My dreams have been really vivid recently. I have been
sleeping long hours. My diet is not great, but okay.
In one dream a puddle in a parking lot with the aesthetic of
a universal movie yielded a green lake hundreds of feet down. I had telephoto attention and saw a flooded
savannah of rehab animals, and a animal savior down there. He was the
gatekeeper philosopher and he knew my trespasses, and I postulated that I was a
witness to my worse self, as we all can be. And it was moot and a stairway and
a gym came like my old gymnastics gym, but this was new and I was going back
somehow. I was going to pick up gymnastics again and not in a clumsy way; I was
going to dedicate myself to gymnastics, so I was checking the gym out. My old
coach was around a hallway into the main gym, in the foam pit kanoodling with
his girlfriend. I wanted to linger, but left them; went into another room, like
the trash compactor from star wars, or the inside of a walk-in refrigerator,
saw promo videos of different gymnastic techniques.
In another dream, I remember a kind of still life scene. It
was one of those dreams where you want to take it with you. The painting
answers seemed to be there. It was like a Fellini composition, and like some of
the work I had done last year, but now I’m better.
Last night. Geez, I already am hazy. Probably something with
a 90’s aesthetic. I’m really hanging out in my youth in my mind. Oh! I know! I
was wanting to do a portrait of Liam, a classmate, but he was unavailable
(probably because he works so hard always doing his own thing) and I just
wanted a portrait. Eva volunteers, and the arrangement changes to reclining
nude in the park somewhere deepish on the trailside. It feels a lot like an
idea that could go bad, but I try to go with it, in part as Rachel is now the
creative director. Rachel is scheduled to leave and soon it will be a strange
arrangement indeed.
I dreamt my brother in law brought me a little frog from
Costa Rica and would follow up the gift with a toad maybe next year, I inferred.
Peter, of all people.
I dreamt of a composition that I’d already been doing, but
from another angle. The Bell Mare, but from the back, so the horse is trotting
away. I want to do that and the portrait.
I want to do some painting from life, as it yields
discernable answers more readily than the imaginative ones. A friend says, ‘it
shows you what you know’, of painting from imagination. I guess that’s true-
it’s like an exam.
Annual Student Exhibition is fast approaching. I have a lot
of work done, but what cahrachterizes my work is that I get yiled from the
bycatch of grander ideas. Periodically I attain grand ideas in totality. Will
the ASE be one of these grand ideas attained? Or will it be a cummulation of
bycatches?
To make it its own thing I think I should measure the wall,
and all of my paintings, and jam pack it. I should make a book, or a few with
all of my paintings that I’ve done at PAFA, compiled into a PDF and printed in
a booklet format. So I can have a little shelf with zones so we can see how
prolific I am. In addition to that, the wall will be covered airtight with
paintings, no spaces. I would like also to have a few shelves with sculptures,
in the spirit of maximalism. The sculptures are done, just a matter of taking a
good look at everything, then making the moves- these are do-dads.
I would like to show my video works, too. Maybe I can put qr
codes into the zines, with the URLs too. I guess the idea is to give the judges
of the walls, more information than they can take in within the judging window,
and yet deliver the big punches too – basically insure myself all over, so that
if I win I know why and if I lose, I know I wasn’t ever going to win.
I have to focus on the big cartoon canvas and most of all
the snake, though I hesitate to say the snake is shaping up and could get
finished this week. This week will have to be a heck of one.
I’ll have to put this entry on this blog, rather than my new
blog (called Kemeys Goethe Tries Reform), because I mentioned some classmates
by name.
Katrina, a student, without talking to me went to the dean
of students and ratted me out for misogyny. I was called into the dean’s office
and I guess just notified that Katrina thought I was being misogynistic, and
didn’t feel comfortable around me. I told the dean I was drawing a blank, and
that the claims should be substantiated, or it’s just a smear. I was a little
more tactful than that, but that’s the gist.
My housemates kicked me out of my room and I had to find a
new place to live. I live near Chinatown now, which has been my dream for a
long time. My roommates held a mock-trial where Caitlin worked herself up into
yelling at me “You’re the fucking phoney” over and over. I didn’t say anything
during this mock trial. I knew what I was going there for, to be a punching bag
for their anxieties. In all fairness it’s shameful to shit talk them on a
public (kinda) forum such as my blog, but the other side to that is the golden
rule, to which I think, yeah, I would like to read this about myself, to be
privileged with the knowing. My favorite part of the mock trial was when
Caitlin said, ‘we’re not going to make you move out before the ASE; we’re not
total cunts.”, and then the next day they made it clear that I needed to move
out within the week, (but they didn’t say that- it was more like a ‘we will
ruin your life if you don’t leave asap kind of thing’, with backup firepower of
mentioning that they had someone ready to talk with the dean of the school
about my misogyny.) I asked Catlin what I’d said that was misogynistic on the
blog, and she said, I’ll take some screen shots. Yoik! I took the blog down.
Changed it from public to private, where only I can see it. And I’ll probably
change it back after school gets out. I bet this has fucked up my chances at
scholarship a little. I think that’s what this is about. I think it’s about
jealousy. I guess all the possible cards were played. I still get to take the
high road, and rest knowing that by their very own logic, they are total cunts,
and that’s my favorite part of this.
Blah blah. I’m doing well.
I’m looking for jobs a little too. Looking on craigslist.
Remember that blog post called ‘After School’? I took that
to our guidance counselor and he asked me to take a Meyers Briggs, but also
said that my first steps should be to contact the people I mentioned in my
After School writing. I think that’s good advice that I’ll take up. My upstairs
neighbor let’s me use his Internet for $10 cash a month. My new neighborhood is
an actual neighborhood, where families with kids live. The kids are often
running in the street and the parents are on the stoops and moms shout out
windows from three flights up to their kids.
I’ve been playing drums in there, and practicing, and
practicing the steel tongue drum that my mom gave me for Christmas. Like all
good gifts, I didn’t want it at first- just another thing, and not a real
instrument in my opinion, but alas, through some practice, it’s shaped my
thinking, and I think in those seven or nine tones that the drum makes, and I’ve
been singing to myself, and making up songs. I play it with a little kick drum
on my right foot and a tambourine on my left foot. I’ve played it at the corner
of Broad and Race, my little dream spot, which smells like piss, and I’ve
played it at City Hall. I made a dollar and a donut and a bottled water. I
think I was at city hall for two hours. I sucked, but I know what the
instrument can sound like there. I’m practicing so I can go back and hope to
make something beautiful. I’m recording and writing songs.
