Shaking

 Here's a sound collage I just put together, mostly woven around field recordings I took at the police brutality protests. There's also a loop of Mexico City protesters beating down the door of the governmental palace, also with their own grievances over corruption in authority. Other sounds were created with assorted gear. I can do this sort of thing but I need to practice basic violin more. I wanna get busking good! Sound experimentation may be art, but it won't get tips dropped in to your violin case underground. However, I spent the day making hand painted holiday cards instead. This can be time-consuming, so thankfully we don't know that many festive people. Just kidding.

Your Wicked Uncle Sam

It's a drawing from my comic diary, but I also think it says what it needs to as a standalone image. As an American, I'm filled with revulsion and ashamed at these things done in the name of supposed "security"...security? Fuck you Mr. CIA Man, as Tuli Kupferberg said. You're also the monsters perpetrating the things I don't want in this world. What makes us secure from you? The CIA Torture Report can be read here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/249761718/Senate-Committee-s-Report-on-the-C-I-A-s-Use-of-Torture

VSM

This is a painting for the cover of a forthcoming poetry book by Barbara Mor. I'm not sure what other commentary to add other than it was created of my impressions of the stream of conscious work.

6/2/11 La La Land

I'm also in the process of uploading Living In La La Land to Tapastic. I'm wide awake now though I was wiped out all day. I have no idea where this surge of energy came from, but it sure wasn't there when the new psychiatrist sprang a surprise psych evaluation on me, saying they really should be done every six months. I don't know what the results were, though he seemed amused when I answered the standard question about thinking about harming others with "Yes, well, I'm not a rich person or a cop, so that would be illegal." At least he feigned amusement.

Death Can Dig It

Mixed media, paint, collage, and some digital touches. The heat has been restored, making our bedroom somewhat warmer than it was. It took an inspector to make that happen though. And so the "tale of two cities" continues, and I'm just wondering when we hit the chapter where wire cut our "affordable housing fencing pens", kick down the poor doors like Bastille Gates and sent our de facto gentrifying aristocracy to the guillotine. "NY Ambassador" (what a joke) Taylor Swift, stepping up to meet her fate can say "Tis a far better thing I do than anything I have ever done in my music career." [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="444"] Class segregating fences. This is now a thing here.[/caption] Yeah, I'd make that little roped off area extremist art central if I lived there. I've gotten to the point where I court haters, at least among white supremacists thirteen years my senior with the writing skills of the mean girl from your 7th grade class. But silly rabbit, veiled threats admonishing me to be silent just encourage me to spout more opinions and put more stuff out there. Because at the end of the day, the only Haters I actually have any respect for are these: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NroBNygAE7c&w=420&h=315]

Platform Edge - "That's A-vore!" Pt 2

 

http://tapastic.com/episode/78051 

 Yeah, it's a spoof on the cannibal cop case, though the character's name is cobbled together from Sawney Bean and local cannibal Daniel Rakowitz.

No One Can Breathe

                

                    


Excerpt of an Astral Knife soundscape track set to some footage I got during the first night of protests over the murder of Eric Garner. I was in midtown, just got done caring for Abuelita. I walked over to Times Square and just joined in the first march I came across, moving up against traffic with arms in the air chanting "HANDS UP DON'T SHOOT" (Michael Brown), "I CAN'T BREATHE!" (Eric Garner), and "NO JUSTICE NO PEACE, NO RACIST POLICE". And though I knew it wouldn't be likely to crash the Rockefeller tree lighting ceremony, once I learned that was the plan, it was good to disrupt the yuppies and monied tourists lollygagging around the area. Their comments ranged from confused to inconvenienced to a bit scared...and good. I know at a lot of the activist events we do we're talking to the same crowd of people that already agree...these were the people who needed to be a little shook up.



I made my way downtown on foot to meet Eric, who with a friend of ours were in Union Square. Passing the library I got that footage that opens the video of a sea of cops swarming on the steps, then joined two women silently standing and staring at the cops with the arms up gesture.



We have a lawless country when the law itself is lawless. While this sort of injustice, particularly against black youth, is nothing new, it seems there's been a rash of police killing without consequence, all over the country. Aiyana Jones, Kimani Gray, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Rumain Brisbon...



I don't know what else I can add.

Platform Edge - "That's A-vore!" Pg 1

This isn't the first "Platform Edge" comic I've done, but it's the first page of a longer story. The initial one, created for an art/lowbrow culture magazine with the instructions to do "something with a cute tough punk girl in it" is somewhere in the publishing clouds, and I'll be sure to write when it's out. This one is on a cloud at Tapastic, where readers can subscribe to the comix they want to read (for free). http://tapastic.com/series/platformedge

An urban-surreal comedy centering around the deranged, demented and disatrous lives of two wayward housemates.

 

Slop Tank Cut-Up

 

We came home tonight from the cold following a trail of blood, at least until it headed in a different direction from the one we needed to go. The semi-consistent pattern of dime sized red droplets extended from the subway platform, through the turnstyle, up the steps and into the night. I couldn't say if someone had entered the subway bleeding and gotten on the train, or exited the train bleeding and headed to the street. But the little drops winked up saying "we'll tell the truth when no one else wants to. All you have to do is look."

This collage/cut-up has been sitting in my book for a minute now, I made it from some freebie paper I picked up when we all rode up with Sean to Philly, where he was one of the openers for Brighter Death Now at that venue. The back page of the paper seemed to be an anti-personals ad space where people could leave anonymous messages of hate to some unnamed person or other they detested. Of course, that page made for the most comedic cut-up text.

Self centered stupid trust fund bitch

inconsiderate, mean, self-centered, arrogant
and you talk about yourself way too much

Crookedly earned money

Why the hell do you want to be in someone's face

all the fucking time. You are the nastiest man

snorting up all the coke you can find with your

yuppie ass friends going to places like the fucked up 

bars that you need to sit in a tub with all these chemicals

and get that shit off you.

Walk away.

I bet your gonna have a really GREAT day tomorrow!

Rome Wasn't Destroyed In A Day

Automatic drawing with pastels, done during therapy. Somehow a lot of the blues in the original drawing got lost in the phone camera snapshot, but really, it's not important because none of it in this case was intentional. Talk, make lines, talk, put down colors. Triangles. I think one of the offices they use there is bugged, but not the one we were in that day.

Sandwiched in between AmeriKKKa burning and a holiday that means nothing to me---certainly not a maudlin inventory of "gratitiude", not when there are fleeting glimmers to appreciate in every day of the year, even the ones bogged down with the acrid fog of depression or anxiety. Sandwiched between a day of religious fundamentalists and genocide and the real life Hunger Games called "Black Friday" when a blood sacrifice or two will be made to the Gods of Commerce. And thinking tomorrow of making yams for Abuelita, and she'll likely ask again for me to play my violin for her and once again I'll literally fiddle while my culture's corpse burns.

Poking My Cultural Malaise With A Stick

I reject your definitions formed from ignorance

I reject your explanations that "Latina women love" your boundary violations, that it's our "culture",  that "freaky chicks will" that "crazy girls are"

Your solipsism, your reassurance to yourself that we know you're right, we disagree out of "fear" but you don't live with the guardedness that people like yourself create in your plunder

I reject being told I shouldn't mind something because you don't mind it

I reject being told I should be outraged or frightened by something because that's how you feel about it

I reject ignoring intersectionality. I  reject your SWERF and TERF special. I reject "social justice warriors" who come with 21st century fire and brimstone sermons of academia, rather than social justice

I reject "culture warriors" fighting to uphold a culture that is empty, repressive and anti-intellectual

I reject where this is all headed

Art On A Holiday Group Show

I promise not to put anything holiday themed in! Well...unless it's Krampus cuz he's fly like that. Or maybe some misfit toys.

  

https://www.facebook.com/events/669582643162697/?notif_t=plan_admin_added

So anyway, I'm flipping out in a there-may-be-new-blood-art-before-the-night-is-done way because I only just now saw James Sturm's comic "The Sponsor". That it could elicit such a reaction should only be taken as complimentary...it means the piece succeeds as art in a way that Kickstarters can't measure. Some people are reading sexism into the work, because it's two male artists discussing the success of a younger female artist. I don't really go to that because the mediocrity who bought her way into a brief flurry of hype in the past and gloated to me about it regularly was also a woman. So while I'll discuss gender politics in lots of things, this isn't one of them. It's also, on my part, old stuff, Qlipphotic bad tapes running on dross-stained, dirty felt heads. Because I'm not in that place really anymore, I've got enough to do creatively, and a lot of it doesn't even center around basic survival! But a one-page comic story that evokes those emotions can put me right back into that place of hardship. Now THAT'S art.

This week is the release for Cult Of Youth's new album "Final Days" (which Eric contributed percussion on) and he's performing with Kama Rupa on Saturday. Meanwhile there's stuff I need to draw and paint.

5/31/11 La La Land - Postal At The Post Office

My beliefs about a culture of fear and passivity have increased about 10-fold since the events in this comic, sad to say. My goal is to conquer my personal fears and phobias both rational and irrational. A highly ambitious goal for a human, I know, particularly one with anxiety disorders. But doing so would be for the better. There's too many people, from abusive personalities one might interact with to media, government, and the like that are depending on fear to control us.

Anatomy Of A...

 

collage on paper.

I'm lost on the spectrum of socio-political ideology in this country, except for the fact that I know exactly where I am. But where that is won't neatly fit where others would like it to be. In our last episode I outraged the "social justice warrior" (in which social justice mainly boils down to nitpicking over semantics) contingent by having the audacity to speak up and say I've heard the word "bossy" applied to men as well as women, and was not about to be silenced by it. (Not that I get called bossy, really. Plenty of other things, including "spicy" and "fiery" more than that. But who gives a fuck?) Tonight? I've bothered a bunch of rich white transplants, friends of a friend, or clientele, can I really say? Hear hear to the small independent shop owners. I stated that I'd most certainly experienced harassment on the street from upper class white men, so much as any other kind, while they were all trying to maintain that this is only done by poor brown people. They didn't take kindly to hearing that yes, it happens. I noticed an interesting defense being invoked repeatedly by the rich white kids though -- well, if you find projection and speculation interesting. They kept insisting that rich white men were all good and above perving on women, but other men weren't, and kept insisting that anyone who didn't agree was simply "afraid" to say so. Ultimately, in this very solipsistic defense, there was nobody that disagreed with their worldview. Only people who were afraid to admit it. So there you go. Racists who claim to be mind-readers. Both types, the SJW's and the reactionaries who talk as though their racism/classism is something new and daring, are two unaware sides of the same shiny, high-market value coin. But only one side seems to need to believe that their view is the only one so badly, that they'll try to convince us all that any dissenters are just lying out of fear.

Or maybe they just know that fear is such a powerful control mechanism for so many people, it's hard to imagine life without it?

Pencil drawing of a plague doctor mask done today in art therapy group. Would like to do a whole art series revolving around modern plagues, Eric is thinking possibly as an Astral Knife project.

Hallucination vs. Vision (I Really Don't Care)

 

 Today I was finally able to get a scanner that is compatible with Linux, and configure it in just two hours. I don't know why it looks soft focus though. I scanned this at 1200 resolution. I'm sure you're riveted to know that. So here you have it, another "hallucination"/vision-based image, another pandrogyne figure, but so much more than that. On the other hand, "hallucination" implies things aren't really real because they're not perceived by everyone in Assiah-level, hard world reality. Ultimately though, I just like the way "hallucination" sounds, a roller coaster word that makes me think of "imagination" "hallowed" "lucere" "lux" "luz" "lucious" "sin".

Mailer Daemon

#inktober, plus trying to get the idea flow going for this piece...it'll be mixed media, ad it's for a book cover...but I want the piece strong, overall. No, those postage-stamp sized Gunter Brus images aren't part of it. I just glued them in my journal.

I try to be productive. I try to be productive. I try to be productive.
                         Is the sin wasting time or the shame tied in
                          with this incessant need for self-validation
                            in proving I got something done, not
                             a couch potato mouth breather
                              fallen back into fugue state
                               depression hours days
                                weeks lost before you
                                  know it self care stacked
                                   against programmed disdain?

I know in part I'm compulsively making up for lost time, due to my mother/stepfather's non-artistically-oriented life decision making processes when I was a child, and later in my life, my own self-sabotaging self-medicating self-destructive dysfunction. Which is only an "artistic temperament" when it's backed up with talent and vision.

I sank into a pit of despair, a sense of failure the other day when I didn't hear back either way from a gallery I'd gotten an open submission call message from. Beating myself up that because I need to wait for my next check to get a scanner that works with this new Linux thing, I sent my submission as a digital snapshot, it was that or nothing, so unprofessional. such unprofessionalism didn't merit a simple yes or no answer. About 2:30 in the morning after the registration deadline, I got one of those "mailer deamon" emails saying the thing had bounced back from their system, never even been seen. I really need to chill the fuck out. Take a pill. No really I do need to take a pill, it's time for my nightly medication. Here's something I saw today:

Dogcatcher

NOT ALL WHORES ARE SACRED ANYMORE
                                                                        (howls of rage at moon's reflective
                                                                               glare)
NOT ALL WHORES ARE SACRED ANYMORE
                                                                      (a dogcatcher swathed in velvet and
                                                                           silver)     
NOT ALL WHORES ARE SACRED ANYMORE
                                                                     (whore in white starch knifes whore
                                                                        in stilettoes; )
NOT ALL WHORES ARE SACRED ANYMORE
                                                                 (she's buried somewhere near the  
                                                                      edge of page 11. an 8 lined
                                                                           paragraph.)
NOT ALL WHORES ARE SACRED ANYMORE
                                                              (just the ones in the streets who are self-
                                                                aware; the rest all think the game brings
                                                                   them theirs.)(someday.)
NOT ALL WHORES ARE SACRED ANYMORE
                                                         (the dogs lap at poisoned meat in the alley,
                                                              the crustaceans yearn to crawl back to
                                                                  the sea.)
NOT ALL WHORES ARE SACRED ANYMORE
                                                            (dogcatcher licks hisher lips in anticipation
                                                                 clutching a blinding veil a snare)
NOT ALL WHORES ARE SACRED ANYMORE
                                                               (or even if they are, the populus too
                                                                  ensnared can't remember how to see
                                                                       it. )
NOT ALL WHORES ARE SACRED ANYMORE
                                                            (Dogcatcher-saboteur to memories of this
                                                                  way)

Taina Punk

As Inktober rolls along, here's a drawing of a Taino woman expressing my thoughts on a national celebration of rape, torture, and genocide. But I probably can't explain it as nauseatingly as Columbus does in passages of his own diaries, along with a particularly brutal account from another of his crew of beating and raping a Carib woman.

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/10/14/8-myths-and-atrocities-about-christopher-columbus-and-columbus-day-151653#.VDtC3w6_tTs.twitter

So reading these things I'm only left with a sense of mourning.

*

Inktober drawings made in the past few days:

Last night was joyful, a celebration of creative life, friends, and much to see and do and talk about, both at the (S)he Is Still Her(e) art show and at Tommy turner's film screening. I feel grateful for the way my life is presently, the people and ideas in it. It comes naturally to me to rant, and not quite as much to gush, but  I really feel like I'm in a shimmering translucent bubble that's existence at the moment. It will burst at times and reappear at others, because the Universe is constant flux. But right this second, 12:26 am, I'm content with what is before me.

Alchemical Marriage/(S)HE IS STILL HER(E) art show

This piece,complete, mounted, framed, and ready to go to this art show, in honor of Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge:

https://www.facebook.com/events/698102706933903/700849903325850/?ref=notif&notif_t=plan_mall_activity