persistence

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they keep taking it down and i keep putting it back up.

this is the third banner i've installed at this particular location.  if there needs to be a fourth, so be it.  when i was getting ready to stitch this piece in to place today, a woman walked by and thanked me for reinstalling it.  it made me feel good that the community here has noticed the work and saw it as a welcome addition to the neighborhood and was sad to see it go.  it made me even happier to be thanked for putting a new piece up.  pep in my step. :)

THE WAY YOU NEED TO BE LOVED

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downtown

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THE WAY YOU NEED TO BE LOVED
19th and Broadway, Oakland CA
angela simione, 2014

this kind of work is so much fun to do.  :)

exacerbating

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THE WAY YOU NEED TO BE LOVED   (exacerbating 1 & 2)
photo performance
angela simione, 2014


i finished the new blanket in the very early morning hours of january 1st.  i started it the day after i came home from germany 6 months ago.  it's amazing to see it finished.  it feels amazing to sleep below it, to hide from the sunlight that creeps into my room each morning, to dream below the teetering text that i have meditated on daily for half a year.

i can't set the idea down.  THE WAY YOU NEED TO BE LOVED.

how do i need to be loved?

how do you?

i am dumbfounded and compelled in the same breath.




i'm interested in finding the line between devotion and obsession, between catharsis and self-absorption.  i'm interested in the strange back and forth dance between these ideas...  the odd cadence contained in the image i made tonight of my naked self seated in front of an object in took so long to create, posed for the quick snap of a camera's shutter...  6 months caught inside the flutter of a split second...  devotion paired with instant gratification.

is my devotion soiled by my nudity?  does my body detract from the seriousness of the process of making a blanket entirely by hand?  does my skin somehow erase the beauty of my dedication?  the beauty of patience?  does my nudity compromise my talent for such faithfulness? and if so, why?  does the blur across my face help the matter?  does it ease the blow?  or am i exacerbating everything and making it even harder to find an answer to the question of  THE WAY YOU NEED TO BE LOVED?

do images like these make it harder for you to love me?

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day one

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i celebrated the first day of 2014 by getting another yarnbomb out in the world. happy new year, everybody.  :)  what way do you need to be loved?


18th street between mission and valencia in san francisco.

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in the wee hours of christmas eve...

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one slow stitch at a time.


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stitch by stich

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a beautiful sunday evening at home.

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love:

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"To love a stranger as oneself implies the reverse: to love oneself as the stranger."


- Simione Weil, Gravity & Grace, p. 111

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in progress

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i spent the majority of the day at home in bed with a cup of coffee and my crochet hook.  i listened to french phonetics and repeated the words as i stitched away and wondered about myself and the life i've been creating vs. the life i want to create...

the way you (i) need to be loved...


i rounded the corner in to my 33rd year on september 3rd and seemed to instantly smack right into a new realm of self-knowledge like a fucking brick wall.  i spent the day after my birthday mildly hungover, a bit forlorn, more than a bit worse for wear, and wearing the same dress i had worn the day before to one of my french classes.  i fared well, all things considered, and had a great time in class (maybe being a bit brain dead even helped me absorb all the new information and sounds contained in this new language) but felt the closing of an era shake within me...  or at least the need to bring an era to an end.

when i first became single a year and a half ago, i needed to live brashly.  i needed to embrace my new freedom in a fiery, even outlandish, way.  it was healing to do so and provided me with so many opportunities to see the world (and myself) in a new way, in a truer light, and without the bad habit of judgement and fear that so easily pollutes us all.  it helped me shake off the expectations and hurt left over from a long-term relationship.  that strange residue of pain, of unfulfillment and goals left to die.  sometimes the death of a dream is more painful that the actual death of a loved one.  it is hard to watch a fairytale fall in to disrepair.  it is hard to watch a fairytale turn to total shit.  it's even harder to not let the experience embitter you.  i needed to be a bit wild for a time in order to heal from the effects of drudgery and heartbreak.  i needed to reclaim something about myself that i'd given up along the way.  but now, it's beginning to feel like the things that once provided me with a sense of healing are now becoming damaging.  excessive in a way that does not lead to a greater sense of freedom and independence, but to a flippant attitude...  a callous form of casualness that i absolutely do not want to adopt.  i do not want to be Charles Bukowski, waking up to 300 hangovers a year, and wading through an endless barrage of damaged human beings and semi-meaningless experiences in an effort to combat the loneliness inherent to human existence. it is true that maybe my sense of loneliness is bigger than others, but i must learn how to bare it in a new way.  i need to return to the work of devotion and exploration.  i need to attempt to learn the difference between Bravery and Excess.  both have their values and nuances but one should not be mistaken for the other.  i have clung to beliefs and images of the world and life that perhaps i've outgrown.  i crave a new sense of balance, a new expression of freedom, a new way to achieve comfort.  i return to my hooks and books and the love i feel for bigger, better things than what i've allowed myself. 

how do i need to be loved?


if i can manage to focus on that question, 33 will be a great year.

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tonight, the center of my heart is still

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my bedroom window in open.  i can hear my neighbor flirting with a girl on his front porch.  and every so often, the thick click of a new can of beer being opened overlaps their giggles. 

this is the dance.

i think of my newest banner stitched to the cold pole of a stop sign in front of a wasted, graffiti covered warehouse.  the words wail out in black in white: THE WAY YOU NEED TO BE LOVED.  isn't that the only search?  isn't that what we're all up too out here?  isn't that the dance?

the voices next door lower.  they're speaking softly in spite of the beer.

the way you need to be loved...

i've been asking myself this question for a while now.  we all crave that beautiful sense of security that tends to proliferate romantic partnerships.  we all want that sense of security and belonging, of being understood.  i'm no different.  those things feel good and sometimes in the middle of the night the deepest seed hunger in me begins to ache and twist.  i think of eyes locked in to one another and hands lost in hair.  i think of eager mouths and eager hearts and sweat flying.  i think of all that gorgeous softness, all that fantastic hardness and sigh.

the way you need to be loved.

i think of the words i bang out across the keys.  i think of all my scribbles, the pages i fill, another volume of the diary nearing its end.  i think of the images i've made and the images i need to make.  i hunger after their creation.  i want them in front of me.  i want them to exist.  i want them to be seen and to be known.   my value dwindles in their absence.  a day passes and i haven't drawn and so i begin to feel the worthlessness of my life stand tall.  if i can't do this, what is my life for?

the way you need to be loved.

i remember laying awake next to the snoring body of a man who no longer touched me.  i remember waking up early to run and sweat.  i'd pretend the pounding rhythm of my feet on the pavement was the pounding of hot, delicious sex.  i was young and alive and i wanted to express those qualities, luxuriate in the beauty of them, but i was in a relationship that no longer provided for such things.  my heart broke over and over again every time he rolled on his side away from me in the bed.  i would gaze at this dark outline and try not to cry as i felt the worthlessness of my life stand tall.

the way you need to be loved.
the way you need to be loved.
the way you need to be loved.

i miss my siblings.

i miss our mother.

i thought about her a lot in Germany.  that was her fairytale land.  it's a place where anyone can fall in love.  it's a place where spectacular heartache and spectacular beauty rest side by side.  one morning as we cruised through sunrise in the most uncomfortable bus i've ever sat/slept in, i looked up right in time to see the sign for Hannover.  i thought, "that's your Germany, mama.  i'm heading back to mine; my rough and tumble Berlin"

i'm more schooled in what i do NOT want than what i do.  i look at myself in the mirror and realize that i'm simply searching.  just searching.  i've still got so many unknown corners within myself to explore.  i don't want to backtrack.  i don't envy the relationships i see around me.  all the locks.  all the ugly names.

i took this photo in a mirror inside an exhibition at the Foam Museum of Photography in Amsterdam a few weeks ago.  It's half-frame photography that ended up in an accidental double exposure.  it's actually a very accurate self-portrait.

the images collide and waver.  the outlines are indefinite.  i am searching.  must it feel like sadness?

that seed that twists itself like a knife within me is trying to tell me something but i've not yet learned its language.  i have to listen closer.  i have to get the static out of my ears and the anger out of my heart.  i have to pay attention and make room for the unexpected.  i have to pay attention and i have to be brave.  i have to use my two hands and build a life for myself that fits me.  who i truly am, not who i've been expected to be, nor the dream others have of me.

i like this moment...  laying in my bed alone listening to my neighbor flirt with a girl.  soon, another beer will crack open and i'll raise my cocktail silently toward my open window in cheers.


the way you need to be loved
the way you need to be loved
the way you need to be loved

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THE WAY YOU NEED TO BE LOVED

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Telegraph Ave @ 49th
Oakland, CA



sometimes a poem only needs one line.