Kvetches

A Swell Field of Rye

December 3, 2013December 3, 2013Ayin EsLeave a comment

Okay, so here’s a new painting. It’s called. Don’t Wait Up. It’s only 12 x 12 inches. (Oil on birch panel.)

But I haven’t been painting. I finished that like two weeks ago. Or something like that. I started it in the summer, if you can believe it.

I’ve been inundated with books. That chapbook. Houses. Then the one I’m working on now: Carol Es une Monographie de Lignes, which has become a lot more work than I had originally planned.

I originally planned 12 drawings for the first chapter, 29 for the second, eight for the third, and 10 for the fourth. That’s not the case at all anymore. I already have 16 and going for the first, 35 for the second, and hopefully I won’t go over on the last two. I may have to edit.

The thing is, I haven’t drawn all the drawings yet. I start them in pencil, then I go over them in black ink, then I try as hard as possible to erase whatever pencil is still there (but that’s impossible). Then, I have to scan them in and bring em into Photoshop, bring them up to 400% and go over every millimeter to make sure there are no spots, hairs, or light pencil marks on them. Whew!

Many of you Photoshop geeks probably think I should just use the magic wand on them, but as you know, that fucks up the edges of the natural line and makes them weird. I don’t like how that magic wand handles that, even if I contract them by 1 pixel, so I don’t like to use it. So there. Bleh.

So… I do it the hard way and go over it with my eye, and, very carefully, take a paintbrush and white out the specs of dust, and NO, I don’t have one of those mouse pen tablets. I do it with a plain old mouse, like some kind of savage!

Each drawing takes forever is what I’m telling you. Some take more time than others. For instance, editing this:

takes a lot less time than, say, something like this:

That’s just an example of the sorts of drawings that will be in the Invention and Preliminaries chapter – because they represent two different stages of my work over the years.

I may not even use that particular angel. I might use a different one. Or I might use another one, or even a few! I mean, I painted angels for a good 10 years.

Oh, you didn’t know that? Good! I’m not all that proud of it. It’s like hearing the music you played with your band from when you were a teenager. It’s a little embarrassing, although a lot of people liked them. I sold a lot of angel paintings. I must of made a few dozen at least.

Breaking away from that was weird. For years I could have sworn I was creating them under the ~~idea~~, or feeling, of lament for a lost lover. Someone I couldn’t get over for years and years – but then – one day – I realized…

Aaalll those paintings; all that paint; all that creativity, time, planning, emotion, tears and sadness; my guts splattered all over every canvas wasn’t about him at all. It was about me. I was the angel. Not him.

So I think that’s what made me stop painting angels. I’m pretty sure. Oh…that, and I fell in love with mjp.

Anyway, so off track. I sat down here to write because I wanted to vent. I wanted to get my feelings out. Ever need to just do that? Well I’m super-dooper in need of that right now!

You know what I remember most about Catcher in the Rye? It’s probably what everybody remembers for all I know, but it’s the end when he steps off the curb. I read it such a long time ago, so I don’t remember where he was going, but he was somewhere in Manhattan and he’s walking and he steps off the curb, and it was like he entered into the other side right then and there in that one step – out of reality. And in that moment, he goes into a dissociative state that he never returns from. Translation: he goes insane.

And it hits you that this is the point in the book where he goes crazy, yet it also hits you, that you’ve been on his side the entire time – he’s the protagonist after all – but it occurs to you that he has been crazy the entire time, but neither you nor he knew it.

When people said he was practically yelling, speaking too loudly, asking him to lower his voice – you realize now that he was in a manic state, not just passionate. It wasn’t the other people like he thought were weird. It was him! I don’t know about you, but right at that brilliant ending, all I wanted to do was flip back to the first page and read it all over again, having this new epiphany and a completely different point of view on Holden Caulfield at that new moment…

My point in all this really was not to talk about one of my favorite books of all time, no.

*sigh*

Lately – I am walking and I am feeling like the next step will be the one that goes on forever off the curb.

And I’m not sure what to do about it.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

I have a good friend coming over tomorrow after I see my doctor (my Lupus doc) and she is going to help me get a grip on my ultra awesome sewing machine that I’ve had for a long time (years) but really don’t know how to work. Maybe that will make me feel better?

Thanksgiving Television

December 2, 2013December 2, 2013Ayin Es2 Comments

It’s already December 2nd! Right smack in the middle of Chanukah, and Thanksgiving flew by like, like…like some kind of bat out of hell!

I hope your Thanksgiving was pleasant. Ours sure was. We have a tradition here: Turkey pot pies.

No, I don’t make turkey pot pies from scratch. Wouldn’t that be quaint? How Martha Stewart of me! Can you see it? Those of you that really know me, can you see me doing that? Yeah? Well stop laughing, because I actually do bake sometimes! I even own a beautiful apron I bought from Anthropologie, one of my favorite stores, I must admit. However, I have to wait until they have extraordinary sales, which they do.

But back to baking turkey pot pies, which I did NOT do for Thanksgiving. Why would I when Marie Calendars makes frozen ones that taste amazing!?

So Chanukah, turkey pot pies, and a few episodes of my new favorite show: Orange is the New Black.

I am in love with this show and I am sadly almost finished with the season. I’ll be watching the last episode tonight. I hate when that happens! I hardly like television, but when I fall in love with a TV show, I really look forward to watching it every week. It gives me something to look forward to that isn’t art, and that requires absolutely nothing from me. I don’t have to leave the house or speak to anyone or “be” any way. It’s a brainless activity that keeps me engaged – fully engaged – where I can escape without using an ounce of my energy or resources.

I mean, I’m sure that is no different than why most people watch TV, but I have to say that TV has always been a very strange radiation death box to me throughout my life. I have been, for the most part, anti-television. I’m not sure why exactly. It was never used as a punishment upon me as a child or anything like that. We were free to watch as much or as little TV as we wanted to. It was always on. Always. And even at age 7, 8, 9, etc., that just bothered me. It made it impossible for me to focus. So maybe that’s why.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t watch it. I did. Certain shows were like heroin. I could watch them over and over again. Anything with Snoopy in it, which only played during the holidays anyway (so it was a treat every time!), Bugs Bunny and all Warner Bros. animation, and other animated shows, such as Mighty Mouse, Tom & Jerry, The Flintstones, Popeye, and Heckle and Jeckle – if you can remember them. When I was really young, I was absolutely crazy for a cartoon called Kimba the White Lion. It’s the cartoon that that was completely ripped from the dead hands of Tezuka Osamu (the inventor of anime), stolen to create the very successful Lion King via Walt Disney. Just remember that every time you see those Disney characters with the BIG EYES.

Of course Disney claims that all this is coincidental and blah blah blah, so I have to state that the above is purely my personal opinion and based on my “feelings,” not at all a proven fact and untrue; nobody stole anything from anyone. They are just two very similar stories. Kimba the White Lion and The Lion King are both great though.

Besides animation, of which I am a great fan of – it probably influenced me to become an artist in fact – there were other shows I could watch over and over, like The Twilight Zone, I love Lucy, and ……………………well, everything else was shit. It made me want to drill screws into my toes or drive a nail gun into my temple, or push a staple gun into my forehead, or hammer a needle nose pliers straight up my nose. Whatever tools you happen to have lying around, I’ll use them if someone doesn’t turn off the fucking TV!

I just didn’t get why it was on all the time, even when no one was there watching it. If you wanted to talk to someone else, there’s a television on, and it was either set to the news or on a game show, or somehow, some way, after I left home, anytime I came over, Married With Children was always on. But when I was there, it was The Jeffersons, Happy Days, One Day at a Time, The Love Boat, or some other kind of torturous bullshit.

When I moved out, I lived at Tracey’s and we didn’t watch much TV, and when I hopped around from place to place, I missed a few more years of TV there too, and then when I got my own place, my parents gave me their old TV, which was really nice of them. I just didn’t know what I would do with it. I didn’t plug it in for a couple of months, but my boyfriend at the time, Scott, brought home some “rabbit ears” for it and plugged it in. We were able to get a few channels, some more furry than others, but they were watchable. I told him that I’d like it if he would just do me the favor of not having it on if he wasn’t watching anything specific.

I watched TV with him one time. I was bored. I don’t even remember the program. Oh, actually, it was the Honeymooners. He was a big fan, but I just wasn’t my thing. You may throw tomatoes at me now if you please.

Your tomato window has now closed. Back to the story.

At the next two places I lived, I had a TV, but I didn’t plug it in until I got a VCR machine. Hmm. Maybe I had the VCR Machine when I lived with Scott. I seem to remember my mom stealing us one and Scott talking me into accepting it, which sounds reasonable, so maybe I rented movies back then. The only problem was, it was a Beta Max. That would only last me so long.

For the following 10 years after that, I just never had a TV that plugged into an antenna. Never had channels. Never watched TV. Unless I was renting a movie (I finally got a VHS machine), I was pretty cut off from popular culture. I caught glimpses on MTV when I had roommates with the band, heard things that people told me, but most of all, it was quiet, and I painted. I’d listen to my records when I lived with the band, mostly to drown out the sounds going on outside my room, but by the time I found my own place again on a quiet street, I was back listening to the birds.

But for someone who rather despises TV, there are a LOT of shows I absolutely love that have come and gone, and have recently started.

Orange is the New Black, Getting On, Masters of Sex, Ray Donovan, Enlightened, Girls, Shameless, Nurse Jackie, The Big C, Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men, Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, Big Love, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The United States of Tara, Weeds, Flight of the Conchords, the Sopranos, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, Sex and the City, and Northern Exposure. I also kind of like Pawn Stars and the Jeff Lewis shows (the house-flipper/designer guy), and a few other house remodel shows and an occasional House Hunters.

I wouldn’t have known about any of these had it not been for mjp who introduced cable to me. He was totally dialed in when I met him, and he had every episode of Northern Exposure recorded already, and many other shows that I just couldn’t get into, but that one became a religion for me.

When it comes to TV and even movies, I’m extremely fickle. I either like it or I really don’t, and if it can’t keep me fully engaged, my mind goes elsewhere and I am not really watching. I tend to disassociate, and that’s never good.

Well, that’s a LONG leeway announcing that I’m finally on the Shulamit website!

Hope ya’ll had a great Thanksgiving.

I Don’t Know What I Think

November 6, 2013Ayin EsLeave a comment

I don’t know what I think. I’m busy all the time and I don’t seem to have much time to write much anymore. I have to change things around so that isn’t so. I don’t think people, others, friends, anybody really knows or understands how much time I truly need to myself. So much more than I get. But some might think I already have too much. I’m full of luck they’d say. Full of luck. Yeah. I am. Yet I don’t have time to make a call, pay my bills, clean my house, make some food, paint or draw, or write. So, here I am. Writing. Writing about how I don’t get to write. How am I supposed to keep the blog up and running, get followers, promote, promote, promote, and still have time to keep up an art practice? A writer’s practice? See my therapist? I’m just tired. My illness makes me tired, plus I didn’t get enough sleep last night, plus I’m trying to quit smoking again. I quit the day before yesterday, but – like and idiot – I had one cigarette today, so I ruined everything! I’m in such a bad mood. I’m disappointed in my being, which has no real will power. I don’t even know what I really think of myself. Whatever whatever whatever. The day flies by. I look up and it’s six o’clock and nothing important has been done – nothing important to me. I only give my life to and for one thing …sacrificed for one single, cheesy reason. People think I’m goal-obsessed. That aint it. I just want to be saved. Swallow a little magic. I need to go change my nicotine patch.

What am I? Winner? Loser? Role Model for Narcissists?

October 18, 2013October 18, 2013Ayin Es2 Comments

I’ve been working on that COLA grant and not much in the way of art. I forgot about that damn thing. Saying “the COLA grant” is just a short way of saying the 2014-15 City of Los Angeles’ Department of Cultural Affairs Grant Program Application for the Individual Artist Master Fellowship.

I have applied for this grant every year since I have been eligible. You are eligible when you have had 15 or more years of professional experience. The only year I did not apply was last year. I guess I was just disheartened and felt like it was useless to apply anymore, so I don’t know why I am applying now, but I am. A friend of mine won last year. Actually, a friend of mine wins every year. Every year, at least one or two people I know pretty well wins. Same goes for the CalFund.

However, I applied for the Pollock-Krasner award seven times before I finally got it. I’m sure I have mentioned that thousands of times. I mention that because I want to be encouraging to other artists to keep trying. Don’t get discouraged. Stay on track. Keep going. Don’t let those poopers get you down. Yet here I am complaining.

You tell me. How can I express my own frustrations and honest insecurities while trying to be some sort of role model? That’s a toughy. Because I try to be candid as I possibly can here. I’m not full of shit. I might be full of myself, and I might not even be anybody’s role model, but I really do want to help other artists that are trying to do what I’m doing. I certainly know what it’s like – the feeling of running in place and getting nowhere. You look down and see that you’re just digging a hole into the dirt. And when you do that, there’s nothing else to do but climb out of it. There is nothing else to do. No one else is going to pull you out either.

Sure, you might have the good fortune of having a loving partner or friends, or a loving mom that tells you that you’re wonderful. That your art is fabulous. “You’re the biggest genius on the face of the Earth!” That’s nice to hear. But you and I know it goes in one ear and out the other when you don’t feel the same way about it than they do. YOU have to feel it. And you can get grants and awards and win the MacArthur (wouldn’t that be something!?), but other than taking you out of poverty for the moment, it’s not going to change how you feel about your art. Trust me. You have to believe in yourself. That’s why there’s nothing else to do than to dig yourself out of the hole and keep going.

But I wasn’t even going to talk about that. Nope. I really wasn’t. I was going to show you a few of my mediocre, colored pencil drawings that I happened to scan from some of the Today’s Quandary. books. Here are a strange few:

Lastly, but not leastly, I have another painting on the Huffington Post’s Image Blog! That’s always nice. Good promotion. I think anyway. No, I KNOW! I am grateful as all hell to be on that site. It’s kind of surreal that I have my own art on there, and that I can blog on there whenever I want as well. I just need to get my article writing chops up to par.

Anywho, thanks for reading, you!

Now I’m going to make a CD for my little sister of music that I myself have played on as the drummer. But I have to make it “age appropriate.” Now that’s going to be a challenge. No, not from the Extinct. It’s the band Circle of Power that’s going to be a problem. She loves rap too. A real quandary that is.

Weather, Crows, and Grammar

October 16, 2013October 16, 2013Ayin EsLeave a comment

I slept until noon today. I haven’t done that in a long-ass time. I guess this cold is still lingering a bit. But that’s okay, my calendar is free for making art for the next two days and I am very excited and happy about that. I don’t usually have two whole days free and dedicated to do that.

Yet here I am writing in my blog.

But I’m getting to it. I like to write a little in the “morning,” either in my book, or on some forums I participate in (WetCanvas if you’re curious). and before that, I have my coffee and go outside and have a smoke (yes, I’m still smoking and yes I’m still full of guilt and shame because of it).

And while I was outside, I felt the beginnings of the winds that come here in Southern California, which are known as the Santa Anas. They are arriving right on time. They are here today, just barely, but I feel them. Maybe because I was expecting them. I was expecting them yesterday, or maybe the day before, but it was actually kind of gloomy, and the Santa Anas have nothing to do with humidity. For some reason today, there is a slight sense of coolness to them. But that will go away by tomorrow. I knew they were about to come because yesterday while I was working in my studio, all I could hear were the crows cawing like crazy. Instead of letting them drive me mad, I just accepted it as if they had a “nice” song like all the other birds, but that wasn’t an easy feat.

I don’t know why I am sensitive to these little changes in the air. I’ve always been a city person, but I’m in tune with this shit. Right around the 15th of October the hot winds come, the giant black crows come in murders, and the mountains light up in flame. It’s called fire season here. The humidity becomes zero by the end of October and the Santa Anas fly through the air at high speeds, making it near impossible for firefighters to keep the fires contained. It’s because it would be something natural that would happen otherwise, but we’ve built homes too close to the mountains and forest land, so that’s what we get.

Just like mud slides along the cliffs and bluffs on hillsides that aren’t bedrock – your house might slide down the hillside if it rains a lot, and you should know that going in.

We have peculiarities here in Los Angeles, and it seems like everyone is surprised each year when it all happens all over again. Like the first week of September – that is not yet fall my friends. That is still summer, and we have a heat wave every time in the first week or so of September. I have a Brazilian Pepper tree out back that lost a quarter of its branches the second week of September, just after that heat wave. That’s because we didn’t have it trimmed properly, the branches got weak from the heat and the whole thing came down. Poor tree. Now I see (and hear) the other branches weakening, but I can’t trim them until all the bees get the hell out of my yard, which won’t be until after November.

I remember going back to school that first week of September when I was a kid. Of course, that would never last. I’d inevitably be taken out of school for one reason or another, but I do remember the times when I’d get that fresh start after the summer break and newly sit in one of those Godforsaken classrooms – asbestos floors and ceilings, no A/C, and we’d all be just sweating our asses off in our new school clothes because there was a heatwave that week. We’d all have migraines, and if there was enough smog, thank goodness we’d be restricted from playing on the playground, but we’d still just have to sit still in the classroom that sometimes did and sometimes didn’t have a fan.

That’s how I remember that there’s a heatwave the first week or two in September.

Nowadays, we don’t have the kind of smog we had back then in the 70s. <– Ha! I love how now when you type 1970s or 50s instead of 60’s in your browsers, email, Google, etc., you will get a red underline. Who in God’s name programmed these grammar functions? Did you know that putting a ‘ before the s after the year is absolutely incorrect? Don’t take my word for it. Just ask the Harvard Linguistics authority I learned it from on KCRW a couple of years ago. Also, something I never needed a Harvard pussy to tell me: please resort to you Strunk and White (the above is also probably in there too): ANY TIME you use quotes, please stop putting your punctuation after the quotes! It’s not correct. Like “when you do this”, this is not right. “this is,” right. No matter what.

I am done with my grammar and weather lessons for the day. Onto art.