peter's houseboat, winona MN: alec soth

I do believe it's true
That there are roads left in both of our shoes
If the silence takes you
Then I hope it takes me too
So brown eyes I hold you near
Cause you're the only song I want to hear
A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere

driving home the other day, i was listening to death cab on full blast and this song struck me more than usual... i'm also obsessed with wolf parade. see previous post>

i shot some pictures in philly the other day with leyla that i'm quite excited about, and some on the way home from syracuse that also look pretty cool. lots of editing to do! but first, i have to get my freakin resume and portfolio out... tomorrow: to work!

do i want to be a photographer or a designer? as of late, i can't decide. though i seem to do photography for myself, and design for clients. maybe that is a hint as to how i should go about my future...

my mom got me a book that's a collection of stephen shore's work (Uncommon Places) for x-mas and i don't think i ever realized how amazing his work is. very inspiring. i also need to find alec soth's book, sleeping by the mississippi. i definately need to do some shooting around here before i go back to school.

here's a list of the things i'd like to take pictures of:
1. the culm (sp?) banks
2. a building on the side of 81 that's painted like an italian flag
3. a trailor park
4. harmony hills (or any homogenous looking houses)
5. christmas decorations
6. mr. denaples' giant piles of crushed cars
7. scranton
8. cow pastures & cows
9. portraits
10. the berwick power plant

i also need to get some flash slaves so i can do some bouncey lighting and find my automatic shutter release and such...

off to christmas dinner to consume some tasty margaritas woo!

give me your eyes, i need sunshine

and I could take another hit for you
and I could take away your trips from you
and I could take away the salt from your eyes
and take away the spitting salt in you
and I could give you my apologies
by handing over my neologies
and I could take away the shaking knees
and I could give you all the olive trees
oh look at the trees and look at my face and look at a place far away from here

Give me your eyes
I need sunshine
Give me your eyes
I need sunshine
Your blood
Your bones
Your voice
and your ghost

We've both been very brave
Walk around with both legs
Fight the scary day
We both pull the tricks out of our sleeves

but I'll believe in anything
and you'll believe in anything



I let you down
how could i be a fool like me
I have no lid upon my head
But if I did
You could look inside and see
What’s on my mind
I let you down, oh, forgive me
You give me love
Let me walk with you, maybe I could say
Maybe talk with you, open up
And let me through
Don’t walk away
Don’t walk away

but now she lives inside someone she does not recognize

it's quiet in here
inside my head
in the space i go
to hide from your eyes

it's quiet in here
inside my head
which is usually full of thoughts
and the silence is deafening

we are all a witness to the rape of the world

this is my mural print for yasser's class. can't wait to see what it looks like at 30x40 inches. he he. kat says it looks like i'm about 12, and dave says it's just plain creepy. i think it's successfully creep-tastic.

tonight i wrote a song. hooray : )

i have a dream that one day this nation will rise up

the end of the semester is nearing, and the work is piling up. i made a list the other day and i'm trying not to be completely overwhelmed by it right now...

i go home for thanksgiving on wednesday which i'm not really looking forward to. seems like just about every year around my birthday my parents and i end up in a huge fight. can't wait for this one!

the other night i was driving with kat and leyla to get doughnuts on erie. we turned around a corner and there was this guy walking up the street towards us, and i was looking at him as we got closer to him, and just as we were about to pass him, i realized he had a gun in his hand. i realize this shouldn't be too shocking considering this is syracuse, but besides scaring the shit out of me for a bit it made me think. i wasn't really worried that he'd shoot at us so much as where he was going with that gun...

i read the newspaper every day and i wonder what the hell a bunch of old, rich white men think they can do to fix the real problems plaguing our country. poverty, homelessness... there's this photographer who calls himself boogie who shoots a lot of documentary style city stuff who i think sums it up pretty well:

low income housing, apart from the poor, houses gangs, drugs and violence. it houses a community of hopeless young people, who never had a childhood or were given a chance to start a life free of the rules of the ghetto. prostitution, theft, extortion are the means of survival in a drug filled environment that leads into a vicious cycle of violenc,e poverty and high mortality rate.

twenty years ago, the crack cocaine plague spread throughout the ghettos of urban america. it brought a surge in violence, caused by territorial rivalry between gangs, all fighting for their share of drug business. the affordable price of crack brought this highly addictive and lethal substance into the hands of those always in search fora way out of their misery - the poor.

gang related shootings soared. a whole array of social problems came along to accompany the gang lifestyle, adn we are faced with them today. children who grew up with gang role models and who are coming from famillies with drug addicted parents and/or broken homes skipped childhood. to prove their maturity they got involved in crime and early sexual actrivity. teenage and adult prstitution, drug dealing and theft replaced work. teenage pregnancies becme the norm, with young girls hoping to form adn maintain their families, but failing to do so as a rule. single mothers were left to fight for a normal life for their children, but wihtout education or any job prospects, they never stood a chance.

and that was the beginning of a never-ending cycle.

boogie
http://www.artcoup.com/movie.html

makes my problems seem so insignificant...

i'll pretend that everybody here wants peace

design shapes people's thoughts and desires, their lives even. it's so powerful and so ubiquitous that design graduates should be made to pledge to use their new-found communicative powers for the good and betterment of mankind.
-cranmer & zappaterra

jack st*r says: the BRIGHT side is the RIGHT side

sunday night i spent about two and a half hours in a cold/gross bath tub all in the name of art. but i got the negs back from jeff today and they look like they're going to be amazing. we were shooting with a giant 4x5 because i'm going to scan it with the fancy $20,000 imacon scanner at 3,000 dpi and then edit and print digitally. we decided to do 4x5 because it's going to be printed at 30x40 inces. big = woo hoo! lots of numbers. my b...

thanks to jeff and loller and everyone else who was a big help to me this weekend : )

long weekend. must sleep...

don't dwell on the pain

this week has left me feeling absolutely exhausted... and all i want to do is sleep in super late tomorrow but i have to register at 10am and then meet with the dean of students at 1:30. so much for the sleeping on plan.

the work is starting to pile up for the end of the semester. i'm supposed to shoot my mural print for yasser this weekend but i don't know if it's going to happen due to the difficulty of the shoot and the people i need to help me with it.

i'm also having trouble falling asleep. every time my mind gets one spare second, all i can think about is the shitty stuff on my mind and i start to panic. i also need to go to the health center tomorrow because my cheek is infected from accidentally biting it too many times and my face is all puffy :
today mooney was talking about the book i'm supposed to be reading for class, and he was saying that we can't say that the world is inherently good, or inherently bad because we have no real way of measuring such a thing. i asked if evolution will bring a more inteligent person who will use their inteligence to better the world instead of blow each other up, which seems to be what we do with our advances in science, intelligence and technology thus far. he said just like the first hypothesis, there's no way to measure that either. we talked about war and what it is that allows us to kill each other in such situations. i said that any time we take the black and white stance that i'm right and you're wrong, either you're with us or you're with the terrorists, it makes us feel like we can do whatever is in our power to eradicate the 'wrong doers'. sometimes the world confuses me tremendously...

i'm exhausted and i need a hug, or someone to hug me and make this all magically go away and make me feel like the future will be a-ok. did you ever feel like something was very wrong inside, something you couldn't necessarily pinpoint, but you needed someone else to just fix it for you? i don't know what i want or need you to do, just do -something-.

i need more love every day of my life

Love is not about getting something done. It is about communication, about realizing that someone else is not just an object to manipulate or control, but is a real subject as well. Love is about bearing witness, accepting the unique and irreducible presence of another. Recognizing that another person is both different and real, according to Irigaray, means "respecting you as an other, accepting that I must draw myself to a halt before you as something insurmountable, a mystery, a freedom that will never be mine." I recognize that you are and will always be different from me, that I cannot see through you and thus you will never be entirely visible to me. But that recognition is the beginning of a new way of relating, one based not on manipulation of an object, but on communication with another subject. It's not a world of force and impact. It's a realm of attention and openness-openness to you. "To you" is an indirect object: the action engages it, but in a very specific way. I listen to you; I respond to you. Not to anyone in general, but to you in particular. The title of Irigaray's book, by the way, is I Love to You. Put simply, what she's trying to point out is the difference in language and in life between "I hit the ball" and "I listen to you."

http://www.allsoulsnyc.org/publications/sermons/ggsermons/indirect-object.html




i want to be loved because you want to love me, not because i have to ask you to love me.

love is watching someone die

the sun is up, the sky is blue, it's beautiful, and so are you

so this was my last photo project for yasser's class. my favorite is the one with the stitches. lots of photoshop fun on that one. kudos to jeff and leyla for being so patient with me and helping with the shooting. i think i'm going to do one of the headshot type images for our mural print. i like them because they're definately kind of creepy and surreal.

things have been kind of stressful as of late, but today was a breath of fresh air, so to speak. i got 22% off of the new society of publication design anual at the bookstore which was awesome. i also ran into johnna at lightworks and i volunteered to teach her how to use photoshop (hooray!) and we're going to do lunch or something. i was just really excited to run into johnna because i really like her a whole lot and she really pushes me artistically. she's also funky and honest and kind of weird and awesome and i appreciate that a whole lot.

today in digi photo i got to teach my group about the pen tool and taught them some of the things i learned how to do at make this summer. i really like teaching people things. share the love/knowledge!

yasser also looked at some other images i shot this weekend and said he really liked two of them (which i shall post) and when i asked him why, he said they're kind of just magical. that makes me happy : )
so i think for my final project i shall continue shooting along the same vein.

so apparently miranda july has a blog as well and she posts all sorts of delightfully thoughtful tidbits. you should check it out.
http://meandyou.typepad.com/

ps: the new nominee for the supreme court, judge alito, ruled on a bill in pennsylvania that said women could have an abortion only if they had permission from their husbands. ----- that makes me want to yell nasty things ------ needless to say, i'd rather not HAVE the right to an abortion than have to ask my HUSBAND PERMISSION. note, that requires that you have a husband in order for it to even be possible for you to have an abortion...

sigh.

360° with this shit

it's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life, and i'm feelin good

go kat go comm design woooooo! you can do it!!! and remember: uncle carlo awaits! : )

today in vis comm, this guy presented to us and he was really imspiring. he made me feel like there just might be a place for me in the design world... he kind of looked like a shorter, slightly stouter version of george cloony. he talked a lot about rejecting stereotypes and his refusal to fit into any one box. he said when someone applies for a job at his design firm, before he even looks at their book, he sits down with them for an hour or so and so he can assess them as a person first. he also said the most important things he looks for in a designer are emotion & collaboration. i got your emotion right here, bitches! i'd also like to think that the d.o. has prepared me to work in just about any collaborative situation imaginable.

tuesday in existentialism, mooney talked about nietzsche's concept of lifes stages as camel>lion>child. the camel being the stage where you bear life and other's burdons, the lion where you roar against 'thou shalt' and the child being innosence and exploration. leyla said i cycle through those on a weekly basis. seems more like daily at this point... lion roar! (mrrow)

lightworks is going to pay me to tutor some professor on how to use his digital camera for 10 bucks an hour. woo hoo! i get to show him how to use a histogram and some basic photoshop work which i'm really excited for. i like teaching, and i'd like to think i make a pretty good teacher (most of the time).

tomorrow i'm going to light a water bottle on fire to demonstrate 'plastic in action' for my plastics class. don't ask me what it means, i just want to see what happens when i burn a water bottle in the middle of the comm art parking lot.

jeff stopped by today to talk about my upcoming photo project which i'm super excited/super nervous for. we're going to be shooting friday around noon and it's going to involve lots of lighting which i've never done before (hence why jeff is helping). i'm also going to need to sew me some chicken skin thursday night... hehe. kat said for a vegetarian that's pretty die hard.

the hardest thing to do is find somebody who believes in you

this weekend, loller and i rented 'you and me and everyone we know'. it was a mix of rediculously awesome and kind of creepy and a lot of other things that aren't worth trying to explain. suffice to say it's how we connect with each other and interact. a must rent, i would say. the movie made me think about a lot of things and had a lot of really interesting dialogue.


most of the time i feel like this:

I don't want to have to do this living.
I just walk around.
I want to be swept off my feet, you know?
I am prepared for amazing things to happen.

I can handle it.


and some days, like today, i feel more like this:

Fuck!
Fuck you! Fuck me!
Fuck old people!
Fuck children!


Fuck peace!





Fuck.







the past few days have left me feeling exhausted...

and it won't stop raining

one percentile of my communication

sometimes my internet works like dialup. that makes me sad because it is not dialup. is dialup one word or two?

i want to know what my cat is thinking. stream of conciousness style. like if you have no 'words' to identify the world then how do you identify things? through feelings? i've been trying to figure this one out since i was a kid. and why do cats have wiskers on their foreheads? would you call those eyebrows? i heard an artist speak on wednesday about how evolution will make humans have smaller eyes because we won't need to depend on them as much for survival as we have in the past and we'll have really large foreheads to hold excesses of information. unfortunately knowledge does not equal wisdom.

sometimes when i look my cat in the eye he stares back at me, in my eyes. but i dont' really feel the same energy as i do when i look at another person in the eyes. which brings me to my next point. why don't we like to look each other in the eye? and what is the strange feeling that we get when we actually make that connection? is it just some social construction that tells us that we shouldn't look too long into each other's eyes because it means something specific or is there some sort of exchange of some sort that we don't really understand... i'm confused. maybe i'll ask mooney. he seems to be able to shed light on these sorts of situations. he was talking about how kids are always experimenting by doing things like running into couches and jumping and spinning and stuff. they seem to be constantly testing the world to see how far they can go. it seems to be very spontaneous though. where's the transition where we lose that kind of wonderment and learn to play by the rules?

i realize this all sounds kind of crazy. stream of conciousness...

it's been grey and/or rainy for over a week i think. i would like to see the sun sometime soon. unfortunately, when i checked the weather there was some sort of horizontal rain/wind like icon i've never seen before on a weather forecast. whatever it means it can't be good and does not in any way, shape, or form resemble any icon i've ever seen represent sunshine. unfortunately.

tomorrow morning there will be the little gem and eggs and pancakes with bacon on top.

nina simone rocks my world : oh lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

i want to be a graphic designer but i also like to make cool looking things which i'm supposed to reject as a designer. more confusion.

obeying stop signs and curing diseases

wipe your feet really good on the rhythm rug

yesterday i started working at the ski shop. it's pretty boring considering all i do is stand around but i am getting paid $6 and hour to do my standing. better than nothing i guess.

today is very grey and i don't like this weather one bit. this is the view from my bedroom window. stunning, isn't it?

best buy still has my ipod and i miss it quite a lot. sad, but true.

john stewart is definately my new god. http://politicalhumor.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=politicalhumor&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifilm.com%2Fifilmdetail%2F2652831

this week we have thursday off which means a nice long thursday to sunday weekend. hooray! i'm going to be going to philly with leyla to her nephew's b-day party and then we're going to stop in at my home to get some delicious apple cider. my favorite part of fall is the ritter's apple cider. best cider in the world, bar none.

apparently there was no arrested development last night. i am having no idea why.

speaking of having no idea, i am missing one anne kenady in my life. speaking of anne kenady, i have no idea what i want to do with my life when i get out of here. newspaper? graphic design? teach for america? art direction? small firm? east coast/west coast? certainly not advertising, that's for damn sure. i guess the scariest part is that i may have to go somewhere by myself. i don't think i like the sound of that idea at all... the future is looking kind of uncertain and i'm trying to ignore it for now.

and lastly, yesterday morning i woke up from a dream where i was locked in my room and screaming my head off. it was kind of scary and not a cool way to start the day off at all. i wonder what my subconcious is trying to tell me...

what sarah said

And it came to me then that every plan
Is a tiny prayer to father time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU
That reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself
That I’ve already taken too much today
As each descending peak on the LCD
Took you a little farther away from me
Away from me

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines
In a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend
On a faulty camera in our minds
And I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose
Than to have never lain beside at all
And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground
As the TV entertained itself

‘Cause there’s no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes ‘round and everyone lift their heads
But I’m thinking of what Sarah said
That love is watching someone die

So who’s gonna watch you die?

this is not about love, cuz i am not in love

i had digital photo this morning with yasser which was awesome as usual. he tried to say organism and it came out as orgasm. how freudian of him. our next assignment is 'altered reality' and i'm super stoked. he wants us to shoot something and alter it digitally which means i get to put my digital rebuilding skillz i learned at marke this summer to use in something other than moving zippers on products or changing stupid backgrounds for nordstrom products. hooray!

today i got in a fight with my mom over a bunch of crap that turned out to be bigger to me than i'd originally thought. she's off on some cruise with my aunts so i won't talk to her for a while. our relationship has turned to crap once again...

i got the new fiona apple album yesterday and i'm stoked as she has not put out an album since i was in high school. hooray X2!

tonight i have to finish my picture frame assignment and get all my ads printed out. i'm stoked to see what they look like when i hang them all up together on the wall.

but then the dove of hope began his downward slope

i find this highly disturbing

everybody knows about mississippi goddamn

today kat showed me a very disturbing image of a pig pushing a shopping cart filled with port products while wearing a chef's hat that says pork on it. it reminded me of this picture. quali-tay.

odd events/thoughts for the day:

leyla: never mix sorority girls with art. all you end up with is plastic shoe sculptures and tri-delt bracelets

a large man in a coffee shop singing 'my country tis of thee' very off key, and very loudly

loller grabs sush's tail and points it at him and states:
sush, i have a tail for you...
there was a little sush, not long ago who liked to sit on laps and make their owner warm... he would just sit and shed his fur, and wait for people to love him which his softness did incur.

note to self: must make cat (not to be confused with kat) stop eating the apartment nature.

When God told Abraham to kill the one thing that meant the most to him in life, it baffles me how he could just say “Well ok G.O.D., whatever you say. You da man.” If some deity descended from the heavens and told me to kill my best friend, no matter how many big, dusty ol’ books I’d read on his/her wrath/all knowingness, I’d promptly tell him/her to go fuck themselves in the not-so-kindest way possible.

waiting around to die

sometimes i don't know where
this dirty road is taking me
sometimes i can't even see the reason why
i guess i keep a-gamblin
lots of booze and lots of ramblin
it's easier than just waiting around to die

wee!

what we need is love

it's sunny outside and that's nice. i have work to do but don't really feel like doing it which isn't so nice. i also have a big pile of clothes to put away which i don't feel like doing. what do i feel like doing, you ask? not really sure. whatever suits me at the moment i guess which isn't anything i really need to be doing... i feel like this a lot lately

went to see the constant gardner last night with leyla at westcott which was pretty awesome. lesson learned: you have the power to change every life you encounter. do i believe that? i hope so. i also learned that uncovering the truth will get you assassinated by the british government.

i have a paper to write for mooney in response to fear & trembling and i still don't really know what the hell i should be writing about. mooney rocks my world. any thoughts on infinite resignation?

went to the used bookstore yesterday and bought a book with all sorts of old school wood carvings in it. i'm looking for something to go with my tattoo idea. a woodcut plaque (plack?) or a fancy looking ribbon with the words 'i defy you, stars' on it. i want it on my forearm. mom's not gonna be too happy.

i also need to learn more about einstein. he had all sorts of crazy awesome thoughts...

rain rain go away

mmm blog. i'm gonna try not to get myself in trouble with this thing...

today it is quite rainy and i had ad design. two strikes for monday. i feel like i'm getting better at this ad stuff but every time i bring work in it just sucks the big one. big time. next week's assignment: big & tall and petite sophisticate. dear lord.

i think it's time to go to the mall and get my dying ipod fixed.