Just nabbed this via my friend Kate Seamons’ Facebook page…OMG. Look for it: seems to me that KVJ’s “but not me” is the precursor to his “so it goes”.
got this via kate baasch…
yes please. make it. really make it.
“How do you get those uneven edges in your illustrations?”
“I draw them, unevenly.”“What’s the best way to get this to look like it’s cut out of paper?”
“Cut it out of paper.”“What typeface are you using? It looks so much like handwriting.”
“That’s my handwriting.”These are all real questions I’ve been asked by folks. At lectures, in class, over email. It makes me feel like I’m in the business of serving up plain, glaring answers.
“Care to shed some enlightenment, Frank?”
“Hm, I don’t know. How about a big pile of obvious?”Sorry folks, the most evident way of doing something is typically the way that I do it. No secret labs, no special tools, no computer gee-whizzery.
Disappointing, isn’t it? I’m not surprised that these people are asking these questions. I think everyone wants a peek into someone else’s process. What surprises me is that they infer there isn’t an easy, obvious answer to their questions. There’s a digital silver bullet somewhere, and damned if they aren’t going to find it. But still, surely people still know that handwriting something and scanning it in is an option, rather than using a typeface?
What’s interesting to me is that these questions are being raised because some peoples’ default states are to “fake it.” Maybe that’s a natural response to being constantly presented with things that are not real. Maybe it’s from working with tools whose reach is so wide, it’s sometimes difficult to grasp where their edges truly lie. The issue is that faking it is turning an awful lot of creative processes that have the potential to be deep oceans into shallow puddles. It’s weakening our physical connection to our work.
Our audiences have lower standards too. It’s unusual for them to be confronted with authenticity. When confronted with it, they’re startled. They don’t want to believe, and their first response is generally to scream “fake!” But, no green screen. No movie special effects. No camera tricks. Nothing that’s kind of like this other thing but isn’t quite it. It is what it is. And it really happened. I hadn’t fully realized it until recently, but authenticity is special now. Authenticity is special now.
“Wait, are you telling me they really released all of these bouncy balls down this big hill?” Yes I am. And if you have the choice, I think you should do it that way too.
and then, they cleaned it all up…
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
— kvj
true story: i waited on Ms. Apfel at a luncheon at the MFA a couple years ago. She was dressed amazingly and was wearing huuuuuuge glasses.
Sometimes you freak about amazing events happening just around the corner…
Rare Bird of Fashion: more than 80 dramatic ensembles from the personal collections of legendary tastemaker and style icon Iris Apfel at Peabody Essex Museum.
Bluebird
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
I drank coffee at 4pm today, which goes against many things I stand for (things like aiming to be more than a nominal pragmatist, remembering/honoring the consequences of my actions, i.e.: having any shot at sleeping tonight before 2am). I am sitting in the dark in “my” apartment, marveling at how strangely efficient my siblings can be at getting shit that seems impossible accomplished, sipping on a gin and tonic (which is actually a knockoff/wannabe screwdriver), while thinking of my unwritten, unkempt Future.
I am reading Bukowski, again. I feel an affinity for his dirty realism, but I don’t particularly like his line length, rhythms or sounds (they’re so clipped and staccato, so brusque and pushy, all elbows and chin jut). I keep moving to the next poem, shivering with a visceral disgust, sighing disappointedly when something doesn’t hit like I want it to, succumbing to a slight nausea (Big Night On The Town does that to me—the nausea), and I finally find what I didn’t know I was looking for:
Alone with Everybody
the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.
there’s no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
nobody ever finds
the one.
the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill
nothing else
fills.
I go home (home in my head = Knoxville, where Chad is in grad school) in less than two days to see my husband, giver of much distress and delight to me over the many years we have been together. And I am pleased to say, that after 13 years of marriage, I still don’t believe in the romantic ideal of The One. Too territorial, too fatalistic, too boring, too not-the-world-I-want-to-live-in. There is a darkness in this poem that feels like the darkness that has continually stirred up the lower waters of my own psyche and marriage over the years. It’s the “trapped by a singular fate” bit. In the poem, it’s not that there is no hand of fate that guides us. It’s that the hand of fate has seen fit to deny us all of what we want and to let us die trying to get it. So it goes: All of us. Both of us. Not the one to the other. Not the one to any other. Filled up—as we are—with all sorts of what we don’t want and not near enough of what we do.
One could try and argue that after a month of being away from my husband, my standards have stooped or slipped or just ceased their striving, but my-hand-on-the-Bible: I don’t care that he isn’t the one. I like very much that he is the one I have/am about to have again. I like that he will be waiting for me in Tennessee sunshine when I exit the airport at noon on Wednesday. I like that his own life is too big to be eclipsed by mine. I like that at this point in time, I still don’t know how to solve my way of being in the world with his. I like that the distance between us is both a threat to our union and the chosen space we’ve negotiated for us both to be/do what we think is best. I like that if/when I expire, he will go on: eyes bright and open to love another.
Nothing else fills except what fills us up and then empties itself again. Love rushes in and rushes out, always tempting us with what seems like satiety, only to leave us hungry. Nothing else fills. Sure. So what? I’m the kind of girl who chooses coffee over sleep, a bowl of soup over my birthright, a lover who is 1000 miles away over any of the ones who might be here and now. The reason is simple and for long stretches of time, unsatisfying: It’s because so far,
nothing else
fills.
(via themadeshop)
so, for anybody who liked the artwork in/of/on the last two gretel records (the dregs and the meteorite ep) and our most recent website buildout—it was this place and this guy. so, give thanks and give hire.
Chad has been harrassing me to change my Facebook profile pic since I signed up for the beast. He recently sent me a digital batch that, in his mind, are all preferable to my current pic. As you can guess by this photo (which is more or less representative of the bunch), my opinion of his opinion of what constitues a good picture of me has taken a dive.
so, zach is one of my favorite drummers/people, and katie is one of my favorite singers/writers/performers/people, and b/c it’s late and i should go to bed b/c i work in the morning, i just want to say that all the other people mentioned hizere are “one of my favorites” in all their capacities/personhoods, too and i really, really can’t wait to hear this record. and sleep. i really, really can’t wait to get to sleep.
I haven’t been posting much in the last few months because I’m busy illustrating The Gospel of Luke with Marke. Anyway, here is me recording drums for Katie Chastain’s new album, which Nathan is producing. Also, to the far right of the photo is my younger sister, The Warden, trying not to look bored while she listens to take 15 of me screwing up. This photo, incidentally, was taken by Chris Jacobs, who is currently my favorite person because a.) he has a mustache, and b.) he only gets slightly annoyed when I distract him from his real job all day by making up songs about him and singing them loudly.
Curious what studio this is, I’m a dork that way.chrisjacobsisawesome:
Zach and Nathan in the studio recording drums for new Katie Chastain album.
tonight, i get to do the thing i like best with some of the people i love most at one of the clubs that makes me the happiest in a part of the country that even with all its charm is too far from my love and too far from my family. and like always, i am too far from knowing how any of this effort makes sense beyond the way it feels in the moment(s) it happens: that familiar trembling, palpable, thank-god thank-god thank-god that turns my heart into a furnace and my voice into a song.
i forget sometimes to be thankful.
not tonight.
I’m a man. I wear pants.
— Lyle Brewer, on discussing the demerits of hanging out in pajamas.
