trick

so tall you can't touch my panoptic vision
my guard is up but you know i'll be watching
try to climb my tower
i'll let down my locks but you'll get tired of the climb or i'll drop you
arms length is the sweet spot
but who am i kidding?
can't marry you so just marry the sea
i want you to know me but i know it's a miss, miss piggy
the emotional eater
fuck that.

Lyrics to "Paper Hearts" by WHY?

WHY?

PAPER HEARTS

MUMPS, ETC.

To be born as anything but this: the dying wish of a dinosaur’s dish; of no use, a shitty gift, like a single slipper. I go diffuse in city quick, like the Little Dipper. She’s cute with little titties and a sense of humor, but to tell you the truth, sir, I pity the poor fool. Her, fruitless in a holster and clueless in a kiss. I’m older than death, vulgar with unfresh breath.

During sex, I might put us in some joke positions, but it’s scary always how we end up in missionary like the daring men who fight to submission, barely conscious there to care about the split decision. Your sour thoughts you wield at me, you ring out your melon, but it yields only drops, like an unripe lemon. All a man can understand’s your bad intentions. The less you talk, the more you draw and seal an ending. Keep leafing through the glossary, sittin’ there, puffin’ weed, telling me repeatedly all the things you wanna be.

The thug’s just a boy, once my money in the bags. Is your love but a ploy, like Bugs Bunny in drag? I leave my lungs open, exposed to the whole crew while you sneak a bump and smoke cloves in the coatroom. Itching like a local ho, wishing like Pinocchio. The wind is at my back anew, but still I feel the lack of you.

Oh, you were so heavy in my heart, Boo, that soon no longer could my true heart hold you. And like the angular Etruscan tchotchke my mom got me at the Met gift shop in ‘92, tearing from the brown paper bag I kept it in when it was new after I left it overnight and it was wet with dew, it sounds blue and shitty, but of course, kid, like the little skinny bronze horse did, you fell through.

You were like a buoy I put down in open ocean, but with no cross-staff and no compass in my possession, and too far out for a lighthouse to provide discretion. How could I presume that you’d divine direction? Must have patience, accept no imitations, take no paper hearts and fuckin’ hate carnations.

Though my home is vacant, yeah, I’m lonesome while I wait. That’s no open invitation, mate, to hope we make acquaintance. The long walks home from the laundromat in Pop Pop’s Holden Caulfield hat, alone. Lost for certain, dry and pent, dead-bent like a Merchant Ivory gent. Yes, to yet get a spouse and kids, have a houseful, but I’m hard to be around and sterile as a roweled mule.

Preemptive nostalgia of the possible but doubtful?
Preemptive nostalgia of the possible but doubtful.

And always, something reminds me of you.

lyrics found here

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/mumps-etc.

Not.

I'm busy conformin to normalcy. Not, because that's impossible. You strive to be something you know you're not. Therefore you're set for disaster from the start. Maybe it would be easier if you just came to terms with who you are. There's no big secret. You're not broken, you're just different. There are people out there who are equal to you. Not below you. Not above you. Those standards are stupid anyway, and force you into that same standard of normalcy that you fight to avoid. It's not your fault, you were trained into it. You were taught to believe these things. That doesn't mean they are correct. You must learn to see outside of it. Even if it's true for those around you and it looks so easy to live life that way. It might not be easy for them either. Maybe you're the smarter one because you can sometimes see outside of it. There are others who can see even more outside of it. They are the truely gifted ones. Maybe happiness isn't the goal because that goal cannot be reached. Maybe your purpose in life is challenging your mind and allowing yourself to feel like you have a purpose bigger than all this bullshit in front of your face each day. Life is stupid sometimes. You are stupid sometimes. You're also gifted and fantastic sometimes. Just let that last part sink in. Maybe you need to find the one who makes you feel gifted and fantastic. Duh. Not so easy. Until then just remind yourself and keep on keepin on.

current sentiments

focus your attention elsewhere because you're an idiot.

fickle, the band aid ripper

most likely fixating on the details of what i said
when really none of that matters
although i'll admit i said it in a cruel way
i even sort of blamed you
when i know it's not you, it's just not us.
i'll know better for next time
i had fun with you

fickle hearts know the truth early on
but they can convince themselves of anything
at least for a while

Honeymoon Stage Cut Short

I realized how disgusting you really are
as I watched you walk away
trying to figure out who to take advantage of next 

I listen when you talk
Although I'll admit I hear just what I want to
We all do that, especially you
You just don't seem to hear anything important to me

If I'm going to be your mother
then you might as well be my father

I let you take advantage of my kindness
because I feel guilty for not liking you that much
HOW IRRATIONAL IS THAT
In fact
I don't think you really even like me that much
I'm just another resource to you


We both have something to offer each other
but I don't think it's quite enough
you can't pick and choose because someone inevitably wants more
that's the truth in both cases

I like how you understand parts of me
and try to unravel the rest
but you'll never get it
so in the end your kindness just hurts

A Cloud In Trousers

"A handsome young man with a gloomy expression... overflowing with lethal and incessant cleverness." Poet, futurist, propagandist - Vladimir Mayakovsky had shot himself through the heart.

A Cloud in Trousers
by Vladimir Mayakovsky
translated from Russian by Andrey Kneller

Prologue

Your thought,
Fantasizing on a sodden brain,
Like a bloated lackey on a greasy couch sprawling, --
With my heart’s bloody tatters, I’ll mock it again.
Until I’m contempt, I’ll be ruthless and galling.

There’s no grandfatherly fondness in me,
There are no gray hairs in my soul!
Shaking the world with my voice and grinning,
I pass you by, -- handsome,
Twentytwoyearold.

Gentle souls!
You play your love on the violin. 
The crude ones play it on the drums violently.
But can you turn yourselves inside out, like me
And become just two lips entirely?
 
Come and learn--
You, decorous bureaucrats of angelic leagues! 
Step out of those cambric drawing-rooms
 
And you, who can leaf your lips
Like a cook turns the pages of her recipe books.
 
If you wish--
I’ll rage on raw meat like a vandal
Or change into hues that the sunrise arouses,
If you wish--
I can be irreproachably gentle,
Not a man -- but a cloud in trousers.
 
I refuse to believe in Nice1 blossoming!
I will glorify you regardless, --
Men, crumpled like bed-sheets in hospitals,
And women, battered like overused proverbs.

 sigh.

A Cloud In Trousers Pt 1

you don't

use someones toothbrush without asking
eat all the cookies
download programs without asking
drink wine in the morning
eat the crust of the loaf
make that voice
spread your sickness

A Note To All Creeps

STALKING DOES NOT WIN A PERSON'S HEART.





I used to feel bad for you but now I just think you're creepy.

context clues make you a mind reader

whom a person decides to fuck says a lot about them

i tread too heavy to appreciate such delicate artwork.

tonight is the night gloss medium answers my prayers


it sucks when people start to notice your bad sides. 

excessive honesty such a burden and gift

 among other things

 you know that song, it's by Herb Frankel



aimless.




you're sad cuz that boy has feelins for someother


even though you know it wouldn't work anyway


you


"are your floors any better?"
no, actually they're worse

unless by better you mean covered in paint

which i kinda do

poetry as thought extraction

er,

thought extraction as poetry.






next painting to be called

High School Missions Trip, 1995


"gonna be heeella good"

to quote my good friend anthony



i miss that California boy. all those boys.
but those girls.  i wonder which one of us really was the asshole. probably all of us. being a teenage girl is so intense. 

 kinda nice to be able to take care of that embarrassing social shit BEFORE going to UO.  BEEFY BACKGROUND FREE but don't worry new things stack up


can't date people whose heads are in outer space.
that means you, artists alike.


next phase in the cycle begins now. late stages of previous cycle transitional period. whathafuckyoutalkinabout


whoa
is your head going to dark places?

lost you for a minute there

yeah. transitional period for real.

...

the tempraments are flipping


worldwide nationwide

wide

girl chill out you're on your period and flying all crazy


context clues make you a mind reader

my first email address

was crashgirl59@hotmail.com

applied expressionism

contemporary painting got lost in the fury of conceptualism.

painting is controlled automatism

my head is lost in school.

wonder what the world is without that solid ground?

maybe i should go to business school...

oh, and p.s mom

i make my rules after graduation.

i know what i SHOULD do

i know what i WANNNNNA do.

i'm not sure if it's blind faith

but something is telling me

things will work out okay for me.

at least in the short term

but maybe long term as well?

yet to be determained

lofty goals can be met too soon

slow down

bad advice

present myself differently in da future

one week til my show

tamed me yet to be determained

not affraid to make an ass of myselffff. or at least not realize you're making an ass of yourself until afterward. naivety works 

la vida

i think i exist
better as a concept than
in reality

smart people sometimes know when they're being fucked over but that doesn't mean they can do anything about it.

smart people sometimes know when they're fucking people over but that doesn't mean they can do anything about it.

well then what good is being smart when it comes to others?

more interesting conversation i guess.




credit - too much or not enough?





artists are the people who feel things, think about things, that other people chose to ignore. that's a pretty heavy burden, yo.

although being self righteous is pretty fun.  (as expressed above)

derive, just drifting through life

balance your ego
because it seems you need it
wild thing to contain

you don't have to try to look cool all the time
in fact you're cooler when you don't
so stay cool, man

betcha could get hired
as a professional muse
sounds quite exhausting

not every advancement needs to be received

learning a variety of cultural expressions of the term 'avant garde'

+++++++++++++++

The Reeeeeal You Under A Facade
(the internet)


i feel kinda weird posting [this]
but then again
i guess that's what blogging is for.

?

you know, allowing people to read your inner most thoughts
but what if they're weird?
your family might not like that.
not your family, YOU.

weird; i love that word
i've decided it may just describe an entire generation
in the most beautifully accurate way


let's reclaim the word!
WEIRDOS UNITE


first rule of being a weirdo
is learning to spell the word correctly



this is just getting silly now
hehe


oh my god sarah,
are you kinda happy?
that's pretty rare.
especially when it isn't summer


a sunny spring day

vitamin D does lovely things to the soul

 even if you risk a little melanoma


+++++++++++++++



THE NEXT GENERATION IS HERE
 MY TURN


bananas are so good
but banana peels are so gross

Two Weeks til Week Six

GAL COSTA

 music to paint to for daaaaayys.

  me, about 30 minutes ago:

 above: the early starts of the practice version of a large acrylic painting i am working toward!

here's the reference picture:

the final version will be 55 x 72 inches

weeeeeee'lll seeeeeee how it turns out, but i'm very excited!

"In spite of its considerable reputation, I’ve never been particularly enamored of the work of Marlene Dumas. She demonstrates a marked propensity for marrying lugubrious themes (like portraits of drowning victims) to a thin, Neo-Expressionistic paint-handling that seems extraneous to the images involved; meanwhile, her palette tends to fall in the spectrum between bruised flesh and dried blood, urine stains and sour milk. The trouble with this package is not that it’s unlovely, but that ultimately, it is unconvincing. Dumas lays claim to a gravitas that feels more assumed than earned, as she often confuses self-importance for a deep unpacking of the human condition. The result is a mannered muddle that hits you over the head with significance."

Howard Halle review in Time Out of Dumas' show at Zweriner







"I paint because I am a woman.
(It's a logical necessity.)
If painting is female and insanity is a female malady, then all women painters are mad and all male painters are women.
I paint because I am an artificial blonde woman.
(Brunettes have no excuse.)
If all good painting is about color then bad painting is about having the wrong color. But bad things can be good excuses. As Sharon Stone said, "Being blonde is a great excuse. When you're having a bad day you can say, I can't help it, I'm just feeling very blonde today."
I paint because I am a country girl.
(Clever, talented big-city girls don't paint.)
I grew up on a wine farm in Southern Africa. When I was a child I drew bikini girls for male guests on the back of their cigarette packs. Now I am a mother and I live in another place that reminds me a lot of a farm - Amsterdam. (It's a good place for painters.) Come to think about it, I'm still busy with those types of images and imagination.
I paint because I am a religious woman.
(I believe in eternity.)
Painting doesn't freeze time. It circulates and recycles time like a wheel that turns. Those who were first might well be last. Painting is a very slow art. It doesn't travel with the speed of light. That's why dead painters shine so bright.
It's okay to be the second sex.
It's okay to be second best.
Painting is not a progressive activity."

-Marlene Dumas

i feel kinda weird about what i said earlier so i'm sorry.

"what did you say i can't remember?"




apologize for something that i thought but never said
brings it out anyway
so in the end i'm still a bitch

Why the fuck Big don't want me?

I think I prefer to party by myself.

I decided that Beyonce is a much better role model than Mariah. I mean riight?

dapper young players
poor boys and girls how your
ego must exhaust you


you will not find the raging of art in its puberty here

Tragic Kingdom

too much of a show off to be a soul searcher

a body represents people
a face represents a person

she's talking but she isn't saying anything

the development of the gift of drawing

"Your blood colors my cheeks red"

stealing veggies from the urban garden

getting caught up in the cool kids game

losing sight of your own ideas

Thoughts on what makes art interesting to look at.

I guess in order for art to be interesting the viewer must be able to empathize with what the artist is attempting to bring to focus. This doesn't have to be terribly limiting, if you think about it in an abstract manor. It could mean that the artist paints abstract expressionist work, and they are trying to get you to feel a pure emotion, whether it be beauty, agitation, whatever. Or with conceptual art, it is more of an idea to empathize with. Conceptual art is capable of getting more complicated with specifically what the idea is that the viewer should relate to, such as a specific phrase in a jenny holzer piece, but it's really all about whether one can relate. bad art is just a thing that the viewer looks at, and it doesn't connect with the viewer beyond what it actually is physically. it speaks nothing. even the idea means nothing. I mean, it is possible for there to be a conceptual piece specifically talking about the work being about "nothing", but that still is something to empathize with beyond the work ACTUALLY not being about anything. Assuming the artist can pull it off.

Now beyond just the ability to allow the viewer to enter empathetically, I think each individual viewer has certain triggers that they specifically connect to more directly because of their aesthetic and life experiences. For example, I connect strongly with figurative painting over other forms of art, because I've spent time making that kind of work myself and I understand how difficult it is first hand, and also can see intricacy of empathetical thought behind brush strokes just from extended exposure and study of past art history. Just as when you meet a new person, hearing their back story helps you get to know them a little bit better and feel a stronger connection to them.

Certain imagery can be overdone, and will therefor lose its meaning from overexposure. For example, direct landscape or plant paintings, while i admit it is still possible to feel the intention behind this type of work, is rarely successful. Van gogh did it and it remains meaningful still. But I think his work because his flowers are almost like people. You don't see them as flowers as much as you see the artist himself projected through his flowers. This is one of my favorite things about painting, that no matter what a good painter does, behind the image you can see exactly how the artist felt while they were creating the work. Well I guess this is most obviously true to expressive artists, but I would argue that you could say the same to more technical painters such as Chuck Close. I haven't studied this type of work as must so I can't speak that in depth, but I imagine him to be a relatively obsessive compulsive man who has a very careful and specific method of approaching all elements of his life as he does his artwork.

I recently did yet another self portrait. This time it was made from collaged paper that I layered and allowed to curl and have some 3D elements to it. There seems to be some sort of stigma attached to making self portraits. I mean it isn't an unacceptable thing to do, and many artists throughout history have included them in their work, or even exclusively worked in self portraits. I feel like only doing self portraits is a little too self gratifying. I mean seriously. If painted correctly(whatever that means), anything can be a self portrait! Back to Van Goghs flowers, that could be considered a self portrait in a sense. As could any of his other paintings. He painted what he felt, and what you feel is an expression of the self. God knows why that means we have to look at hundreds of pictures of an artists face over and over again. Van Gogh had many fascinating self portraits, although I don't find them to be the most captivating of his work.

end rant i'm going back to bed.