Category Archives: Art

Today I’m being bad at pinstriping

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Most of what I do as an artist is just materials science. I play with different materials and see how they respond and interact. I don’t make art to exalt a finished product. I make art as a calculated and regular offering to the muse and the end result is a new thing.

Because of this generalist approach, I don’t have solid fundamentals and a real mastery of anything but I’m finding that expanding one skill or another offers advances to other skills and new opportunities to add something unexpected.

I picked up a pinstriping brush for the first time and made some lines. I used EZ Flow Striping and Lettering enamel, and when the brush is loaded it’s a buttery material and glide that’s almost an addictive sensory experience.

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Hey look a Coronavirus blog

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It’s really stupid, what got me writing again. It’s a psuedo-scientific journal of my rat colony’s behavior over time. But it made the keys clack. It reminded me how it felt to put sentences out in the world. So I thought I’d say a few things about coronavirus and mental health.

Right now we’re in a world crisis and I am calm. I am hopeful. I am ashamed for being calm and hopeful. But I am compassionate with myself because I know that this calm, this energy that I’ve received, is from having played out so many worse situations in my head, day by day, minute by minute.

With coronavirus, people who are mentally ill lose major coping outlets in quarantine. They’re flat out closed, inaccessible, or inadvisable. They may lose access to therapy. Anyone goes a little loopy when cooped up for a long time, but when you’ve already got a disorder that hates you and your life and your joy working against you, it can be hell. Check on your friends. Really check on them, press harder. If they just say they’re okay, ask again, gently. Pressure builds without a vent and social contact allows us to release a lot of emotions. We suffer without each other.

I have anxiety and depression, so not only do I imagine the worst case scenarios, I kinda want them. When a semi comes up close to my car and I can feel the draft of it and the space between the wheels would fit my car just right if only I yanked the wheel and then…I imagine everything that would happen next. All the horror. All the trauma. All the unnecessary guilt. The urge goes away.

It’s a weird place to be, to be a vulnerable person in a pandemic, be deeply suicidal on a regular basis, and somehow still care about getting it. I thought I might’ve had it because I had a connection to a positive case, but my symptoms could have had to do with my ear infection going rogue or something. I want to die without clogging up a hospital bed for 15 days. I don’t want to be more of a waste on the system than I already am. .

I see a disturbing number of people flat out not caring, or being racist, or denying what’s going on. But here’s the thing: people you know will die. People you care about will die. And lots of people that you apparently don’t give a damn about will die too, because of your reckless callousness and total disregard of the common good of society. There’s a line that gets used a lot that I’m gonna try to remember right: “I don’t know how to convince you to care about people.”

That’s it. That’s the end of it. That’s absolutely all of it. Do you care about others enough to make a sacrifice for a little while, hide out in your house and do as much nothing as possible. Please catch up on your home projects. Watch those educational YouTube videos, maybe learn sign language or something. Make art. No such thing as good art or bad art, you aren’t competing, you’re playing as a human person, put emotion into it. Read. Nap. Do absolutely nothing at all and appreciate the deep relaxation. But remember that what you’re doing is caring. Caring about the weaker and more vulnerable, reassuring that those lives have value.

They tell me that humans live to 80. If this goes on for 6 months or the 18 that was projected, it’s still a blip in your existence. This will be the past soon. And you’ll be able to look back on it and think of all the craziness and be totally detached. But not everyone will have that luxury. A lot of people will die. A lot of people will have permanent lung damage. We are paying for poor decisions in blood and the bodies will keep on stacking up as this progresses.

Don’t be a disease vector. Act like you already have it and need to protect everyone else from getting it from you and you’ll be about on the right track. And please, please, please, just stay home.

Happy Pride

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I wish a

“Solemn Wrath”

to the people

who can’t yet

muster up “Happy”,

or “Pride”.

To the folx

who realized

why it was

that they

wanted to kill

themselves,

only to realize

that now

there’s a

huge faction of

vocal and cruel idiots

that want you dead

instead of you

and you have to wonder

at every moment

if you are worth it

if you are real

if you are more than a plague

if you aren’t really an abomination

when mothers

clutch their children

away from you

in the goddamn grocery store,

to you I wish an armor

so mirrored and fabulous

that you might return

every laser gaze of hate

with a reflection of understanding,

followed by a spiraling dance of non-caring,

and an eye shattering glow of exposure,

bringing to light the hateful hearts

of those that wish

to strike you down.

Growth Work

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I’m learning a lot about both making art and processing trauma. 

You have to trust the process above all else. 

It won’t look pretty at a lot of stages but you are doing the work and that’s what counts. 

It’s the layers of tiny details that build up to make a whole image. 

If your system doesn’t account for mistakes, your system is broken, not your work. 

At any moment you may see what you are working on and declare it beyond repair, but ultimately it is you who decides when you are finished so the only way for it to stay flawed is to stay unfinished. 

Don’t give up until the work is done. 

Did you think the work was done? Think again. There’s fresh ideas to be had. 

You will never be pleased and nor should you. The brilliance of growth is that it is unsatisfied. 

Pride in craftsmanship shows and people are drawn to the light of vulnerability. 194A6857-7BE9-4736-9E94-AEDC26DB9D60

Words of Wisdom

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My Very Wise Friend said 

“If your family 

demands you perform 

what they perceive 

as your You-ness 

in order to be 

part of the family, 

that’s not family 

and that’s not love.”

My family has struggles. 

Every one does. 

I think we battle 

more about 

my You-ness. 

See I can’t restrain my me-ness 

and all they seem to think about 

is imaginary penis 

while my brain attempts to run from all 

of these problems with expert fleetness 

but really could I be less

Worried

Ashamed

Real

if I wasn’t truly here 

or am I pretending that my absence 

is a problem solving algorithm 

when the question posed 

by the riddle was always

“How do you have your best life?”

and the answer to the system 

was never supposed to be

“Tap out, give up, it’ll only get harder,”

but instead the lesson was

“FIGHT. Fight and YOU’LL GET STRONGER.”

Feel

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I don’t feel inspired to write. 

But here are words, 

evidence of slogging. 

A pace of clacking 

set to the the 

music of numbness. 

I don’t feel inspired to write. 

I feel a clog in the 

underside of my chin 

and above my left eye 

and probably somewhere 

in a ventricle. 

My therapist once told me

 that these are called emotions 

and I am to sit with them 

and name them 

and feel them. 

They are leaden 

and mucus slimed. 

I don’t feel inspired to write. 

But suddenly I am allowed to feel. 

Pure Sterling

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My mother told me

that God is the potter

and I am a cup

but I’m trying to

become a plate

but what she

doesn’t understand 

is that I was 

never meant

to be so simple

and utilitarian

in the first place

and it’s much 

more likely that 

I’m an abstract sculpture 

out of precious metal clay 

and this is my trial by fire 

in the kiln of cruel expectations 

burning away impurities 

and anything less 

than what I need 

to be pure sterling. 

Sheep black by stain

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I know that I’m not supposed to talk about being crazy.
I know that I’m not supposed to talk about my family.
Or politics.
Or religion.
Or suicide.

I know for damn sure I’m not supposed to talk about my gender and sexuality.
A bunch of anonymous people know I’m not supposed to talk about my alcoholism.
Or my autism.
Or my PTSD.

These are things people get judged for.
These are the things that cause family members to turn into black sheep.
Some black sheep come by it honestly, just melanin, all natural.
But most are stained that way by the vile oily sludge of judgement.

I know these things make people uncomfortable.
You think I don’t know that?
I’ve always known.

I think a little discomfort is a small price to pay, to relieve some sheep of their Sludgement Day.

Frack

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A man
once told me
the inside
of my skull
was like
a funhouse
filled with mirrors
so the
slightest
little laser
impulse
of emotion
would
bounce around
and
I r fractured
u refracted
split like concrete
served like pie
little slices
teeny splices
page at a time
all stories are lies

Give it

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Late at night,
when you have to
step outside of yourself,
stop your own breathing,
and slow your racing heart,
enough to verify that
the people who
yell at you and
spit on you and
beat you up and
leave you bruised
have taken their own
shallow
shuddering
breaths
in the
lonely darkness,
that they are
still alive
and you are
still here
to keep them safe,
that is the
season of refreshment.
Breath is
the great equalizer
in this
moment of vulnerability.
Take it.