go Korea!

I've come across some really smart and well done stencil/graffiti art popping up in Korea from various sites and blogs. This one is pretty damn sweet. Seen on the wall of the painting department at Hongik University (one of the most prestigious art/design school) in Korea. It's so simple but says a lot, from stereotypes (the smart Asian kid) to breaking taboos and traditions (your Korean kid wants to be a what???) Being an artist is hard, being a Korean artist may be even a tad bit harder. Kudos to those that understand, advocate and spread the visibility of this population. Also parents, if your kid wants a brush, give the damn kid a brush!

tire swings

Something else I came across while collecting references on-line, and I'm thinking how come I never knew about these???

When I have kids I'm so getting these for myself them.

Here's a dragon and a motorcycle (prefer the animals personally.) I've also ran across elephants, giraffes, horses, and more. I want a herd of them in my backyard.

colors and the kids

I was collecting reference pictures for my drawings and listening to a live Cat Power recording. So appropriately the song "Colors and the Kids" came on. I had heard this song before but it never really grabbed me, until that moment. It was so perfect and I realized yes perfection comes with a price, that price being Beauty.




It's so hard to go in the city
'Cause you wanna say hello to everybody
It's so hard to go into the city
'Cause you wanna say hey I love you to everybody
When we were teenagers we wanted to be the sky
Now all we wanna do is go to red places
And try to stay outta hell

It must be the colors
And the kids
That keep me alive
'Cause the music is boring me to death

it must just be the colors
And it must just be the kids
That keep me alive on this January night.

we meet at the dark end of the street...

What do all of these posts have in common?

This-
At the dark end of the street
That is where we always meet
Hiding in shadows where we don't belong...
You and me

from "The Books in My Life"

My encounters with books I regard very much as my encounters with other phenomena of life or thought. All encounters are configurate, not isolate. In this sense, and in this sense only, books are as much a part of life as trees, stars or dung. I have no reverence for them per se. Nor do I put authors in any special, privileged category. If I defend them now and then- as a class- it is because I believe that, in our society at least, they have never achieved the status and the consideration they merit...

I am rediscovering Henry Miller and remembering his genius. I love him for his honesty, for his humility, for his nature and for following it. I love it because he will not call himself a Writer, but he will call himself Human. This common thread too is what I believe in. Before we are anything else we happen to be, we are human. He celebrates this, he devours it and bathes in it. The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the harsh, the pornographic, the romantic, the dirt, the Heaven, the Hell, the whore, the Virgin, Brooklyn, Paris, filth, cheap wine and smoky cafes to Big Sur sunsets. He experiences it, so he writes it.


I am on the side of revelation, if not always on the side of beauty, truth, wisdom, harmony, and ever-evolving perfection.

Let the Right One In

There are no words to describe the way my heart felt, beat, trembled.

This film is the epitome of beauty, and quite possible the epitome of my personal beliefs. To see your own heart and dreams played out in front of you, words written, spoken, ideas relayed, scenes played, imagined by someone other than you. Is there anything more powerful? More touching and reassuring?

Tears could flow freely when I think of my gratitude for this. There is understanding.

Innocence. Childhood- Intimacy exists here. Honesty lives there. Children- Love is all they are. Truth is all they know.

We learn from them. We must. Let's not insist we are the teachers, let us be humble, let us be curious, let us thirst for innocence lost but can be found.

American Express in Paris

11/01/2008

We met, June and I, at American Express. I knew she would be late, and I did not mind. I was there before the hour, almost ill with tenseness. I would see her, in full daylight, advance out of the crowd. Could it be possible? I was afraid that I would stand there exactly as I had stood in other places, watching a crowd and knowing no June would ever appear because June was a product of my imagination. I could hardly believe she would arrive by those streets, cross such a boulevard, emerge out of a handful of dark, faceless people, walk into that place. What a joy to watch that crowd scurrying and then to see her striding, resplendent, incredible, towards me. I hold her warm hand. She is going for mail. Doesn’t the man at American Express see the wonder of her? Nobody like her ever called for mail. Did any woman ever wear shabby shoes, a shabby black dress, a shabby dark blue cape, and a violet hat as she wears them?

-Anais Nin in her diary in 1932

the paris drawings

Brandon Bird

What Nat Saw


Mr.Noodle


Bam Thwop


Pax Cybertronia

Patricia Waller

Playful Spaces by Bruno Taylor

Simply brilliant-



71% of adults used to play on the streets when they were young. 21% of children do so now. Are we designing children and play out of the public realm?

This project is a study into different ways of bringing play back into public space. It focuses on ways of incorporating incidental play in the public realm by not so much as having separate play equipment that dictates the users but by using existing furniture and architectural elements that indicate playful behaviour for all.

It asks us to question the current framework for public space and whether it is sufficient while also giving permission for young people to play in public.

Play as you go…

Spiderman number 3423

last night in a dream to a man i said "i like to experience things alone." we were walking through a crowd, the newest Spiderman movie just out, Spiderman number 3423. i told him i hadn't seen any of them. but one day i will watch them all, in my own time, alone.


i need to come out of my shell, i thought, this morning awake with a book in my hands. 4 hours of sleep. 4 GODDAMNED HOURS OF SLEEP? did the hours of intoxication work itself into the equation as part of sleep, as nonawakenness (make up your own words, why the fear!) trickery. resting is memorable, as in there are no memories and this complete lack of, is remembered as strange yet nice. soft. soft like skin. not all skin. not like my hands. i was born with hands already been in use for a thousand years. i was born with such deep indentations and so many lines i am afraid to go face a palm reader. she would laugh, then become bewildered. she will tell me "i am not fond of 10000000 page long stories." and i would know from her face she was telling the truth. this woman would burn pages of all the greatest books ever written (and still to come) to keep warm in the coldest winter, instead of letting words already scorching red-hot on the pages fuel the very furnace inside of her. she would still demand the ten dollars, and a tip. a true clairvoyant. she knows i am a sucker, the one sentence she did peak said so (explains her laughter.) she 20 dollars richer, i, still too far from understanding my very own hands.


the callouses come and go. they shift from one place to another. jumps over one finger tip in the midst of my sleep that i wake up confused, 'but i thought...' one day i am a worker, another an artist. sometimes within the same day this shift occurs. these are the days when my callouses dance and trade places. over-stimulated and unhappy staying still. i find unfamiliar marks, bumps on my body and i think it's my body trying to play tricks on me. one day i may wake up in a completely new body but the same mind. which is i? the body or the mind? i would have to choose to live as myself but never recognize the face in the mirror, or to become someone new. it is easier to accept things so unacceptable when they happen slowly over time and not fast like a revolution, an overthrow over night. in the dream there were geese shitting everywhere flying above us. even deafeningly loud noises from a group of identical little children could not frighten them.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” has a natural, flowing vitality to it, a sun-drenched splendor that never falters. Two young American women go to Barcelona for the summer—Vicky (Rebecca Hall), who is bright, skeptical, and cautious, and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), more adventurous than her friend but unformed and easily dissatisfied, a seeker without a lodestar. In the magnificent city, they meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), who is incapable of spending a night alone. Bardem’s natural-born lover—a painter, by trade—is as devastating as his natural-born killer in “No Country for Old Men.” He’s almost criminally attractive—soft-spoken and erudite, decent in his way but relentless, a Don Juan brought back to life as an English-speaking charmer. Both women get involved with him, and the movie becomes a complicated triangle that forms, breaks apart, and reforms; it’s also a lengthy exploration of the eternal struggle between security and passion, dependency and anarchic freedom.

Now there's a bubble of me/And it's floating in thee

Cibelle

"Green Grass"

Anais Nin Goes to Hell

I want to see this play. I wish I lived in New York. It's playing this month. It probably is time for me to revisit NYC anyway... Laughter and Anais? Sign me up.




Anaïs Nin Goes to Hell by David Stallings, is an existential comedy with a strong ensemble cast of characters. This new play explores the question of whether Sartre was right and hell really is other people, or whether we carry around our potential for damnation or salvation within ourselves. The play opens on an island off the coast of Hades where five women have been stranded for centuries. They are Heloise (a twelfth century nun), Andromeda (a Grecian princess), Victoria (Queen of England), Joan of Arc (soldier and prophet), and Cleopatra (queen of Egypt). Each woman waits for the love of her life to come and rescue her—except for Joan of Arc who is waiting for God himself. They cannot leave the island out of fear of a giant Hydra that reputably circles the island and eats any who attempt to escape. These lively women are each stuck in her own century and time—never willing to release old wounds or failures.

Their world is turned upside down however when twentieth century erotica writer and psychoanalyst, Anaïs Nin is shipwrecked on their shore. Anaïs reinvents her life long struggle to awaken autonomy and self-confidence in this band of women. She also struggles with inner turmoil—never knowing if her only purpose is to see in others what she cannot see in herself. At the climax of her fight, her purpose is endangered when a man swims ashore. He gives the group hope in finding their men and ending their time in solitude. Each woman must decide whether she has evolved beyond what she was in life and if her goals have changed. Discoveries are made as some of the women transform and enliven—realizing that they do not need to be defined by their past achievements or views.

In the end, some women change and some do not, but Anaïs is still left alone in her question; once the use of our battle is over, once we have won or failed…do we still have a purpose?

Anaïs Nin Goes to Hell received its first public reading as part of MTWorks NewBorn Festival 2007 directed by Cristina Alicea; later in the fall it received its second reading at Boston Theatre Works: Unbound Festival, garnering the First Prize win. In Christmas of 2007, Michael Howard Studios hosted a reading of the play, as part of its Friday Night Series, directed by David Wells.



Maieutic Theatre Works

a friendly warning

James Leo Herlihy to Anais Nin-

"I can't tell you what they mean to me, each one of them: except that I have a feeling that they are in a way of warning- that if I can't learn a lesson through beauty (like those notes) then I damn deserve the pain I invite."

Paula Rego

I see London,

I see Balthus,

I like what I see.














"He once put a bowl in front of me, a blue bowl with some oranges in, when I was stuck again, and he said, well, if you don't know what to do, paint that. And you know, horror, horror, you see, I couldn't. There's no faces there, no faces."

Food Party

"Food Party"- It's magnificently brilliant. You have to watch it!

Clinic

Thank god for bestfriends that sing a song to you at a dive bar 2 a.m. that.you.just.have.to.hear.
Thank god for bestfriends who's taste, intentions, love and dream you never have to doubt.



Clinic- Distortions

I'd like to know completely
What others so discreetly
Talk about when they leave me
Not that I notice when they're gone
It's eerie and so scary
I don't know who to marry
Your sister came to bait me
But I love it when you blink your eyes
I've showed me once to often.
You'd never know how often
I've pictured you in coffins
My baby in a coffin
But I love it when you blink your eyes
Oh I, I want to know my body
I want this out not in me
I want no other leakage
I want to know no secrets showed
I leave, oh I leave, now I leave care
Free of distortions,
free of distortions,
free of distortions.

Breath

I need to watch more films by Kim Ki-Duk.

This is a trailer for the movie "Breath." Even if you can't understand Korean, I think you'll get it.



Here is my best attempt at translating the written parts:

"if loathing is breath we inhale
forgiveness is breath we exhale
if hate is breath we exhale
understanding is breath we inhale
if jealousy is breath we inhale
love is breath we exhale
we have to breathe

until we suffocate"

Infinity of Sound

Maya Deren

The party scene is just mesmerizing...


Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946)

NINA 2008

NINA II

a lighter and a firework- the equation like mathematics with its precision cuts, rather explodes, quite appropriately. there's smoke, loud noise and sparks ranging in sizes from small, medium, large, x-large to xx-large on especially special occasions such as celebrations never to do with a living breathing being but someone dead or better off dead. but no one you nor i would know, for heaven's sake, i certainly should hope not. the problem that lies after an equation is easily solved, theoretically, until it lands on your front steps. there are papers weeks old even months old, majority in the process of rotting away. odorless but nonetheless appalling to pair of eyes expensively trained in the world of aesthetics in the finest of schools (which has lead to the replacement of soil with debt when burying one alive.) this is not preferred backdrop for romance or tragedy but it is more often than not in these inappropriate backdrops inappropriate acts do stem, appropriately so. then there are introduction of chemicals foreign to the body yet so comforting, like a mother, abusive yet blood-tied and demanding the boiling of said blood with each swallow. this rise in temperature leads to fire leading to memories of and/or real time passion to spill over and out of crevices like eyes that begin to water, ears that amplify breath, and mouths that salivate with lips glistening and open, four between the two. there are knots in her hair, tar black with patches of sunset and sunrise sewn in between- here, time loses all meaning. so then the present could be the past. could the past then, be the future? put forth the dilemma in terms of a scientific experiment where a hypothesis is given the authority of truth, at least until proven wrong. as long as the experiment itself is prolonged and the unveiling of the results postponed the imminent future shall not affect the present. it is with manipulation of logic that we may reach satisfaction, which should be noted is always better than bending of the senses. with this said, go on and wake up.

Deena Metzger on Anais

I found on YouTube videos from Anais Nin @ 105 at Hammer Museum. I was there in attendance this past February in Los Angeles. It was quite a beautiful night. Deena was my favorite speaker and I'm happy to have come across this. On YouTube you can find videos of all the other speakers as well. I came across these when I was originally searching for Ian Hugos' films on YouTube but none seem to be there, however I am right now uploading "The Bells of Atlantis" which is inspired by House of Incest and features Anais. You should feel my heart beating right now... I'm about to hear her speak, be, alive. Wow.

random sexy music men post

Elvis Costello




Jarvis Cocker

Make Art not Drugs

I don't do drugs, I drink very moderately. I always felt these things that supposedly heighten for some the experience of life, whether by blocking certain inhibitions or create other worlds to go into, sharpen sensory experiences, was unnecessary for myself because I live this way without the aid of anything outside of the self. Anais Nin participated in an experiment when LSD was still a newer drug (1955) for a professor who wanted a writer to be a part of it to be able to describe the experience more articulately than others were able to. The pages in the diary where she describes her "trip" are astoundingly, wonderfully beautiful, overwhelmingly sensational and breathtaking. But it should be said, not any more than her normal writing. After description of her experience she goes on to write this which I agree with 100% and is another case of Anais saying so much better how I feel about everything in life-


I reached the fascinating revelation that this world opened by LSD was accessible to the artist by way of art. The gold sun mobile of Lippold could create a mood if one was receptive enough, if one let the image penetrate the body and turn the body to gold. All the chemical did was remove resistance, to make one permeable to the image, and to make the body receptive by shutting out the familiar landscape which prevented from invading us.
What has happened that people lose contact with such images, visions, sensations, and have to resort to drugs which ultimately harm them?
They have been immured, the taboo on dream, reverie, visions, and sensual receptivity deprives them of access to the subconscious. I am grateful for my natural access. But when I discuss this with Huxley, he is rather irritable: "You're fortunate enough to have a natural access to your subconscious life, but other people need drugs and should have them.
This does not satisfy me because I feel that if I have a natural access others could have it too. How did I reach this? Difficult to retrace one's steps. Can you say I had a propensity for dreaming, a faculty for abstracting myself from the daily world in order to travel to other places? What I cannot trace the origin of seemed natural tendencies which I allowed to develop, and which I found psychoanalysis encouraged and trained. The technique was accessible to those willing to accept psychoanalysis as a means of connecting with the subconscious. I soon recognized its value. But then there is also the appetite for what nourishes such a rich underground life: learning color from the painters, movement from the dancers, music from the musicians. They train your senses, they sensitize your senses. It was the banishment of art which brought on a culture devoid of sensual perception, of the participation in the senses, so that experience did not cause the "highs," the exaltations, the ecstasies they cause in me. The puritans killed the senses. English culture killed emotion. And now it was necessary to dynamite the concrete lid, to "blow the mind" as the LSD followers call it. The source of all wonder, aliveness, and joy was feeling and dreaming, and being able to fulfill one's dreams.

from Diary Volume 5

NINA
She is Breton's Nadja but far more eloquent. She is Nijinsky before he plunged to earth pushed by his earth wife.
She took her bracelet off. She braided her hair. As if the street at midnight were her own chamber and she were preparing to sleep.
Jim could not bear to leave Nina wandering about at two a.m. and took her to his apartment.
Before that, Jim told me, they had seen some giant pipelines resting beside an excavated street. Nina bent over the opening and laughed into the drainpipe and then ran toward the other end of it to see if her laughter would come out of it.
Arriving at Jim's apartment she said: "The room is too small." Then she opened the window and said: "Oh, but there is so much more to this room than I thought. It is enormous."
Then Nina asked for silver foil. "I always glue silver foil paper on the walls to make them beautiful."
She wanted to mop the floor with beer. "The foam will make it shine."
"Do you want to sleep?" asked Jim.
"I never sleep," said Nina. "Just give me a sheet."
She took the sheet and covered herself with it and then slid to the floor saying: "Now I am invisible."

(insert heartbeat here)

"Forget her. Or pray to God!"

Every now and then I go to the Dandyism blog. Here I can get out a few inspiring ideas for wardrobe as well as read somewhat amusing articles/thoughts. Recently there have been couple posts about a new film by Catherine Breillat called "The Last Mistress." I can not say I am familiar with her work, but now I certainly would like to be.

THE LAST MISTRESS is a smoldering adaptation of Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s scandalous 19th-century novel. Set during the reign of “citizen king” Louis Philippe, it chronicles the surprising betrothal of the handsome, aristocratic, former libertine Ryno de Marigny (newcomer Fu-ad Aît Aattou) to Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida of FAT GIRL), a lovely, young and virginal aristocrat.

Lurking in the margins – and in the imaginations of high society’s gossip-hounds – is de Marigny’s older, tempestuous lover of ten years, the feral La Vellini (Argento). Described as “a capricious flamenca who can outstare the sun,” La Vellini still burns for de Marigny, and she will not go quietly.

Anaïsm applied to Life-

"At times I do feel like a snail who has lost his shell. I have to learn to live without it. But when I stand still, I feel claustrophobia of the soul, and must maintain a vast switchboard with an expanded universe, the international life, Paris, Mexico, New York, the United Nations, the artist world. The African jungle seems far less dangerous than complete trust in one love, than a place where one's housework is more important than one's creativity."

-Anaïs Nin


I'm going to buy tickets for Paris ASAP. Then I'm going to somewhat reasonably (by that I mean through my reasoning which means unreasonable to some but to me really it means just do as I dream it) set plan for the other 3 tentative trips to Argentina, Italy and back to Spain within the next year. Thank god sometimes I'm so easily influenced by amazing, inspiring souls.

Native Korean Rock

Native Korean Rock is a side project of mine comprised of a body of love songs written over the last two years, to be performed with a motley crew of NYC natives. Expect high drama, high stakes in two intimate performances.

Does Native Korean Rock have anything to do with Yeah Yeah Yeahs? NO

Are these the leaked demos of years ago? NO

-Karen O.



This is making me very happy. Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeah's side project- Native Korean Rock. (Karen O's mom is Korean f.y.i.) I love her use of photographs of the Korean women divers (more on her MySpace.) I heard a very inspiring and heartbreaking broadcast once on NPR about these women, everything from the history of to current struggles. I sat in my parked car for an hour at 2 in the morning just to hear their stories. Korean women are something else. I can say this because I have one of the most incredible woman as my mother and yes, she is Korean folks.

Anyway, check out these songs. Can't wait to get my hands on them. Korean + Emo = 2 of Michelle's favorite things.

Native Korean Rock MySpace

Shawn Barber

From the "Tattooed Portrait"series which seems to be on-going since 2005. I'm personally loving the paintings of just the hands. Go to his website to check out many more portraits.
















Speaking of tats if I was hardcore I'd get Anais Nin tatted on my entire back with all the volumes of her diaries stacked and spilling into all my limbs!


Shawn Barber website

Jan Vormann- Dispatchwork

Porous Walker

owltooth (Porous Walker)