march 14th , 2005
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10:40pm

doodles

the 1st is just a doodle doodle, i'll add more to it later maybe in pencil and watercolour,
the 2nd is a doodle of jason, the kind where you don't look at what you are drawing, you just put your pen down on the paper and then follow lines of things with your eyes and your hand draws the lines but you don't look down to see what you are doing. and the 2nd is done the same way and is one of milo fine playing drums and twiddling gear. in the back of both of those are words and little sketches from a remote viewing session i did at the remote viewing convention i was at awhile ago.

 

10:25pm

brought my camera to the show and it had no compact flash card in it! bah!
so i doodled instead.
i will take pix of those in a sec.
i dressed up all up, too in red white and black!

the free jazz ensemble was GREAT tonight! very inspiring!
jason did really well, they all did. but poor jason has a terrible cold :(

i hope i don't get jason's cold! ack! i don't need that! no way!
*positive thoughts positive thoughts positive thoughts*

the sax player had a cold, too! eee!

but the concert was totally amazing!

 

3:52pm

good grief i am still writing about what i said below. just making quick notes.
but i can't write about it fully because now i must eat and get ready to leave with jason on 1/2 an hour! eep!

11:56am

11:56am was the time i was born.
i remembered my dreams 5 minutes ago, and now i've forgotten them.
listening to cat power.
my whole body is sore, i guess that is a good sign that excercise is doing something.
today i leave at 4:30pm to go with jason because he is playing with milo fine tonight.
free jazz. good music to crochet to and i haven't crocheted much lately, so i hope the music will spark that in me tonight.
last tme i listened to milo i carefully shredded a piece of paper into one big long string and then tried to create it into something. i didn't make anything cool, but it was only my 1st try.
i thought i'd try it out since one of the games i've always played in my mind is "what if you were confined to a one room cell for the rest of your life and had to keep your mind busy?"

and one way would be rip up my clothes and then crochet something new with them.
or rip up my bedsheets and crochet something new.
or if they allowed me a bible, i would shred each page onto a string and crochet that (with my finger)
or i would scratch myself until i bled and then create pantings with my blood and hair.
or maybe i would pull my hair out and crochet that.

i'm sure in my past lives i have been institutionalized many times and i'm sure this question i ask myself stems from that because i am always paranoid that perhaps i will be imprisoned at some point in my life.
i don't think i will in this life, if i can help it, altough it always does seem just a few short minutes away as i often have the urge to run screaming down the city streets completely naked and screaming about the injustices of the world and just what is so horrible about being a woman and why is my body considered dirty yet also is the most sought after of all things and why am i crucified for this and why is thinking differently a reason to be burnt at the stake and why are we killing our planet?
but this time around i get a cam so i can sort of do it from the safety of my own house :)

anyway, ya...glad i get a cam this time.
and so far nothing i have done has gotten me arrested. been CLOSE to being arrested, but never have.
like a time i was playing topless at the 7th st entry (as i often did) and some assfuck called the cops on me and the cops came and in and watched my show and decided they liked me and do didn't arrest me for indecent exposure.
although they probably didn't because back then i had no breasts. i'm sure if i had been up there with size D ones i would have been hauled off. but then again maybe not...
i guess if i ever start playing live again, i'll find out!

so last night i didn't drink beer, which was really good.
i have been drinking too much beer lately. even tho it is only 3/2 beer and so almost completely impossible to get drunk off of it,
i still feel a bit toxic from the cumulative effect of it.
it's just so nice to drink it and feel a bit more relaxed at night because i am so tense from this whole mom thing.

but ya, i feel a little toxic from it all. so i'm going to try to go this whole week with no beer, and i'm sure i'll drop those last fricking 8 pounds, too, if i do that.

and then to work on not drinking coca cola and taking tylenol pm every single night.

it's easy to fall into a habit of cheap 3/2 beer, coca cola, and tylenol pm. because these aren't exactly hard drugs. ha :)
but i'm sure my liver and the rest of my body aren't exactly thrilled with them.

*as i sit here drinking coffee*

sugar...caffeine....

mmmmmmm :)

oh, and the knock off xanax from argentina...
but hey...i don't feel like talking about that one yet,

shhhhhhh.

i get by. i get by. and i'm doing alright.

at least i'm excercising almost every day now.
ya, i shouldn't get so down on myself.
i'm doing really well.
i'm doing remarkably well , actually.
probably, in big part, because of said knock off xanax from argentina.

yessirree. thank god for the internet.
and thank god for my cam.
and thank god i am creative person.
and a SMART person.
and a GOOD person.

and i'm not going to look in my mom's journal today either.

but if anyone here knows her journal, could you just let me know if she deletes it?

i'd really like to know if she deletes it because that makes me breathe easier to know that the journal is gone.

i just want to know when it's gone, if it's ever gone.

i just want it gone.

so, i have 4 hours until i leave to go with jason to his show.
i don't know what i will do with my time.
i will take my camera along.

cat power sounds a lot different than i thought it would be.
i thought it was a bikini kill type band.
but it's this slow acoustic thing.

oh wait, i remember part of my dream.
was at some crowded club show and trying to find a good vantage point to watch the show from.
and then i realized they had put me on the flyer as the main band, and i was like wtf?
so i was trying to think of something i could possibly do.
and i came up with this thing where i just played acoustic guitar and i made 1/2 the audience sing the word "halleluiah" (however you spell it) in a slow sing song way, and then the other half of the audience to sing "amen" in a complementary way...so it was sort of like row row row your boat.
and then i sang on top of what the audience was singing in this indian chant kind of way.
and it was really cool.
and i thought, maybe this would be a cool new way for me to play live, to always make the audience sing along with me so i didn't have to travel with a whole band and then the audience could have this new participation in the whole process.

+++

helena wrote a small paper about anacam for her class. and last night i super sleepily skimmed it. and today i am going to try and read it more thoroughly. it references a lot of things that i know not of, so it's hard for me to put a lot of it into the proper context. and i don't read the college-speak type writings very well 'cause I BE a high school drop out, ha :)
someday me speak better.
sometimes i wish i knew all about this theory stuff. and sometimes i am glad to be ignorant of it because i think it helps me just do what i do better. but maybe that is a false assumption.
anyway, i just marvel at helena. she is younger than i am by a decade or more, yet her brain is more advanced than mine is, in so many respects, and i have learned so much from her, which is really a rarity for me to ever have anyone show me things about myself that i didn't even know. or more like, she is better at articulating things that i didn't even realize i so desperately needed to be articulated!
and so i thank zeus that i've found her because she is truly a special treasure in this universe. :)

and interesting, too, that in her paper, she is making reference to the point that the spaces between the cam shots, what isn't said, is just as important as the cam shots themselves. (at least i think that is what she said)
because i was just thinking about that a few days ago in an even more intensely thoughtful way and then especially more when i was watching this documentary on this very odd musician/singer/songwriter/artist named jandek (http://tisue.net/jandek/) who has put out something like 36 records but has only done one interview and no one really knows anything about him.
and so as this documentray was speculating on who jandek might be, it really was more a documentary on the people who speculate on who jandek might be. and i realized that was how the beginning of my cam was and part of what made it s popular is the mystery of who i might be and why i might be doing wha i was doing.
now that i have spoken about it so much, the same mystery does not exist in the same way it had in the beginning, and i kind of miss that. but i didn't know i'd miss it because i wasn't trying to be mysterious. i was trying to be UNmysterious. as unmysterious as i could possibly be! and i learned that the more you explain yourself, the more ammunition you give people to distort and project upon. and that's about it.
but in the beginning i didn't KNOW that part of the popularity of my cam was it's mystery to the degree that i know that now.

and in the beginning, i guess it was just as much a mystery to me, in many ways, as it was to the people watching!

and part of the reason i have never gone streaming (except for a few times) besides the fact that it's too expensive to do, is that i really DO love the mystery of what is BETWEEN the cam photos i make.
i like the fact that you have to speculate and fill in the blanks of what might be happening in between each of those 30 seconds, which frankly, is quite a lot!

and i didn't know i liked that until i got streaming and streaming wasn't just as fun for me. although it was for some things, i wish i had the option of turning it on every once in awhile, for sure.

but now even more, as i am getting older, and getting more confident in myself, and really having said SO freaking much now (i mean i have been ridiculously verbose for most of my life) i wonder if i might reach a stage in my life where i say very little.

it's funny as i write that, i recall a few times i have been on video, once in the little video i made that is on anavoog.com and once in that canadian documentary i say "what more can i SAY?"

well, i always think of more to say, as i am thinking of more to say right NOW. in fact i have, obviously, a lot to say about saying nothing! :) which really cracks me up :)

but i can see a time with this site where i just take down a lot of it and distill the "good parts" (or what i consider to be the parts i want to be considered) and then let it be a lot more mysterious and less verbose and put the cam refresh back to every 2 minutes as it originally was. (well, i guess anacam is every 10 minutes)

but then it's hard for me to distill, as you know, and as i always say.

and as i always tell you, the surprising parts of the cam, for me, the parts i enjoy the most, are the photos that i saved of the "unimportant" parts of my life. the parts of life that no one would deem worthy of documentation.

we always take photos of important times of our lives. weddings, gatherings of friends, when we are dressed up, when it's a nice day outside, when things loook good.

or even when things are particularily bad, war, death, funerals.

but we don't document the boring every day crap. we don't photograph the magazine we keep by the toilet.
we don't photograph the hair on the bar of soap in our showers.
we don't photograph piles of clutter and dust that pile up aggravatingly by the door as we come in or by the sides of our bed.

almost no one i know photographs themselves while they are sleeping, whch has been truly fascinating to me and i wonder if sometimes that is how i will look when i am dead.

no one photographs their dirty carpets or what they look like when they are just being slobs on the couch or the tv dinners they eat.
no one photographs the dishwasher.

but i have :) more by accident than on purpose. and for me, personally, i find that most fascinating.
and i GUESS that if this project ever finds itself still deemed as worthy as saving after i have died, that it is the mundane photos that will be of the most historical importance as to how a woman during this time period lived (even tho my life isn't very ordinary, the mundane aspects of my life are very ordinary).

or maybe not. maybe all of this is just important to me because i am completely self absorbed and like to think of myself as doing something slightly important. or of not important, then at least entertaining.

maybe i am just entertaining in a johnny carson sort of way.
in that what i say and do is entertaining and has relevance NOW but it lives for only the now and has no shelf life for the future.

certainly when i look back on most of what i've written in LJ, it has no shelf life for ME.

this really hit home when LJ had the glitch a few months back where it wasn't emailing all the replies people had made to my entries. and then in one fell swoop i started receiving replies to posts i had made MONTHS ago.

and i found that the i wasn't at ALL interested in what anyone had to say about my posts i had made months ago because i was so OVER that conversation and i had totally moved on.

and i realized in a way i never had before that what i say most often is only interesting to me right NOW. but a few months down the road, or even tomorrow, i may have no interest in it at all. like yesterday's newspaper. and it made me wonder why do i even write most of this crap at ALL if most of it i will not even care about it in a few days?

and i find myself posting things in LJ now and leaving them up for a few days, and then after i feel that conversation is over, i delete that entry. and i keep up only the ones i think are going to still be interesting to anyone months later. posts with photos in them and stuff.

but i do save it all in ana2, so it's not like it's lost forever.

but the conversations i had are lost. and maybe i will regret deleting those posts later on. but right now i feel like deleting them.

journaling is strange. i don't think most of my journaling is done because i think i am writing down some important thought, but more as just a focus for my nervous chattery brain energy.

i remember that about my paper journals, and especially if i was going through a nervous bad time, i would write and write and write, i'd write about anything and everything. dust, detergent, every fleeting stupid thought i had, just so i could have something to do with my hands and not go mad.

kind of like crocheting. just something to do with my hands to keep myself from bouncing off the walls.

same with doodling. i miss doodling.

but there may come a time where i just write all my really mundane nervous doodle thoughts into my paper journal again, and save you the trouble of having to skim through it. or save myself the embarrassment of having you see all this crap.

but there was something in that jandek movie that struck me when someone said that because he leaves out all the "important stuff", like who he is, and why he does his art or how, or just the every day "important" things one usualy tries to find out about an artist, you are forced to then concentrate on the actual art. and i haven't heard any jandek songs in their entirety but the seem to to be stream of consciousness things..and so, again, you are left to fill in the blanks. and maybe that is what it so appealing about his music, is that it makes you WONDER. or maybe it's not even his music that is appealing (and if you've heard his music you will laugh at that) but just the fact that he makes you wonder that is the appeal. it makes me wonder what is "important". the "important" things, or the importance of wondering? :)

if you leave out all the things that people deem are "important" things, then...it makes a person WONDER. because we automatically CRAVE to make the puzzle whole and have a complete picture so that we can put frame around it and know what to DO with it.

and maybe that is why what i do will not have a shelf life. because what i do makes you wonder right NOW, but it doesn't make you wonder later. because later you KNOW. know who i am, why i did it, why YOU looked. and the wonder of why YOU looked is the important part. maybe my work will become more "important" after *I* have been forgotten and my photos or even my writings become mysteries again. "who wrote this and why?" "who IS this woman in this photo and WHAT is she doing?" part of the reason we all love old photos divorced from their CONTEXT. does "context" destroy wonder? and so, i guess i struggle between those 2 things...context and wonder, i think.
at least that is my thought right now. isn't that why so many people say they do not want to meet their "idols" because they don't want to be disappointed? they like to think of these peolpe how they want to think of them, not as they really are. to think of them as they really are ruins it for them. and i have always thought that was a bizarre way to think because the more i could ever know about the artists i loved the more it always heightened their experience for me. until i finally had a few bad experiences, and now i TOTALLY know what they mean.

i certainly know that has happened to a lot of people who enjoyed me as long as they had their idea of who i was and how i should act according to what they had in their head about me and when stepped out of that box the had put me in they got quite outraged with me for ruining their ideal of me. and i'm sad that my art is now ruined for them to look at simply because i don't fit into what they wanted me to be FOR them. and sometimes i kind of wish i could take back all the words i've made on the net so that EVERYONE could be free to wonder about me in just they way THEY like. because i know how fun that is to do. and i know i've ruined that for a lot of people.

but i guess, for me, that is exactly why i started my cam, so that i could ruin everyone's preconceived notion of who i was and what i should be to them. and so it's hilariously ironic that it this stage of all of this i should suddenly see the value of "staying mysterious". i think i see the value in it simply because i see now how completely pointless it is to ever try to explain yourself (even tho i am doing that right now) and to be seen for who and what you truly are. to be seen for who you really are is pretty much nearly impossible. and i say partly in bitterness but also in peacefulness and in a tranquil zen like way of just letting the water go where it wants to flow. and i don't NEED to be seen as much as i used to. and i'm not sure why that is. i don't know if it's just part of getting older or if it is something more or if it is merely a symptom of exhaustion.

and so, as much as i LOATHE to put meaning to the art i do and i've never seen the meaning in it until sometimes even years later (meaning to me, personally). i've always created just at this gutteral instinctual level of "this would look cool" and "this would be fun to do". i don't question WHY, and when art teachers would demand meanings from me about my art ("because it looks cool" just never flew with them, the bastards) i would be highly irritated because, now looking back on this, it's because i didn't KNOW the meaning of it, i really didn't, and it didn't even OCCUR to me that it had meaning or even SHOULD have meaning. WHY did it have to have meaning?
i still don't think things HAVE to have meaning. sometimes are "just because". BUT..as i have grown older, i have realized that things often DO have meaning.
nothing i ever do is "random". even tho i thought or think it was/is.

every little doodle i've made, no matter how silly has been created because the universe aligned in me exactly in that certain way at that certain time and so i drew that line to the left instead of to the right. and that says something...it does have in it a meaning of how things were just aligned like that, in me, at that moment. and years and years later i can see that now.

and i'm glad that, up to this point, i was blissfully, unaware of this because it allowed me to create completely purely instinctually.
if those "teachers" had actually taught me to see the meaning in what i was doing (instead of just teaching me to be forced to come up with bullshit meanings to get them placate them and get them off my back)
then i think they really would have ruined art for me.
because if i could explain art, then i wouldn't make art.

and instinctually, deep deep down, i knew this.
or maybe i didn't. i just don't know.

anyway, i know it now. but still am somehow able to create art instinctually regardless, so far. maybe because i don't overthink things. in fact, i don't really think about it all. i just do it.
like my compulsion to get into that shopping cart and take my photo.
and it truly was a compulsion.
i don't really know what that MEANS. i just thought at the time that would be fun and cool.
but on further reflection i suppose it means i feel trapped in a commercial consumerism enviroment where women are bought and sold.
or something...blah blah blah.

thing is, if i could have just expressed that in words at the time,
i would have, and then those photos would have never been made.

i don't sit and think, how can i express how i feel as a woman being bought and sold in today's consumerist society and how i feel trapped in it?
gee, i know, i'll go sit in a shopping cart and look like i'm caged in it.

*yawn* that seriously would have taken the fun right out of it.
and in fact, even typing that sort of took some of the magic out of those photos, i feel. i somehow diminished their power by writing that.

did i? am i wrong?

and then for SOME people it seems they can't appreciate art until it IS explained to them. it's like they are so afraid of wondering, because they instinctually know that whatever meaning they put on it , if left to their own free will of wondering, will reveal a part of themselves to themselves or to other people, and that is too scary a thought. and so they uncomfortably fidget until the artist or someone explains to them what that art means and then they can heave a sigh of relief, stick a frame around it so they can file it away into their brains into the file that says "not me" but "them"
and then they can smile and buy it and put it on their wall and not feel threatened by their own selves when they look at it.

and when their friends come over and question why they put that on their wall they can give an easy answer and give a story about the artist who made it and not a story about WHY THEY bought it and put it on their wall.

like some people collect art, and they think they are collecting stories about other people and their art. but they are really collecting stories about themselves that they just haven't been able to express yet.

like i have noticed that if i put a story and a meaning behind my art,
it is more likely to sell than if i do not.

some people do not like to wonder.

and i have found that a LOT of people like to be things SO literal that when i am doodling a face, someone will inevitably walk on by and say "who is that?" as if it has to actually be a person who exists!
that always boggles my mind and i can't comprehend living THAT literally.

anyway, round and round i go, this is such a big thought here it's really hard to lasso it in and make it cohesive and complete...
as much as my thoughts are, since everything is connected.

BUT..so as i was saying, as much as i hate to ever do anything wth my art deliberately, i think the 1st deliberate thought out act i do in regards to my art, is start to take away things from this site.
start to deliberately create more silence, and more negative space in order for the creation of more wondering to be had by other people.

and it irritates me to do something pre-thought out like that (but wait did i not PREthink to explain myself as MUCH as possible when i 1st put this site up? yes, i did! so what is so awful about prethinking to NOT say stuff? hmmm. *smacks self in forehead*). which is more "radical" and which is more "safe"? but honestly, who cares? does it REALLY matter? not really, because people are just going to think the way they want to think regardless of what you say or don't say. right?

but i can't help it that i am getting older and wiser and learning new things and learning how things work, and entering new phases in my life where i am not as innocent.

i feel like eve who has eaten a piece of that apple and now i am aware of my own nakedness and cast out of the garden of eden.

bt you know, i've written about how my innocence is now gone about a million times before, and i look back and laug on those times i thought i was so wise and old, and i'm sure at age 60 i will look back and have a hearty laugh at this, too.

oh, back to helena now, i just realized that she does the same thing with her photos. at least for me, that's the way it is. she leaves things out and creates silence and wonder. she leaves stories untold.
you are forced to fill in the blanks. i think it was she, or diversify, or both of them at the same time, who would take photos of the lower halves of their body and leave their heads or torsos off.
and i found this utterly compelling. it really opened up a new way of thinking for me, but not until this exact very moment did i realize WHAT it opened up in me and WHY i was so compelled by these "incomplete" photos, it was because it made me wonder and made me fill in the blanks. wow, pretty cool how helena writing about the silences in my work and filling in the blanks, and i realize that it is this exact thing about HER work that makes me love it so much.

full circle and realization and how cool is that?

thanks helena!

+++

 

Horoscope for Aries (March 14 2005)

You may have trouble making up your mind today. Look at the big picture; if you react too quickly, you will overdo, overspend and overcompensate. Refrain from making promises.

and

Show your injuries *
During this time a particular sore point of yours is disturbed, a sensitivity or vulnerability that you may not be aware of. So it may well be that you react as you have perhaps always reacted to such situations: You are distressed, hurt, you distance yourself and forget the incident as quickly as possible. If you do not react by withdrawing as you usually do, but instead show that you have been hurt, you will earn the freedom to behave differently in this, for you, typical situation. That is, of course, easier said than done, but this influence offers you an outstanding opportunity to stand far enough outside yourself to show your own injuries. If you recognize the situation in question and react to it, you will win new strength and confidence.