Web Videos and The Other
By on April 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)
I have been watching a great deal of web-exclusive videos lately to familiarize myself with the content and vision of my new employer.
As I edit different interfaces on the website, the videos begin to play before I press the edit button to edit the post. I keep thinking about the psychological transformation that takes place as the web page morphs from a static window to a container of time and experience as a human begins to move on the screen. It is as if an actual human is present, sharing a story with the viewer. This makes me feel guilty pressing edit to leave the page, thereby quieting the person.
What makes us love so much? I am beginning to think it comes from spurts of desperation, regret from being too critical to the people we love. These regrets cause us to gratefully cry at the site of poppy-covered hill-lined freeways, have visions of bathing our parents in small kitchen sinks, or overwhelming gratitude for the young man at the coffee shop for making flawless warm scones every morning (no, I won’t let that one go).
Were I to communicate properly, as my best self, I do not think I would be as shocked by the motion and presence of the awakened web page human.
Yes, I am saying that an inability to move from inside out, from our internal architecture to common space, causes a person to become more and more shocked by everything that moves outside of the mind, that uses and builds upon, even changes our language and context. These kind of changes often dismantle our logic and create a sense of panic and stress.
I would not trade these intense, full-body climaxes of tenderness to avoid the (sometimes terrible) shocks of the other. Not even for consistency, stability, and what could be considered greatness. I think those virtues might relieve us of the heavy feeling, the beautiful weight of existence.
May we embrace intersection, even when it tears us apart.
Shine Your Shoes
By on April 19, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)
I spent a total of nine hours in traffic yesterday. Alone.
I cannot tell you that I hated the experience. There is something about driving alone that is very nurturing, sitting very still and being carried for long periods of time without having to look into another human face. But rather, like looking into your own eyes in the mirror, it is this neutral brain-space that allows a kind of brain detox. (And by detox I mean every part, including bad symptoms.)
Don’t get me wrong, that amount of time doing one thing seriously wear away at this positivity. By the last hour I thought I might be driving forever and that I would no longer have a physical body or a destination. I felt like I would never be able to do anything ever again because my body may have forgotten how. I might have to jump start my system (following the detox comparison) and slowly introduce interactions and just plan old actions back into my life. I could hardly keep up conversations at work after the first four hour block, let alone after adding the one and a half hour lunch block. But getting home after the last stint was just too much.
The reason I am telling you this is because of what greeted my arrival.
But first, some context. My parents went away for the weekend on a married couples retreat. I am watching my younger brother who is ten. One of my Dad’s students, we’ll name them Josh, picked my brother up from school and hung out with him until I got there at 9:45 p.m.
So I pulled up, beat and zoned out, not looking forward to having to appear coherent and talk to a stranger. YOU GUYS! He was the kindest, most genuine student I have ever met from the school where my Dad is teaching right now. I brewed us some tea and we had wonderful conversation littered with interludes of laughing at the movie my brother was watching. Later I found out that he had made breakfast for dinner (i.e. pancakes) for the two of them.
It was too much for me. It was all I could do to crawl under the covers with a big fat smile on my face and sleep like a baby (please excuse the unabashed literary reference). These kind of crippling experiences that keep me up at night all jittery and confused. People like the young french guy who makes world class croissants and scones every morning and whistles to himself, or this guy. They may as well ask if they can bring me a tangerine.
How can you prepare your heart for something like that? People are just too beautiful.
What Would You Grow
By on February 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)
We are like the corn, what we put into our bodies is what we become.
How do you become the best person ever? According to some people you make a rainbow (including almost every color in the spectrum) smoothie out of:
1. young coconut (water and flesh) for your blood
2. cacao nibs, cacao butter, cacao powder (all three make a more complete and rounded taste) for bliss
3. Maca for balance
4. Berries for antioxidants
5. Cashews (no need to soak because of high fat content) for sweet creaminess
6. Açaí for more antioxidants, protein, and Omega fats
7. Goji berries for complete protein and 21 minerals
8. Spirulina for relaxation, alkalize!
9. Agave for taste
You could even throw in some cat’s claw or sheep’s sorrel powder if you wanted.
I’m just sayin’.
HOW CAN WE PASS THIS UP!
Or we could just sit and eat whole bags of grapes. Or let dark chocolate melt on our tongues.
(x(Syntax)) + Consumption = Vices/Sabotage
By on February 8, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Two things that control/influence what we are able to perceive through our experiences in life: SYNTAX and CONSUMPTION. 
The architecture and structures that we create with language vary depending on the placement of words in a sentence. For example, or perception of reality may vary depending on the placement of the direct object in a sentence. Accordingly our perception of the physical object, where we “place” it, exists within the viewers visual and cultural syntax, which is dependent upon the linguistic syntax. And what’s more, a listener/viewer/reader will take your syntax and interpret it within their syntax which is most likely made up of a very different architecture and the two parties may never be able to connect. This lack of connection is no fault of their own, they literally do not posses the structures to translate. This is particularly relevant to the parent/child relationship.
I think that perhaps music can surpass some forms of syntax that cannot be access through language or gesture or image. This may explain the magical powers of music to penetrate memory. For example, when my father, brother, and I listen to Neil Young or Joni Mitchell there is a level of reality that is completely inaccessible otherwise. The space between my father and his children is completely irrelevant, we all just sit and mourn the possibility of human honesty.
Similarly, what we consume could be considered another form of architecture. What we eat influences our chemical make up, physical form, mental capacity, etc. Or what we consume through purchase, creates physical structures that create our placement.
The Doctrine of Signatures contends that every whole food has a pattern that resembles a body organ or physiological function and that this pattern acts as a signal or sign as to the benefit the food provides the eater. This blows my mind. Here is just a short list of examples of Whole Food Signatures that were posted on this forum:
- “A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye…and science shows that carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.
- A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart is red and has four chambers. All of the research shows tomatoes are indeed pure heart and blood food.
- Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows that grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food.
- A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds are on the nut just like the neo-cortex. We now know that walnuts help develop over 3 dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.
- Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.
- Celery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don’t have enough sodium in your diet the body pulls it from the bones, making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.
- Eggplant, Avocadoes and Pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female - they look just like these organs. Today’s research shows that when a woman eats 1 avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? …. It takes exactly 9 months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them).
- Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the motility of male sperm and increase the numbers of sperm as well to overcome male sterility.
- Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.
- Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries.
- Grapefruits, Oranges, and other citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.
- Onions look like body cells. Today’s research shows that onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes.”
It’s so simple, I love it! Why would this not be true?
There is at least two ways that you could percieve this based on your syntax.
- As the radical visionary Jakob Böhme perceived it, evidence of the natural world vibrant with the numinous images of the Deity, or “as above, so below,” an expression of the relationship between macrocosm and microcosm; the principle is rendered sicut in terra.
- Evidence of egocentrism.
Do you see the difference?
What separates us from each other is the placement of the object.
I often sabotage my own tendencies toward syntax that will keep me from you. This bleeds into other parts of my life. Parts like decision making. I want to be a raw foodist, but it will give me a syntax which creates not only feelings of superiority in terms of nutrition, but also influences my physical architecture which will literally become unable to have certain foods without becoming ill. What is interesting about this is that I am not sure if it would make me more ill than I might be now, but I would become hundreds of times more aware of it because I would have forgotten what it was like to feel inner turmoil from foods.
I think this is a metaphor for why some of us cannot make decisions of what place is the best place to move to or what project is the best project to invest in. Or even whether I should have coffee today. Every form of syntax influences each other. It seems like we could be missing out on the entire picture by subscribing to something. Is being in the best physical chemistry possible worth feeling like I should convert everyone to my new way of life in order to be able to eat with them? No.
Would giving up my vices to become perfect be worth the isolation? No, so I sabotage.
Because I wished you were with me
By on February 2, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4)
I was lying in bed trying to think of a way to sleep through the day and then I had to go pee. I opened the door and my father whirled around in his spinning desk stool. He was watching his interview on His Channel. I watched it with him for a while, I wanted to support him in ways that neither of us will every be able to articulate. It has something to do with time and space I think, with collecting. And then I went down stairs to make some carrot-beat-arugula juice. My mom had just roasted some tomatoes, so many perfectly closed shapes of collapsing yellow. My mom started talking to me about God’s love.
They went to my little brothers flag football game.
I went to Henry’s Marketplace and put on expensive facial moisturizers and bought five pink lady apples, one granny smith, one d’anjou pear, and a pink grapefruit. When I got home, I went to put them upstairs, I am not sure why, and opened the closet to put them in a drawer my sister left empty for me to use. My wedding dress was just hanging there, touching the edge of the particleboard ever so slightly.
I thought about last night, waiting for my mom to come home so that I did not have to open the package alone. I thought that maybe when I put it on I could make her happy. That it wouldn’t matter that I am not who she wishes I were. It didn’t. It “looked like it just came out of a box.” I need to change it a bit. Then it will be perfect. I wished that I were wearing makeup, for once, as to protect myself from something. Maybe this is what makeup is for. I thought about trying some on when I was in Henry’s.
This much is obvious. There is something that we need to feel together. Shit, you guys.
My New Commute from lady parts on Vimeo.
From the Inland Empire
By on January 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4)
My father just got back from Egypt and Israel. The tour de Old Testament prophets. The night he got home he sat us down in the dining room to have a look at some photos, snapshots, from the trip. Among them were pictures of, yes, olive presses and old Hebrew men, there were guards and scenic shots of Aaron’s (supposed) tomb. He sat on a camel with a student and took “art” pictures of my brother lying on the ground as if dead. But littered among these sometimes-encouraging-horrifically-depressing-comments photographs were pictures of cats. At least ten of them.
It is true, my father loves cats.
On his spiritual pilgrimage, accompanied by people buying diamonds and thousands of souvenirs, he took pictures of cats and a few other small animals.
And this is how I know that Vonnegut was right.
We Do, Doodley Do, Doodley Do, Doodley Do, What We Must, Muddley Must, Muddley Must, Muddley Must, Until We Bust, Bodily Bust, Bodily Bust, Bodily Bust.—Bokonon
“Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing. Whatever it is,” these are the wise words of Vonnegut’s son.
I am living in the Inland Empire. Surrounded by vacant houses. For Sale by Bank. I wake up late because there is nothing to welcome me but hollow searches for wedding dresses and jobs. I search and search online for something. And have dreams about being near people I love. There is no blood here. It is like the Pillar of Fire. Without the innocence.
But there is my parent’s cat. And pink lady apples. Oh zinc, you do drop your lean and massive body into the corners beside my body so well! I do love you, old chap.
And as my mother exclaimed tonight with utmost fervor and thrill (in regards to applying for a position at a tutor agency),
“I think you should just put on a dress and march in there!”
And so we shall.
Final Project
By on December 10, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Check it out.
note: Antarctica photos courtesy of Matthew Spencer, taken by Joseph Peeples, his grandfather.
Re: December 12
By on December 9, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)
And my birthday
Like a piglet1, lay
On a brown paper towel
Or a tiny plate
Holy
In its glossy coat
One year ago I turned twenty-one. My brother took me out to a wine bar in Pasadena. Matthew bought me a book of poems. I saw Alisha for the first time since she had returned form Sierra Leon. Jordan, Alisha, Daniel, Matthew, and I sat and ate delicious appetizers and wine. Then more people I love came (James was there!?!?). Jenna brought me beautiful orchids. We went to Lucky Baldwin’s and rattled on for hours and felt happy.
So much has happened since this day. Off the top of my head: I had two art shows, began writing this blog, fell in love with tastey beer, roaches bred and crawled all over my body every time I sat down in my apartment, friends graduated and moved away, I moved into a tiny and lovely new apartment, got and became a beyonce, met some very tender people, participated in UB3, got a baby cat, and I am about to finish my super-senior semester/undergraduate degree.
2007 was epic. Thank you twenty-one.
Dear 2007, if you were a person, I would give you a hug. If you were a cat, I would kiss you on the eye. But you are a year. You have different parts.
1puerquito or cochinito, soft molasses cookies shaped like pigs
Broad, Sweeping Assertions
By on November 30, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)
You could say that my New Genre Art forms class is about kitsch and staging performances. It’s your call on wheather or not that fits the title. I know I have been talking about this class a lot lately, hey, it’s a three hour class that meets twice a week.
Here are some things I have been thinking about:
Blurb by Tao Lin about Tao Lin written by Todd Zuniga:
I like my book of poems. I like salmon. I want the salmon to shake
hands with the book, but I ate the salmon and now it’s in my stomach,
and my stomach has no fingers. The book is good, but I don’t care. I
want the book to punch the salmon in the face. Then I want the
universe to punch itself in the face.
This is the current dilemma of time and identity in art. We are confronted with things that touch us, but they are not related other than within our own minds. We are aware of this and it is depressing. Identity is composed of concrete memories with constants, but we are not sure if there are truly constants. But it doesn’t matter. We still ate the salmon, which did not shake hands with our book of poems (see above poem). Likewise, we still experienced something touching us, even if the significance of that touch is a result of what we have trained our minds to do. Thus, even if we can become aware and overwhelmed by time and identity, we continue to compose it.
This thought process causes people, humans, to make art. Out of our sorrow births metaphor. Contemporary artists are essentially wrestling with the question, “how can I communicate with people who use abstractions?” It is about communication. We are hungry for it because we think it creates, or adds to, our identity and perpetuates time.
I was thinking a lot about this on a ride home from L.A. on the Metro gold line. I tried to identify my criteria for the best piece of art I could make right now. This caused me to ask myself what I considered good art, which led me to ask myself what it is that I want to, am trying to, say. But this just made me unbearably aware of my existence/consciousness. I became aware that I am just like the tapeworm inside my kittens intestines. I have lodged my head into the wall of I-have-no-idea-what and am starving for touching/beautiful/significant moments. I gorge myself on them. This is all I do. Then I became utterly paralyzed. How can we go on and make art within this thought process; this hunger for identity (and not just roll over and hold someone)?
We cannot help ourselves.
It seems to me that kitsch touches on these dilemmas of identity and time, or rather, ability to conceptualize our relationship to the abstract notions of time and identity. Rather than contemporary artists who show their work in quite white spaces, people who create small meaningful/less objects, what we refer to as kitsch, distribute their products freely and overwhelmingly. There is no privatization or ownership of thought or idea. The image and/or object belong to everyone because it can be obtained for a reasonable price. Quality is not the objective, but rather, distribution. This is the contrast between high art and kitsch, the principle conceptualization of the self. Does thinking about your existence paralyze you and cause you to isolate yourself, or does it numb your brain and make you completely able to roll over, completely able to forget and move on. The lonely artist sitting in a studio, birthing the idea that will revolutionize our perception of the human condition is an icon of the elite, wealthy class. But kitsch just is the human condition, taking time and being itself. It does not continue into frustration, it feels warm and touched by the small plastic figurine of a lamb.
What is Good Performance Art?
By on November 13, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (7)
Last night, at the end of the very heated class discussion, my friend Johanna asked, “What makes a performance piece good? Like with the lady who takes pictures with her mouth, why do people like Tom Waits go to her performances?”
The responses from fellow classmates, including myself, basically outlined that performance art, because of it’s inherent intimacy, a great deal of it has to do with the audience. If the performance matters to the viewer, the viewers respond and the piece is considered good. The artist is responsible for tapping into what matters.
This is somewhat depressing.
Why do we make things matter?
My professor said that there has to be an equal ratio of visual stimulation and conceptual stimulation. The concept has to be strong, but it also has to be beautiful.
I think this is what holds me back from all of the professors in the Art department, why they do not latch onto me. I lack the interest to keep that ratio equal, the concept is much more important to me. I have trouble with the homely details of the mediums I have experienced in art classes. Writing continues to be my strongest medium. This is not something that any of the professors in the art department at my school can relate to at all.
Do you think this is true of performance? When you think about the art that impacts you, what elements are present? Are there equal amounts of visual stimulation and conceptual stimulation in a musical performance? Let’s have it.
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