that ole devil called love

Billie Said it Best:

"It's that ole devil called love game
Gets behind me and keeps giving me that shock again
Put a ring in my eyes
Tears in my dreams
And rocks in my heart

It's that sly ole-sun-of-a-gun again
He keeps telling me that I'm the lucky one again
But I still have that ring
Still have those tears
And those rocks in my heart

Suppose I didn't stay and ran away
Wouldn't play
That devil-what a potion he would brew
He'd follow me around
Build me up, tear me down
Till I'd be so bewildered
I wouldn't know what to do

Might as well give up the fight again
I know darn well he'll convince me
That he's right again
When he sings that siren song
I just gotta tag along
With that ole devil called love

He'd follow around
Build me up, tear me down
Till I'd be so bewildered
I wouldn't know what to do"

reflection, the things we don't want to see

it has recently occured to me that i am not like anyone else. i am completely different in many ways from all of the people around me. but i also know that everyone is different, everyone is weird, even if they don't show it and everyone, at some point in their lives, feels alone and isolated.


sometimes i wonder if it is just me that feels this drastic flaming difference between themselves and the outside world. i have come to a place that i never imagined myself staying in for very long and i have tried to make a home here.


Los angeles is weird. los angeles is bipolar. in some senses it embraces all of these different people and gives them a place to stay. drive six miles from where you live, and you see a whole different demographic and a whole different lifestyle. but for me, that transition is slow. if you drive six miles from where you live in san francisco, chances are, you'll end up in the water. people in SF don't have to go very far to step outside of their demographic. LA is weird like that. in la, you can stay in your own little bubble and you never have to experience life if you don't want to. you go to your local coffee shop, your local grocery store, your laundromat. but that's what irks me about it. people don't step outside of themselves. people stay in their neighborhoods and keep to themselves and never experience anyone different from them. it's frustrating for someone like me who loves to meet new people and find out what their lives are like. i have worked in non-profits for years and i always meet new people and i always find out something new about life. it's hard to be in a place that is so "diverse" on paper, but so segregated in reality.


in san francisco, you only have to walk two blocks before you enter a whole new neighborhood. i live on the edge of two neighborhoods and all kinds of people are always coming through.


i'm never comfortable in just one place. i like scenery. i like to change my atmosphere and shake things up. i am not tame, nor am i boring. this has become painfully obvious in the past few months. school is daunting and perilous and i have been scraping my way uphill for the past two months. home is tugging at me. my father has been in and out of the hospital this week and i am missing my family very much.


but still, i am trying to find the beautiful things in life. i think what keeps me going is those little bits of beauty that we see everyday and take for granted. sunsets, intense formations of clouds, how clear the night sky in LA can be after it rains. i have not seen the stars so brightly since i moved here until the other night. to see the entire orion formation brought up something in me that has been repressed for almost three years. the need to be in nature. the need to know that i am still a part of a living breathing earth. that we are all so small when we look up at the sky. mostly. the comfort of knowing that we all look at the same sky, that we all live on the same planet, and that even though war and hate may separate us, that those things keep us united and have made a bond that goes deeper than that.


as i carve my path in this world, i try to remember that everything i do affects people. every move that i make has an affect on someone. as an artist, i have a responsibility to express humanity. i have a responsibility to show people that they are not alone in the world. that someone else feels like they do and that they are not freaks, that they are not abnormal, and that they are just like me. so when i feel isolated and alone, how am i supposed to make everyone feel included in my little world?


i'm missing my lost ones, my angels. i walk through this world, pretending that i have not experienced the things that i have and that i live a normal life like everyone else. we all have our demons, but how often do those fears and paranoias come through into this world? i call them angels because that is the closest word that i can think of to express what they are to me. i look to them for guidance, i look to them for protection, for comfort in times of dispair and pain. the thing is, the loss of these people has caused much of the pain that i often need comforting for.


i realize that i live two lives. i live the one at home where everyone knows me and my deal and understands that when monica is upset, she's upset for a reason. but i also live the life here in LA where when i'm upset people are like, "whoa, what the hell was that?"
it's hard to balance these two lives. it's hard to feel like a whole person when i feel like so many pieces of me are missing.


i know....emo, right?

flipbooks, tightrope walkers and thumbelinas

weird dream diary
entry # 1:
mike and i are driving to malibu in a red convertible that reminds me of a cross between the mr. toad's wild ride car and the chitty-chitty bang-bang car. the car flies up off the road and into the air. i ask him to park the car and i jump out and float down from it on a hoola hoop.

entry # 2:
i am in a big old hotel walking around the grounds with my friends. we come across a pond/pool that is overgrown with vines and lily pads. the architecture is greek and the pond is surrounded by a kind of maze with pillars, walls and floating stones. there is a woman in a tattered Victorian dress sitting at the edge of the pond one one of the stones. she is screaming, "they killed my daughter! they killed my daughter!" i walk over to the edge of the pond. she hands me a small girl, who is the size of my hand, drenched in water. she asks me to do something. i rinse the girl off in the pond, and move the hair out of her face. she lays there limp and pale. i look up at the woman, tears streaming down her face.


p.s. these dreams are copywrited....

Babies, Depression, and the Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust

My beautiful god-son was born last thursday. i am very proud. he is healthy, so is mommy, and everyone is glowing with joy that we finally got one back. Babies remind you of life, and how wonderful it is that even when we are surrounded by pain and war and suffering, that the world still goes on. life persists even in unlikely places. plants grow out of barren earth, trees sprout up in empty lots littered with broken glass and trash, and babies are born to a group of people who have lost a lot of friends and family. it was a pretty wild experience.


Halloween recap:
I made a stunning appearance as Ziggy Stardust, however, because of my excess of pigment, i was also confused with the following: a harajuku girl(ew), an anime character, and my personal favorite: the Filipino Tina Turner.

Halloween always brings up a surge of emotions.

First there is the confusion, "What the hell am i going to be?!" you might ask yourself.

then the excitement, "Oh f* yeah, i know exactly what my costume is gonna be, this is gonna be so friggin' sweet".


Followed by panic, "What if I can't get my costume together in time?"

then, if you're like me, you stay up a few nights in a row constructing a satin taffeta kimono and painting cherry blossom trees on it until you feel like your fingers are bleeding, (or they really are bleeding).


then you finish the costume and there is a great feeling of pride and success "I actually finished something!!"


Halloween day: you spend hours on your makeup, painting pink streaks across your face, trying to embody the bony, emaciated persona of ziggy stardust without having to take all the drugs and sleep with all the rock stars.


you get to wherever it is that you're going that day and everyone is in awe that you are so into it. they are amazed at your passion for dressing up. you get compliments all day and you are very happy, floating on a cloud of recognition and feeling the wind in your blond mullet wig.


you wake up the next morning after not really having done anything that "halloweeny" the night before. there is a small rush of disappointment and you get out of bed and wash the pink out of your eyelids.


it occurs to me, at this point, that the day between halloween and the second of november is a kind of purgatory for me. what America calls "All saints day" is the day between halloween and Día de los muertos for me. there is nothing in between. it falls between the two most extravagant holidays of the year.


day of the dead brings up feelings too. there is sadness from loss, there is the relief of knowing that for one day a year, people like me celebrate death as an integral part of life. it is comforting to know that on this day, people acknowledge the grief and pain that loss brings, but that they do it by celebrating. for one day, they remember what it was like to have that person with them. they call them back to visit our world and to remember what it was like to be alive.


so to bring it back, today, i am celebrating the full cycle of life. from start to end to start again. my week has brought me around full circle.

if you're not first, you're last: an introspection pertaining to the digital art field

yes, it's true.

i am in the digital field. i am majoring in digital media. which means that when i get out of school my occupation choices include but are not limited to movie, video game, web, and commercial production. this may sound thrilling to those 3D and movie enthusiasts, and to an extent it does to me too. but i don't know, it just kind of seems like there's something else out there for me.


Otis is not one of those schools you go to in order to figure out what you want to do with your life. you kind of have to know already. and i thought i knew. and then i changed my mind. i don't want to always paint, and i don't want to always be on the computer. and i want to draw.


so i thought to myself, can all of these come together into some kind of mega-major? and the answer then came to me. CONCEPT ART. with concept art, i could paint, draw, and be on the computer! Concept art would allow me to create characters, story boards, environments, costumes and all kinds of other creative things. i would be the idea person. i would be edgy, new, exciting and provocative. only...it's not really a major, in fact, it's kind of the under dog of the department. and while i'm not the best draftsman, i'm also not the worst.


let's break it up into sections. so there's the top, the middle, and the bottom. and each of those sections has three subsequent sections. so one's position on the scale can also be put into a number value ranging from 1-9.


when i was in high school, i was in the middle of the top, artwise. an 8 on the number scale. i was voted most creative 3 years in a row. i always got A++es in art class or on any project that had an art component.
when i started my first year at Otis College of Art and Design, however, that all changed. after my first life drawing class, i deduced that i was now in the top of the bottom, a 3. after a semester of trying and failing and feeling ultimately pathetic, i made my way toward the bottom of the middle. this can be translated into approximately a 3.7 on the scale.


it was shortly after this failure that i came to the conclusion that the only thing that any of us at Otis had in common was that at some point, someone in our lives told us we were creative. like, "hey, you know what? you're really creative. do that".


i wanted to find that person and punch them in the face.


throughout my sophomore year my skills increased steadily and i found myself in the mid-top-middle, at about a 5.6 on the scale. in my class there are about 5 students that are into concept that i would consider at the top of the top. then there are a few, between five to twelve of us that are somewhere floating in the middle range. this is quite a big range. between a 4 and a 6.9, the skills vary, some are better at figures, some are better at drapery, some are geniuses of color. but we all bond in the fact that we are not the best and we are not the worst. meanwhile, all of the 8-9 range artists pretend that they suck, so as to look humble, "oh, this really isn't that good"... this left me in a state of complacency. at this point, i could steadily get better and rest knowing that i could coast through my education with minimal effort and that somewhere in the work world, there was a mediocre job at a mediocre company out there waiting for me.


but was this good enough?


for me? an overachiever? a dedicated do-gooder? a perfectionist extraordinaire? no way. i wanted a way to go out average and come back a genius.

as my junior year approaches. i wonder, is this the right major for me? is wanting to make doodling into a career really worth $150,000? the question still begs. will i ever approach the 7-8 range? will all the money that i spend on this education get me to the top? or does it really require that much external effort? do you only get out what you put into it?

i have resolved to be motivated, disciplined, and patient in my pursuit of higher artistic enlightenment.

do i really even want a job in the digital field? do i want to work in movies? everyone else seems to have a grasp on what they want to do when they get out of school. i, however, am still in limbo. being a perfectionist, i have a need to always be in control of my life and the things around me. being in art school has made me learn a lesson in acceptance of my current situation, keeping in mind that it is temporary. i am learning to deal with uncertainty. it has been quite a journey.

so will i be content with my decisions? will i be able to tailor my education to my specific needs as a half assed perfectionist? i guess we'll see.

or will all of this time money and effort go to somewhat of a waste and will i end up just writing and drawing comic books like i planned and doing hair on the side to pay the bills?

so, if people could be straight up, my life would be easier

Okay,
I consider myself a good friend. Ask my friends, ask my family. Don't ask my exes...
I spend a large portion of my energy on becoming a better friend. I have lost too many friends to suicide, accidents, shootings, and the tests of time. Because of these experiences, I try to make the most of my time with the people that I care about. It may sound cheesy, but you really never know when your time will come.
In light of recent events, I am beginning to realize that no matter how good of a friend you try to be, people will inevitably walk out of your life for no reason at all. I know that this is all a bit sentimental for me, but I'm trying to work something out in my head.
My father always says, "you know, you get up every morning and you do the best you can".
Is the best I can really good enough? Is anyone's best good enough?

And what's best for some people is a pathetic excuse of an attempt to others. To what capacity can I or anyone else meet other's expectations of what makes a good friend? A good human being?

points of view anyone?

i swear, art will come soon

i swear that i will put some art up here soon, i promise. once my life takes a breath, there will be art here. pretty promise.
with sugar on top.

Blog thinger...

okay dammit,
you got me internet... i'm going to try this. but i swear, if you screw this one up, there's no second chances.