February 2003 Archives

After both Jack and Penelope told me they couldn't come with me to Sin City to see the Breeders, and I couldn't get my car tuned up, I bought a ticket for the Breeders and gathered sheets and the like for sleeping alone in my car. I did manage to grab a map, like one of those bigs books of just maps at the store and... some batteries and some Clifbars. I forgot to get bread for PB+Js, but I bought enough Coke for 3 trips, which it may turn into if I decide to wing it to Pheonix the next day, to see another show.

A delightful surprise! A Breeders, "Head to Toe", tour t-shirt came in the mail and now I'll really look the fan dork part. School was mindless. Except for my teacher telling me I was both the brightest student in the class ("You live Art", he stresses) and also bound to fail, as I haven't handed anything in yet.

We watched Casablanca and another earlier Bogart film in English class. Nevermind how this reminds me of High School English, where we'd watch the movie adaptation of a book instead of reading the book, (can you say, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, being hard reading material? I can't either, but the movie was nice...), watching movies in English class is a waste of my time. Yes, Casablanca is a good movie, but I don't know if I'm certain on how great movies are in general. I like the feeling of gritty weathered pages in my dry hands and having to picture every single event in my head. Sex scenes in books are way hot; please someone else admit this.

The only thing that made me have interest in the earlier Bogart flick, "The Petrified Forest" was a character named Alan Squire, who was a traveling writer, penniless and stuck in the desert. He was out to find something, anything - a reason to live and love, a reason to make art and someone to appreciate it with. And then, he meets a woman and falls in love, makes a pact with the devil and I lost the respect of his character. To be the hero, you can't fall in love with the herone, it's gotta be love 'em and leave 'em, Fuck and Run. Think James Dean. Make them wish they never met you and that you never had gone at the same time. What kind of flick is it if everyone gets what they want? A Disney flick, that's what. I ain't going to be drawing Mickey Mouse in the desert tomorrow, I'll be drawing mountains with blood and sweat and hoping I'll stay up for the 12 hours it takes to get to the cradle of that Devil.

Last evening, I think I actually felt the onset of sleep for first time in absolute ages. This is all new to me, but let me describe it, so I can realize it right away when it happens again:

I'm lying in bed, it's very warm and I feel surrounded by nothing but my comforter and heat; it's almost damp, but I'm not sweating. All I see is the color of burnt sienna and paynes gray. I feel myself almost as if I'm looking at myself in a darkened room in the third person. This vision just slowly drifts away, and I don't remember anything else except dreaming a most beautiful dream, and then waking to my alarm... not so much refreshed, but with enough gusto to actually walk over, turn if off, and start my day successfully. I don't know the last time that actually happened. It's wonderful. I wish I could have PJ Harvery just say, 'with the most wonderful boy in the world', to you, right now, just to have the way she says that line, get you in the right mood on how it felt for me right then.

I wanted to get up early to get a good spot in figure painting class; the stragglers always get a spot far off to the corner, where all you ever see of the model is maybe a cooly darkened hip and like a chin, and only if it's oversized. Today, I got the most glamorous spot, with just perfect foreshortening. It must have been stellar, since my teacher sat right in front of me and I had to adjust everything to compensate. The model for today and at least another week is Ericka who is just drop dead beautiful. Almost too beautiful to muck up on, so I may not tear this painting in half. She's a new model and won't pose completely nude, which is odd since... well, we're in an art college; art students draw and paint nude models, it's a standard, incredibly boring affair. Well, usually boring. I was more stoked to paint than I have had been all semester and the time between 8 am and 3 pm (yes, I paint throughout that time, negate an hour for lunch) flew by, and I wanted more.

I went out to try to get my car tuned up so it doesn't break down in route to Sin City this weekend and pick up contacts since I'm blind without corrective lenses of some kind. If you don't wear glasses, think of everything more than 8 inches away being totally out of focus. Now, think of going to art school like that. It's a good circumstance for one or two paintings, but after that, it gets old - the whole, not being able to see, thing.

The tune up place wasn't taking any more cars today, and Jack told me he isn't going to make it to Las Vegas with me. I mentioned the trip to Penelope, who may be down... but if not, the Hell with everyone, I'm making the trip alone and I'm going to have a time, believe you me.

After more boring things, I decided to do another three hours of figure drawing, so I went back to school. I noticed there was, what seemed to be white paint on my 3 foot by 6 foot painting that was hanging by the door of the painting studios. It was this.. semi opaque.. sort of white, liquidy dried up liquid. It basically ruined the painting and I was a little more than pissed, as I'm planning to have it shown at the student show and have it win all sort of awards and prizes and recognition and commissions to swanky art galleries in NYC and so on and so forth. I took desperate measures.

I got out my mineral spirits, a rag and my green, radioactive handling latex gloves and proceeded to rub the white off the painting. The painting itself is acrylic and should be impervious to mineral spirits, but if the white... whatever is organic, it should come off, no problem as the mineral spirits eat anything that's in its contact, including my brain in unventilated studios and classrooms (read: all of them). The white stain was impervious to my efforts. I was getting ticked off. I took off the gloves and just starting picking it off. My guess was the white was also acrylic and acrylic on acrylic is basically a for life seal. It's the same sheath of material once it's dried.

Being the idiot I am, and wanting comic relief, I randomly spat on the spot, while someone was talking to me - this just... beautiful huck of saliva and rubbed some more. Miraculously, the spot disintegrated on contact, flaking and came off with just the slight movement of the room air.

I was speechless. Right before I spat the resolution of spit, I had some coffee, Starbucks Coffee. At the moment, Jack is painting an SS figure, holding a cup of coffee, underneath a huge Starbucks Logo. I didn't know wether to spite Jack and show him what good comes from coffee breath, or, wonder what the Hell coffee does to my stomach if it takes off suspicious white, milky, drippy stains off paintings when even basically turpentine can't lick it. This was all too much and I went figure drawing.

Julie was the model and Julie has a wondrous body, everything is elongated and boney and it's just a real blast to draw. I have a major inferiority complex having to do with figurative anything, which means after this semester has ending I'll be one of the best in the school at the subject and will feel barely rectified from all that I'm still feeling right now. It won't be apparent to everyone, but I'll be getting over it by doing about 6 hours of extra figure drawing a week and it's going to be a major strain. I guess nothing good (takes cums off | comes) cheaply - cept spit.

Today, I woke up and got to school on time, something I hadn't done in quite a while. Sunday, I had gotten to bed at a reasonable time. I had coffee, yes, and was getting very excited, since I found the Breeders are touring - but for only 3 dates in the country, LA, Las Vegas and Phoenix. I decided right then and there that this requires a road trip, that I would meet someone there at the show and for some reason, the events we'd have together would snap me outta my little funk - I dunno. I had picture my car plastered with the concert poster and perhaps, "or bust", written in with a sharpy - just to get those odd honks in my direction. I think I might have also gotten together blankets and pillows to use while I sleep in my car.

For the third day, I worked on a self portrait of myself. I have many self portraits of myself, as every teacher I have seems to need one, or ten, made. This particular painting was for a Figure Painting class - a class in the Illustration department. You may not believe this - I don't believe this still, but being a Painting Major requires almost no actual painting skills. In other words, I'm barely taught how to paint, as in, technique. This is well and good, because what I do get taught is Concept. I basically redefine post modernism on each critiqued painting. The weakness of this is that you're not well developed in the actual skills to pull a good painting off. So, I started taking illustration classes, which have absolutely no concept applied to them; you just try to make what you're working on look pretty, or, let's say, Correct.

I'm having major troubles following directions.

In my illustration class, we're learning a technique regarding painting a human figure. There are steps that you must follow to render an academically correct painting. I seem not to be able to follow these simple steps. I'm trying to make this self portrait to give to like, my Grandmother. Something she can hang up in the living room and wonder about and maybe smile. Every time I paint myself, it seems that the face looking back is tragic, expressing pain, tortured, full of emotions, but not the kind I want and my painting style isn't jiving with the assignment. The painting I was working on this morning was my second attempt at this painting. I may need a third.

About an hour into the painting, I looked closely at it. It gazed back at me. I snapped, and ran my hog bristle brush into its forehead. I then picked my metal paint tray and started crashing it against the canvas again and again; it ripped, as if it was really flesh that just tasted a metal pipe. I then took my index finger and unzipped the weak thread all the way down to the neck. Before I could do anything worse, I took myself outside and sat on a bench for a few. I never had done that before and I didn't know exactly what I was feeling. I decided I needed to go home and go to sleep. So I did. Until around 3, where Jack woke me up, staring down at me, on my bed.

He told me he was with a girl and if they could borrow my apartment. Last week, I was wandering around school and went into a drawing class. This girl asked me, "What's your brother's name?". I was about to say Chris, but I have a running joke with Jack, in that we're brother, he's the older, I'm the younger and we were conceived via different fathers, which explains the fact that we have different complexions, last names, etc. I told this girl, "Jack."

She replied, "He's hot."

I never thought I'd hear that before. Not that Jack is ugly, he's just been an asshole recently, since he hasn't gotten laid.

"Well", I said, "you should go out with him"

"I would, but I have a live-in boyfriend. I am looking for a lover though..."

"Well that's perfect! Make a note, and I'll make sure he gets it."

So, she does. The note looks like something I would make, but she didn't use crayons. It was a card made out of one piece of paper. Inside, it said something like, "Be my husband", and "I love you, be my lover" and signed with her name.

When Jack first got it, he thought someone was playing a joke on him, because that's exactly the kind of joke he usually either hands out, or receives back. Apparently, today they met. Jack basically asked her if she wanted to Fuck, and well, she said yes. Thus, I got woken up, asked if my apartment could be borrowed, asked if I had a Trojan to be borrowed, and skiddadled out of my apartment. But first, Jack asked if he could have his beer back. His beer was in my car, which was at school. Without thinking, I took my bike to school, picked my car up and drove it back to deliver the beer. I then went back to school to see the damage I had done.

Harry was there. He remarked, "I like it." It was true, it didn't look bad; if anything it expressed the emotions I was feeling - it was a true self portrait. But it wasn't what was needed. It wasn't an illustrated portrait of me, rendered in a very old master style. It was almost like my whole soul was rebelling against doing such busywork. As if, it didn't want to learn a technique, that it was just fine doing what it had been doing: making it up as it went. I've done many figurative paintings, I might even say that most of my paintings are figurative and I've never had this much trouble. I felt as if I was back in highschool and I hated art classes in highschool.

I came to the conclusion that the best thing to for me to do would be to pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again; even if that meant trying the self portrait for the third time. I'm glad this is just a painting, and not, say, a heart transplant or a moon mission. I still felt crappy, so I went to the school store to buy supplies and went to the library to borrow a video on Keith Harring, whom I found I thoroughly enjoy. That gave me enough strength to go to a figure drawing session at the Temple Event Center:

and go back to school once again to prepare a canvas board for figure painting tomorrow. Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow - I have to get my car tuned up for the road trip this weekend, give Molly my Photoshop 7 CD, buy tickets, get directions, get a map and think about doing another 3 hour figure drawing session after 6 hours of figure painting class. It seems that I need some practice.

Andy Warhol was quoted as saying, "I'm the type who'd be happy not going anywhere as long as I was sure I knew exactly what was happening at the places I wasn't going to. I'm the type who'd like to sit home and watch every party that I'm invited to on a monitor in my bedroom." That's not exactly how I feel at the moment, but it's close.

I was invited to a party, by a friend of a friend. It was supposed to be a mythical party; flyers were being posted everywhere. The birthday being celebrated wouldn't be topped in a long while, beautiful girls everywhere. It was as if, my presence was needed, if only for atmosphere. I had gotten directions. I had left the house at around 9:30 pm. I had gotten lost not too long afterward. I had called and gotten clarifications, finding I was in the absolute wrong side of town. I called for more clarifications, finding I was still, in the opposite side of town. I stopped at 711 to ask the old, balding man, who couldn't shave every last whisker from his face, leaving a few to keep the tastes of things past eaten.

He told me of the street I needed Arapahoe. It was in the exact direction that I had come from. He insisted that I wait for him to draw a map. The line grew behind me of people buying cigarettes with credit cards. I decided to go the direct opposite direction that the man told me to go and ended up in Englewood, south of Denver, never finding the road I wanted. I turned around and tried again. No luck. I decided, "Arapahoe", on the back of the envelop I was l scribbled the directions, really meant, "Alameda" and I knew where that was, and proceeded to follow the directions from there.

Amazingly enough, the directions didn't work. More calling. Much talk. No clarification that I could make out. I tried again. And again.

The dashboard clock on my 86' Celica creeped into the next morning. No fucking Arapahoe, but I found the street I was supposed to turn off of, Glipson. I had written, "Gliton". Off of Glipson, was Glipson Circle. I was to turn right onto the street and into the arms of the party. The street turned into a park, with many, DO NOT ENTER signs. I cursed. I screamed. I was glad some radio station was playing the Pet Shop Boys and New Order, because that's the only thing that got me through for some odd, inane reason. I tracked back and decided that, "Right after first light", meant, "Left onto street, keep going until sign from higher spiritual energy comes to light".

That, didn't work. I was surprised. My radio turned onto the late night Death Metal Hour and I was pondering if this was a good station to have on, or should I put in my friends, Iggy and the Stooges tape, dubbed off a record player with a too slow/loose belt. "I swear," my friend will confess, "Some of my tapes sound better slowed down, my CRASS, sounds way better." I turned off my phone, since the battery was running on the fumes of whatever batteries run off of, about an hour ago. An hour I spent going up and down the same, snow and ice covered roads, going much much too fast, with only one headlight. The irony of that, is if I turned on my brights, the light that didn't work, works; and the light that did work, ceases to work. There's a new light right on top of the backseat of my car and I'm not sure which lamp to replace; it's a fuckin' allegory.

I turned on the phone and had three messages from my friend. He was calling, wondering where I was, thinking I was so close. I wasn't. I decided to just screw it and drive straight. I would stop whenever I wanted. It didn't matter. I got onto University and just went South. My friends messages gave me one more grip on finding this stupid thing. It was about 1 am. I past the street I lived on. I entered a different town, whose name I never heard of. I past gated communities, going 30 miles over the speed limit. I stopped at a light on

Arapahoe.

I turned right and found Broadway, then Glipson, then a bunch of kids hanging around a house. I must have driven 150 miles.

I parked my car and entered. I found Rudy and gave him a monster hug. I was stressed from the trip and really wasn't in the swing of the party. I saw Melissa. I had this idea that Melissa and I were something, you know, from the fact that we go out; and that we fuck and do cute things for each other, like make mix CDs. So I went to give her a kiss, but she veered back and I lunged forward and basically licked her neck to her shoulder. I didn't know what to do, so I looked for Jack. I found him and he was fucked up. I saw alex and alex's friends, just sitting on the couch. Some kids was mindlessly playing with a Macintosh. The back had all the potsmokers.

I felt really dizzy, as if I wasn't in the right place. I found the birthday girl and wished her a happy birthday and she acknowledged my presence for a second. I said hello to a few other people I had met the day before at a Noise Band show at Monkey Mania. They seem to act as if I was some fly, in the way. I was getting pissed. I saw Melissa again, and asked what was up (nothing), asked if she was happy to see me (yes) asked if she wanted me to kiss her (no). I didn't know why and was already too sick of the party. I went back to the kitchen, grabbed my coat and left.

I couldn't stand the party. I saw all these people around me. The seem to be having mindless fun. They were dressed all the same and all... in this style that was put done in stone somewhere. No one really had thought about it, but there they all were, acting and looking like they should. And there was I, dressed the same way, probably to do the same thing. It made me ill. I couldn't believe this is what its all about; this is what we do in our spare time. We gather together in a house, we drink and we laugh and that's it. It's pointless I thought and I wondered why I think so much, why I couldn't just be jolly and do the same, why I thought myself so highly and why I felt better than all the people around me. Why was this? Why didn't I feel like I fit in?

Every time you learn the truth about something, the magic of that thing disappears. If you were working on a movie set, you'd know right away how every scene you've witnessed takes place and it was just that, a scene, choreographed. The final edit does nothing to erase the knowledge of every seam stitched. That's how I felt tonight. I felt that this was all staged, that this way of living out as the Youth was just an act, that I knew the truth and wanted to scream, "STOP, EVERYONE STOP AND LOOK AT YOURSELVES!", but no one would listen, would they? No one would care.

The ghost of Plato's cave won't go away and why I am the one who has cast away his chains, but at the same time, feels inferior? Is that the catch on knowledge? That those who have it cannot easily take this knowledge and use it? What kind of sick joke is this? What kind of world is this?

Barely knowing where I was, doesn't help oneself in getting back to where one knows where one is. Basically, I got lost going home, as I had gotten coming to the destination.

Have you ever seen the movie, The Labyrinth? The lead character, Sarah, has to go through this huge maze to the Goblin Castle to save her baby brother, who she had first cursed and wished that the goblins would take him away. They did, but she of course, didn't mean what she said and had to go through said maze. The problem is, nothing is "fair" in the labyrinth and being a magical place, the labyrinth is itself alive, changing and rearranging itself at whim. A dead end will miraculously change into a shortcut to the end, and vice/versa.

Retardedly, I felt exactly like that. The difficulties on finding that damned party paled in the getting back.

Sometimes, I have hours, days and weeks where I feel as if half my brain has turned off. As if a part just doesn't receive enough oxygen and refuses to work. I swear, my vision just didn't work, I couldn't make out signs. I didn't know which way was which! I felt trapped and it seemed that the labyrinth of roads to my house constantly changed around me to foible my attempts of escape.

I turned onto a road that I swore was South. I found myself going down a road and passing Arapahoe, the street I thought I just got away from. I went onto another street, Holly, a street that was only 3 blocks away from my apartment. I thought, "If I just stay on this street, it'll take me to Evans, and Evans, I'll just take Monaco."

On this hunch. I raced on Holly. I saw a cop car to my right and he turned onto Holly as well, following closely. Of course, yes, he stopped me over, asked for my license (which I have), insurance (after a bit of searching, that as well) and registration (couldn't find it). He had stopped me because of my headlight being out, but let me go. I followed Holly for another few blocks, but it ended in a dead end.

I turned around and took University, now, not sure which way I was going. I couldn't see the Mountains, which are always to the West if you live on the front range, or the Qwest logo, that beams from the top of the Qwest Building, marking where downtown is. I past Arapahoe again. How could the street I couldn't find a hour ago, pop up everywhere? It was as if every road I took just turned either into a dead end, or a loop back to Arapahoe.

I pasted Arapahoe one more time, before I decided to turn onto it and West (I thought). I naturally, got stopped again by a police officer. I showed him the card the first one gave me and felt ill with deja vu.

I found Broadway and made it to Evans and then home. The party was maybe about 20 minutes away from my house. If I had known that, this night might have had turned out different. But, I feel awful. It's as if I never wanted to go to that party, I didn't want to interact with anyone tonight. Sometimes, you just feel that way, you know? But I made myself do just that, because people expected it, or rather, thought that action was natural; someone has a party, you go, because it's going to be "good". Why didn't I want to go? I feel sometimes that my brain fights with itself.

It's as if it wants to do one thing, but feels another and sometimes can't make up it's own mind on what the other 170lbs of itself should do. It's as if you had one of those toys, with appendages that seem to fly towards each other when you turn a crank, but skillfully it misses itself every time they move, except this time, the different parts do hit, gears grind and spark and the entire contraption falls into itself. It's like my inner thoughts are a piston in a motor that doesn't know if it should go, up or down, so tries to go to the side, thinking that both up and down are equally taken care of.

I wish sometimes I could make carbon copies of myself, give them to my friends to interact and play with. These copies don't have to speak or anything, they just have to be there. Then, the real me would be able to do what it wants and wouldn't feel as if it's missing out on doing what it really, truly wants to do. Maybe if that was the case, the real me would know what exactly what this thing it wants to truly do is and I would be able to fit comfortable into that place.

4:30 am, Sunday,

I've been experimenting recently with the idea of documenting the process of creating art and having this documentation, this proof and process, be artwork... or even, be the significant artwork itself, and not the actual painting, drawing, what have you.

Click to view the process movie

I think my greatest strength and weakest link is that I always ask the questions, "How does this work?", "Where did this come from?", "What was here before, after, in a million years?". I'm more interested in its story, than the object, the spectacle itself. This is true for people I meet, or will meet, or people that won't talk to me anymore. Yes, the relationship really exists in the Now, but it's the memory and the anticipation that we ponder. I can't help but to think of the ephemeral qualities of everything. Take for instance, you're most likely reading this in a jouranl, called the Ephemeris.

Painting this sort of portrait, one of myself using a mirror, always reminds me of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes strip; Calvin is looking in a puddle and wonders to Hobbes about the idea that what he's seeing is an opposite Universe and that the moment he looks away from the puddle, the entire universe and the existance of his reflective self will be destroyed. Hobbes puts up the postulate that maybe he himself is that reflected self that will be destroyed. Calvin keeps staring at the reflection till nightfall.

Documenting a painting in this stop motion style reminds me of claymation movies some what. It's again trying to hit on the idea of giving another dimension to a painting, that I'm also trying to accomplish via pixelPaint.