pool, ocean or other, howl and let your body tremble.

to be victorious and to be defeated are equal. everything is filled to the brim and everything is equal and my struggle was worth my while. -don juan

a thing you should know

farther: used to describe distance, LITERAL
further: used to describe time or degree, FIGURATIVE

that bum derek spat his watermelon seed way farther than mine then, like a true jerk sauce meanie, further humiliated me by saying that i suck eggs like a weasel. what a bum.

now you know.

music

baby dayliner, all critics pass away
i'm trying to think of how to say this...okay, walk with me for a second. let's say you feel something on your arm. if you're like me, you don't need to know what it is, you already hate it, just for living, just for touching you. assuming it's a fly, a gnat, a mosquito, assuming it's another lame it's-the-80s-again hipster bum with a sythesizer who thinks he's the second coming of ian curtis or one of those little green bugs that looks like it won't bite you but totally does and then it itches for days, you brush it off and don't think twice about it. so let's say someone takes a picture of the moment just before you brush off the bug. turns out NO, it wasn't a chigger, a moth or a tick, no, it was a buprestidae, a prized and iridescent little jewel beetle, like little golden boy up there.

that's kinda what i did to baby dayliner. i'm sorry baby dayliner, please forgive me. when i finally had the crazy idea to actually listen to the music, i realized that he is a consumate modern musician and performer and that i am an idiot. anyway, you can download a few tracks from his website, send a friend request to his myspace page, buy his latest, critics pass away on itunes and, if you're like me, spend your free time watching the same video over and over again on youtube:



somewhere between the itty bitty gold chain and the subtle hump after the lyric "turn rain into rainbows" at 2 mins 5 secs, i was done for. he djs with my favorite producer (sir blockhead) every saturday night. i go sometimes. you should go too. we could go together...


also, and, too, as well, blockhead writes a blog for the def jux website. there's a link in the "blogs i read" section. Sweeping Generalizations with Blockhead is the best place to go to keep up to date on girls who lie and say their friends are hot, how myspace has multiplied idiocy exponentially and, last but not least, the dangers of anal sex. and he's funny as hell. did i mention that?

movies

quantum of solace
yeah, i watched it. it was a movie, things blew up, the chick was hot but...uh...i dunno, man. it was kinda flat. i kinda didn't care. i kinda just wanted it to end so i could go back to watching baby dayliner videos. i have no idea what the movie was about. was there a diamond or a bomb? oh, i remember....eh, i'm still bored. daniel craig (or is it craig daniel?) is an awesome bond and he's hot, not my kinda hot but hot nonetheless...olga kurylenko, the hot bond chick, is really hot but uh...neither of them is hot enough to make up for how bored i was.

new section!!!

rat tar
high art for low lifes

SAINTS AND SCARS
touching base with los angeles based artist, william ambrose

i met sleepy eyed saint will at sarah lawrence in 2001 when i was walking up a hill he was walking down. if i list my five favorite people and my five favorite artists, will is on both lists. that's pretty much all i have to say. the triptychs below are all done by will, you should click on them to see them BIG and if you want more, he's got a site, williamambrose.com where you can feast your eyes.

hi will! how are you?
an X and a Y, then some percolating, then some more. i'm lots of water. some tubes, wires, other junk.. it all fits in there and lights go on and off and that's how i am. or, "feelin fine" if that's what you meant, saint j. and you? so i guess i'm good, but an ass

i'm super, thanks for asking. i just got back to new york. when are you coming to visit me in new york?

soon. i saw rupaul at an opening i was just in, which i think means i'll be fabulously wealthy enough to get a plane ticket, or a bus pass or something pretty soon. you want to drink n draw again?

of course, always. next time i'm on the left coast, you and me baby. (drink n draw = get drunk and draw) so, you're a los angelian now. that's nutty. how is sunset blvd affecting you?

the drive from my old cramped apartment with cockroaches and ghetto birds with police lights circling above in echo park (approximately downtown) to the ocean on sunset is the best drive in town. you see the city change like dr.jekyl with a million faces. when i first moved here fresh from murderapolis i was playing Z, the my morning jacket album on repeat in my car (thanks cory) and learned this: the first half of the album is exactly what you want for driving to the ocean, getting out of the city and burning tiregrease smoke, sun amplified with smog radiation-killing everything and everyone burning under it--escaping the long city and gunning it to the ocean with music made by guys screaming like madjoy dervishes in a rented greenhouse in nebraska or somewhere all ecstatic beatific joy making you want to jump out of your seat or punch your fist through a window because you're finally escaping and can't believe it--and then of course the ocean hits you and you do jump out of the car. then at the halfway point (which is exactly 3 minutes into track five--or, halfway through the halfpoint song) a complete shift happens in the music which is perfect for the drive back. The music shifts from this sunny exuberance to a moody ponderous darkness, something dangerous, about the black palms silhouetting an inky purple sky as the neon lights start to blink on and you glide under and into the night.

gee willickers batman. we'll have to play that the next time we drive to the beach, eh? hopefully we'll miss the ass kicking sunset blvd traffic this time...speaking of traffic, what are some things you really hate about yourself?
twisted my leg today, didn't like that. but i get along better thinking positively about things that happen. i'm too poor to eat, well i guess i don't need to clean any dishes. just got thrown out of a house with my clothes in trash bags, guess i don't need to pack. car broke down, walking is good for you--and you see more that way, plus, car payments blow. a dog bit your face, now you've got an excuse for being ugly. see?

makes perfect sense to me. i've been trying to think of things that way myself. got fired, now i don't have to go to work. awesome. i think we're on a similar wavelength.

when was the last time you contemplated the palm tree? as a californian, i often find myself missing the palms...

as a transplanted minnesotan i find myself missing deciduous trees. like oaks. trees with leaves that change color in the seasons. and missing seasons. i don't like californian seasons which go from 72 and sunny to 105 and drought to 50foot wall of flame firestorms and dark ash from burning trailerparks in the sky. call me crazy.

you're crazy. tell me about an artist whose work makes you uncomfortable.

not so much an artist but the culture of the arts or galleries and openings makes me uncomfortable. with the exception of the last show at the world of wonder gallery a lot of the time you only see stuff on repeat: hipster owls or fake graffiti guys doing fake graffiti up at openings which end up being a bunch of folks who look like they took more time on their clothes than making whats hanging on the walls, but nobody's really looking at what's on the walls anyway and when you're the only one doing it or trying to take an interest, you get uncomfortable, frustrated, and go home to paint pictures on the floor until dawn. but thats me. i think thats how it was in new york too.

you were, that's why we're friends. yeah, i just went gallery hopping tonight actually...it was pretty much that except it's not fake graffiti it's like fake rauschenbergs that shame abstraction and dirty, swooshy zac efron hair. shudder. speaking of dumb hair, you ever get into sculpture? sculpture freaks me out. how do you feel about it?

so i have a girlfriend now and i'm pretty crazy about her and i want to do all these things and buy all this stuff for her but since i'm not made out of money sometimes you get creative, and the last thing i did i guess borders on sculpture. it borders on carpentry too. but like i said, you get creative. i wanted to build a bookshelf to go over the door to the kitchen so i took wood from an old bedframe and stuff from grocery store carts sawed it up nailed it together got some screws and brackets in there and now its up and she's got all these tiny bottles and jars she collects up there now. making something out of nothing or junk which also serves a purpose and has a form is pretty exciting. of course, when the next earthquake hits thats a doorframe we can't stand under.

dude, that sounds awesome. i wanna see a picture of that. i miss earthquakes. even though california isn't my home anymore, i'm deffo still a californian when it comes to natural disasters. where is home for you? are you a californian or a minnesotan in california? what are you, william ambrose?

i was born in a blizzard. i might as well have North stamped on my forehead or tattooed on my arm, because that's always going to be where i'm from. ..speaking of tattoos, what are your thoughts on them? i know you have some nice ones. the other day i was noticing all kinds of little scars and marks from here and there on my arms and knuckles. those are my tattoos. then i was thinking about cutters, who also have scar/tattoos, but that seemed different or artificial in the sense tattoos are: when you're choosing how and when and where they go. so, i've got a little roadmap of different things on my body that happen when they happen, small enough to be like hobo marks on fences (can't see unless you're looking for them) which mark passes along the way. old fight scars on my right elbow, old burn from a restaurant i used to work at which stays because it was a burn made on top of burn after burn on the same place that started out looking like a kiss from white lips then an apple then a crescent moon and now just a mark i can find... a scratch on my arm from an old girlfriend which never went away, knuckle mark from the affliction this summer... maybe someone will invent a tattoo you can only see under a blacklight.

will's blood on will's elbow

scars are way more hardcore than tattoos could ever be 'cause scars are free. free things are always more hardcore than things you have to pay for. but my tattoos are awesome, the best. i notice you have a pretty lady...do your sexual/romantic interactions tend to have an affect on your work quality or quantity? my work tends to sucks when i'm getting laid.
you noticed that? i think that was the violent femmes curse. all that angsty music about wanting to get laid and then they got famous and kept getting laid and didn't have anything else to talk about. i think for some of us we never stop wanting to make it, sometimes you sidetrack, but you find ways to make it happen. to get past the lovers vortex dilemma, always being around each other and trying to get anything done but failing, i started painting at a converted maternity ward in echo park called the clinic which drew selna and chris stewart (stewie) are building from the ground up to be artist spaces/ a recording studio/darkroom/salon etc. which was a great frenzy of sawdust and walls going up or coming down hammers and stained glass windows setting in, really an exciting thing to be a part of, an energy and enthusiasm like that--but still easier to work in than in a lovers trance, if you get me. (definitely check the place out when you get back to LA and tell your friends, its next door to the Echo. good people there) ...Now i get to painting pretty much the same as before i met margeaux, which was starting around midnight when it gets quiet except for the alley cats screaming and get into a trance where i don't know where i am and everything else sort of blacks out except for what's in front of me on the canvas or paper or whatever i'm aiming at, then go til dawn when the city wakes up again. but now its when the house is quiet and our dog is asleep and everything turns back to stillness so i can crawl back into my head where it gets loud inside and the music starts up and concentrate on what's in front of me, what i'm painting on the kitchen floor. you roll with it. in the morning i can concentrate on what's in front of me again, and its pretty nice that its her.

i love that you say "aiming at". i was thinking about the violence of art, like how a photographer "shoots" or "captures" an image. you aiming at the paper/canvas/surface fits in there, i think. you murder common objects into art, will! MURDERER!!! okay, let's think of a good last question...when you eat a slice of pizza, do you fold it in half? do you swab off the oil? use parmesean? oregano? red pepper flakes? garlic salt? eh? eh? EH?

all of it.

nice. that's why you're my hero, will. you go all the way.
nice talking saint j. take it easy. and lets drink and draw again soon. margeaux will take photos. ever think about doing a photo interview? i know someone good

ooooh, enticing. wait, can i interview margeaux? OMG!

the meat and the berries

hi guys! um, i was bored with the blog so i tried to make it better. i hope you enjoy. i'm trying to make it something that's worth reading even if you don't care whether or not i have a job yet. you know, blog rhymes with pog. remember that. but yeah, the blog was originally to let eveyone know that i'm not dead in alabama but uh, you can check my myspace profile to see if i'm still alive, when you come here you should be getting more than just a glorified journal entry, at least according to me. so i'm interviewing my friends, gallery hopping, reading, taking pictures, listening and trying my darnest to write well all with the specific goal of bringing you a fun read. if you don't enjoy my blog i hate you.

yeah so i went gallery hopping tonight, i was suppossed to meet miguel but i was like 2 hours late and i still have no phone so that didn't happen. i saw a lot of art that i don't get. it's hard for me to say that i don't like a certain piece 'cause...there's a dialogue between work and audience and then there's the conversation between work, audience and history. personal history and art history play into what the audience hears from the work. that said, 'liking' something is an emotional response relative to experience where the relationship between the work and history is unchanging; my feelings change and are unimportant, what is the greater dialogue? that's my big question when i stand in front of something...if i'm a historian. tonight, i was not a historian, i was just jessica. i won't say that i didn't like it but i definitely didn't get most of what i saw tonight. then, i stopped at the robert miller gallery where the word was very getable. the exhibition focused on small scale american abstraction. oh, what? what? jessica is obssessed with abstraction? really? who knew?

Untitled, SF 64-171, sam francis

this is by sam francis, a now dead, american (californian!) painter. we won't get too deep into anything here but what i like about most his work is the way these abstractions occupy the cavas space, the way a concrete thing would occupy 'real' space. in sf 61-171, the abstract seems to hover in white space until the drip and the little splashy dots are considered and the canvas is acnkoelwedged as existing below the color. the abstract knows how real the real is in francis' work.

in another untitled work (to the right), francis lets the abstract color/shapes relate to each other in a concrete fashion, the yellow seems to fold where light meets dark, the red falls back in space, the loosness of the strokes low in the canvas attest to some distance, some things pop and other fade, just like in real life which is nutty to me.

i can't explain all the reasons i like francis' work but i can't explain any of the reasons why i like franz kline, seen below.
he's using the same device, if one could call if that, of bringing a sort of realness to these abstractions...but then again, so does every abstract artist...i like things when i can't explain why i like them and in the end, if you ask me every reason why i like abstract, i can't tell you that, not even close. the renaissance was 400 years long buddy, studying seems to be taking nearly as long. while i love order (and am so excited about being in school for another decade!) like any other nerd, my eyes get tired of seeing things on canvas that they can see in real life. BORING! yawn...

painting number 2, franz kline

of course, with that said, you can't too get abstract or you lose me. i don't know where the line is between abstract and too-abstract-for-jessica but i do know that it exists, i stand in front of it and my mind goes "huh?" and not in the "ooh, what is it?" kinda way, more in the "why am i looking at this? i should stop looking at this." kinda way. but we're not here to talk about what i don' t like, that's for someone else's blog. more art!

adolph gottlieb, jetsam

symmetry! but no! it's not symmtery my pet, it's ALMOST SYMMETRY which is arugably better. and don't get me started on how glorious these colors are; they're chalky and sexy all at once, the white seems like it's still wet. i love it. two circles, two definable shapes over a...a what? a mass of white paint fallings? droppings? drippings? they make the imperfect circles perfect by comparison, the painting might be kinda boring without the white. am i making sense here? who knows.

okay, one more, una mas, just for me. i won't geek out over it but i will say that when i look at it, i feel like i'm there or i'm that. i feel like i've been there. i've been reading a lot about suffering and compassion 'cause i'm trying to be a better pseudo-buddhist. my suffering and your suffering are the same and anytime i try to act like they are different, i'm being delusional because of my ego, et cetera. i either feel what you're feeling right now, i've felt it before or i'll feel it soon/one day. i feel the same way about your suffering as i do about this painting. we'll leave it at that.

Albuquerque 9, Richard Diebenkorn

have you had enough? i hope not. i took some pictures and i found some nice little ending words by folks i love for you (but not too many, i'm sure your eyes are tired by now. mine are). enjoy and tune in next blog, same blog time, same blog channel. bring friends. and some money. and baby dayliner. or don't!

the time will come
when, with elation,
you will great yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome

and say, sit here. eat.
you will love again the stranger who was your self.
give wine. give bread. give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who loved you

all your life, whom you have ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
take down the love letter from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
sit. feast on your life.
-derek walcott






















"if someone makes the mistake - as i think it often is made - of thinking that the major cause of suffering is outer circumstances, then it is very difficult to develop a method to free oneself of sorrow...our trouble is that when someone causes us distress, we usually don't feel that we have brought this sorrow on ourselves. rather, we simply focus on the external forces involved. we say "that person or that thing really makes me unhappy." this make our sorrow grow more powerful...to be concise, the intensity of sorrow will vary in direct proportion to the intensity of our feeling that "i am important.""
-tara tulku/rinpoche



"perhaps there is no greater love than that of a revolutionary couple where each of the two lovers is ready to abandon the other at any moment if the revolution demands it. it is along these lines that one shoud look for the non-perverse reading of christ's sacrifice of his message to judas: 'prove to me that i am everything to you, SO BETRAY ME on behalf of the revolutionary mission of both of us!'"
-zizek


i know that you're the most self-involved thing in the sky. my body doesn't mind at all. it's nature that nags me, you can satisfy an illusion that is ten feet tall...i'm a sucker for juiciness.
-ethan marunas





‘the earth is one,
not two’
i said
in the moonlit
cornfield at
the woods edge
but a huge bug
landed on my arm
to mock me
and the tree
waved at me
with its million eyes
va-v-a-vh-as-hh
all is same.
-ti-jean k.