intellectual properties

video promo for lovesick5

clinically attracted
in which i go crazy in love. (possibly NSFW)

LOV3SICK5 – 2.14.12

fantasy life 2012

it seems a local team did something and sports fever is taking over again. cool, i guess? < shrug> . i was thinking about this, how some people are really into being BIG FANS and things like fantasy sports or phantasy phish where you create (and try to manifest?) the best possible team/game/event EVAR.  i’m more into Fantasy Life, and this morning i feel so grateful that i have so many other people not only playing along with me, but into making it FANTASY REALITY, from #occupy to fashion to fitness to art to music to education to policy to travel to procreation.  dreaming ain’t good if you don’t try to make it real, and if we play it right it looks like RealLife 2012 is going to be an epic win. GO TEAM! you know who you are.

everything is its own reward

(click for full size)

–Paul Madonna. this book is unbelievably beautiful. many thx again to Vera for the gift.

epinephrine.

the emotional spectrum between frantic anxiety and welcome anticipation is interesting.

music rec: superhuman happiness

as seen in NYC: this may or may not be your thing:

Superhuman Happiness

Superhuman Happiness was founded in 2008 to seek joy and love through shared rhythm and melody, composed and improvised. To pursue a happiness greater than that of an individual. They have one CD, Stuart Bogie’s Superhuman Happiness – Fall Down Seven Time Stand Up Eight, and two 45 records entitled GMYL/Hounds and Human Happiness (Electric Cowbell). Members are known for their work with Antibalas…, the Sway Machinery, TV on the Radio, Battle Apples, The Phenomonal Handclap Band, Caural, The Roots, Nicole Atkins, King Expressors, Minerva Lions, Passion Pit, Celebration, Holly Miranda, Iron and Wine, Foals and the inimitable MC Chris. The band regularly rehearses, composes, and records together, engaging in various improvisatory musical games currently being compiled for implementation in widespread applications.

look mom no hands

today is almost t-shirt weather, except that the air off the pacific is cold.

do you ever have those moments where you see yourself, unexpectedly, from 20 feet away, like watching a few split seconds of scene from the movie of your actual life?

do you ever feel unsafe with yourself? do you look up sometimes and realize how vulnerable you are? through either the reality of mortal life, or because you’ve lead yourself into a specific situation that is maybe not ok?

people are on guard here, a strange distrust in the fact that we are all only human. it should be safe to be outside in broad daylight on a sunny afternoon. but it’s not. we’re not safe from each other if we are not safe from ourselves.

as i say this i ride down city streets with no hands, my fingers laced behind my back.

Essay Question: When is art propaganda? When is it not?

Part 1.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one’s group.

And art, IMO, is any form of creation as a means of expression. Who creates without expression? And when is expression ever neutral?

Personal or political, if you share your art, isn’t it propaganda? Aren’t you hoping to change the way people think about something, even if it’s only yourself?

Do you have thoughts? I know this is wide. Answer widely.  and please excuse my lack of academic understanding.

Part 2.

Are you turned off by artists who are/seem really “political” or constantly pushing a message/cause? Sometimes? Always? Why? At what point could you consider it propaganda? (Consider, for example, the length of the spectrum from SuperBowl commercials to campaign ads. Are they really that different?)

Please answer in the comments here. This need not be overly wrought.  define art for yourself, define propaganda for yourself, and then tell me where their relative intersections lie for you, and how you feel about that/how it affects your support/how affected you are/how you are affected by any form of what you define as art.

hair theory

on new year’s eve i went and got the sides of my head shaved again in brooklyn, this time with the closest shave i’ve had (#1). i was tired of it growing out so quickly, and wanted it to look fresh for the new year.

every once in a while i catch someone’s eye – usually an older person, but sometimes not –  and i can see the question in their eyes.

now why would such a pretty girl go and do something like that to her hair?

i admit that some days i look in the mirror and ask myself the same question, but that is exactly the question i want to be asked.

snippets

i finally opened my suitcase last night, filled with a mix of sandy bathing suits and smokey winter layers, because i figured i should find my own toothbrush and stop using jay’s. it was thursday. january 5th. taking bets on how long all that laundry sits there. this morning i also took a full shower with all the soaps and stuff for the first time this year.  and after i toweled off  i noticed that my skin was DRY.  like, it looks like i’m molting dry.  this is why i don’t like to shower unless necessary.  it’s not good for the hair and skin.

.::.

later i had a long chat with an old dear friend, and then took a walk through these slanted january sunrays. as i walked and thought of him i imagined having the power to conjure a certain subset of dearly beloved humans to appear around a campfire late one warm summer night with bottles of whiskey and wine, where slowly they would recognize their reflections in one another and melt like pools of multicolored wax into eachothers lives, and i would sit and bask in the warm glow of unbelievable good fortune and love.

Two English Poems – Borges

I

The useless dawn finds me in a deserted street-
corner; I have outlived the night.
Nights are proud waves; darkblue topheavy waves
laden with all the hues of deep spoil, laden with
things unlikely and desirable.
Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals,
of things half given away, half withheld,
of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act
that way, I tell you.
The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds
and odd ends: some hated friends to chat
with, music for dreams, and the smoking of
bitter ashes. The things my hungry heart
has no use for.
The big wave brought you.
Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily
and incessantly beautiful. We talked and you
have forgotten the words.
The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street
of my city.
Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to
make your name, the lilt of your laughter:
these are the illustrious toys you have left me.
I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them, I find
them; I tell them to the few stray dogs and
to the few stray stars of the dawn.
Your dark rich life …
I must get at you, somehow; I put away those
illustrious toys you have left me, I want your
hidden look, your real smile — that lonely,
mocking smile your cool mirror knows.

II

What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the
moon of the jagged suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked
long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts
that living men have honoured in bronze:
my father’s father killed in the frontier of
Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs,
bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in
the hide of a cow; my mother’s grandfather
–just twentyfour– heading a charge of
three hundred men in Peru, now ghosts on
vanished horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold,
whatever manliness or humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never
been loyal.
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved,
somehow –the central heart that deals not
in words, traffics not with dreams, and is
untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at
sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about
yourself, authentic and surprising news of
yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you
with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

- Jorge Luis Borges (1934)