Get Ready, Sucka: This Is A Long One.

Oh my.

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately, at the expense of most other activities. I some times wonder if I do too much thinking and not enough acting (or interacting) and the reality is that I most certainly do at times, but I'd like to think that there's some benefit in it as well. I also do not kid myself into pretending that all of the thinking I do makes me an exceptionally intelligent person, because I'm no genius. But I do a frightful lot of thinking anyway, and lately has been one of those times where it has been my main occupation.

I've been thinking about death. My step-grandmother, on my father's side, just passed from cancer. Her ex-husband, my grandfather, my dad's dad, died from cancer when I was young. They were both people I respected deeply, although my grandfather I knew only as a young child, and I now regret not being able to know him as a young adult. My step-grandmother, Gisela, was someone I did not get to see very often, but I felt a strong affinity towards her as a person striving very hard to make peace within herself, which I sensed was the feeling many others had as well when I heard them speak at her funeral ceremony.

Both of my mom's parents have cancer as well. Her mother is terminal, and my mom is spending every chance she can get to be with her and take care of her. Her father is still fighting hard, he has had one tumor removed successfully already, and is going to be getting a second, harder to remove tumor operated on. She has been handling it as well as she can, but she told me that the death of Gisela has made the struggle with her own parents all the more immediate for her.

I find myself unable to feel sad about the death that seems to encircle my family at the moment. I have definite regrets - I feel like I hardly know my mom's parents, and although I know that it isn't really my fault, I regret not having a true knowledge of people that I have such an immediate and strong affiliation with. But death to me does not seem like such a sad thing. And my biggest regret comes from that feeling - I cannot empathize with those who have a deep sadness connected with the death in my family. I question whether my own inner peace regarding death stems from a selfishness on my part. I cannot tell if I am using my "acceptance of death's role in life" as an excuse to not let death affect me; or if I have truly, at least on some level, managed to accept the idea of death, and that my main worry is that my family will mistake my apparent lack of pain as a lack of caring at all. I suppose the reality is that I do not at all have an 'inner peace', there is in fact a deeply running conflict. But it does not stem from a sadness over death - it stems from the lack of it, and my attempt to search for an answer to why this may be.

And even in searching for these answers I feel selfish. Now is not a time to look for answers within myself, it is a time to look around me, and take pleasure in the people that I cherish. I have been doing that with my immediate family - mainly going home on the weekends to watch Battlestar Galactica with my parents. Even if it's just sitting on the couch, I've spent more time with them in the past few months than I have in a long, long time, and it's felt really good, and I know it has to them, too.

Amongst all of this, I've found my artistic ambitions severely lacking. I've still been getting to the studio about three times a week, and I've actually done quite a bit of drawing in the past few weeks - but the quick sketching at my home has felt a lot better than plugging away at the big projects in the studio, and I realized why the other day.

I did several small drawings as birthday presents for coworkers from Semifreddi's. There was such an excitement in me as I drew them, and I realized that I was having more fun with them than I have felt in a long time while drawing; and this feeling lent a boldness and a decisiveness to my markmaking that excited me further. And that, I realized, was what had been missing: I was deriving such pleasure, such excited glee from the fact that what I was creating was most likely going to make someone else very happy. I need that feeling to truly care about my art - that feeling not that it has a 'purpose' or a 'message', but that it is positively affecting someone else. That is why I not only don't care to make money from my art, but loathe the thought of it. It is like oil and water to what I want from drawing. And although this is quite a revelation, and I feel like its implications deepen even while I write this, I don't know what it spells for my ultimate artistic ambitions.

All that I know is that I don't really feel like retreating within myself at the moment, and that is what's making it hard to motivate myself on a daily basis to hole myself up in a studio and work on things that I do, in fact, think truly worthy of being worked on. I feel a need to turn myself more immediately to my fellow human beings, and make people happy, and receive happiness from them in return.

And that is what I am thinking about. And that is why I feel as if perhaps I should act and not think, but I do not know how to act, how to change the current flow of my life to allow more time to find the immediate joys in other people. Perhaps I don't need to change anything but my attitude, but perhaps I need to abandon my situation and habits entirely. I would absolutely welcome any insights that you might have for me, although I know full well that this is a problem I must ultimately solve for myself.

In the meanwhile, I promised you over our last V-chat a glimpse at the study for my other large project, which is currently named "The Mythology of The Takers". And although I was just now talking about a lack of ambition, I can assure you that I have full intention of seeing this through, even if it takes me a frakking decade.



As I had said before, this piece shall be a 'mythologized', folk-tale history of the entire universe, beginning with the big bang and ending with the destruction of our solar system and a receding into nebulous space. The main point of the piece, besides a literal illustration of the insignificance of human life in the vast scheme of things, is to point out that all we think we know of the universe through scientific deduction is still part of our extremely limited human perception, and that its translation into popular knowledge still revolves around the human experience, and is thus a part of our modern mythology. The entire piece will be 44 feet long, split into 22 separate 2-foot by 5-inch panels.

That about does 'er.

Visual Stimulus of the Literary Variety:
Neil Gaiman - Coraline (Sucked. Neil Gaiman is kind of a hack some times.)
Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (This is my second time through, and I kind of regret starting to read this again, but at this point The Fellowship has left Rivendell, and as we all know there is no turning back from there)
I'm also planning on buckling down and reading the entire Harry Potter series, because I had never gotten past the third book before. I'm hoping to get it done in record time, so if you never hear from me again you can assume that I died from malnutrition/sleep deprivation and that I'm probably lying in the middle of my apartment floor with a bodily fluid-stained copy of The Deathly Hallows beneath my corpse)

Auditory Stimulus:
Mastodon - Crack The Skye (Y'know, I could praise this to death, but I'm hoping that the reason we haven't talked about it yet is because, even on opposite ends of the world, we can silently agree that Mastodon rocks harder than anything else in existence)
Boston - Boston (I can't stop listening to Foreplay / Long Time!! Yes!)
Zu - Carboniferous
The Ocean - Aeolian
Neurosis - Times of Grace
Snowman - The Horse, The Rat, and the Swan (I like it! It's like Yeasayer's bitter, jealous but brilliant cousin)
Fever Ray (Also really dang good. I never got fully into the Knife but this might be the gateway)
Helmet - Meantime
Boredoms - Super Roots 10

P.S.: One last little observation I'd like to make. I watched the finale of BSG again recently, and I think that, knowing how it all would go down, I found myself enjoying it even more than I had the first time. I think that my absolute favorite touch, however, was the continuing of the "All Along The Watchtower" lyrical motif. In fact, I think that "All Along The Watchtower" is now swiftly on its way to being imbedded within the human collective unconscious until the end of sentient existence. Here's how it will happen:

-After Kanye West confesses his undying love of Battlestar Galactica, he does a cover version of the show's cover version of Jimi's cover version of the Dylan song, featuring backup vocals by Beyonce, Miley Cyrus, Bono and a rousing chorus duet by William Shatner and the former Lt. Felix Gaeta. At this point the assimilation of the song into every crevice of popular culture is complete. The song and lyrics lie dormant within Western Civilization's collective unconscious for several centuries until the arrival of the Apocalypse and the near-extinction of the human race.

-From the ashes of humanity's decadent past rises a new governmental structure based upon peace and coexistence with other Earth species. The New Humans are extremely partial to musical chanting as a way to continue hope and to bring minds together where they might otherwise be split. Somewhere, at some point in time, a group toiling in a field chants to keep their spirits up, and begins to sing "There must be some kind of way out of here..."

-The song quickly spreads as more people realize that the tune and the words feels somehow strongly familiar. Within the altruistic framework of the New Human society, no one person takes credit for the song, and humanity decides that it must be a message of reminder and warning from their ancestors about the horrors of the past. In this way does the song become the de facto theme of the New Human society, sung in every hall and home and on every hillside throughout the thriving new world.

-Upon humanity's inevitable buildup of new, sustainable technological practices, ships are made that can finally leave Earth for prolonged space voyages, and humans fulfill their millennia-old dream of taking to the stars. With them they bring The Song. After eventual discovery of other life forms with similar mental tendencies, The Song is taught as a sign of peace and goodwill from the humans to our newfound alien friends.

-And so it comes to pass that ghost of Bob Dylan squeezes his iron fist around the entire galaxy.


"Death exists - in a paperweight, in four red and white balls on a billiard table - and we go on living and breathing it into our lungs like a fine dust." (Murakami - Norwegian Wood)