Today an idea came to me and I hope that I can realize this.
I want to start putting away between $1000-2000 when I am 30 in an account every year (whatever is best for money that won't be taken out for 30 years.) And when I turn 60 I want to develop a foundation with this money (between $30000-$60000+ interest) and every year give away $2500 to a Korean female art student/artist (fine art, no fashion, no design, no architecture) between the ages of 18 and 25 to be used for an abroad trip with the intent of artistic inspiration. At the end of the trip, within a set time after the trip the they will be asked to create something to share the experience and its influences. Photos, video, sketches, any medium of their choice and an essay/paper. They pick where they want to go, how long they want to stay, what they do there, the $2500 can cover the airfare, whatever for the trip (in most cases it won't cover the whole trip but will be a nice supplement.) For example, for me just sitting in a cafe in Paris had an even more profound affect on my art then walking through the Dalí museum. So they don't have to take an art class with the money, spend it on art museums tickets, sketchbooks or a portable easel or other supplies. They can spend all $2500 on pain au chocolat if they want (and if these don't inspire you, there is no hope!)
More and more I'm realizing what traveling has done and does for me, as an artist, as someone with the artist soul. Also I'm recognizing more and more how being Korean, and female, affects being an artist. Put it all together and it can at times make for a very uncertain, scary and depressing place. One trip I've experienced can silence all that. You don't come back and all of sudden everything is okay, your parents don't worry less, you don't make more money, but something happens. I want to give this to Korean girls. I am them, they are me.
And god knows how much Korean parents like to brag about their kids getting anything "prestigious" especially money/scholarships. It's hard to brag about a crazy artist daughter to their friends with lawyer sons and doctor daughters. But, this would be something. My mom never knew what the Yale residency really did for me. It had nothing to do with Ivy League. But that's what she knows it as. We both love the residency, for different reasons but for once, we were both happy I chose art. I want a Korean daughter and Korean mom to be happy at the same time for Art. (This, means a lot to the Korean daughter. TRUST ME.)
This doesn't seem too impossible. I just have to make couple more grand a year in my 30s. This will happen. Right? Yes.
At the end of the day, I don't want these girls to have to eat ramen every day to go to Paris for 8 days. I'll do that so they won't have to.
(artist budgeting 101: ramen, milk crate for dining table, walls for drawing board = one more day in Paris)
You know, I miss a lot of things, beginning with- curious I actually wasn't. Awkward, strangely, it wasn't.
A drink or two must've spilled. There was a glossy sheen to the floor when the lights flickered at 2:30 a.m.
The radio turned on when the car started. There were voices, not singing, just talking. I'm becoming my father, even though it's my mother I desperately want to be.
Or any mother, if I could just convince myself and somebody else too.
You wouldn't know anything about this, cause I can tell "you're not that kind." Being the asshole in the right context is doing the right thing.
You did the right thing, I can accept that.
I'm starting to think I wouldn't mind a working relationship, not in the sense that it "works," cause that's so subjective. But working like evolving, like water.
Something just bit me, finally. It's summer and hot as fuck.
How could I explain this? A phenomenon of sleepy eyes and home made curtains with uneven edges dragging on the floor. It's a beautiful color but the fabric could be better.
I spent the last two hours doing something I thought was good. But now I'm not too sure.
The drive wasn't so pleasant but not the worst. The torrential rain pour swallowing city skyscrapers, there's some charm in that.
There's nothing to wait for I wasn't waiting or standing still. It didn't pass me buy or slip right through my fingers.
There's no rhetorical question or metaphorical musing.
The sky's the strangest color tonight. The puddle, always on the left side, I climb through, right foot first. The gravel wet turns a shade darker like coming home an hour too late.
The blanket reminded me of another time, there was nothing to dream that night. There was no point in turning around so I faced the wall all night. But come on, we've known this all along.
You probably don't know the part where he says exactly the thing I would say. But it's so charming, I hope you catch it.
It was the funniest thing, the crooked streets and no one else to see it.
One of my dearest friends shared this poem with me. She said it reminded her of me, of us. Ah, I could read it over and over and be filled with this energy, excitement, a sense of purpose and understanding. I love how every world is connected. I can see Robin in Nightwood roaming the street late night, and I catching a glimpse of her steps behind as I too walk the streets, and the same night Djuna has locked herself in her house and Anais is dancing drenched in music in Harlem. Temporal drag, isn't it a wonder, and a bitch! And how I love the ones, the few, that are here with me now. Thank you.
Saturday Night
In the solitary dawn through drifting secondhand smoke and sidewalks sticky with spit I go out walking to escape the nocturnal silence of my own room seeking bright lights oh, those neon friends who always ward off my internal wolves my hungry demons (my Vallejo ancestors). I go in search of something losing myself in the narrow streets round the harbor looking for company, oh, the sweet drugs that since Baudelaire have run along the gutters of cities at nighttime --London, Paris, New York, Madrid— oh, the unknown flesh that stirs, aroused by a look. Finally I find it: some sleazy joint that’s still open a prison cell of solitary pleasures a peep show hidden between the trees: a bookstore open all night where I can wallow among the books luxuriate in other people’s verses and finally reach orgasm with one of Allen Ginsberg’s self-destructive poems.
--Cristina Peri Rossi (translated by Tatiana de la Tierra)
A great interview with Rossi from BOMB Magazine (where this poem was featured) here.
Randomly came across this animation video on youtube. Just wonderful. "By Your Side" is one of my favorite songs by CocoRosie, it in fact was the very song I was introduced to them with (thank you Sylvie.)
It's such a sad song. It's such a sad video. But I understand it so well. And even want it. Isn't it strange? I blame it on Midsommarfest. Too many families, too many kids. It turns me into absolute mush.
Another excerpt from Henry Miller's The Books In My Life
(Miller quoting Sherwood Anderson) "If there has been a betrayal in America," he goes on to say, "I think it is our betrayal of each other. I do not believe that we- and by the word 'we' I mean artists, writers, singers, etc.- have really stood by each other." ...He speaks of our loneliness for one another. He says that it might help for all of us "to return to the old habit of letter-writing between man and man that has at certain periods existed in the world."
On a similar note, I thought this song accompanies quite well this idea of loneliness in being an artist. Being a creative person, at least for me, is like being the man who turns into a werewolf. I am not the same when I am creating as I am simply living as a girl. There's a complete change. Unstoppable and uncontrollable. The full moon rises so often (a blessing because it allows us to be so powerful and wild) but at times it is scary, and yes lonely, and I miss the girl and wonder when the moon will fall, if ever. And naturally, more people understand the girl than, the werewolf.
Oh the werewolf, oh the werewolf Comes stepping along He don't even break the branches where he's gone Once I saw him in the moonlight, when the bats were a flying I saw the werewolf, and the werewolf was crying
Cryin' nobody knows, nobody knows, body knows How I loved the man, as I teared off his clothes Cryin' nobody know, nobody knows my pain When I see that it's risen; that full moon again
For the werewolf, for the werewolf has sympathy For the werewolf, somebody like you and me. And only he goes to me, man this little flute I play All through the night, until the light of day, and we are doomed to play
For the werewolf, for the werewolf, has sympathy For the werewolf, somebody like you and me
"lot of those songs are just the response to what struck me as Beauty whatever that curious emanation from a being, or an object, or a situation, or a landscape, that had a very powerful affect on me as it does on everyone and I pray to have some response to the things that were so clearly beautiful to me and they were alive."
-Leonard Cohen
And is that not also my wish? I pray, I pray that I respond to Beauty when She shows herself (may I be so blessed.)
Exit Strategy II
(Another amazing version of "If It Be Your Will" is Antony's, of Antony and the Johnson's. Embedding of this version is disabled but you must, must watch, listen, here- Antony singing "If It Be Your Will")
Michelle Jane Lee’s art is minimalist in form yet muscular in content. There is a complexity, density; to put it simply, there is a lot of heart in her often times sparse drawings and paintings.
She is about going back to the moment of childhood possibility before our imaginations become impoverished and our options seemingly circumscribed. Her work reminds us that things could be different, if only we are brave enough to embrace the free fall, letting go of all of our prosthetics that keep us from realizing our freedom.
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