♪
hey ya hey ya hey ya ho
날이 개나 소나기가 와도
all dey wanna do is just
steal ma flow
all dey wanna do is just
grab ma dough
♪
.
.
i wish i had flow and dough, but i can not steal moneys because i can not lift the heavy money bags, and i can not run so fast. i do have a little flow because i know a little about zen rock gardens.
polyps at the discothèque S.OH 2009
a dollop of silver rose from a lower deck S.OH 2009
here is the poop deck of my desk, submerged in twines and leathers. i enjoy the confusion of lines, and braiding keeps my hands content during long commutes.
two more goldfish tangled in strings S.OH 2009
surely this luminous fucker stings S.OH 2009
this has nothing to do with my opinion of lars von trier’s personality or his work… but i hate how the press treated him at cannes after the premiere of antichrist. the journalists’ collective tone was nasty: not critical or questioning, but disrespectful and ungracious. i hate when an audience just demands answers from an artist, as if it has a right to those answers.
“how could you? why would you?”
“justify yourself!”
to me, arts appreciation is the practice of empathy. it’s hard to really know a person; it’s an unending process of undoing knots in memory, stringing together dialogs, disentangling perceptions. an artwork condenses so much of this discovery, because a person has labored to deliver one essential mystery of himself to you.
i have the complete collection of van gogh’s letters. his letters are boring, full of the day-to-day concerns of any average person. you’d never surmise that an exceptional personality penned those words. so when you see his paintings of vivid, rioting strangeness, you are grateful for this form of intimacy with another person.
coincidentally, the book in the photo of my desk’s poop deck is a.s. byatt’s possession. the first pages introduce you to a scholar obsessed with a poet. he pores over this writer’s published works and his private correspondences… i’ve only read a teeny tiny bit, but already his relationship with a dead man’s words is his most passionate human connection. (and yeah, byatt’s prose is florid but it serves the romance well… i hope this book is good because it is a fatty, almost as heavy as a money bag; i can not run with it)
poor is the fowl without wings S.OH 2009
the last thing i am thinking to blog…”photography is truth,” said jean-luc godard.
i wanted to show the truth of a jellyfish by making a photograph of its beauty. so i took this photograph, and in this frame, the jellyfish’s truth was that it became two fatty mcpatties.
tenemos un dolor de estómago pero queremos mas burger kings S.OH 2009
look closely for the obscure hands, though i don’t know if they can be seen in this resolution.
there were many beautiful sights i wanted to write about, but i forgot… the most special were a dance directed by sardono kusumo and an exhibition of barron storey’s journals. i’ve loved his illustrations since i was a child poring over his spread for national geographic. you can imagine how thrilled i was to actually thumb through his diaries, to literally press my thumb against his graphite smudges. but they made me feel lonely, too. diaries in general do.
the last story in this episode of this american life made me shiver with recognition. there’s the normalcy of your home life, the accepted norm of your outside life, and sometimes you have to invent another life to bridge the two.
unlike the siblings in this story, i was lucky and happy, because i knew i was loved. i never even experienced a rebellious phase against my parents, because i could never let my dad feel i looked down on him; when his loneliness and weakness were obvious, i felt sad and powerless.
i’ve made mandrake bobos.
each is a brooch, a crudely stitched bewitchment, which wards off vampires, boogeymen, rush limbaugheymen, himalayan snowmen, chupacabras, ectoplasmic highwaymen, and tiny water elephants. here is a detail from a bag i sewed to deliver the mandrakes and complete the narrative.
here are more samples of sewn objects, for other deliveries.
i want to recall a story i heard…
i am certain i heard this story from another human and did not hear it from myself… from inside my own brain… >_>;
……it was a heartwarming bedtime story about a chinese vampire with white fur who fellated monks to death without permission!! i wish i could recall the rest of the story, but naturally i’ve only remembered the fur and the fellatio.
the past week i kept waking up in a strange mood at exactly 3 a.m. in this pause between sleeping, i practiced at letters. i began an elegant, passionate, honest communication. each night i edited and deliberated over its deliverance. each morning, i secured my work in my secret safe. but my letters would fade during the day. day by day, they decayed. periods and dots over i’s became pinpricks as tiny, parasitic mouths worried my words. here was a passage clinging to meaning by perilously fragile threads; within a week, the persistence of moths had frayed it into lace.
i have a sense that i’ve been remiss about the imperative of some certain missive. but i’ve lost the urgency to say anything at all. now, i can sleep well again.
…or not so well. T^T i’ve been having nightmares about zombies infected with piggy influenza and back alley decapitations (i have mexico-in-the-news to thank for these nightly delights). also, i have a reoccurring skyscraper opening its many mouths to expel exclamations in broken glass.
i have one more picture ready and uploaded to show, and it is such a good one. it is a special delivery from me to you, with friendly intentions to your well-being and happinesses!
(this picture is so enjoyable because the rabbits are bobbing earnestly yet going nowhere.)
in this handsome and tricky picture, two rabbits happen at once because i wanted to double the pleasure of the rabbit’s good looks; in the reality of his fiction, he is a single rabbit who is only one himself at a time. the rabbit’s name is monica b. lopez. the b stands for buffmallow. for breakfast he loves to eat small, dewy cabbages. for lunch, he nibbles fresh clovers and vegan hams. for dinner, he suckles at the teats of unsuspecting sheep.
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many sheep have wept.
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……..i named this ‘conejito malo’ after monica bellucci! because he has sensual lips and a soft, full body like hers.
「the forest reeked of fear and deer turds.」
that’s the opening of my novel. then…
「as he waddled towards her, his silk-swaddled thighs clapped together like two humongous manatees trying to hug each other again and again, unsuccessfully. and yet, the cockatoo on his shoulder wobbled dangerously.」
so i just need a plot. the plot will be the crispy tortilla that i wrap around these succulent morsels.
here are some things.
1. a six year-old girl drew my fist and boots assaulting an innocent child. i carefully salvaged the canvas and sewed it by hand into a pencil case.
2. one of my three disgusting desks, covered with zippers and needles. just disgusting.
3. tiny paper snails. i put two into the gold lotus to give to a small child. only his fingers are small enough to remove the snails without ruining the lotus petals.
4. i am excited to read that yellow book, the president by miguel angel asturias.
here is the drawing in the photo. i like this mulberry paper because it’s slightly translucent and furry. if you rely on pencils, pastels, and erasure, this paper won’t suit you; but it’s perfect for brush and ink.
it’s a mandrake root. i post it because i think it’s really cute.
a couple of months ago i attended an exhibition of dead artists’ love letters. i found myself a bit embarrassed for them, and a bit offended (the way i felt when i learned x-rays revealed the underdrawings beneath van gogh’s paintings); i wouldn’t want anyone rifling through my private correspondences… and that’s why i wanted to post one of them. (it makes sense since blogging has become a kind of personal torture) this is the sort of brilliant “reply” i send to steve:
you see? some secrets should be kept secret under bolt, lock, key, and three-headed hell hound.
edit edit edit p.s.-
you can buy my picture on a tshirt now, also,
「DEAR DIARY,
i would never date a guy named dan who calls himself “the danimal.” just, no. also, what is it about anthony? i hope it’s just (and only just) that i never got to tell him the real reason why i begged him to say, “leave the gun, take the cannoli” that one time. anyway my baby brother says i’m attracted to psychopaths, and he bought me a fake diamond encrusted scarface “pimp goblet” for christmas. it looks like movie versions of the holy grail except it’s not full of christ’s blood or pimp ambrosia; i just keep my most precious hello kitties in there. and i don’t care what he says, about al pacino and clint eastwood having LOS OJOS LOCOS, they were super dreamy back when they weren’t living fossils. you know what else is a living fossil? the goddamned coelacanth. in conclusion, i still think about anthony. it is so embarrassing and ugly–hideously horrendously horribly girly. but then again, “what have [i] lost? nothing! nothing will come from nothing, you know what they say?”」
i will try to believe in and live by those idiomatic clichés about seeking the good in the bad. i have been anticipating that fabled calm after the storm, waiting out the snow with a phrase framed around the name of michael furey and waiting out the rain with a tap dance and song of gene kelly’s, but the weather’s been moody, reminding me that there’s the calm BEFORE the storm as well. and i haven’t been able to make lemonade out of lemons as the saying goes, but i have made other comestibles. so i dedicate this food-centric posting to my mother. she thinks i ineptly subsist off cooler ranch doritos when in fact i am actually cooking. this week was cha soba and cucumber (i love the green hue of both), tofu, yummy potatoes, and chicken with mushrooms. although edible, all my food looks hideous because i can’t dice aesthetically and i must drown everything in a hideous confusion of badly mutilated scallions. also, when the onions make me cry, i yell at them; this adds a subtle taste of ANGER to my meals.
korean cucumber side dish is so easy to make and really refreshing. just get three big cucumbers, slice them thinly, salt, drain, and then mix well with about 1-2 spoonfuls of vinegar, a little sugar and pepper (more or less to taste), minced scallions, and a minced garlic clove. it tastes best after it’s chilled in the refrigerator a while.
for the past fifteen minutes, my computer’s been telling me that i only have four minutes and 45 seconds of battery life left. i have a feeling it’s going space odyssey hal on me. so before i lose all contact — and i WILL somehow get my ssbb art uploaded by deadline — here is what i already had scanned.
these two i drew to bach and chopin (and some nice audiobooks). the piano concertos are addictive, and it’s amazing how generous the music is (that is, you can listen to a piece over and over again, and it suits all moods). it’s natural to associate music with colors — sunspot whites and bright yellows mark the highest notes and deepen into indigos at the very lowest — so i dreamed paul klee was possessed by chopin and painted patterns, which could be directly translated into piano. (btw, there is no “black” note or a really “black” music, i discovered)
and then i dreamed,
one of my reoccuring characters, mandore, had a band, although more conservative critics dismissed them as “tuneless whores in feathered dresses.” papagena played panpipes and keyboards and a little metal fish; voladora played a theremin cello and tubular bells; odette played the ethereal eggshell dulcimer. had odette chosen the medium of her expression, because she’d always been inclined to suicidal madness? or did the instrument drive her insane? the dulcimer could only perform for four minutes and forty-five seconds before crumbling to brittle bits. while the rest of the band played, odette would pick up the pieces and play her part, backwards, in her head.
over thanksgiving i fell desperately in love with mum’s wii. mum’s boyfriend helped me to design the perfect virtual representation of myself — my “mii” — and my mii is the me i have always wanted to be. the baldness represents enlightenment by allowing divine light to penetrate easily into my thinking dome, however, the lush hairs on the sides that flow into the goatee represent my animal nature and corporeality; the eyes sparkle with clarity (the right eye) and rapacious lust for food and sex (the left eye, sinistra, the evil eye). gender: female! height: short! favorite candy: 초코송이! hates: computers, witch’s curses, tropical weather, ugg boots!
i also want to show the best present that i’ve received in ages. usually children paint bright primary-color landscapes and cheery animals, but this eight year-old dived into reds and blacks. i’m fond of him because i can tell he’ll grow into an impressive adult, a warrior poet: he’s small but already built like a bull or tank, yet he loves writing and music and art, and he always defends bullied children. so bushido! this painting is a “dragon’s eye” to protect me. i’m both amused and touched.
here are small moments[possibly memories] lifted out of my fever haze: several prokofiev numbers performed simultaneously by tangled hands, notes wrangled into some aesthetic order by an organ grinder’s rusty antique, a wren strangled by a six year-old who is still white-knuckled tightly gripping his murderer’s loose threads, loose ends hastily knotted into a happy ending only a total dumbass would believe.
here are more pictures.
what i typed above makes apparent that i do my remembering in passive voice. it’s bad form, but there’s something ritualistic about using it in repetition. as if the disjointed (almost unnatural) structure of the passive forces time to stand still so you can you begin the retrogressive slide into what has-been and was.
something annoying: remembering should feel like returning home. but it’s kind of annoying and ironic that remembering feels like arriving too late to an abandoned party. and remembering should be risk-free. the only real risk should be resuscitating bad feelings, instead: more often these days i feel scared to touch the surface of the memory, maybe displace a few props and change my own past altogether. maybe that is why in cinema i “trust” the slight sfumato of old film stock more than the crispness of digital high-res; it feels closer to remembering.
however
(of course)
there is $^&*@% chance that i don’t know my own speech, i am just typing this in order to put some weight on my starved blog. don’t trust me because i am just a faulty mammal with a keypad.
here is one more.
oh and i just love this, it’s so adorable and makes me smile. take a corny piece of music (sorry, pachelbel, but canon in d IS endearingly corny); make it cornier with the addition of beatbox and kayageum; add the most attractive member of the cutest korean b-boy group (….), and, this adorableness is the result:
), and, this adorableness is the result: