saturday morning