I still can't get the hang of this year.  I think it's gonna be best for me to make a new website completely different.  well, maybe not completely, but mostly different.  Into folk music these days, especially beck again.  How did I get into beck?  was it the riley's?  Or did I show some initiative and get into him on my own?  Really like the song "Going Nowhere Fast."  This'll prolly be the last update I make to this site.
 

2-8-00

classes have started and seem to be going well.

It's funny that I should have mentioned gibel on this page, because I recently received an email from him and he and that general crew have started a band called 'global achievers.'   They seem to be adaquately bizarre in an excellent way.  I suppose what I was mostly thrilled about was this review in an online zine http://www.geocities.com/uandimagazine/arch/11.html that said:

With all the craziness on stage it is hard to remember that they're trying to play music. They brought along a Santa Claus door hanging that they cut the mouth out of. John Allen [Gibel], one of the bands two dynamic lead vocalists paraded around on stage with it yelling, "Santa gonna get you!" They are surrounded by a lot of other artists, not just musicians but filmmakers, painters, graphic designers, photographers, etc. They seem more of a cult than a band but either way it's all about having fun and brain-washing people. Speaking of brain-washing, they were dressed in tin foil, garbage bags, and spacesuits for the show. Maybe I sense a little paranoia and fear of brain washing with the guys in the band.

The whole collaborative sense of involving film (of course), graphic design, painters, photographers, that excites me, generating a real culture for these things.  It's like the velvet underground or something, the warhol scene.  Speaking of film, I was at this concert recently where they had these awful bands, and on the wall they had a projector running "Madame Chao's" videos, which were a visual cacophony of snatched images, some cheap porn, some cartoons, some random stuff from what looked like 70's samarai movies, etc.  The idea is really great, but they were mixing the videos in real-time, sortof and doing a bad job.  They had these machines that were probably supposed to form fit the image splatterings with the sounds, but it just ended up being this really lousy parade of images played too fast.  A good idea gone to waste, and probably a lot of good money too.

Getting back to the global achievers' scene, I guess this sort of thing happens more often outside of pittsburgh, here for instance film at concerts is not uncommon at all, actually in most places and the idea of an art crowd that mingles and does the same stuff happens everywhere, but in pittsburgh it's as if nothing is common there.  The good thing about this is that when something is created, it's all on its own, it's unique in some sense and in that, I feel, it's likely to be more progressive.  Here, it's the norm and when it happens, it's a conformation, it's not anything new or exciting and there is this aura of oldness to it.  The idea of it going on back home is exciting to me because I think of the people back there as innocent, not tarnished and trapped by the mire and trash that is the art field in general.  The possibilty for innovation lies in a petri dish like south western pennsylvania, perhaps.  I hope it's true, and I hope gibel or somebody can get the creative ball rolling until it can't be stopped.
 

1.31.01

feeling really good lately, working on an alice in wonderland mural, the last scene where the deck of cards flies up, just before she awakens.  trying to schedule classes, want heavy philosophy/art load, but I think it's fairly balanced with tech courses.  wish I were more proficient at the tech courses.  found out our team was second out of five teams in the adapting linear narratives class.  put music online on my computer website, feel like my collection is smaller than I thought.  trying to finish mural, it's going better than I expected though not as well as one could hope.  Gayani's back, that's a cause for celebration.

1.26.01

got presentation finished, it went well enough, I should probably be happy and pleased about it,  I guess.  copied old files from high school onto computer, re-reading old emails, what seemed so veiled at the time seems to obvious now, was it obvious to everyone but me?  well, it reads off well enough, except my old emails to amber, how did I justify being so convoluted?  I expected too much, what a moronic period in my life.  found some old drawings I like, some I don't like.  an excerpt from egotistical first email to john gibel of long ago:
 

1-25-01

okay, hmm, 'danny boy' she said, smile remember.  stupid project in my head, but my fingers are blocked up to that, more glorified violence, more gorified.  can't get the hand of this new year, he's playing coy so I'll leave him untouched because I'm too shy anyway.  ergo the eyes on yesterday.  wish I had some fish to get confused about.  I should get some pets, like katie's monkeys, maybe I have some already, what about the roaches, do those count?  or fleas, like that guy in city of lost children, but mine wou'dn't be near as cool.  actually, even, maybe, I could get some real living fish.  dead fish are confusing for sure, live ones less so, I can have them eating from the palm of tomorrow before the water dries up and they suffocate because my memory is bad.  I can forget to water them and watch them shrivel up too, no sense in wasting their lives.  memo: explore connection between flowers and fish, fax myself to china.  I wonder what it feels like to break a bone, like a leg or something.  If I don't drink milk will bones really snap?  I need an excuse to drink tea out of my new cups, they're so cool.  people care about politics, I guess we have an overblown sense of importance, but then I guess it's nice to care about things...  It probably gives you a good feeling to feel that you're fighting on the right side, right thinking, right work, right on, right off.  we should have clappers for our spiritual sides, so it's obvious when we're on or off.  I like the idea of being on or off, this guy I met is always on, it's hard to listen to him, he seems like he's trying to say something and I can't really bring myself to notice.  hmm.  in some respects this is...well, no, I was going to say a bad environment for me, but I don't think that's necessarily so.  It's good to be alone, I can well imagine.  I can also imagine debra turning into an orange from drinking too much juice, so I guess that doesn't prove anything.  I'd like to see jesse.  <smile>  good ol' charlie brown and his wonderful dog too.  I've never been to kansas.  I slept outside a gas station in kentucky once in sub zero weather, that was fun, man was I tired.
 
 

1-22-00

well, it's taken some convincing but, at some point, for some reason; I honestly don't remember, I told myself that it would be healthy for me to write about things that are happening to me or that I'm thinking in an unstructured arena.  Hopefully this will sort out some of the difficulties I have with seemingly innocent everyday things and allow me to speak to someone, even if, in fact, there is no one.  I've noticed an unsettling habit of mine which is to reach out and find somebody I can imagine being an audience and then to talk too much.  This happens a lot and I make a mess of things generally when I do things like that.  I notice it especially hits me hard when I'm home or away from people for too long.  I'd really like to be self-sufficient, but I can't quite seem to manage, audiences, or perceived audiences help me to focus my thoughts in certain helpful patterns and give me incentive to think things through.  I'm not sure if, left alone, I think too little or I think too much, certainly I lose all motivation which I've noticed is linked closely to my occasional depressions.  Claudine has started a journal of her own, which I will link to soon.  At first I was opposed to the idea of it, because it seemed as if I was saying that I thought these ramblings were somehow worth listening to or had some value to others, which I don't actually think they do.  Unless, as I imagine claudine does, and whoever else writes these sorts of things, you write with the express purpose of trying to say something valuable and I don't know that I could do that without feeling slimily contrived, not to say that everyone else who manages is necessarily like that, some are, I think, some aren't, um, etc. etc. whatever and all. where was I.  Oh yeah, but I guess I just think I'm not capable of doing something like that the right way.  like I said, I'd talk too much and make a mess of things.  Here, it seems, I can manage to talk to myself, or have been for the past few moments, that's rare....hmm.  This seems to be accomplishing its purpose, but in that case, what is the purpose of posting it?  I could do the dougie houser thing, gosh how I hated the music for that show, to this day I can't get those notes out of my head.  It's ruined, well not ruined but hurt a brian eno song for me that starts out similarly. Hmm, 'spider and I' from before and after science?  maybe, I can't quite remember if that's the one.  I do have a journal that I write in day after day, but it degenerates into a short list of the day's events, skimmed down and de-emotionalized.  Maybe this format is better for me.  Listening to mahavishnu orchestra.
playing vicious computer games in which violence is glorified...  talking, laughing too much.  trying to be funny too much, not shutting up enough.

hmm.  considering snorting my cajun seasoning, but that's probably a bad idea.  need to clean room, need to put my pink cabinet on a pedestal, need to delete messages on answering machine without listening to them, need to walk without looking where I'm going, need to watch the river.

need to delete this and start over.

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