she's a mess

.

a major round of Sciatica brought me to the ER on monday.  i spent two days laying in bed before making the call to go to the hospital and i've been laying in bed ever since.  luckily, it's not as bad this time around.  i am able to walk, albeit slowly.  i am able to sleep, albeit with the aid of Vicodin and muscle relaxers.  i am able to work on projects from my bed, though i wish i was out in the world, making money and friends, and taking pictures.  it's hard for me to lay around like this.  it truly is.

the first time i dealt with back problems was during my last year in art school.  crocheting was the only art-making method i could utilize while laying flat on my back and not moving for hours upon hours at a time.  i suppose it's no wonder that i view the skill as one of mending, of catharsis, of process, of healing.

yesterday, in my warm opiate surrender, i started making a new text piece that i'm not sure will be a yarnbomb or a scarf.  perhaps it will be both.  perhaps i'll wear it for as long as the cold weather calls for it and then transform it by stitching it to a pole somewhere.

i like that idea.

i like this notion of giving away my history.  or better said: gifting away my history.

this work has so much to do with the conflation of the public and private self.  i take texts from my diary or lyrics from songs i like (in this case, the lyric comes from the Lady Gaga song 'Dance in the Dark') or bits of my personal autobiography and stitch them in to sweaters, scarves, and blankets.  i take the text of my fear and desire and twist them in to some sort of signage... my story being told one yarnbomb at a time on city streets.

it's a game of exposure, of exploration, where the photographic image also plays a very heavy part.  which image of me is real?  which image is the most honest?  the image you've met in person?  or the image i make in my diary?  what does it mean to sit naked in front of a mirror, taking pictures of one's own reflection wrapped in the lyrics of a favorite song?  especially when the chosen text is "she's a mess. she's a mess. she's a mess".  especially when the naked body in the mirror's reflection is a body in pain.

maybe i was a mess this month in more ways than one.  currently, i am a physical mess but there was also the fact of my mother's birthday and death anniversary to contend with.  those events are exactly a week apart: january 12th and 19th.   and amid all this, i'm trying to learn my own curves of conscience, the twists within my personality and sensibility.  i'm learning about myself through these moments of exposure. i'm learning what i'm capable of and who i want to be.

i felt lonely today being cooped up like this.  i made a choice just to bare it.  i reached for my crochet hook and let the soothing tingle of medications wash over me.

.

just do that thing that you do, in a perverse hue

.

when she sings a hybrid can withstand these things, my heart can beat with bricks and strings i swear to whatever absent or present Christ that might hover above me, wishing me well or feeding the dark cloud that follows my bloodline, that my tears well up something awful and beautiful in my eyes and, in this moment i want to lay your body down and crawl above you like a demon, with enough space between us so that my awful beautiful tears fall and find their way in to the crevice where your arm lays against your side, in to the well of your collar bone, and leak down to fill the millimeter of flesh between your toes.  let me cloak you, bathe you with my tears.  i promise, i won't make an ugly face when i cry.  i cry with a straight face.  every now and then, a trembling chin.  and that's if you're lucky.  like Caesar, no one gets to watch me die.  my betrayers will remain unsatisfied.

she sings brushes with darkness will not help you create your destiny of self  but i think i disagree.  i disagree because my whole life has been one brush with darkness after the next and it has been absolutely not of my choosing.  and in the midst of such ugliness i tended to my own face and my own soul: i scraped together whatever breakfast i could managed and i choked down whatever hope i could find.  in these moments, when the world turned away from the squalor of my birth, i loved the world anyway.  in these moments, i dreampt of your corners and promised myself that, one day, i would find a way to reach out and explore the shadow that marries your thigh to your hip.  no matter how many plane tickets or tears it may take to find it.

my imperfections are glaring but i don't give a fuck.  my love is perfect and complete and so is my lust.  i paint my eyes and my lips and crash into myself with the total fervor of your aching, confused heart.  lift up my skirts, lift up my sheets, bury your face in, bury your face in, bury your face in, bury your cock in, shove your faith and pain into whatever opening you find first.


put your headphones on and ignore the phone calls.




walking through crowds, all i see is myself-  my own hands swaying next to my hips, my feet pounding the concrete, and all the plane tickets i've bought myself.  i look to no one for the realization of my dreams.  just myself.  i look to no one.  no one.  just the darkness that brushes up against my cheek, parts my hair, paints my lips, my eyes, and puts a strong stride in my step.


keep it tight.  sometimes the simplest move is right.
the melody that you choose can rescue you.

.

TURN IT UP AS LOUD AS YOU CAN AND DANCE!

.

gimmie the thing that i love

...a soldier to my own emptiness...

.

 

okay, so i didn't buy a red dress, i bought a blue dress. :)

red is so specific.  i was looking for a fire engine red dress but the closest thing i found was some crazy shade of coral which, though i like the color, was made of such cheap knit that it unmistakably showcased my unmentionables.  and hey, i admit to being okay with looking a little slutty but this wasn't in that good way.  and the only other "red" dress around was maroon.  maroon is categorically NOT RED.  but i was there and eager to shop; excited for my trip and feeling spunky.  this is, in fact, the grand side-effect of The Kelly Bundy Dress.  as well as having two plane tickets, a train ticket, and a concert ticket in my hot little hand.  5 more days!!!!!  AHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!  and so amidst the Beyonce that blared from the store's stereo system and the excitement in my own heart and mind, i decided turquoise was the next best thing to red so here we are-  packed and ready for adventure, a devil with a blue dress on. 

i'm gonna see this wide world, mama.  

sure the fuck am.  :)

leave nothing on these streets to explore.

i have never felt so happy in my entire life.


.

belief

we stay up late. we discuss our theories.  we discuss the theories of all the big dogs and i count my blessings.  then, i count how many shots i've poured.  i count how many books i've read this year (far fewer than the last) and i count how many times i can get a raised eyebrow out of a man.

my roommates head to bed and i hang new pictures on the wall.  pollen filters in through my open window and i listen to the neighbors fighting.  i put on a slow song of romantic redemption.  i take off my shoes.  i take off my socks.  i pull the braid out of my hair.

earlier, we discussed the power of images.  we discussed the power of persona and watched Lady Gaga videos.  i played my favorite and said: "she understands visual pleasure. she knows the exact moment when taboo begins."

that picture up top:  that image is me and it is not me.  i am that girl sometimes.  and sometimes that is the truest self i can express.  sometimes i am a girl of fishnets and wild hair and all i want is for someone to notice that i need a nice, good slap.  but there are reasons for this and those reasons matter. those reasons are not contained in the photographs i present.  there is the allusion.  there is the heartache.  it is spelled out in vivid pink.  it is scrawled all over me.  but i don't want to have to go on and on about it.  sometimes i just want a reckoning and i don't want to have to argue for it.  just do what needs to be done.

that picture up top:  it is me and it is not me.  sometimes i am not that girl at all.  sometimes i am too angry for romance, too absorbed in my own slow rage.  i am too interested in my own steam and decorum to consider the desires of another.  leave me alone.  i like my lonely road just fine.  i need no hand to hold.  god died for me the second my mother did. and let me tell you, i've never felt so fucking free.  i twirl my hair and paint my nails and stare you in the face.  i don't owe anyone anything and i plan to keep it that way.

that picture up top:  it is me and it is not me.  

friday night bullshit

listening to The Smiths and enjoying a spectacularly poured greyhound here in my white room (zum wohl!) with a burning shoulder from spending the last several hours hunched over a painting.  these text pieces look so simple but a tremendous amount of labor actually goes in to them.  all my work seems to be that way.  my friend Lea once said "your work is so devotional".  her comment has stuck with me.

i am a devotee, to be sure, but devoted to what?  the rules change quicker than i can name them.  it's gotten to the point where i no longer care about rules at all.  this damn inner compass of mine gives me enough trouble.  i've made a point of ignoring it lately and just leaving myself open to the strange throes of exploration.  how else will i know what i'm made of?  how else will i know anything?  how else will make art?  risk, as such, is a definite necessity.  i've felt so scared of so much for so long.  i've felt afraid of being myself.  but i'm at the point now where feeling afraid of something actually becomes the reason to explore that particular something or do that particular something or cultivate an environment where i have to somehow explore the fear.  fear becomes the reason for a lot of things these days but never not to do something.

funny enough, the result is that one begins to be afraid of very little.  maybe i am devoted to the questions?  maybe i am devoted to the attempt?  to understand anything.  to understand one's self.

am i getting too philosophic?  is it too late for that?  wait, it's friday night/saturday morning.  it's not too late for anything!  and aside from that, it's never too late for philosophy!  philosophy is a necessity.  it's right up there with food and air.  so let's get philosophic.  tell me your secrets and what the fuck you expect out of this life.  the clock is ticking, friend.  get on it.  fear is a reason to DO IT.  i look at this body of mine and i watch it dying.  people think i'm so much younger than i am.  in some ways, they're right.  in some ways i am much younger than i actually am.  but i am watching this body age, for however imperceptible that may be to others, and it is a huge motivating force in my life.  i look at myself and i see my mama somewhere under this skin.  her genetics, her softness, her absolute kindness...

fuck.

talking about her makes me want to cry and marry the first person who will ask me.  our fairy tales are hard at work in me too, i promise, i've just decided to ignore that shit and hold out for the best.  or atleast the most honest expression of self i can manage.

but my mother...  she's dead. and i feel her beauty everyday.  it is such a deep pain.  i try to think of my life along the same lines of hers.  i ask myself "what if you die at 55, kid?"

and so: i bought a ticket back to new york.  7 weeks to go, friends.  7 weeks.  and this time i plan to go all alone.  i will walk and walk and walk and see as much art as i can.  i will write in the bars and cafes.  i'll do things that i am afraid of doing.  it matters.   i plan to move there in the spring.  i have 6 months to save as much money as i can but, regardless, i'm going.  even if i end up arriving penniless, i'm going.  this next trip back is more about exploring what daily life would be like rather than being on vacation.  i re-read my NY diary tonight over sushi at my favorite oaktown sushi bar and recalled how instantly at home i felt in that city.  god, it overtook me.  i loved it the second i saw it.  i loved it the entire time i was there.  i was heartbroken at the thought of leaving.  my last day in NY was a rough one.  i really didn't want to leave.  it took all i had not to cancel my flight.  it really did.  i have to go back and let her have her way with me.  i have to follow my own trembling, romantic, boisterous heart.  our time is too short.

but let's not get too serious.  the brevity of our moment is also a reason to participate in exquisite simplicities and sensual pleasures.  i'd like to offer a very loud and public THANK YOU to Lady Gaga for making my life infinitely better by making me smell this fucking fantastic!  her perfume is amazing.  seriously.  i test drove it at Lord & Taylor in manhattan but waited til i got home to buy it.  i've already spritzed an inch of the stuff and i've only had it a week.  good thing i bought the big bottle.

and speaking of Lady Gaga, there's this really special thing i keep resisting making mention of here:  jack halberstam's new book GAGA FEMINISM.  oh looky, looky! whose image is that on the cover?  awwww shit!!!  yep, you guessed it!  yours truly!  and i am absolutely honored!  SO HONORED to have been asked by such a thoughtful and exciting theorist as Jack to use one of my drawings on the cover of this book! and also SO HONORED to participate in the feminist/queer discussions of our age.  it's a major feather in my cap that jack liked this drawing.  period.  and i am absolutely honored to, by proxy, engage with Gaga's discussion of identity.  i am a lucky bitch, to say the least.

and if you are at all wavering on whether or not to buy this book, don't!  it is spectacularly written!  i'm only about half way through and i am IN LOVE!  GET IT! GET IT! GET IT!!!!!  you definitely won't regret it.

and now back to painting and drinking greyhounds.

all my love,
angela.


.

...a soldier to my own emptiness...

.





.

anais nin and judas and the world a diary makes:

i just read this passage in volume 2 of her diary a few days ago and copied so many of these sentences into my own notebook. what a gift to stumble across this reading. a gift to hear her voice, to hear her read and giggle.





and there's something about this, most obviously that last bit, that pairs so well with lady gaga's new video JUDAS that was released today. listening to anais read her ideas about women's creations needing to be made with their own blood, nourished by their own milk, but with the acknowledgement that she did not come to this act of creation alone (a very post-modern notion, nicht wahr?) and is not turned away from Creating by this fact, is important to hold on to when engaging with today's art, no matter what form the art takes. i think gaga is a grand example of this. she is helping to create a language which embraces the feminine, the bloodiness of being female, of Becoming a woman, Becoming a human, Becoming an artist. it is a bloody job. i listen and i look and i see that her mirror is familiar to me. there is something in this that calls to something very basic within my construction as Female. her words! confession. the honest onslaught of hidden desire, the secrets that must be kept, the truth that must be squelched... these are things a diary would contain. could a pop song be a diary entry? could it be an extension of that mode of private practice, an outcropping of a totally private world? yes. and her make-up! and when my mother died all i wanted was bright red lipstick and luscious perfumes. i wanted beauty around me. i wanted the reverie of gorgeous smells. we are called Whore for wanting such things. we are called Whore for having Wants. i watch and i listen. her luxurious references! her fake fingernails pointing, pointing, pointing! the weaponry of them, bejewelled skewers. she is a golden thesaurus! she becomes her own judas, betraying her king, betraying herself, but not shying from the work of Creation... not shying from the language that women must create for themselves. still. the awful silence will be born again tomorrow. we must scratch and scribble every day.

as i read anais nin's diaries i wonder if men read them too? do they respond to the language that is made. the caress contained within each turn of phrase, the glory and horror and beauty of exposure.

i wonder if the diaries have, again, become dangerous books? silence is thick these days and i am guilty at times of it as well. i'm trying to become less guilty. with everything i've got and it is hard, i am trying to Become less silent. i scratch and scribble and maybe i am making a world too. notebook as tool.

just a holy fool

.







judas


.

life's work

i've been thinking a lot about limits lately. and art.

perceived limits.

how all the artists and writers i admire have highly multi-faceted practices. they don't just write or just paint. they embrace a wide definition of what art is and can be. and what it can be made with. and i'm so attracted to that. i'm so compelled. just turned ON but that expansive, inclusive, generous view.

and then a few nay-sayers arrive and start trying to infect me with all sorts of dualities that i simply don't agree with, that i find no real foundation for. the nay-sayers that shout oil paintings are better than drawings and why would you waste time crocheting when you could be painting and writing? i thought you were a painter?

for awhile, these interferences accomplished just that: interference. but i've decided that part of being an artists is simply being yourself and ignoring all that chatter. because those nay-saying remarks, those limits, those expectations are not critique. and therefore need to be thrown out and turned a blind eye.

the really wonderful, happy circumstance of my life at present is that i have no one to answer to, no one to argue with about these things, no one to sell my ideas about art to. i can sit, alone and quiet, and hear the crunch of the road i'm on. i can find a site of stillness where i know, beyond any doubt, that i am moving in the right direction for me, for my practice. and it's become important to track down like-minded people who really do truly care about the job artists do and believe in its relevance. this blog has been absolutely wonderful in that regard. completely. my instances of fear and doubt are becoming less and less frequent as a result of this practice, this weird electronic landscape.

but is it weird? it doesn't feel weird. i take it back. it feels good. it feels happy.

thank you for travelling over to Gaga Stigmata yesterday. i hope you liked the work. i hope they are good images regardless of what your art opinion is of Lady Gaga. she's become very interesting to me in the passed few months. very compelling. the image she's made. the images she continues to make. and there's just something about that Hair Bow.

also, when it comes to music, anytime someone gets labeled "poison for the minds of our youth", you can be sure i'm going to take a better look at what they're up to. ;) and it's especially scary to me that she's been labeled as such when her dominant message is to love oneself.

but i guess that is a dangerous message somehow... if we all loved ourselves a little bit more (love, the opposite of indulgence) we probably wouldn't waste time caring about the kind of car we drive or who has the hottest boyfriend or how thick our wallets are. if we all loved ourselves a little bit more, our social values would definitely begin to shift. education and culture and walking through life with respect and kindness... ethics... would become much more prevalent and important within our society. maybe even come to be viewed as necessities?

somehow this all leads back to DIY culture in my mind. how it shatters a lot of those perceived limits. how it is the best antidote to consumer culture available to us right now. relying, every step of the way, on buying survival puts me in a very weak position. and i'm talking about the basics- food, shelter, clothing. i have to buy a place to live and buy the food i eat and buy the clothes i need to cover my body. i have no choice but to participate in the system.

wrong.

after making the most recent banner, i realized that i already have a skill that can be used to satisfy one of my basic needs- clothing. and with autumn's arrival, i decided that rather than buy sweaters and scarves, etc, etc, etc... i'll make my own. i'll buy yarn instead. and lead a more artful, more creative, more compassionate life that way. i want the objects in my life to have some type of meaning... and i just don't find the meaning i'm looking for in mass-production. can i find a way to love myself enough to figure out how to be less reliant on a system that keeps artists down? yes i can. i totally can. it takes time but i've become willing to spend my evenings with my crochet hook (and learn to knit too!) so that i don't have to buy a blanket or buy a pair of mittens. i'd rather give cash to the people who make the supplies with which i can use to build (truly build, with my own two hands) a life that i love and feels good. making my own sweaters is a good way to begin. it's a start. it's a start that takes a stand too. and i think artists and craftsmen who do this need to be supported as well. i think it's wonderful to buy t-shirts and stuff like that from the artists on etsy and places like that. a t-shirt can carry a lot of meaning sometimes.

i'm not going to choose between painting and drawing and crocheting and writing. i'm going to do them all. i love them all and they all feed each other. having a wide practice makes life more interesting, more beautifully complex. it erases dualities and strictures and just opens the world up. a sweater could be Art, for sure. a sweater can operate as a billboard. just like the banners do. fashion is Art, so why not?

one of my favorite art pieces ever is Jenny Holzer's t-shirt project. body as billboard, clothing as a warning label. i love it.




talk about a ton of bricks, right? t-shirt as Art.

thanks Jenny. :)

wanna know a secret?

a sneak peek at my secret drawing series is up at Gaga Stigmata today! go have a look-see! :)

"i'm a free bitch"