always david

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he is almost an instinct of mine.  in my alcohol-fueled lethargy, i began to quiz myself over the relevance of art...  what it means, what my art means and whether or not it even matters.  this is an aggravating little game artists play with themselves, it seems, but in the moment it really hurts.  it hurts to ask yourself, "is art meaningless?"  it's so close to asking whether or not life is meaningless.

and maybe it is.  maybe life is meaningless.  maybe art's role is to provide the meaning we're all searching for?  or at least an avenue to it.  i don't know.  i just suddenly found myself wondering this evening whether or not i'm defeated...  whether or not i still contain the requisite amount of FIGHT.  despite recent encouragements, i suddenly felt worn out.  

i got out of bed and went to my book case.  i needed another artist.  i needed a mentor.  i needed someone to tell me that everything is okay and to pull my shoulders back and fuck what the rest of the world thinks.  my eyes flowed across my collection of art books.  so many volumes of kiki smith's work, louise bourgeois, keith haring, andy warhol.  i paused at francesca woodman.  i paused again at terrence koh.  then i came across a book i forgot i had.  a book i hadn't even read yet.  i pulled it from the shelf.  david wojnarowicz's 7 MILES A SECOND. 

the moment i start reading his work i come face to face with the truth that art is a way of life.  i don't need to torture myself with the question of whether or not my work "matters".  what does that even mean?  i don't need to make myself cry about the accomplishments i've not yet made.  art is a path.  or better yet, art is a language.  it is how i speak.

i read his texts and i want to cry.  not only because of the sadness his work so often describes but because of his fearlessness in telling his story, his bravery in regard to confronting the twists of the heart and mind.  his love of humanity was so unapologetic, so humbling...  and so i want to cry when i am confronted with his work:  i am humbled.  i realize, in the face of david wojnarowicz's work, to ask, "does my art matter?" is a waste of time and effort.  just do the work.  just speak.  and even if it's just to speak about something as aggravating as my struggles with my own artistic temperament, that's alright.  i silence myself too quickly sometimes.  i mean, we all need to complain to each other every now and then.  it does us good to know we're not total freaks in this regard.  we all fear our work is total crap...  that how we are choosing to spend our lives is an act of  futility.  david's work reminds me that this is absolutely not the case.  the point is to care enough about the brevity of life to use what time you have to connect the way you want to connect with other human beings.  the point is to breathe as deeply as you can breathe, so deeply it hurts and then to tell the truth about yourself...  the truth that hurts.  the truth that nags and won't stop tossing and turning until you finally acknowledge it exists and needs a space in which to be seen, to be dealt with, to be wrestled with and contended with.

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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.

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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freedoms, large and small

in spite of the heat, my summer is done.  a new semester has found me and i return to my previous loves.  i return to German with such an open, bleeding heart.  i've missed her sounds, her sharp corners, her purrs and rumbles.  she is such a gorgeous mystery.  and infuriating.

the summer was spent in a mad swirl of work, work, work, and late nights dancing and drinking.  i needed the reprieve of sweat and music.  i needed the thump of dance beats to set my heart right.  i needed the greyhounds.  i needed to back away from even the smallest public expression of my self and what my days are like.  i needed to confine my emotions and thoughts to my diary.  i needed the freedom to be crass and unruly, mean even.  i needed the privacy of blue lined pages.  i needed to be alone with my ink. it's been good to take a step back from my online life.  it's actually already been 6 months since i kept up this blog in any type of regular way.   i once had so many rules about writing here.  it was a Practice.  but then i came to a place where i just couldn't live below the weight of rules.  i needed some sort of buffer between myself and my expectations of what an artist is, what a writer is, and who gets to carry such titles.  i needed to figure out for myself what i was okay with inserting into the public sphere and what i wanted to keep private.  i'm still unsure about what i want to offer up but joining the dialogue is a necessity.  i had to cocoon myself for awhile.  i've been deeply engaged with building an entirely new life for myself.  but 6 months in, i crave the company of certain work i was doing before i threw my life in to the air.  i crave a return to the activy and buzz of art and communication.  i don't want to spend long nights at the bar, i long for late nights spent alone with my books.  i long for late nights spent basking in the glow of this white rectangle, typing typing typing and sending up my little flags of hope.  maybe even tremendous flags of rage.

because i exiled myself from the internet for so long, i didn't learn of Pussy Riot until a few short weeks ago.  i read the three women's closing statements last night after i got home from work.  they are currently sitting in jail cells, sentenced to 2 years in prison, for making an anti-Putin art action in Russia.  they have been made an example of.  it is heinous and i tremble with anger.  i don't even know how to articulate my feelings about this yet.  i am shocked.  i am disgusted.  i am totally disappointed and abhorred.  but i am also totally inspired by these women.  i am inspired as an artist and as a feminist.  it is so sad to see such brave innocents stripped of their freedom this way and to be punished for making art that matters.  but i am encouraged by their bravery.  i am so grateful for the example that ideas and words and art really can change the world.  art and words can still cause the corrupt powers to sweat fearfully and i fucking love that.  art can still be an impetus.  art can still be a the strongest weapon one can wield.  art can still be a shelter for the oppressed.  art can still enrage everyone.  art can still awaken an unknowable passion in each one of us.  i will need to read and re-read the statements again.  they are gorgeous and brave and necessary.  i must ingest the words again and again until i am able to regurgitate some sort of understanding of this insanity and formulate a response.  because no matter how obscure an artist may be, this is an attack on each one of us and we all must make some sort of response.   and let us also not pretend that this isn't an attack on feminism and woman-kind in general.  bad girls who talk back do not go unpunished.  take note.

6 months ago i chose a very particular form of freedom, a very particular independance.  it was more frightening than i can say but it has also been the greatest gift.  i am entirely different now.  stronger than i thought i was and happier as a result of this knowledge.  i literally have a room of my own and it is a space that i cherish above all others.  it is my Freedom.  here, i make whatever art i choose.  i write and write and write.  i can dance and i can cry.  i do not have to edit anything.  i do not have to quell my emotion.  i can once again be openly passionate.  i am never silenced here.  i am never afraid of my own self or my own expressions.  the "inner freedom" that Pussy Riot speaks of is something that stings my heart.  my love of this freedom is beyond words as is my love for these women.

the closing statements are here.  beautiful and entirely necessary.

the regular fears

my internet connection has been failing off and on for the past week and half and has become totally unreliable. i called customer service and they let me know our modem is bad and so a man is coming out today to check it out and hopefully give us a new one. the upside to this is that yesterday after posting about kate's book, my internet was down all day- effectively hog tying me and keeping me from deleting the post... which i sorta wanted to do and was in a panic all day long, waiting for my phone to ring, and going over and over in my head fear-driven conversations and how to explain the difference between art and life, how to use one to inform the other, and that creative license and honesty are an imperative of our times, etc etc etc. ha!

and then i started thinking about lady gaga. yep. she is a recent fascination of mine. and i thought how a lot of people in this country seem to think she's the spawn of Satan and, looking at her work, listening to her songs, and paying attention to her message of self-acceptance and self-love... i really have no clue where these attacks on her are coming from. it's one thing not to like her work, a totally other to label her as "poison for the minds of our children". and i thought: here's this 24 years old girl that has somehow managed to acquire enough strength and stamina to endure such a massive onslaught of hatred and malice, and here i am, a 29 year old girl, fretting about a "review" i wrote about a book i love and posted on my personal blog. a blog which doesn't get a ton of traffic anyway. at least i don't think it does- i disabled the tracker on it months and months and months ago.

but there it is- the thing every person needs to overcome if they expect to be a writer (in the public sense of the word): getting beyond the fear that you will anger or embarrass your family, and speak from a site of truth and strength. let come what may. this is a very very VERY hard thing to do. very.

i love my family. of course i want them to be proud of me, the work i do, and the person i am. we've been through a lot of shit together and have come out on the other side with a deeper understanding of what it is to be resilient, capable, and how to truly practice forgiveness. still, there are some stories that need to be told. they need to be told because silence seems to have (strangely) become the dominant mode of our era. these stories we have need to be shared. and when i stumble across a piece of writing that i am able to see my own life story in, i feel such a huge comfort. i become stronger. i become more confident, more able to not only stand up for the rights of others, but also for my own. i also become more able to forgive, to see the other side. silence prevents forgiveness.

and so, i must find a way to let my words and work keep their wings. i must find a way to shake off fear, run right through it, and just keep digging digging digging. it is a strange world and a strange life and our stories have such value, such power, such music in them. i want to be strong enough to let that fact sit on high and not apologize for the life i have lived and the life i have found as a result.

and so it begins...

stumbled across this first thing.

:)


yesterday, with all my pictures back in my care, piled in to the car, i drove back across the golden gate bridge in to the wide green of the countryside. the light, all yellow. the light, all golden. tunnels to honk a horn in. and still, the heavy sadness. again, the heavy sadness. strange how that emotion staples itself to even good decisions.

i have not lost sight of the positivity of this action. my words and my face and my name and all the things that pour out of my hands are mine. mine alone. and maybe it's the alone part i don't like. it is scary sometimes. but i am reaching toward it and trying to be fearless, trying to look at nothing else but THE FACTS and THE FACTS are that i love what i do, i believe in it and i want to live inside it every single day and i want to see where these tangled roads lead. i want to find a deep courage within myself and i want to hold tight to integrity and love and honor. there will be sacrifices. yes yes yes there will be. lots. and lots of times when i feel afraid and incapable of rising to the challenge in front of me.

our fair elisabeth left a comment yesterday about the need for space. i readily agreed with her because i felt deep in my heart that it is true. and her comment stuck with me for the rest of the day. it followed me to bed. and as i lay there, wrapped in a black quilt, smelling the graphite in its pocks and dimples, under the black of eyelids, i realized i'm afraid of having lots of space. i'm afraid of claiming something i desperately need. my tendency/training kicks in and i feel i am being selfish. or just plain lonely.

it is a lonely road at times, but here i am. and i will allow myself the privileged/necessity to scream in my new wide-open space if i need to. i will allow myself the luxury of making an ass of myself if i need to. and i will roll around in all these words and images and fears until the heat of my struggle and flailing makes them congeal, gives them form, sends sparks off my body and burns my eyes from their bright glare.

my friend said to me: i am so interested to see where you will go from here.

me too. i am summoning the courage for that battle right now.

crochet hook? check.
paint brush? check.
pencil? check.
punk rock? check.

and this day will awake with my two Miss Smiths: Patti and Kiki, side by side, hugs and middle fingers aimed at the world, poems tumbling and a winning smile. :)

the new road opens.

this road

i ran out of my delicious hazelnut and walked down to the market to buy more. on the way, i saw a hand painted sign in the window of a boarded up (papered up? sheets of white butcher paper on the inside of the windows) storefront that read closed for renovations in quite a lovely, humble, careful script. the letters were a dusty red on a flat white background. it looked like whoever painted it really took their time- no drips, no sloppy edges with the brush. and it reminded me of margaret kilgallen's work- her fascination with the signs people make for their small business, hand-made cultures, the beauty that follows actions of necessity. and i stopped to look at the sign again on my way back home. it's very simple but something in it spoke very loudly to me about my own life and struggle and pursuits at the moment.

closed for renovation.

i guess that's how i feel right now.

especially about oil painting. as a mode, it just seems so final, so serious, so declarative. and i'm not trying to make any declarations whatsoever in my work right now. i'm searching, hunting, excavating, mapping. and these modes are curious, exploratory. definitely not FINAL. not ABSOLUTE. and oil painting feels like that to me right now. maybe it's the history of oil painting flooding over? maybe it's the grand authority of oil? a confrontation with expectation? maybe maybe maybe...

but pencil, paper... their common attributes. humble, easy to access, the materials of map making. these things call me. they encourage me. i reach for these materials and it feels right. it feels authentic and honest. the right tool for the job.

i'm at a new beginning in life in a whole lot of ways.

i am on my own right now in a whole lot of ways.

simultaneously scary and exciting.

but freedom isn't an easy thing and it doesn't quickly line up with "happiness". there is struggle in those fiesty veins. and more and more i think that the work we make decides for us what type of artists we are, what type of life, what type of "career", what type of happiness we come to. my only choice in the matter is to hold on to the things i value and to stand with my ethics when the world breathes its confusion in my face. the only choice i have is to not crumble, to keep digging, to keep running, one day at a time, 15 minutes at a time, further and further down the harrowing highway.

i worry too much about things that are totally out of my control. a common human frailty, for sure. and i'm really trying to release myself from that shit right now. i'm trying very hard to trust The Work, trust The Process, trust The Materials, trust The Impulse. i've been carrying around one of my many Kiki Smith books again for days and days. again and again, i turn to her because she trusts her own work. she doesn't second guess the impulse. she just goes. and i have paired that book with Sylvia Plath's Ariel. they are laying together right now on the floor next to me. two bibles. two hymnals. two treasures. two books of hope and persistence. gems.

i see the mortality that surrounds us. how short, how small a day is.

i want my outsides to mirror my insides. i do not want to "live one way and pray another". i want my expressions to be as honest as possible. i want to whittle away at whatever hypocrisy exists in me.

and so i excavate. i writhe. i push the dirt aside.

i am trying to ignore fear.

i trust the pencil's scratch so completely. i trust it like i trust poetry. i trust it like a mother. i climb in to bed with my papers and all my blankets smell like graphite dust. they smell beautiful. my intimate "renovations".

maybe i'll make my own hand-painted sign? hang it on the wall in the living room. or maybe in the big window.

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.

call

last night i started reading 'a thousand plateaus' by deleuze and guattari of all things. i've been thinking of the book for weeks, feeling there's information somewhere inside this monster that i can use. especially after accepting the schizophrenic nature of my practice as a whole. the multiple personalities of it. the splintering. the fragments. the shattering that occurs almost daily. and then after reading The Bell Ringer, i saw that the act of sweeping up all the fragments, all the splinters, in to a pile and calling it a human that that is what my art practice is and has always been about. a collection of evidences. the appearance of the images i make only seem disparate. how they are produced - oil, graphite, collage, embroidery - accounts for this difference but they all are hauled up from the same deep well. so i will haul them up and lay them out to dry and work work work and take a peak at all these things in a couple weeks or maybe a couple months and see what i've got staring back at me. i'll see the red thread later when all these images are spread across the living room floor. not a second sooner. for now- just the taking in of ideas and information. deleuze and guattari paired with aase berg and angela pnueman and angela carter and rebecca loudon and hans christian andersen and patti smith and banks violette and ed ruscha and kiki smith and anna gaskel and gerhard richter and alice in wonderland. take it in, take it in, take it in and then go draw. don't worry about it just yet. don't think too hard about it. just draw. the drawing will help me process all these things. it always has if i just let it. i have such a fire of ideas in me right now. such a tremendous and beautiful burn. beyond smoldering. way beyond. i don't need to know where i'm going, i just need to GO! and this morning i stayed in bed for an hour after i woke up just thinking about art and the articles i've read recently and all the poetry and i thought "maybe art is more about noticing things- the connections or discrepancies and anomalies and fissures, not saying something concrete". and that thought felt right and made me feel good. i got out of bed then and poured my coffee and went outside in to this cold sunday, this last day of february, and wrote wrote wrote on my frigid stoop outside the front door.

good morning. :)