(((grioette)))

I HAVE TUMBLR

2011-03-29T15:31:00.000-07:00

http://sistercalypso.tumblr.com

CLICK THAT I USE TUMBLR NOW BYE BLOGSPOT

Lately:

2011-03-02T15:55:00.000-08:00

Sister Calypso review!

2011-03-01T17:15:00.000-08:00

http://www.picksysticks.com/2011/02/sister-calypso-sanctuary.html

Check out this, um, eloquent review of my show last month at the Sancutary.

Importance

2011-03-01T16:44:00.001-08:00

Longing never ends and now I'm tired of cold nights and goosebumps all over my legs. I want humid orange afternoons and blue Otter Pops and camera adventures with friends and rooftop beers and vibrating guitar strings on the sand and wooden porches with blankets and candles. We went hiking the other day and snuck through a fence to a forbidden trail that led us to a rock perched above the wrong side of the river. We smoked and shared a water bottle and talked about animals and kissed for a while until a creepy fat man came up behind us and stared at our backs. We wanted to leave but the sunlight coming through the branches looked so beautiful and made ripples in the water glow on our faces in little delicate white streams. I climbed down by the water and watched ducks attempt to swim upstream.

I've also realized every roommate I've had the past two years has been male. And shockingly, living with three guys is not much different than living with four. Albeit, the four guys in the photo above are some very important people and I want to juice oranges with them every day. (Oh wait I kind of do...)

Gamelan Cudamani

2011-03-01T16:43:00.000-08:00

Last year, Tony, our friend Jeff and I had the pleasure of seeing a Gamelan Cudamani performance at UCLA. It's not even worth trying to explain...

Cinnamon Chasers video

2011-03-01T15:30:00.000-08:00

Cinnamon Chasers - Luv Deluxe (Music Video) from Saman Keshavarz on Vimeo.

Ho-ly shit.

Tonetta, his own league of brilliance.

2011-02-23T16:37:00.000-08:00

My dearest friend Sam and I were driving back from Claremont the other day, sitting in President's Day traffic on the 10 West whilst blasting both volumes of Tonetta's "777" series and singing along. Albeit, we probably looked really strange, maybe like we have serious daddy issues. It's probably reinforced by this video of Sam singing Marvin Gaye to some chickens on the Pitzer campus (which is an academic wet dream... I want to go to that school sooo bad. It's like Santa Monica College in Mexico and Switzerland at the same time!).

Our favorite towel.

2011-02-14T12:44:00.000-08:00

Brett and Satanpuss.

2011-02-14T12:43:00.000-08:00

2011-02-09T14:40:00.000-08:00

Lately, I've felt the way I imagine this cat feels from the look on its face. I've lost count of how many times in my seemingly short life I've been totally-fucking-balls-to-the-wall sure of what I want to do with my life. I've also realized that life is too short to let a bunch of bitches and assholes make you doubt yourself. If you're not spending every moment of your life doing everything you want to do, exactly the way you want it, then what's the point of living? I don't mean that in the extremely selfish and conceited way that sounds.

For now, this is all I know. I'm 20 (and a half, to be exact). I have a wonderful boyfriend/best friend action pack combo deal who I get to wake up to every morning in our apartment 4 blocks from the ocean. I have amazing amazing amazing friends who are talented freaks and who I can cry with and bitch to and jam until 5am making loud noise and pass out in a big kitty heap. I got kicked out of college for no reason (no, really, for no reason). I have a rad job where I get paid to watch movies and hang out with old people who smell like biscuits and tell bad jokes. I'm an apprentice to an archaeologist and that alone gives me a few cool points in my book. I need to stop wanting. Be yourself and love yourself, and don't let the bitches and assholes get you down.

2011-01-31T19:31:00.000-08:00

i'm officially withdrawn from UC Santa Cruz

the horrible feeling that's loomed over me the past several months over the fact of moving

relocating

leaving everything i love behind

building a new life that i don't want, wanting only the things i have now

wanting to swallow myself whole, starting with the ends of my hair

and not stopping until i am inside out.

sticking my hands into cold mud, letting some monster devour me.

that horrible feeling is gone.

and while my decision to stay in LA shouldn't induce it,

i feel like a whole new page in my life is turning.

i feel like every morning i wake up, i'm a little bit newer and better.

2011-01-20T15:23:00.000-08:00

Me, cold and underslept, catching salt in my hair on Rodeo Beach, Northern California.

2011-01-20T15:01:00.000-08:00

Sitting in the passenger seat, I'm watching slow black seas of crows lift from a pale field. Laying on some Northern hill, a still lake made of silver and oil and black hills all around us. Walking back to the car, we find an owl carcass and, with empathy, carve four feathers from its wings. He stands on rocks and I laugh at the pictures that I took of him when he wasn't watching. Crying in Santa Cruz while deer walk across the road and around me, as if I were a new tree. Waking up with my seatbelt pressed into my cheek and him trying to harmonize with Connie Francis. Dragging our fingers across the map in the sky, star by star.

Open your mouth and pull out your fucking skeleton.

2011-01-08T12:41:00.001-08:00

San Francisco tomorrow. Santa Cruz on Wednesday. Driving through the snowy flatlands of California. Riding our bikes to breakfast on cold mornings. The smell of the ocean four blocks away from our new apartment. Coffee and papaya and rice. Crowding under the green awning at Abbot's with my friends, talking about what breaks our hearts. Brief interludes during band practice to watch the sunset color the sky purple and blue and orange and pink and black. Being someplace where fences don't surround us.

2010.

2010-12-26T14:24:00.000-08:00

2010 has by far been the most exhausting, eventful, terrible and beautiful year of my life. A small retrospective is in order:

JANUARY:

My mom commit suicide. There's no easy way to phrase that. On the 21st of January, my brother, my sister-in-law and I cowered under a small roof at a funeral home avoiding pouring skies while smoking cigarettes and planning her cremation. On the 29th, my brother and I took a small boat out to the Pacific Ocean where we fed my mom to the sea, where she's always wanted to be.

FEBRUARY:

I hiked a lot and thought a lot. It stopped raining and I wore a lot of white. Grass began sprouting through damp layers of cold mud and the air began to feel warm again. I got into good schools and didn't give a shit.

MARCH:

Sat alone a lot. Went to a lot of concerts. Played music for several small crowds of people. Became a college hermit again obsessing over psychology textbooks, hoping painfully hard that they'd offer me some answers. One afternoon Sam and I climbed to the top of a building in Midcity and watched the sun set between rows of palm trees and concrete. The Cozy Castle opened its doors and everything was covered in flowers.

APRIL:

April gave me a concussion of bliss and made me forget the happenings of the previous months. I drove a thousand miles and walked on northern beaches with my best friends. I spent a week dancing and singing and napping with Jón and eating noodle bowls the size of a sink in the Haight and I found a four leaf clover. I also fell in love, but more of that in May.

MAY:

I should really be mentioning this several months earlier, but it was during a walk through Pan Pacific Park on some late night in May when a little Italian sloth and I decided one day we'd get married and live in the forest. I moved into a dusty, creaky old castle in Midcity where music bled out of everything alive and dead. We sat by a lighthouse one afternoon after a day of petting stingrays and kissing in front of haunted cruise ships. He told me he loved me and we made out in my car in the dark.

JUNE:

I played a lot of music and never slept alone. I was constantly surrounded by people I loved - an enormous contrast to January and February. I was on malaria medication which induced the most nauseating fevers and I started to feel fear again. On the 20th, I stuffed a mosquito net, a flashlight and muddy boots into a suitcase and went home to the ancient jungles. Saying goodbye at the airport was one of the most painful things. I scratched 75 cents from my pockets at LAX and used a payphone to hear his voice before getting on a redeye flight. Sitting on the plane, I didn't even look out the window and just cried, feeling Los Angeles and him get smaller and smaller and further away from me. Our plane bumped through the eye of a hurricane and I sat in the most humid place I know listening to birdcalls.

JULY:

The entirety of this month, as well, was spent lost somewhere between jungles and urban slums in third world countries. I climbed the same ancient Mayan temples I'd climbed the year before that, I drank a lot of warm beer and ate a lot of papaya. I got a tattoo in unsanitary conditions. I had identity theft. I walked alone for four hours one night through the jungle up to the top of a hill where a thunder storm spilt electric chains all around me. A Mayan shaman gave me some bad weed which three friends and I smoked in a scorpion infested cabana surrounded by infinite trees and rain and strange animals. We didn't feel anything and I counted down the days when I could kiss said little sloth again. I didn't sleep and didn't shower for three days and got bedbugs and could hardly breath during 36 hours of bus rides and plane rides and walking and running and elevators and wrong directions and almost lost luggage. I came home to our cozy nook after getting off the plane and ran into his arms and cried for a while. I asked him if this was real and he didn't need to answer.

AUGUST:

I turned 20 and gladly parted with my teen years. We drove across California and all it's golden hillsides. We soaked naked and covered in mud in sacred Native American hot springs and every night there music and dancing. Tony and I slept on the side of the road in the woods in my car. We shared a small sleeping bag and shivered all night. We woke to early morning pale blue light cast on mountainsides and trees. I was brushing my teeth and Tony was peeing under a tree and a plum fell right next to us! Every night I missed infinite Guatemalan sunsets, like the one above. I dreamt of those warm reds and the stillness of that lake.

SEPTEMBER:

Went to Disneyland for Tony's birthday. We got to a dark beach and pitched a tent and started a fire in the dark. We woke up to a toppled tent and waves crashing too closely and ate chocolate croissants while driving on the edge of land and sea. I modeled nude, and it was cold. I ate a lot of grapes and cashews and Yogurtland. My bicycle was stolen. A jealous female stole my artwork. I went crazy for a week and there's still water stains on my sleeves and pillow to prove it. We found a dirty little kitten with worms in her belly.

OCTOBER:

We dressed like skeletons and dropped acid in the desert, where all the stars became little kaleidoscope eyes and I couldn't tell the difference between planes and vaguely blinking stars. I don't remember much of this month. We yelled and cried and on Halloween we were both tired and promised never to do that again. Walls were vibrating from all the heartbeats inside them and I rode a carousel outside a Rite Aid for 25 cents.

NOVEMBER:

We dressed up and ate comfort food. We went bowling and a drunk man heckled us. It got cold and then it got hot and then it got cold and then it got hot and then it got cold and then it got hot and then it got cold. The car broke down on our way to go camping and that's probably a good thing because it was too damn cold and we are too crazy to know otherwise.

DECEMBER:

We built a hut on a pebbled beach with driftwood and threw rocks into waves. We went bowling a lot and the rains came and flooded everything. I said goodbye too much and now all I want is this year to end and to put it in my pocket and walk on. It's like all of my memories, all of them, good and bad and mundane, are pennies and dimes I've scattered on the ground. Now, I'm picking up the most beautiful to keep and leaving the rest for some curious stranger to discover.

down:up

2010-12-10T21:14:00.001-08:00

What else is there? Being in airports makes everyone into a drama queen. I remember not sleeping, waking up drunk on a cold metal bench, calling Anna at 4am to tell her I was going to leave again as soon as I came back. I remember the horrible feeling being on the plane, my aunt waving to me on the tarmac, her hair whipping in the wind. Saying goodbye to Italy forever, all lakes and forests and churches disappearing behind me.

Last Sunday, we pet stingrays in their shallow little sandy prison and he fell asleep in the car on the way home, while the rain beat down so hard it turned the 405 into a river, full of metal clanking fish. Hearing your friends tell you why they wouldn't ever fuck you because you're too much like a sister to them. Listening to Karin Dreijer Andersson's voice over and over untangle the words right at the gates of my mouth, past the tooth I chipped from being too excited.

I miss the deep smells of the jungle and the wide wide green sea that is Belize. Rice and beans and beer will only get you so far in life.

Rhythm 0, 1974.

2010-12-08T12:20:00.001-08:00

To test the limits of the relationship between performer and audience, Marina Abramović developed one of her most challenging (and best-known) performances. She assigned a passive role to herself, with the public being the force which would act on her.

Abramović had placed upon a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use (a sign informed them) in any way that they chose. Some of these were objects that could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were scissors, a knife, a whip, and, most notoriously, a gun and a single bullet. For six hours the artist allowed the audience members to manipulate her body and actions.

Initially, members of the audience reacted with caution and modesty, but as time passed (and the artist remained impassive) several people began to act quite aggressively. As Abramović described it later:

“The experience I learned was that…if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed.” … “I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.

LA Times article on The Cozy Castle!!!

2010-11-15T22:00:00.000-08:00

Click below to read an article from the LA Times about my house, The Cozy Castle!!!

C L I C K ∆ C L I C K ∆ C L I C K

Tokey Tones music video.

2010-11-09T13:39:00.000-08:00

This is a little music video my friend and I did for The Tokey Tones, an awesome band and wonderful bunch of people from New Zealand that are sadly no longer together. I think I was 14, maybe 15 when we did this.

Los Angeles, a motherless city.

2010-11-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

You grow branches.

2010-11-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

If you are ever lucky enough like I am to have someone in your life who loves you for all of you, your flaws and mistakes as well, don't do what I do and take it for granted. Feel love all around you, love this moment you're in. The past is meant to pave a road for you, not to keep you lost in a place where everything loses shape and meaning.

2010-11-04T11:18:00.000-07:00

When your life is like a goddamn dream everyday and everything is so good it smothers you, you are left confused and are given a skewed vision of what good and bad is. It's like waking up on a hotel balcony in Hawaii every morning. It's like not having to get up to make coffee or go to work to pay for your life. You forget little pieces of yourself, what makes you love yourself. What makes you different or interesting or desired. You pour gold onto everything and forget what it actually was once - all you see now is this cast. A silhouette. You see the shadow of something that scares you but never see the beast itself.

HOLY SHIT

2010-10-29T21:15:00.001-07:00

LOOK HOW AWESOME MY FRIENDS ARE!!!!

strawberry birthday jam.

2010-10-22T23:20:00.000-07:00

check out this crazy space jam recorded in our home by the incredible Dick Grayson.

With Jeffertiti's Nile, Insects vs. Robots, and Sleepy Owl <3 Tribe members Jeff Ramuno, Tony Peluso, Ali Kellog, Tait Nalley, Preston Mendell, and Dayve Samek.

2010-10-15T15:29:00.000-07:00

Hahaha, weird memories. How I manage to always look small and awkward and confused in the background of photos still puzzles me.

everything is everywhere.

2010-10-15T14:14:00.000-07:00

Heading west on the 10 freeway, you won't get far. It'll drop you straight into the Pacific Ocean. Going east, as you stretch yourself across the wide wingspan of California, and you lose the smell of salt and cold winds, buildings become boulders, hills are flattened, trees lose leaves and become black and twisted, and everything is sucked of water. Dryness is all you see. We came into the dusty little town from the 1940s, where they filmed the old Westerns my dad watches every night. The ones full of political incorrectness and Gene Autry riding horses. Trekking over cactus after cactus and animal burrow holes, we found music coming out of everything. That night, the stars were the clearest I'd ever seen them in my life, even more so than each dark and clear night in the jungle. We starred at them in the dark and they joined and separated, like amoebas. They became bright little eyes in a giant kaleidoscope. I couldn't tell blinking planes carrying business men and confused actors from bursts and explosions millions of miles away. Our tent blew over in the middle of the night because we pitched it in total darkness, like we seem to always do. I look around and I see everyone has a face. We played music and it was a ballet of hands and swaying and lights.

Thank you, Oatmeal.

2010-10-13T15:50:00.001-07:00

It's the equivalent of guys taking pictures of their abs.

2010-10-05T12:57:00.000-07:00

I remember last April when I was in New York. The snow had begun to melt and it flowed in streams down the trees, back where it came from. Winter was over and a small gray cat laid curled between my thighs and I was lonely and composed a letter in cursive and the words flowed out of me violently but they didn't mean anything. I stared out the airplane window, trying to figure out which city we were over. I let my hair out the window of the taxi and it whipped and whipped and whipped. I looked at pictures of 20 years with my father. I laid in a bath until the water was cold and my skin was like raisins. I went to Mexico to forget everything and climbed mossy warm Mayan temples and the horns outside my window each early morning were so loud, like a marching band, and a small boy dressed as a donkey begged me for money and a soda. I could feel you all around me, like salt in a tremendous gust off of the Pacific Ocean. You stick to my skin. I laid in wet grass and heard little birds swoop overhead chirping, concerned. I thought about California and drinking tea made from the sun and down there on that grass I covered my eyes with my hands and when I opened them, you were still here.

my heaven is all around me.

2010-10-04T13:46:00.000-07:00

check out this s i c k cape i made tony for his birthday!

a week ago, it was 118 degrees in los angeles. today, it's raining and cold and gray and i love everything.

Happy Birthday, love of my life.

2010-09-30T12:17:00.001-07:00

you're my feathers, best friend.

A gentle reminder to plagiarizers:

2010-09-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

I like Blogspot. Blogspot is really awesome and it sends me nifty little emails warning me when they detect someone stealing your work.

It's come to my attention recently that people have been plagiarizing my writing, and people have been selling prints of my photos on Etsy.

You cannot hide. I know who you all are. The internet is going to point a big bony finger at you. A lot of the things I put here have been published elsewhere and are copyrighted by me, the creator. It is way illegal and shameful to steal other people's creations.

I can evoke the power of Satan, so don't fucking steal people's ideas...

the 7 warmest moons.

2010-09-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

my life, a beautiful film.
look at it! look what's going on!
we got to a dark beach and got stuck in traffic on the way a few days ago. he rustled with firewood and built an enormous fire while i pitched a tent in total darkness. he called me a champion and kissed me and we all fell asleep under the enormous white harvest moon. during the night, i'd continue waking up repeatedly to the sounds of waves crunching into the earth and and the wind attacking our tent. each time i woke up, i was so cold and he'd give me an article of his clothing. we woke to sandy bodies and went back to our normal lives. yesterday we rode rollercoasters and shared sugary foods and i squeezed his hand so tightly even though i wasn't afraid of the ride, his hands were just so safe.

Kim Asendorf - Pixelated Mountains

2010-09-20T13:05:00.001-07:00

2010-09-20T12:11:00.000-07:00

When I was younger, European dreams kept me breathing out of one day and into the next. Riding on the backs of Vespas with waify boys, drinking cappuccinos off cobblestone streets, photographs of churches lining my walls and walking home from a market through an ancient city with bags of breads and tomatoes.

You will go to Brooklyn. You will go to India. You will see Patagonia.

Now at 20, which feels like 300, I'm still a child, but a child with more obligations. My life is so different now. I still don't know if that's something I should feel threatened by. I don't wake up to dangle my feet from a balcony while smoking cigarettes, wear something fantastic and have breakfast in a room full of light with a cat around my feet like women do in movies or lingerie catalogs. I sit next to you at the laundromat watching cartoons in Spanish and 25cent rubber bouncy balls while the machines take away the week's mistakes. I see your face after you've just fallen asleep and get as close to it as I can without waking you, listing all the animals you look like.

2010-09-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

summer is drying up all the ugliness it brings to LA and i'm hungry for winter.
i want to feel cold and taste warm spiced drinks my fingers are wrapped around for warmth
i want to be able to wear head-to-toe velvet outside and not boil.
i'm in a strange period, somewhat like a midlife crisis at 20 years old
every morning, a warm hand holds my forehead and instills doubt and insecurity and emotional attachment
while the people around me tell me everything that keeps me alive is in fact detrimental and unhealthy.
i'm knitting scarves with thoughts that are suffocating me and i can't stop it.

swallowed down into the gut of centuries.

2010-09-09T10:50:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in a room yesterday, entirely quiet and still. I was overwhelmed by thoughts and fears and judgments. I closed my eyes and imagined I was sinking like a stone to the bottom of the ocean, passing by fish and kelp fluttering like the longest hairs on my head at the beach. I eased into the sand and watched the light patterns brush over me. Once in a while, I'd feel a tremble and see a wave rush over my head. It was loud but I still couldn't make it out over my internal dialogue. My brain runs miles a minute most of the time and it hurts me. I reached into my mouth, down into my belly and up into my skull. I started pulling everything out. Strings of thoughts that looked like organs came out of my throat like ribbon, sometimes there would be a massive knot and I'd know that was a big big thought. Tears welled in my eyes from the pain of pulling what seemed like an endless river of bad and meaningless thoughts out of my body. As I pulled them out, I let them float up towards the surface. A long, bloody, dripping rope of horrible thoughts, it felt like an elephant, it all came out of my stomach and brain and throat. I watched the last of it come out of me and float quietly to the surface. Parts were getting caught in the waves. A long string of knotted thoughts would curl up in the wave and slam into rocks, and nothing but water was in me, cleaning me of everything bad I've experienced this past year. I still can't embrace the good because I think what I need most right now is to feel full of nothing, just water and space.

raccoons in bed.

2010-09-07T21:29:00.000-07:00

Tristeza - Lambs

2010-08-31T13:52:00.001-07:00

2010-08-30T12:26:00.000-07:00

i want you to run after me.

2010-08-18T10:35:00.001-07:00

you are infinity.

2010-08-11T12:38:00.000-07:00

there are things you read about, see in the news, that you remember your whole life. i remember one autumn reading a story in the Los Angeles Times. a man in Marina Del Rey lived on the third floor of a four story apartment complex right on the boardwalk. it was around halloween and everyone had their decorations lining the balcony railings of this apartment building. one morning, the man walked onto his balcony with a rope around his neck and hung himself from the balcony railing. people walked their dogs and peered up at his dangling body, others drove by on their way home from work, and children rode bicycles directly in front of him, some with training wheels. it wasn't until five days after he hung himself that people made the distinction between a surrendering man and a well-thought halloween decoration. in those five days, thousands of people passed his stiff, swaying weight. some even took photographs, admiring the creativity of it all. five sunsets glazed his body each afternoon with an orange glow. dozens of gusts of wind off the Pacific Ocean blew into his apartment, since he had left the balcony door wide open. those gusts are what the coroners blamed, having finally carried his smell to fill the entire apartment building like a tank.

the story about the middle school couple. the girl ate a peanut butter sandwich at lunch one day and kissed her boyfriend, who died five minutes later due to an unfortunate peanut allergy. the story about the flight attendant who cussed out a passenger, stole two beers, and escaped his responsibilities by way of the inflatable emergency slide on the plane. the one that doubles as a raft when planes collide with bodies of water.

i remember reading about how belize flooded during a hurricane, and i thought about how belize would still not be any less beautiful. all those trees and rivers and alive things weaving into one another. i remember the story of the afghani girl who at just 12 years old, refused to marry a man 47 years her senior, and had acid poured all over her body. i remember a few years later reading about how she survived, left home, and went on to finish college and complete a series of grueling reconstructive surgeries. i remember a photo of her on the front page. her face is scarred and her fingers almost entirely gone. she holds up a large photo of a girl, with piercing eyes, a round mouth, and a black river flowing down her back. it's her, almost unrecognizable, both of them so full of different kinds of beauty, in the same body.

i remember reading my mom's obituary, and even then it seemed like fiction. the story about a cat with three legs who was a stowaway on a flight to new york and made its way back to san francisco mostly on foot to be with his owner again.

stencils.

2010-08-09T15:57:00.000-07:00

here are some recent stencils i've done for you to look at:

oh beautiful poison tree.

2010-08-09T11:38:00.000-07:00

let your branches fill me. let your sap fill my veins and turn me into something powerful. let your flowers bloom inside of me. let your roots grow into my streams. turn me into a poison tree.

through the water, through the snow.

2010-07-30T18:47:00.000-07:00

Please, take me back to the place where you bite into pomegranates that spurt blood like hearts. The place where the air is warm as honey. Where we lie on beachwood beds all day draped in threaded wildflower fields holding down against the most tremendous wind. The place that's far away from here, where I have so many thoughts, and all of them are so small and so vague, like fistfuls of pebbles. The place where we don't need to write letters to remind one another that we love them everyday and every night. Where the hungry and selfish ones sink like stones and all of us, all our free soul, pour into the caverns like magma. The place where he appeared to me as a bird one day, shouting songs at the sky. Beating a drum, thinking of how all the things I do for him, even the stupid things, like feeding him a burrito, or walking him to his car in the morning, fill me like oceans and sulfur sucks dry what's worrying me.

2010-07-28T12:40:00.000-07:00

one of my favorite things - stumbling out of a venue in the middle of the forest at 3am after a day of sitting naked and covered in mud with your friends in sacred hot springs followed by a night of amazing music, not knowing where you're going to sleep that night, pulling your car over to the side of a mountain road with your other half, throwing musical equipment outside on the ground and snuggling in a sleeping bag in your trunk, waking up early to the sound of birds, early morning cold and pale blue morning light over the canyon, brushing your teeth by a grasshopper, and caravaning with 20 magical people across california.

home.

2010-07-28T01:56:00.000-07:00

Look at this picture of me in front of Temple El Gran Jaguar in Guatemala.

I'm writing this from my bed, which I had not been in for almost two months before this moment. I have been traveling non-stop for that in between time. In the midst of moving constantly, between climates and languages and sounds, my heart has clung to a few things incredibly tightly - music, the love of my life, my friends, and my future, all of which combine into something more beautiful than words can embody. I've clung to people and moments and songs like warm afternoons, like old photos of my mom riding horses, her hair long and brown and her eyes bright and wild. My life is so beautiful and I don't know how I can possibly write or record its mass.

this sums up my life lately:

2010-06-24T10:28:00.000-07:00

i'm leaving tomorrow. i'm feeling heavy boots about leaving all of this amazingness behind for a month, but my travel bug is making me itch uncontrollably and i'm in dire need of jungle adventure. i wish everyone knew how much i love them because it's something you can't touch, can't see the ends of, like staring into ocean horizon and trying to see all its wideness in your peripheral.

2010-06-22T15:06:00.001-07:00

“Oh, God, I know no joy as great as a moment of rushing into a new love, no ecstasy like that of a new love. I swim in the sky; I float; my body is full of flowers, flowers with fingers giving me acute, acute caresses, sparks, jewels, quivers of joy, dizziness, such dizziness. Music inside of one, drunkenness. Only closing the eyes and remembering, and the hunger, the hunger for more, more, the great hunger, the voracious hunger, and thirst.”

- Anais Nin

Diary entry dated May 30, 1934

this is what malaria medication feels like:

2010-06-19T20:24:00.000-07:00

Waking Up Beneathe The Cozy Castle

2010-06-18T12:04:00.001-07:00

Waking Up Beneath the Cozy Castle from alec singer on Vimeo.

Please watch this amazing little movie about the Cozy Castle by our dear friend, Alec. Also note the very hunky Tony Peluso smoking in sunglasses in the beginning.

are those blackholes i spy, sucking starlight from our eyes.

2010-06-13T18:17:00.000-07:00

last night we laid in bed and i thought about the month ahead of me, a month without waking up to his breathing and bony knees. i thought about how far down i'd have to dig to find the teeth of my great great great great great grandma. he was asleep and i was laying awake, tracing his face with my eyes, trying to embed every detail into my memory. i practiced by continuously closing my eyes and then opening them to the white wall and trying to see him without him being there. i'd fall asleep and wake up and he'd wake up and he'd clench my hands tighter and i'd clench his tighter. we fell asleep and i woke up again some hours later, thinking about moments i could see him and everything inside of me exploded out of joy. i thought about watching him perform. i thought about the way he whips his head from side to side and squeezes his eyes as tightly shut as he can. i thought about how in those moments, his hair looked like a gust of wind rolling over a field of wheat. i remember in those moments, everything in me is electrified and time moves backwards into its own mouth like a river back into a sea, and i wondered how i lived all these years without him next to me. i think about how the other night i preached my anxiety over leaving him and he told me how in 50 years when we're warm in a bed together i'd look back on this month and laugh. he pushed hair out of my face and i finally fell asleep.

thinking of you, there's lightening bolts in my chest.

2010-06-08T12:55:00.000-07:00

i return home to green, wet jungles and mayan temples in 19 days. i'm so excited to be going back and simultaneously really distraught that i'm missing half of a summer in LA and all the wonderful things and people happening right now.

Broken Deer - White Women

2010-06-05T17:17:00.001-07:00

am i melting too fast, dripping into your lips?

2010-06-03T12:07:00.000-07:00

Cornmeal mush is all you took for
Thirty thousand miles on foot
Come inside, stay a while
I’ll fix you things to eat

I’ll offer you some clothes too loose
A soft bed and someone else’s shoes
Come inside, stay a while
Rest your tired feet

Haunted by a recurring dream
Of the girl you left hanging from an apple tree
Johnny Appleseed wanders the countryside
Keeping to his task to keep out the rest
Johnny Appleseed, right fresh from heaven sighed:
“Please, let me make it up to strangers.

In Ohio, all the farmers wives
Thanked you with fresh apple pies
And hurried to mend the tears in your pants
Dumbfounded by their kindness and embarrassed by your shyness
You slipped out the backdoor at the first chance

Haunted by a recurring dream
Of the girl you left hanging from an apple tree
Johnny Appleseed wanders the countryside
Keeping to his task to keep out the rest
Johnny Appleseed, right fresh from heaven sighed:
“Please, let me make it up to strangers.

The famished cow you rescued from the
Wealthy rotten Farmer John
Offered, in gratitude, to turn itself to gold
But you declined the offer, saying: “That was not for profit,”
And ushered the straggler back into her fold

love is a weak word.

2010-06-02T01:21:00.000-07:00

I haven’t changed clothes in 5 days. I’m covered head to toe in bruises and blisters and burns. In the last week, I’ve played 4 shows. Yesterday morning, I woke up in my smelly love’s arms on the top of the loft with our friends snoring all around us and light breaking through the wooden beams in the ceiling. He still had face paint on from the night before, which was all smudged and milky like watercolor bleeding into fibers of paper. Last week, I drew him a picture of mountains and wrote on top of the peaks “I love you more than mountains” and put it on his pillow. I didn’t think he had found it but when climbing into bed the other night, it was pinned to a beam above where he lays his head at night. I'd grown so accustomed to feeling small and hopeless, and just then, a beautiful window opened. It's like my memories, all of them, are pennies and dimes dropped and scattered on the ground. Now, I'm gathering up the most beautiful ones to put back into my pockets, and leaving the rest for some other curious person.

these moments.

2010-05-30T10:09:00.000-07:00

these moments burst over us like fireworks over a dark city.

for you i'd shed my fur and my bandages.

2010-05-24T20:42:00.000-07:00

i'm tip-toeing through this busy, dark, smelly market called life, vicariously teetering baskets of college, work, being a musician, pre-Belize departure, and being northbound for two years. everyday, i wake up after a savored but unsatisfying 4-5 hours of sleep, rub my eyes and hobble into my car filled with music equipment, books, and my sleeping bag. i pull heavy loads across rough terrain, rub my eyes and fill cup after cup of caffeine and watch as the iceberg i'm standing on slowly melts around me. each night, after being beaten to nothing, like roadkill after several hot days and rush hour traffic, i drive to a castle to visit a wonderful boy who bites my ears and licks burns right off my arm, like an iguana! i hold his face in my hands and say goodnight after leaving later than i said i would.

i realized the other day i haven't been to or seen the ocean since february, when i scattered my mom's ashes there. tides come in several forms in one's life. my friends and the light and music they surround me with is my current tide. it's never violent. i see them everyday and they wash over me and bury me deep into soft, sandy bottoms covered in cigarette burns and cat hair and lost articles of clothing. i see a full yellow moon and i can wave to it like a country. sometimes, he comes outside and holds my hand and waves, too. sometimes we drape sheets from beams and cast blue light through them and i feel like i'm with her, at the bottom of the ocean where it's quiet and nothing, not even light or oxygen, can find me, except prehistoric monsters and haunted shipwrecks.

for now, all i can do is turn photos upside down and watch shadows with my family.

i'm laying down, eating snow.

2010-05-17T02:10:00.000-07:00

growing up, there was a house on my street that burnt down one night. i remember the smoke and the red lights and neighbors in untied robes carrying toddlers. i remember for weeks, months after that night, riding my bike down the road and seeing houses. different colors and sizes and shapes, like riding past different colored faces. towards the end of the street, you'd reach this house. it just stood there staring at you with big empty eyes and black-mouthed windows. it looked like a scream. like a horrible thought. people would start to take different routes to avoid looking at it. they would leave their houses 5 minutes earlier in the morning to curve their way wide around its painful stare. over time, kids spray painted their shitty tags on its walls, and ivy and uncut grass overcame its sad, flaking cheeks. they tried putting boards over the windows but people still snuck in. sometimes teenagers would sneak in to smoke cigarettes and drink watery beer. other times, young couples would sneak in to make out. my brother told me stories about monsters that lived inside, chewing up the floorboards to hide children's skeletons.

they flattened the house last year, after it had nearly become dust. i parked my car outside of it one day and listened to bulldozers pound and scrape and destroy its walls, untangle the ivy and slash the grasses. i closed my eyes and felt the beat of every rock hitting the ground. a man flicked a cigarette into its ground up remains and rains ran its blood into a drain.

Helena Kvarnström - A Siamese Cat Would Be So Small

2010-05-10T19:27:00.000-07:00

A Siamese Cat Would Be So Small from Helena Kvarnström on Vimeo.

this is me being optimistic.

2010-05-06T11:40:00.000-07:00

it's strange how you think you know what's best for you and you realistically have no idea. watching things fall into place around you is a surreal thing, like being the first person to watch the first drop of rain after a drought. i have this overwhelming urge to turn to people lately and ask "DID YOU SEE THAT!?"

it's official, in 7 weeks, i am on scholarship to return to the jungles of belize and guatemala, as well as old, dusty roads in mexico. i'm more excited than i can express. i'll be digging at two of the same sites as i did last year, and living with a MAYA SHAMAN. i'm also doing a quasi-thesis on traditional Maya dances. i can't think of a better way to spend my summer.

following that, i'm moving to the jungles of california, santa cruz, just before my 20th birthday. i'm still somewhat ambivalent about this. in truth, i'm bummed i won't be at berkeley because a.) it's berkeley, and b.) all of my friends go to berkeley, c.) i'm going to be the one who didn't go to berkeley. my fear is my social life being reduced to taking acid and going to protests. to avoid this, i'll probably become thoroughly anti-social and go hiking by myself everyday, which might funnel some inspiration nicely into my electronic music minor - something i could never do at CAL. i have a knack for being able to make myself happy in whatever situation i'm in, so i'm guessing i'll be up there later this year, completely happy. my life is all about things not going the way i plan and the outcome being much better. so i have no reason to worry.

it's a jungle out there.

Loli Phabay - Abor Uhodit V Nebo

2010-05-05T19:31:00.000-07:00

2010-05-01T11:26:00.000-07:00

i can pick apart the past like the hairs of a feather. i can section it like braiding your daughter's hair. and when i think of you, i tremble like a million ripples and my head fills with ideas of things, some of them completely ridiculous and some i can hold in my palms like dirt. i want something so badly and i don't know what it is but i know that i want it so bad i'm willing to crawl out of my skin and find it.

i got rejected from my first choice school, which is actually a very humbling thing, and i think it's going to lead me to a road i wouldn't have considered before. i've realized this is THE trend in my life, working my ass off to have things go a certain way, and they don't go exactly that way, but rather become something better. i don't see this being any different.

two nights ago i took part in the most immense cuddle puddle and realized words form in my head and before they can reach my tongue they get tangled in my hair, which is full of curls and knots. a long black tide that sailors tell stories about.

sometimes i'm lost and sometimes i know everything.

2010-04-25T21:55:00.000-07:00

you grind your claws, you howl, you growl.

2010-04-20T14:31:00.000-07:00

my idea of perfect happiness is being with your best friends, listening to good music, eating good food, and having a good view. the past week was maybe the best week of my life. i completely fall apart sometimes. i can never anticipate when it will happen, but i generally have a pretty good idea. i might be walking down the street, and then it happens. i shatter into hundreds of pieces and no one even notices. my bits are kicked and stepped on, mixed with beer cans and
plastic bottles and scraps of paper and spit and footprints. my friends scavenge for my pieces, put them back together, and music is my glue. my thighs are bruised from using them as drums.

even right now, as i'm sitting in the los angeles municipal court house nibbling on micro greens and watching bollywood films on youtube, listening to a large woman with a bleached perm cattle-call ID numbers of jurors over the small TV playing regis and kelly. some are hunched over asleep, some are leaned against a row of vending machines discussing their small businesses. one man hears my ringtone (yeah, it's crickets, you got a problem?) and shoots me a dirty look, but i don't mind because it's my friend telling me my energy is amazing. it's raining outside and we have 73% humidity right now in los angeles, which is making me really miss the jungle.

a few days ago, jónsi and i were sitting in golden gate park drinking beer and snuggling while hippies and crust kids tried to sell us acid. i decided that i want to do music. i stayed up late last night and under the well-intentioned beams of a small book light, i made a roughly chronological list of the things i'd do in the next ten years. i've been so happy lately and had so much good happen to me that quite frankly, i'm freaked the fuck out and clenching my fists, waiting for something else terrible to happen to me. i don't even have words for the past four months. whoa. sheeit.

when the wind takes you, it takes me, too.

2010-04-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

somewhere in california off the I-5.

the missing piece in me i can find in a melody.

2010-04-11T03:09:00.000-07:00

just turn the music up, and keep your mouth shut.

2010-04-04T23:56:00.000-07:00

i wonder if it's a strictly youth-oriented phenomena;
memories and certain songs being synonymous.
one of my biggest fears about growing up is losing that sensation.
i read a book once by Daniel Levitin about how the psychological activity that occurs throughout the relationship between teenagers and music is some of the most powerful in all of human thought and emotion.
i'm so scared of losing that. i've lost a lot in the last couple of months, but gained twice as much.
this year has been thus far and will be the most profound of my life so far. my mom commit suicide and i'm coming to terms with that. with losing her, i lost a huge part of myself. at first i assumed this was a really bad thing. i'm learning that maybe that bit i lost of myself was a part i've been trying to get rid of for a long time, and i'm filling that void with new and great things.

the other night i was surrounded by friend and their beautiful music. it was raining outside and i thought about all of the heavy things i've seen and felt lately, and how i still can't believe all of those things happened to me. i thought about the consequences i'll eventually experience from those things, and i got really scared. everything around me felt really small and predictable and inescapable when suddenly my friend grabbed my hand and said "keep crying, this is good. keep crying, ali." i realized i was crying and he gave me the biggest hug. another friend, dressed in a giant chicken suit, hugged me as well, then another, then another and another and another. before i knew it, i was in the middle of a great big hug. it felt like everyone i loved was my galaxy. i was the sun and the people i loved orbited around me, kept me in my place and equalized gravity and axis and light and time. we all stayed hugging and i cried more and we eventually danced until tears turned into sweat and my knees got weak.

life is so immense. everything is uncontrollable and bigger than the human mind can bare to comprehend. i love it that way. i don't want to ever understand everything. one of the biggest mysteries of my life will be the last four months. how is it possible that everything went from more horrible and scary than i can put into words, into the most beautiful unraveling of sequences and lessons? how the fuck am i so lucky?

sounds can't be described sometimes, like feelings. the lyrics to this jens lekman song are in my head all the time lately:
http://www.lyricsdownload.com/jens-lekman-black-cab-lyrics.html

out here, honey. i'm in the garden.

2010-03-28T23:51:00.000-07:00

trying to write lately has been really hard. a.) because, i don't have the time, and b.) i've felt so many thing lately, overwhelming happiness, mostly, as well as confusion that feels like trying to read poetry i don't understand at the bottom of the ocean. it's incredibly hard to formulate the words that describe everything. it's somewhat like casting fishing line for a whale. i can't do it. if my life were the span of human history, i'd be experiencing the renaissance right now. i could elaborate on that, but i'm too lazy to type that all out.

i've learned when you are a bit lost and sad, there's one universal cure - hugging old friends. the other night, while i was surrounded by a cocktail of what felt like the entirety of my high school (the one i liked, anyway) and the strangest collection of people swaying drunk and wafting cigarettes in the air, i squeezed and weaved uncomfortably close between people to watch a beautiful boy sing with his eyes closed while a sequence of lights hit his cheek - red, purple, green, blue, red, purple, green, blue. the following afternoon, while some awful punk band played abrasive guitar chord that rattled the walls, we snuck upstairs and crawled through a hole in the ceiling to sit on the roof and watch the sunset between rows of palm trees and concrete. a nearby church was having a barbeque and the air smelled like sea and smoke. the sun cast orange on sam and gregory's faces and the graffiti'd wall they leaned against was glowing and i took a picture of them even though there was no film in my camera.

RIP Margaret Moth

2010-03-21T20:10:00.001-07:00

You extraordinary woman.

8:54 p.m.

2010-03-10T20:47:00.000-08:00

we are leaving here. we're going away, to see the sun ballet. we made arrangements and we're leaving tomorrow. tonight, we'll smash the light bulbs with hammers until they shatter and splinter our feet, and we'll stare into candles in a circle on the floor. we're getting out of here, we've had enough of shit here. we'll go to the storms where mountains are fluttering and green and ice weaves between crevices like thread in a sweater. we'll go to the hot and dirty thickness. we'll patch our pants with tea bags and pour milk into our baths. we'll run and run and run until our legs melt back into little atoms. we'll row boats down rivers of cardboard and cellophane till we watch the sun storm from up on the hill with yellow flowers. patches of them, here and there. like us, here and there.

"Stroke of Insight" by Jill Bolte Taylor

2010-03-10T20:14:00.000-08:00

Neuropsychologist Jill Bolte Taylor discusses her out-of-body experience while having a stroke, and the insight she gained from it. This brought a lot of tears to my eyes.

tell me where shadows go.

2010-02-22T00:50:00.000-08:00

I took this photo of Jordan while hiking last week.

Sometimes, when I've built hopes up around me like clay walls, and they dry and fail and crumble around me, I remember last year, when we were at the Belize-Guatemala border. I had just gotten my seventh stamp in my passport and my head was sore from the 9-hour bus ride through rough jungle roads. I was pacing towards a taco stand and little men in cowboy hats surrounded me asking for money. I saw two little girls, one in sandals and one barefoot, sitting on a bench in the sun. The smaller, barefoot one, was drawing swirls in the mud with a stick. I kept walking towards the taco stand like the dumb American I am and got a warm plate of rice and beans and chicken. I walked back and the girls would perk their heads up each time they heard a car. Jose and I walked over and asked them where their parents were and they said they had been sleeping at that bus stop for 5 days waiting for their mother to come back, who was in Belize looking for work. They had a knapsack with bread and water. Despite being so young and alone, they were happy and didn't feel as if their mother had left them. We bought them food and gave them money, and more men in arched hats swarmed us like flies.

Today on my way to work, I heard a man in Beverly Hills playing cello next to a building. I watched him violently drag his bow across the strings, almost as if he were laboring and pulling the music out of the instrument, like a stray thread at the end of a shirt. He pulled and pulled and the song poured into passerbys' ears, while I passed an old fading photo of Michael Cera and thought he was pretty cute in it, and saw the man who wears black and dances in front of the rug store window, stepping and stepping and stepping and stepping with no fucking rhythm but his stepping for some reason I find it soothing. All the stepping and pulling and pouring on the street came together in a maelstrom and I tried to remember the song I wrote earlier but it's gone now, like a lot of things.

so much water.

2010-02-17T00:14:00.000-08:00

i think about the past month, and wonder if there's a way to measure emotions. if every tear you cried turned into a pearl, and you could make a string, i feel like i'd have one long enough to lasso the sun, pull and tug, collide with everything i love and hate. if every time i felt happy, i glued a feather to my arm, how long would it take me to fly?

the rain has finally stopped (for now) and everyday this week has felt like a slow summer afternoon. as i frantically rush to finish my last few classes before transferring, and maybe it's part of the process of coping with something really heavy and tolling, i hear music i love lately and i sometimes consider stopping everything, stopping college and work and time and thinking and just write music. there's so much i want to do and so much i want to learn and i know i can't do it all in my lifetime and that terrifies me. that's my biggest fear - an unfulfilled life. it's hard when your mind moves faster than time.

Jónsi - Go Do

2010-02-14T20:47:00.000-08:00

Jónsi - Go Do from Jónsi on Vimeo.

Jónsi Birgisson is one of, if not my favorite artist. He's had the biggest influence on me and my life aside from Dan Eldon. I can only do so much as wish and beg that someday I have half the talent of him, and I hope that like him, I can successfully pursue multiple forms of art. Jónsi does music, video, and visual art so flawlessly it makes you wonder if there's a higher power, because it's completely ridiculous how much talent one human being embodies. Uhh... anyways, this is his new video for his new song (and his sister directed this video and did his costumes and makeup! there's something in their genes...)

my mother ocean.

2010-02-07T23:17:00.000-08:00

momma died on a sunday - slumped in a leather chair, in her cotton robe, and a glass of vodka in her hand. my momma died looking like a scholar, but she died so stupid.
seven years ago, she handed me flowers, bigger than any other kid had. she put her hand on my cheek and she smelled like the sun.

today, the sky was clear from the rainstorms and my brother, my momma and i sat in a small boat on the sea with a loud motor. we could see all the way to the mountains, which were capped with snow like cocaine for the sun. my brother wore blue, i wore green, and momma was ground up in a box wrapped with red velvet, sitting at the front of the boat - she liked that, that's where she would have sat.

i drove the boat out all by myself. momma missed driving lessons, and my first car accident, that scary day on the freeway. she missed my first car and my first time driving a boy on a date. now, the first time i'd seen her in 7 years, and i was driving a boat, out on the open sea - just like a pirate. she was like the ocean, she surrounded me. she always told me i was a pirate.

seven years ago, i saw her with silver rings through my skin and the bluest waves flowing down from my head. today, she saw me in green, and i had grown into a pirate. i drove us to the roughest part of the water, the place where signs warned sailboats not to go. she liked that, that's what she would have done. today, my brother and i sat in the roughest waters in our boat, and we fed momma to the sea. it opened its mouth as wide as it could and told her "welcome home". momma always wanted to live by the sea.

momma sat floating on the surface - chalky and grey, like the ashes of a cigarette or a joint. i turned and faced the mountains and the wind blew through the little palm trees on the shore. they bowed their heads to momma, and birds flew overhead and cheered as if the queen was back to her throne. the trees clapped their hands as she entered, and speck by speck, she lowered herself into the dark. we sailed back to shore, a dolphin saluted us nearby. waves shot their cannons at our sides and salty smoke rose after each hit. i didn't look back, i didn't want to choke. the wind picked up. mother ocean let us go. i didn't cry, pirates don't cry, especially at sea. momma died on a sunday, and today we fed momma back to the sea.

grief isn't scared of pirates (unfortunately). even pirates are afraid of feeling sad. grief is a giant monster, with red eyes, a broken back, teeth like needles and a gaping mouth. i always pull out my cutlass to try and scare it off, but my wobbling hands entertain it and it eats the sword whole. grief is like a monster, and it's always chasing you, and it never slows down. you run and run and run and your chest shrinks and your lungs burn and your legs break. if you don't keep running, the grief monster catches you, and that always ends badly.

the monster named "she died this morning" watches you every night, when you try and fall asleep. it shakes you with bad dreams of her crying face. the monster is worse than an awful guest spending the week with you. the monster turns food in your mouth to your momma's ashes. you choke and vomit and shake. later, you get tired and you get in bed and the monster takes advantage of you every night in bed like a drunk date. his snores sound like earthquakes and breaking glass and the funeral director's southern accent. he scratches his stomach with long, sharp nails and it sounds like clinking metal in a morgue. the monster hides under your bed and on top of your bed and in the air and under your skin.

you drive down wilshire blvd. on your way to work and the monster disguises himself as a homeless man holding a sign that says "you're crying because your momma's dead." you pull up to the corner, he knocks on your window and you hand him five dollars so he'll go away. i get to work and the monster stands there with a clipboard and a tie and tells me i'm late. hours later, i'll come home and crawl in bed with the monster and curl up close to him, give in, embrace him.

where there's smoke (there's fire)

2010-01-19T02:02:00.001-08:00

it's hard to believe that at this exact moment a year ago, i was in my cabana at our camp in the jungle, with kate asleep next to me and a mosquito net draped over my body. i was probably wide awake from the racket the rain and howler monkeys made everynight, and the zips and hums of insects watching me through the net like lions at the zoo. i had a cold and was sneaking into an archaeologist's cabana to steal nyquil. the rain would finally go soft but i still couldn't sleep because of a mixture of the mildew mattress things we slept on, and how simultaneously good and nostalgic they smelt. at that point, i'd just stay awake so i could watch the sunrise break through the jungle canopy and a quiet blue light would hum over every surface that could see it. soon everyone would be up, and we'd be muddy and eating beans and rice for breakfast.

today was kind of a perfect day, as far as days recently can go. i've been sleeping in my sleeping bag (on top of my actual bedding) lately, just because. i slept in this morning and woke to loud rain and strong tea. i finished a 12-page essay in 3 hours. jordan and i went to have rainy day sushi and it was cheap and delicious. after that, i went hiking at my secret spot. the clouds were sort of cleared from the rain and the air smelled like mud. there's a certain part of the trail that goes into a grassy area with small, frail trees. some are standing, and some are chopped down, leaving good stumps for sitting and watching the view, which is marvelous. there are big green Californian mountains all around you, the 101 freeway to your left, and all of los angeles laying like a grid in front of you. the sun was setting over the mountains and the light on everything was golden. i was completely alone in the trees and it was so quiet. the whoosh of the freeway echoed off the hills and just sounded like wind. i could hear myself breathing and a coyote meandered out of a bush and looked me in the eye in between a few frantic sniffs. i hiked back up to my car and drove with the windows all down through dark mountain roads and the smell of the rain was so strong.

this land was made for you and me.

2010-01-17T18:43:00.000-08:00

sometimes we get mad at love. we pull out hair, scream, stomp our feet.
you said "it's like a massage - it's nice when you get it and it's nice while it lasts, but not worth dwelling over."
we blame love and it's unfair and we know it, like blaming video games and rappers for school shootings.

the best.

2010-01-14T10:57:00.000-08:00

pitter-patter, getting fatter.

2010-01-11T23:38:00.000-08:00

i don't think i account for how much i talk about dreams. part of me feels like a wimp for talking about dreams, and part of me doesn't feel so bad because it's sort of all i do, especially lately. hot weather makes me feel sleepy for the wrong reasons, and cold weather makes me sleepy in the sense that when i'm cold, i'm constantly striving for more comfy situations to be in.

this winter, it rained for almost a week, which is remarkable for los angeles. streets became wide, wide rivers and cars drove through like the evening news during a storm in oklahoma. my car is swedish and loves cold, wet weather. it also looks sort of like a big, green boat, so it was happy. i drove a lot when it was raining - pretending i was somewhere far away battling a maelstrom at sea in my big, green ship. i put the radio on and mazzy star guitar solos sounded like california and spaceflight and i cracked the window just a breath so the rain could sing with hope sandoval. each night during the grey rains, i'd crawl into my bed, a narrow life raft, and float off, through the rain and into another pleasant dream. sometimes the rain got so loud i'd wake up and read a book with a flashlight. sometimes i'd put music on and my cat, blanket, would sit curled around my feet with his eyes closed, waving and thumping his tail as if he were conducting the music.

most of the pictures i post on here i take with a little point-and-shoot 35mm olympus film camera that my grandma left me after she passed away. its batteries have given out on me and i haven't taken many photos lately. i found a roll in my suitcase mixed in with gum wrappers and business cards. i got it processed and it had some nice, random moments from the past month or so...

el matador christmas.

2009-12-25T23:51:00.001-08:00

for christmas, i got a banjo. my dad and i drove up the coast to the beach with boulders made of mussel colonies. i stood at the edge of where the mountains meet the sea trying to play but wasn't very good, but it still sounded nice and it felt like one hundred dollars to play looking out at the water, and turning around and looking at big green california mountains.

DO YOU DREAM IN CHOCOLATE?

i've been sick in bed for what feels like a month. my bed has sprouted arms and a ribcage around me. it's quiet everyday and time doesn't exist. there's no day and night since i'm consistently sleeping or drowsy from cold medicine. i fell asleep the other day and dreamed i was back in mexico. the horns honking outside our window sound like a marching band rising just early enough to annoy me. it’s a place of smog and music and history and couples everywhere groping on benches. little boys dressed like donkeys run up to you and beg for money. week-old dead dogs are still in the same place in the road and large men strum guitars while large women swat flies.

i woke up and worried about the future.

Belize and Guatemala video plunder!

2009-12-14T00:12:00.000-08:00

these are various videos i took in belize and guatemala. them memories are flooding back...

6:30am walking somewhere in flores, guatemala.

"grandpa" showing his old turntable on an island in the middle of a lake somewhere in the middle of guatemala.

our first night in guatemala, we bolted from the hostel towards a carnival that was in town, only to find a giant discoteque. we danced in the beer-soaked mud with vaqueros, it was epic.

our last day in belize. i have to say, sitting on a pier drinking rum in the caribbean with your friends while harry belafonte is playing is the happiest thing that could happen to anyone.

in cahal pech, this folk trio was passing through and played a concert for us one night. it was raining really hard and they started playing beatles and everyone's singing overpowered the sound of rain. also happy and epic.

soy una bruja.

2009-12-01T10:20:00.001-08:00

on a plane Sunday night, somewhere over middle America
i was sitting next to a Malaysian woman and her daughter.
the woman filed paperwork in a dentist's office, and her daughter was ten.
she was born in Malaysia and immigrated here on her own when she was 17.
she was going back for the first time since, to see her family.

they flew from Michigan to Chicago, Chicago to LA, LA to Hong Kong,
Hong Kong to Thailand, Thailand to Malaysia.

we happened to cross paths on the Chicago to LA flight.
she asked me what i was doing in LA and i said i lived there.
she squeaked and asked if i knew any celebrities while her daughter took pictures of the sunset
over the left wing of the plane.

i mentioned i worked for the academy of motion pictures, and saw tom hanks a few times at work.
she laughed and clapped her hands and put her hand on my leg for a moment, and then clapped and laughed again.
she told me malaysian soup recipes and how she was scared angelina jolie would take her daughter from her.
when the woman fell asleep, her daughter and i talked about what she was going to do in malaysia while drawing a garden. the garden had snakes playing trumpets and monkeys drinking beer. they fell asleep in a heap of mom and daughter and the sky closed its eyelids to sleep with the sun.

du Metier debut!

2009-11-19T12:34:00.000-08:00

here are my pieces for the du Metier show, which is opening tonight! i'm very excited.
these pictures are pretty crappy. i took them early yesterday morning while running out the door to school, and the sunlight was not in my favor. here's the pictures (click to enlarge.)

'the sea was in the sky, and it flew."
photo/cutout illustration

'fog spoke, and it sounded like a harpsichord.'
photo/cutout illustration

'your breathing grew so still, i thought you'd become a lake.'
photo/cutout illustration

'waves kissed my ankles, they were strangers.'
photo/cutout illustration

yesterday's sunset.

2009-11-13T15:57:00.000-08:00

i've been very overwhelmed with my workload recently, which has led to my physical and social confinement in recent weeks.
i really needed a break, so yesterday, jordan and i hiked up to my favorite spot, the trail above the 101 freeway and the hollywood bowl, in front of steven spielberg's house, and next to the hollywood sign. the clouds were dusting rain over everything and this was what the sunset looked like. it was exactly what i needed.

weehhooo

2009-11-11T00:38:00.000-08:00

high tide left pebbled footsteps on the shore.

2009-11-10T23:22:00.000-08:00

palos verdes, ca. 2009

The Love Song by Kahlil Gibran

2009-11-09T01:49:00.000-08:00

"A Poet once wrote a love song and it was beautiful. And he made many copies of it, and sent them to his friends and his acquaintances, both men and women, and even to a young woman whom he had met but once, who lived beyond the mountains.

And in a day or two the messenger came from the young woman bringing a letter. And in the letter she said , "Let me assure you, I am deeply touched by the love song you have written to me. Come now, and see my father and my mother, and we shall make arrangements for the betrothal."

And the poet answered the letter, and he said to her, "My friend, it was but a song of love out of a poet's heart, sung by every man to every woman."

And she wrote him again saying, "Hypocrite and liar in words! From this day unto my coffin, I shall hate all poets for your sake!"

all the big trees - riceboy sleep

2009-11-09T01:19:00.000-08:00

Jónsi & Alex - All the big trees from Jónsi & Alex on Vimeo.

duMetier show!

2009-11-04T23:20:00.001-08:00

hi folks. i'll have several works featured at the duMetier show here in L.A. on november 19th and 20th.
music, open bar, and other fun stuff.
click the photo above for more details.
see you there!

houses.

2009-11-02T21:09:00.000-08:00

somewhere in southern california, 2009.

fog spoke and it sounded like a harpsichord.

2009-11-02T20:53:00.000-08:00

palos verdes, ca. 2009.

i woke up early and drove through empty highways to get to the beach. i got lost several times on the way and i pulled over to ask a women in a fleece sweater walking her dog for directions, but she ignored me and walked on. the map blew out of my hands and a construction worker helped me find my way. when i got there it was warm. sunlight touched everything and i stood at the edge of the cliff and looked down past my feet. as i inched closer, i saw small waves curl into rocks and rusted car parts. suddenly the fog rolled in and you couldn't see down to the water. waves echoed up but you couldn't tell where they were. we traversed down a 200-foot cliff face and when we got to the bottom there was kelp all over glassy white rocks. walking across it, your feet would occasionally sink into it and several small black crabs would scatter outwards from your feet, like ripples. i lifted rocks and held brittle stars. i tried to catch a giant octopus but it didn't like us and bit me. i scraped my knee. a wave hit me. i held a little octopus that fit in the palm of my hand and he wouldn't let go of me, and for a moment, i felt loved by a stranger.

Dafali Wale Dafali Baja - Lata Mangeshakr & Rafi Sahab

2009-10-25T20:21:00.000-07:00

one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite movies.

whet yourself. whet your friends.

2009-10-21T23:57:00.000-07:00

francisco in the water, caye caulker, belize. 2009.

put your head to the ground, you can feel stone's baby kicking.

2009-10-21T23:52:00.000-07:00

strange man in a tuxedo sitting on a stairless abandoned WWI barrick.
somewhere near san francisco, ca. 2008.

we pulled over so fast to get this.

around your town.

2009-10-21T23:48:00.000-07:00

caye caulker, belize. 2009

bug bites from tall grasses.

2009-10-21T23:45:00.000-07:00

my feet being loved by parasites, 2009.

bandito & lamanai,

2009-10-21T23:36:00.000-07:00

bandito, the stray jungle hound. and the last photo is the view from half-way up the Jaguar Temple at Lamanai in Belize. you can see a tiny Jenny towards the center. Mayan indians performed sun rituals and seldom sacrifices from where i was standing.

still.

2009-10-21T23:32:00.000-07:00

That is the Rio Nueve in Belize.
If it weren't for gravity, standing by that river, I'd be carried off far.

Hideaway - Karen O

2009-10-21T00:09:00.000-07:00

While there were some things I didn't like about Where The Wild Things Are, there is nothing I don't like about the soundtrack. Especially this song. I think this is my favorite song of the year.

Thank you, Karen.

Portland, OR. 2006

2009-10-20T01:40:00.001-07:00

cross-processed color slide.