4 years ago today

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languidly waking this morning next to Brian, i rolled over and looked at his sleeping face and thought, "my mom would've really liked you."  i smiled and rubbed his head and closed my eyes.  it wasn't until another several hours had passed that i realized what day it is.  it is the fourth anniversary of my mother's death. 

i was shocked that it wasn't the first thing i thought of today.  perhaps it's a sign that my life is no longer dominated by her death.  i think she'd be happy about that.  i think she'd be relieved that i am not walking around crying behind my sunglasses the way i used to, a calm demeanor presented to the world but wanting to be just as dead as she is in the aftermath of her loss.  my entire physicality felt like one big gaping wound.  sometimes, it still does.  i don't think i'll ever reach a day when her death doesn't cause pain.  i miss her incredibly and the world is a drastically different place without her in it.   her absence is so palpable some days, so pronounced...  how unfair it all is, how awful.  there's no way around it.  it directly effects the decisions i make.  her early death brought me face to face with the reality of my own mortality and it's impossible for me to take it lightly.

i wrote in my diary like i do every morning then went for a run.  i wanted to feel my body move.  i wanted to breathe heavy and feel blood coursing fast throughout my body.  i wanted to feel my legs getting tired and yet push myself to meet the challenge i'd set for myself.  i wanted to feel young and alive and beautiful.  i wanted to appreciate being in the world.

afterward, i bought myself a new tube of lipstick.  hot pink.  a celebration of life and vitality; an honoring of our shared brevity and a recognition of the fact that life is too short to not live boldly. that's what lipstick symbolizes for me.  when my mother was feeling sad, she'd go to the drugstore and buy herself a new tube of lipstick. 


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i wish she were here.

i wish she could see me.

i wish she could see what i've accomplished in the last four years and how far i've come.

i wish she could see the portrait i drew of her.

i wish she could meet Brian and hear him sing.

i wish i could talk to her.



i wish i could just talk to her.


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i feel very alone in this big world sometimes.  it makes me want to run from people i love because i'm afraid of losing them too.  i didn't realize that i have this fear until recently...  that i would rather push people away and keep them at a distance than get close and deal with losing them.  there is a part of me that somehow believes that everyone i love is going to go away.  i know that isn't true but it's my little girl voice speaking.  it's the little girl in me that still believes i'll never be good enough...  that somehow i'm unlovable and i'll never belong anywhere...  and i don't have a mama to run to to scratch my back and tell me otherwise.


but i have a lover who loves me.
i have friends that love me.
i have a brother and a sister who love me and know exactly what i'm talking about when i say the things that make other people too sad or too scared or too uncomfortable to keep listening. brian too.  he has cried with me and it is such a comfort to me.  it means i wasn't wrong or crazy for wanting to cry about the bad things that have happened.  it means things really were that bad and i perceived it all correctly.  it means i should've never been made to feel ashamed in the moments when i did cry.

and i have Vermont and the awakening that happened there:

my sister pointed out to me how pronounced it was that i quit drawing after our mother's death.  instantly.  i dove headlong into my crochet practice.  it was such a powerful thing to stand alone in my huge studio that night in Johnson, VT and draw her portrait.  our portrait.  it unlocked the floodgates and drawing after drawing spilled out of me after that.  a big part of myself healed.

today, i made a small linocut of an iceberg.  i stamped it out 20 times.  the iceberg is a strange sort of metaphor for me, a self-portrait of mine.  the iceberg is the middle child. 

there are still so many secrets
but i am finding ways to tell them. 
i am finding roads out of silence.
i am finding roads toward courage.
i am more myself than i have ever been and, despite the brutality of her loss, my mother's death worked to teach me how absolutely imperative it is that i BE MYSELF, that i live honestly and bravely, that i keep putting one foot in front of the other, that i must will myself to be undaunted and to build the life i want for myself.  her death taught me that there isn't always going to be another Tomorrow.  if there is something one NEEDS to do, it's best to do it now. 


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my mother used to wear a lipstick named Yummy Plummy.  i stole it from the bathroom the day she died.  it's in my makeup bag.  i never wore lipstick before she died.  now, i twist the hot pink bar of my new lipstick and paint my mouth and allow myself to languish for a moment in the pleasure of being alive.


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YOLO

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58th @ telegraph
oakland, CA 2014


walking home in the cold tonight through oakland, i came across a couch that had been abandonned on the side of the road and totally stripped of its skin. perfect canvas for an Ode to David Wojnarowicz.  this is an action i've been taking for close to two years now.  the text is taken from his essay THE SUICIDE OF A GUY WHO ONCE BUILT A SHRINE OVER A MOUSE HOLE which is one of the most affective, searing personal essays i've ever read.  David Wojnarowicz is one of my most favorite artists.  an instant beloved and i ache for his loss.  the art and writing he left in his wake is beyond tremendous and i am inspired every day by his endless bravery and daring.  he was in touch with his own mortality the way few people are and, fearlessly, the man created and loved and didn't apologize for either of those things.  if you haven't read the essay, get your hands on it.  get your hands on any/all of his work.  because make no mistake: one day this is going to be YOU, friend.  each and every last one of us is going to meet our end.

SMELL THE FLOWERS WHILE YOU CAN.


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THE DREADED UNKNOWN! THE DREADED KNOWN!

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i went to my little storage unit earlier today for the first time in 10 months.  so many of the objects seemed like they didn't belong to me.  or couldn't.  but they did.  they do.  and i've been paying rent for them to be kept safely somewhere for the passed year. 

it is a strange time-capsule.  an odd window in to a different era, a different heart.  after i turned my key in the padlock and swung the big, white door open i felt as if i was looking at someone else's belongings.  in so many ways, i was.  i am.  i took one small carload of boxes and artwork back to my house.  as i unpacked, i came across such a funny and weird assortment of shit from my past.  numerous lives!  it made me laugh joyfully to pull a two dollar bill (with red and black ink print) from the lowest drawer of my black Japanese jewelery box.  i dumped the contents of the entire thing on to the floor, cleaned the drawers and hinges of a year's worth of dust, then rooted through the tarnished pieces. 

i made a massive pile of trinkets i'm definitely not interested in wearing anymore, i'll say that much! ha! i looked at the glittering heap on the floor in front of me and felt next to no attachment to any of it.  i'll keep the pieces of jewelery my mother gave me even though it's of a style i no longer wear.   there is the necklace she gave me for my 16th birthday.  here is the necklace she gave me when i graduated from High School.  and here, the necklace she gave me when i graduated from college.  when she died, i took a few of her necklaces.  not because i wanted to wear them, i just wanted them near.  like a Bible.  amulets.  talismans.  and who knows?  maybe the future will give me occasion to wear these necklaces again. 

but i digress.

i didn't remember how much stuff i'd managed to cram inside such a tiny unit.  i rented the smallest one available!  my crap is really shoe-horned in, let me tell you.  it's going to take a few more trips to get this all sorted out.  most of which will be left on Oakland street corners or given to the Goodwill.  i don't want it.  i don't identify with it.  i have no feeling for most of what i've saved.  i want to be rid of it and have a clear, wide expanse in front of me upon which i may build a new life, a new future, a better, more honest Self.  i don't want the anchors of The Past pulling at the corners of my eyes, the corners of my heart.  i don't need the barbs and burrs. i don't need or want the attachments.  it's truly just stuff.  and mostly annoyances.

but my books.  god, my books!!!  i've missed them so much!  i brought two boxes home with me today.  i found the boxes that held my kiki smith and louise bourgeouis monographs and also my collection of jean genet's writings.  i've been wanting to re-read The Theif's Journal since i embarked upon an idependant life a year ago.  i need to have it around me, again, like a Bible.  i need the reminder of his fearlessness, the illustrations of his philosophic bravery and poetic swagger. 

right now, i am uploading my cd collection in to my laptop.  soon, i'll be able to relish in the sounds of my brilliant music collection as i stomp back and forth across Oakland and San Francisco.  i've been without Fugazi and Tori Amos and En Vouge and TOOL for a year!   a fucking year!  it's so good to have my music collection here in front of me.  it is an ecstasy, truly. 

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the future grins from its dark corner.  change is afoot.  there is no reason to think his grin is sinister.  he is merely chuckling at the surprises he knows are in store for us and of which we will be amazed and glad - these same things which we (i too) are afraid of now.  the Unknown is a scary motherfucking thing,  but i feel the fear and barrel forward anyway.  like my friend said "get busy living or get busy dying".

it's easier now that i have music to do it to.  ;)



let's live, kid.

to be alive...

the streets are wet and black.  a slow rain is coming down.  i am wearing one of the first sweaters i ever made.  how strange to think of where i was then, and how i spent my nights and days. even my body is a different size.  george michael sings in my ear (again and again) and a faithful Greyhound rests at my side.  i think this might be the first time its rained since i moved in to my white room. 

what can i give you tonight?  or any other night that might make up for my arrogant absences?  what can i give you that might mend the tear that i can't help but deal with my sad silences?  sometimes i need such a grand depth of space around me, such a deep, abiding stillness.  i slink low in to my warm bath of solitude and i do not surface until i have to.  i languish in it.  i luxuriate.  and then i go to work.  i look at the calendar and think of friends i haven't called and the skin i haven't touched in so long, the hair i haven't brushed and the glasses i haven't raised to the honor of such wonderful people in so long.  i hole up with my own projects and beverages.  and i suppose we all do it.  we all get lost in out own present tenses.

over dinner tonight with new friends i admitted that, now, a little more than 7 years after relocating to the Bay Area certain home-town friendships are finally starting to deteriorate.  it is sad because we've managed to hold on for so long.  we've managed to call each other on a regular enough basis and still say i love you but so much changed when i became single at the beginning of the year.  a renewal of sorts.  and so much changed after going to New York:  a birth that i knew would occur.  so many people have commented on how "alive" i seem since having gone.  so many people have commented on how much happier and stronger i seem.  and what they see is real.  i deal out a lot of my vulnerabilities here in this electric square and i willingly supply evidence of the existence of my own excitable, quavering heart; nevertheless, i have become quite brave this year.  it's an event that surprises the shit out of me.  i've wanted to be brave my entire life.  i've wanted to know the definition of courage for so long. it is totally different from what i assumed it would be.

i am finally myself.  i am finally allowing for change and experience.  i am finally allowing for pleasure, finally able to accept the pleasure of risk.  for the first time in years, i am enjoying my daily life.  i don't feel like crying as i walk closer and closer to my front door.  i don't feel like, with each step, i am telling lie after lie.  i look at the sky and think of my mother and wish she could see me now.  she would be so happy for me.  she would tell me how well i'm doing and how proud she is of me.  she would be envious of my trip to new york and we would talk for hours about it.  she would want to hear all about testing perfume at Lord & Taylor and how delicious the hotdogs are at the food carts all over manhattan.  she would want to hear all about walking through the lower east side at 4 am and the dead pigeon i accidentally kicked.  she would commend me for having found the courage to stake claim to my own life.  she would ask me to speak to her in german just so she could hear the language of her favorite land in the entire world, a place she always wanted to return to.  she had been stationed there when she was 19 years old and always longed to return.  "there's such magic there", she said, and in so many ways, that is where my family begins- our strange, careening story. we've all become so different. we share such similar stories but walk such distinct roads. 

november is coming and, with it, an election, a concert, and another trip to beautiful New York.  i am on pins and needles waiting for the first of the month to arrive.  a new adventure is breathing down my neck and i cannot wait to turn and collect its kiss. 

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.


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what if???

a few nights ago i watched Coco Avant Chanel and i've been thinking of it ever since. this orphan girl and her sister, both making their ways through the world, equal turns of generosity and brutality... the steep ups and downs that always seem to follow people with a creative mind. i found myself wondering as i went through my long day of school and work yesterday... is it harder for us? artists, i mean. is life harder for us? is it somehow more brutal? more affecting? i guess it is. i suppose it must to be. it must be and we must let it be if we expect to be able to do this Work. we have to be sensitive and open. we have to roll on the ground and expect to get splinters. we have to allow affliction, maybe even infection. there's no way around it. and, when i think about it, i'd want it no other way. if i turn my back and drop my eyes, i am no longer really living. i no longer have anything to say. yes, it sounds so dramatic and obnoxious and romantic, i know, but i think in this climate of strange silence and strangulation of ideas, suffocation of education, and the rampant acts of Stifling i see it becomes even more important for artists to NOT RUN. i have to risk being called "dramatic". i have to risk being called "romantic" and "obnoxious" if i am to get over the threshold, if i am to stumble in to a territory that is honest and brave. as i turned on to the freeway yesterday to head to work, i thought of my mom and i wondered if she knew it was coming so soon. death. i wondered what that would feel like to know in 3 weeks i'll be dead. would i be panicked? or would i be assured of what was right for me to to do? would i know exactly how to spend those final 21 days doing? i asked myself: what would i do if i knew i only had 3 weeks to live. i'd write and i'd draw with every fucking thing i've got.

so i guess i've got my compass.

i've been drawing since 8am and only stopped to eat a bowl of oatmeal and write this. i am in the drawing today. in love. when i've got a show on the horizon, my fire and hope really start to blaze.

3 weeks to go. BURN! BURN! BURN!

here we go!

September! eeeeeeek! the big 3.0. is right around the corner! 2 days away and i am totally looking forward to collecting it.

i am (weirdly?) one of those people who hate their own birthday. i didn't think i was in that crowd but, about 5 years or so ago, i noticed the pattern of letting the day roll by without any sort of real celebration or acknowledgement. it was more than enough to get the obligatory 'happy birthday' phone call from friends and family. i'd take the day off from work (i am a firm believer that no one should work on their birthday unless you've got a jobby-job you absolutely adore) and usually stay home and paint or write. and get sad. it is the horrible cycle of The People-Pleaser to feel like you haven't "accomplished enough" in your life... especially on traditional markers of time like birthdays, anniversaries, and New Years. this is a habit that needs breaking. because, to put it plainly, it sucks. ha!

and last year on my birthday, the stars aligned in such a way as to show me that there were some pretty deep changes i needed to make in my life... that for all the wishing and crying i'd done, the only way to move forward was to go inside, clear the bullshit out of the way so i could actually see the path i was standing on. and i had to be able to see it in order to know which direction to head in. i made the decision on my 29th birthday to get re-acquainted with myself and to stop worrying about Time so much. not an easy thing. and i realized that my path is specific to me and that i make a mistake when i compare my life to other people's. i decided to do the clean up that was so clearly necessary.

the first thing to go was drinking. i had a glass of champagne last year on the night of my birthday. i was at an art reception for a show i had some work in. and i haven't had any alcohol since. it isn't that i thought i had a drinking problem, i though i had a thinking problem and i've wrestled my entire life with Sadness. for me, drinking compounded those issues in a way that was pretty much dangerous. and insofar as my practice was concerned, it stalled me in my tracks. and that made the level of depression i was living under all the more heavy. a depression i had been living under for 2 years straight and was only getting worse by the day. in fact, September 2nd (tomorrow) is the anniversary of a total Collapse.

my birthday seemed like a pretty opportune moment to start digging myself back out of that pit and that's exactly what the last year of my life has been all about.

The Almighty Jog, re-learning how to trust my instincts again, trust my own internal rhythms, focus on my own loves, my own values, my own beliefs. and to let my wrestling take place there. and i found a ton of out-dated maps and notions and ideas that i desperately needed to abandon.

i made the decision to approach my practice with love and gratitude, to take it day by day, and to locate images and words and the work of other artists and writers that resonated with me and what my life had been. i began to see what my true values were and how long i had been shelving them in order to "help" other people. i had had it drummed in to me that that's what you do when you really love someone. after making the decision to confront myself, i saw what a load of horseshit that actually is. and i spent a long time feeling alternately mad and sad about having been taught such an extremely damaging lesson. very mad. very sad. and rather than hide my sadness (which is what i typically did) and put on a Happy Face, i allowed my sadness to sit on the surface of my being. you can see it even here on this blog. i'm not ashamed of that. i don't think struggle is something a person should ever be made to feel ashamed of. ever. and so i don't allow myself to be ashamed or be shamed by others anymore. and that's probably the biggest step i've taken this year. shame had become quite a nasty habit. the only thing i've found that conquers Shame is Honesty. hard Honesty. Honesty about myself.

the passed year has gone by so unbelievably quickly. and here i am- a runner, an artist, a writer, a lover. from the outside, my life probably doesn't look very different today than it did a year ago, but it is. it is deeply different. i still get sad a lot... but life, at the moment, within my family, is pretty effing sad. and so it's normal. and i won't say i've figured everything out or that i have all the answers. i don't. what i do have is the knowledge that no one has all the answers and that that's actually a really great thing. i was thinking about that when i woke up today- answers and questions. and that maybe that's what art is? a practice of nailing down our questions rather than answers. and i like that. i like that a lot. :)

i'm excited to see where the next year goes. the only plan i have is to keep doing what i've been doing. keep running, keep writing, keep drawing, painting, making, exploring, excavating. keep trying. truly trying. and to not measure myself against other people's rulers. to live by my own standards and to practice a very brave, compassionate Honesty. i am removing the gag that i've lived with for soooo long. and though it is a very scary thing, i choose to be myself and to not writhe in silence anymore. i choose to be an artist and to let the expressions of my humanity be complete. i choose bravery.

anyway... GOOD MORNING! and HAPPY SEPTEMBER!!!!!! <3

the facts

i've been a good girl since last october when the diagnosis came. resisted the urge to go online and freak myself out by reading the research available about pancreatic cancer.

but i've stopped being a good girl. it's a member of my immediate family. i am reading it. i know what the statistics are.

relatives have been calling, getting in touch through Facebook, reaching out to me and my siblings.

based on what i've read, surviving this since october is, itself, a miracle.

i am so grateful for that.

and also, for as hard and painful and scary as this whole thing is, i'm grateful for being forced to look at mortality close-up, in a new way- a way that is biological, not theoretical. it's easy to expound upon the horrors of the world from a safe distance. theories show their holes when you get up-close and personal. the importance of love and hope starts to shimmer. the shimmer builds in to a beautiful shine. we begin to twinkle in our moments together. we begin to feel thankful. certain histories finally find a resting place.

other histories don't. beasts i thought had been conquered, or at least put in to a deep, unbreakable hibernation, have come slinking out of their caves. the beasts awaken. writhe. scream. blood in their mouths and caked to the claw.

i feel lost some days. i spend a lot of time feeling afraid of the world but, somehow, still loving it. somehow, still wanting to help. somehow, not sarcastic. still... this weighty fear. fear that i will make the wrong decision, the wrong turn, waste my time, waste the time of others, and staring with my gaping O of a mouth at how horribly short Time is.

all i can think some days is hurry hurry, get the paintings out so she can see them. so she can see i accomplished something. so she can be proud of me.

there are lots of mornings when i want to ignore the alarm clock. i hear it and think what's the fucking point? plenty of mornings where i wake up feeling so stunted and small, just like a little girl. floundering and frail and just so bent up by fear. the dark. no night-light. no angels. no open door. there are mornings i wake up crying.

i reach for my notebook. i reach for my pencils. i make drawings.

the amazing/odd thing about it, is that i'm doing the best work i've ever done. at least that's the way it looks to my eye. somehow this fear has armed me with an unexpected drive to push the work further, go deeper, take chances, be brave in a way i hadn't yet learned to do.

there is a lot of anger in it. there is a lot of sadness. but i think there's also a lot of hope.

it's the hope that lives in these pieces that are the most important part. it is the portion of the work that i am most proud of. it is the site i try to lay down in. i live so far away from her.

since the beginning it seems, our little family has been a magnet for tragedy. i know we're not exceptional in that. tragedy is not as rare as people like to believe it is. nevertheless, the division and splintering and unfixable things that have resulted are really hard to look at some days.

the divorce. the swimming accident. my father. ambulances. hospitals. halo bolted to skull. poverty. ugliness. abuses. falling in with a bad crowd. bad mean boyfriend. scary situations. and then the work of repairing one's mind, one's broken heart, one's dream of life. and now cancer. now chemo.

these are the things i'm writing about in The Letter- the 9,000 words that have been typed out and are morphing in to something else. i have no clue what yet but it just keeps on pouring pouring pouring on days when i'm strong enough to be a vehicle for it.

this is the well that all the new work is rising from.

and the new work brings me closer to the kind of artist i want to be. the kind of human i want to be. to find a way to create some sort of beneficial, hopeful thing out of all this. but it also leads me away from certain ideas, certain places. it has to. it's unavoidable. the lineage has become clearer.

it's time to take certain risks.

it's scary and sad and overwhelming, but it's also a very positive action. ask any baby bird about the terror of the free fall when they are first urged out of the nest. that's the stage i'm in. it is a necessary stage.

because if i say i mean it and i say i believe in the power and worth of art and i say art saves lives, then i am charged to follow a particular road. a road that has all sorts of barricades across it and all sorts of pitfalls and potholes, a road that has no caution signs, a road that will be dark and lonely at times. but i must follow it. i must. i have to try to be brave. and so i cut away my safety net, in spite of all the things that are going on within my family... or maybe because of them. maybe it is because i see how short and uncertain a single life is. how full of opportunity, how full of chance, how full of the inexplicable...

i've asked to be released from my contract. the gallery agrees it is time. it is sad for both of us even though it is best for both of us. we've been building toward this moment for a year. it's time for this baby bird to jump. it's good to have support in this. it's good to find myself in the position to take a good hard look at my work and the kind of artist i am. this is an opportunity for me to get very specific about my goals as an artist, to work and struggle as hard as i can. i'm lucky to have so much encouragement from the people in my life. i'm lucky for the open door that remains. i'm lucky to have the friendship and support i've received. i'm very lucky.

and mostly, lucky to have art in my life. this outlet. this desire to make maps out of all these things. maps and poems and portraits. documents of hope. documents of desire. documents of my passage through this world. i am not joking when i say ART SAVES LIVES. it does. it has saved mine, over and over again, since the very beginning. and i am blessed.

i am very very very blessed.

me and louise

my buddy rebecca snapped this of me, scruffy and make-up-less, at SFMOMA and i'm so grateful for the token, for the archive of this experience. it serves as a reminder that i truly do need to follow my own heart and do this thing my way, a way that feels right for me.

it's about honesty.

when i look at louise bourgeois' work, her honesty and bravery radiate right of the surface of her objects. it radiates from the core on out. and standing so close to one of her sculptures, i felt the deep buzz of her love for her work and it was very hard not to touch it. in fact, i should have touched it. the only reason i didn't is the security team at SFMOMA are fanatical and watch every move you make so that they can tell you NO PENS ALLOWED! ONLY PENCIL!





and since the beginning of the year, i've been crawling deeper and deeper in to my own values and ethics when it comes to art and life. and the two subjects are so connected that they are basically the same thing. i want to be a smart artist. i want to be a brave artist. and honorable too.

the passed few days i've been trying to photograph finished drawings that have been hiding in one portfolio or another for quite some time. the grunt work of documentation, but also a very necessary step in the process of curation. because i live with the work and it isn't caged away in a separate studio space, i can easily lose track of what i've made. and this experience of going through the work piece by piece, laying it across every inch of my small cottage, crowding myself with all the black and white and nebulous greys is such an inspiring thing. i can see the lines that connect one work to another. i can see how far back these fault lines run. that i've always made portraits of some kind. the only thing that has changed is my idea of what a portrait is.

in a nut shell, each piece of mine is a portrait- of loss, of desire, of anger, confusion, longing, struggle, failure, and love.

the work is personal and the work exposes things that even i am surprised by sometimes. even the work i consider to be not "good enough" for public consumption, has such a steep value to it. the pieces that i struggled hard with, the work that never came easy and never really became what i wanted it to be, is the work that supplied the best learning curve. it's the work that taught me the most, showed me the most, and, like a good teacher, kicked my ass all over the place when i needed it. my Learning is evident in those pieces and, because of that, they are Good.

it's interesting how one's eyes change.

and i feel lucky that those pieces can have a voice every now and then here on the blog. there's really no such thing as "failure". it's a false construct. it's a lie. Learning is not failure.

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i'm learning a lot these days... and sometimes i get tired, sometimes i get mad, sometimes i am totally frustrated and confused. and then the next morning arrives and i scribble away in my notebook and some sort of answer or brightness falls out of my pen and i find a way to proceed. when i feel especially lost, i spend time with the work of artists i admire. louise is at the top of the list. i am currently trying to leech some of her bravery, some of her gnarly french fuck-off attitude. i love the way she lived her life. i love the way she never gave her power away. i love how she stood, secure and strong, on the foundation of her beliefs- the things she believed to be important about art and life. she was unshakable and didn't give a shit if anyone agreed with her.

talk about faith.
talk about courage.

what a gift that woman is.

hard look

all these things lately- The Catcher in the Rye, The Land of Green Plums, The Triggering Town, A Clockwork Orange, the letter of intent, my practice itself, writing, writing, writing, the list of deadlines for art opportunities sitting to my right, memories, overcoming past hurts, relationships with family members, the big snarling dog painting on my wall...

all these things begin to point, as glaring as a neon sign, toward one thing: figuring out who i am and how i want to live.

i'm sure i must sound like a broken record on this blog sometimes but self-knowledge is a big issue for me at this point in my life. i need to free myself from a wealth of very large and strange expectations of myself that, when i really sit down and look at them, i have no clue where they came from and yet i nevertheless allow them to exact a very hurtful influence on my opinion of myself, my work, my life, my everything.

for the past several weeks, the last sentence i write in my journal each morning before i get rolling on my day is Believe in yourself. every morning for weeks and weeks and weeks, i have written this sentence. it's finally beginning to make sense in a particular way that lets me know i've misunderstood what believing in one's self really is. today, i realized that the big reason i struggle with believing in myself is because i get focused on whether or not other people believe in me too. when i've allowed this to happen i trade my instincts for their preferences and this has only ever been detrimental to my life in a very sweeping, all-encompassing way. and the nuttiest part about it is that it's basically seeking approval from people who traditionally aren't really even capable of giving it to me anyway. never have been. it's a fucked-up brass ring. an accomplishment spurred by masochism. it's stupid. and in addition to being stupid, it's super destructive.

as i read all these books and write all these winding blog posts and come to the end of another page in my slang-filled journal, i come in to confrontation with myself... how fear of being displeasing has sabotaged a great many things in my life and within myself. in short, i've been holding back... and holding back some very good things.

the latest collection of paintings and drawings have given me a taste of what it is to be fearless again and to practice integrity. it has given me a warmth and hope that i had been living without for a long time it seems like... and that it doesn't really matter if other people approve of what i'm doing and who i am, if i'm happy with what i've done. why this has been such a hard understanding to maintain, i don't know. but it's high time to pretty much say fuck it to other people's definitions of success and their expectations for me. i need to begin the self-assured mantra of i don't care.

i think artists wrestle with this issue a lot. not just professionally, but privately as well. feeling misunderstood and unsupported was the state of affairs for most artists i went to school with. i can't tell you how many people i know whose families scoff at their pursuits, find art and poetry to be laughable, think that it's merely some display of ego. sad. and very hard to overcome. it hurts.

The Storialist left this link in the comments stream of one of the posts below and i keep going back to it. it deals with being present and not worrying about whether or not anyone likes you. it helps me and it got me on track with really thinking about the role i play in feeling minimized in certain relationships, professional or otherwise. it comes down to something as big and bad and basic as the ills of approval-seeking behavior. no good, friends. no good. and it takes a lot of acceptance and guts to get beyond that shit, for sure.

yes.

Each indecision brings its own delays and days are lost lamenting over lost days... What you can do or think you can do, begin it. For boldness has Magic, Power, and Genius in it.

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

thankful

it is 10:30 on a saturday night. my sweetheart is in bed. i just finished reading The Land of Green Plums by Herta Muller. and from the first sentence of the book, she got her hook in deep. at times, her prose so dazzling and painful, i had to put it down. and not just the heart ache of it. not just the documentation she has lay down. but the honest expression, so direct and beautiful, that eventually led my thought of "oh, what writing!" to "oh, what reading!"

that this book was even in my hands is such a gift. that the freedom for it to arrive here in my home, to be read, to be experienced, to be handled and smelled and wrestled with is a gift. the book chronicles the state's deadly hand reaching toward poets and artists and thinkers and dreamers. young people, in love with ideas and going to college in eastern Europe shortly after World War II. it spells out, in such heart breaking, despairing, but completely unsentimental language, how dangerous ideas are seen to be in times of political fear...

that by simply having read a poem, one becomes marked.

and of course, by the time i got to the end of the book, my paranoia was showing- oh shit. i bought this on amazon. i felt much the way i felt 11 years ago when i first read 1984. i was 18 and in my first semester in college and with every page i turned i thought my god, it's already happening. but the small conspiracy theorist inside me is pretty quiet these days. i no longer get so worked up about these things. i guess i just felt so profoundly blessed that freedom of speech is still protected in this country... that i can own a book and not worry that simply by owning it, i am some how an enemy, that i can love ideas without shame and read as widely as i want to and never have to fear that someone will pound on my door and come get me all for having read a book.

it's no wonder to me at all that this work won the Nobel Prize. not only is it written in such a rich and gorgeous speech, it is necessary. more important than i can say. an act of witnessing. beyond reproach. out of everyones league.