wtfacch

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springtime springtime springtime

I have been working my way out of a stubborn cold for a while now, the kind that comes with the shifting seasons, where the days range from a whisper of summer to a cold reminder of winter.  Yesterday, with my boss’s encouragement, I took the day to rest, removed even from my own apartment with its distractions of painting projects and musical instruments, and read Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing.  New ideas came to me in the stillness and I approached a centering that has evaded me in the news cycle documenting this country going down the toilet.  A major point of Odell’s manifesto is to reclaim our attention in the era of social media alienation, to live life geared not toward optimization, but presence absent capitalistic productivity.  That a retreat, even as brief as the one I had yesterday, shouldn’t be seen as a way to re-charge as to return a better worker bee, nor to escape the world like a hermit, but to better resist within this world with all its flaws and potential. Every day appears to be an exercise in cultivating and protecting this attention or creative energy.  What I go to bed hoping to conquer the next day will be foiled by dread, depression, or an undisciplined desire to play online backgammon.  This inertia derails starting the task at hand, forget about the concentration necessary to make any headway on it. I have been practicing with my band Childless since November 2023.  We… Read More

ruled by losers

It’s already been said in at least one iconic headline, but we are indeed being led by a bunch of straight up losers.  We already knew about DT, with his simp JD, Jeff Bozoz and Zuck, who sucks. And of course, who could forget the biggest loser of them all, Elon Musty, who can give a sieg heil in front of the whole world and have the ADL insisting we give him the benefit of the doubt.  fuck.them.all. Losers, and those who support, enable, excuse, and —inexplicably—adore them.  The shameless shift these oligarchic cowards have taken to the right has bled into our online experiences.  TikTok 2.0 already feels different, and is bound to get worse under Dumpy’s influence and with whichever one of the dweebs mentioned above buys it up.  And Instagram has already tried to push more libertarian content on me, just to see if I would take the bait (like how it keeps showing me John Mayer content, as if!).  I have seen several people within my creative circles post about migrating off of Meta, exploring alternatives to Zuck and Musty’s lame ass party.  It is a great conversation to be having, a collective shift in imagining online connection without the big losers mucking up our fun.  This discussion has been going on for a while, but with such tangible and immediate changes felt by so many, there appears to be a seismic shift in people’s desires for something different. My whole adult life has been… Read More

Resolutions in the End Times

There is a Climate Clock looming over Union Square.  It is supposed to remind us of the time we have left to limit global warming to 1.5ºC, although it looks like we are pretty much there already.  The monument has been ticking away for the seven years I have lived in Manhattan.  I imagine most people ignore it as they go about their lives, too preoccupied by our own dramas and dreams to take in the magnitude of the situation.  It says we have about four years.  Fitting, given this election cycle and the clowns lined up to destroy the planet faster than ever.  If there is any comfort to be had in climate despair is that there is plenty of company.  This particular brand of blues has colored most of my life, and while a Harris win would have been more akin to a run-of-the-mill log boat ride towards environmental destruction than the current megalodon rollercoaster we are currently boarding, neither outcome would have been much of a comfort given everything we know. The election came and went in unseasonably warm weather during a drought, further exasperating personal and collective existential dread.  Depression is a demanding mistress, but she has been very supportive of ever more frequent waves of nihilism that come over me.  The first NYC white Christmas in 15 years gave some foolish feeling of normalcy, that is until the first week of 2025 brought human bird flu deaths and literal hell fires,… Read More

(Greetings from my) Quota Systems (Holiday)

Now that I am in the ranks of those with personal creative websites, I can partake in the collective feeling of guilt we share over failing to regularly update our websites. This post is the fruit of me going in as a wasp to the fig of a draft that I let sit for a month.  Even though uploading what amounts to a blog entry onto my website can expect to have the same traction as leaving one of my morning pages notebooks on the bus, there is still a hesitancy to put the permanence of words out there in the world.  Paintings? Easy.  Music?  Getting easier.  But to chronicle what I am thinking about in any given moment and just leave it out in public?  A bit terrifying and embarrassing, tbqh.  But here we go. In the spirit of cut and paste, here are whole lasagna noodle sheets of paragraphs from the original draft for this entry, which gets to the topic at hand: *** Starting in the new year I have been keeping with what I call my “quota system.”  The initial categories were exercise, music, reading.  I had already had some success with committing to 210 minutes of music practice a week, the number based on the 30 minutes a day of guitar and cello playing I did as a child with an egg timer.  The idea to apply it to my adult creative practice came from my pianist friend Todd’s own practice… Read More

Stumbling towards Kintsugi

On Saturday I broke one of two bowls left by an old roommate, spilling hot fried rice on myself, the floor, and the countertop. I salvaged the pieces as I cleaned up and Stevie ate bits of scattered scrambled egg. My heart became immediately fixed to executing a kintsugi craft on this poor bowl, and, with a manic energy I sometimes get when so inspired, I watched less than 5 minutes of TikToks before concluding that I had everything I needed in my apartment to achieve my vision. I gathered some old eyeshadow from my early Peter Pansexual drag days and concluded that I would start the project after coming back from practice with Adam for our show on the 24th. In an obvious sign of serendipity, I found an eyeshadow palette of brilliant colors on the sidewalk just outside the rehearsal space as we left. I explained to Adam, mostly out of reassurance to him that I was not crazy enough to put the makeup on my face, what my intentions were for it. Back home, I made a custom blend from several eyeshadows to make something akin to copper. I then applied some Gorilla glue I had on hand and mixed it in with the powder. It is at this point where a meditative pause would have served me, namely, to stop and put on some gloves, which I do whenever I paint in oils and am surprised that I didn’t think to do it here. This… Read More

Why a Website?

For two years in a row I applied to the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park Artist-in-Residence program. This application was a material step in actualizing a dream I’ve had since I first read about the residency in the Pick & Axe at my grandmother’s apartment years ago. Turns out, a residency that places one in a remote cabin alone with no electricity or food for two or three weeks is quite competitive. I would look into the chosen artists and see that most had MFA’s and professional looking websites. While I am comfortable with getting an MFA to remain in the realm of pure fantasy, building a website seemed more attainable and a recommended next step for me to take as an artist. (still feels weird saying that. a topic for another post. or my journal. or therapy.) Developing my own website became one of those persistent to-do’s after my last exercise of residency applications that appeared doomed to never materialize. I allowed myself to let go of the ambition as to not let it’s apparent failure demoralize me (similar acts of mercy have been dealt to my idea for a novel, etc.). That is until, through a series of serendipitous social introductions, I met Brendan, and I accepted that — although I have taken on many mediums with the beginner’s mind of the Fool — I wasn’t too keen to learn web design from scratch, especially when I could support a fellow creative and professional… Read More