Ch-Ch-Changes

(Leah Before The Church of Our Lady Immaculate, 2012)

Some of the most embarrassing moments of my life have been lifted from immediate memory indefinitely. In fact, I can't quite remember any of them other than the really funny-in-retrospect moments, which are also few.

There was a time in my life with my mind tended to remember the really sad moments of my life, as if they were something monumental and all-important to who I am today (or then). Somewhere along the line that value in my memory shifted and now I can only remember the best of times. There are of course some sad memories that have stayed with me and will remain with me probably forever. I just wonder what made all that change? What event or events happened in order for such a drastic change to occur for me to suddenly stop remembering the sad parts of my life for the happy ones. The only thing I could think of, and as cheesy as this is to say, is love. When that thing happened and changed everything, even my concept of memory.

As I trace back my past, it was three years ago and of all the seasons it was winter, and a cold one at that. But inside my small apartment at the time, on carpeted floors and a careful collect of lamps I was absolutely warm sharing one moment after another with that special so-and-so. The outside world could not enter that space and with each moment passing it grew a deeper sense of warmth. I remember writing my best love letters then, on a typewriter, and with grammar and misspelled words omitted to the fact that there was passion written with blood on those once blank and lifeless pieces of paper. I didn't actually soak my blood on my type writer's ribbon nor did that warmth nor passion last into the warming weather, and things that grew in that fall-winter love story of my life in 08-09 have halted in place, have been even forgotten or misplaced and have remained three years behind and three years without progress. I can't imagine the dust that has gathered on their surfaces nor can I imagine their once brilliance. All that remains are shadows of once was and the swell that followed the end of that love.

What happened happened and the transformations that occurred then stay with me now. I started to recall some of my happiest moments of my life again. And where there was once sadness is happiness, a happiness I may or may not have failed to shared with others but one that exists within my heart and makes me feel good.

There is nothing profound to say here, nothing out of the ordinary, this is just how it is, and one thought out of an infinite amount. All I can say is that nothing is solid, not sadness nor happiness, not love and regret, and that everything shifts and everything falls only to ascend in a whole new way. The wheel is constantly being reinvented and only our stubbornness to hold on will prevent us from changing, to shifting, to being reinvented as we perform the act of letting go one time after another until nothing makes sense (only to make all the world of sense later). Just. Let. Go. And be swallowed by the changes.

Under Artificial Starlight

There be no images on this one. (I'm sorry, you'll just have to trust my words for entertainment).

I don't want to be too ambiguous on this one. I don't want to stray from the truth either. But I also don't want to point fingers and give names. I want whatever feeling I am about to describe and even produce to feature no name and be directed to you, whoever you are, without the notion of "you" as just anyone, but to a particular person that just might be you.

With that said, shall we begin.

I believe it was 1998. There was this all-night event at the local roller ring and I was twelve at the time. I had been to this event the previous year, and for a bunch of kids living in a small town in the middle of the desert its promise was the funnest night of the year. It never failed.

This was a time of extreme emotions, something in my adult life is rare or nonexistent, and crushes for girls were going wild back then. I could remember some of their names. There was a Genelle, a Mary, a Carrie, a Megan, and the rest I have sadly forgotten. I remember the climate of their hands, I believe I held each one of them during the "Snowball", a segment of the evening where we would skate around in a circle, hand in hand, with only the mirrorball and its orbit of starlight to illuminate an other wise dark cave-like room. I remember just the touch of one of these girl's hands was enough to shoot some vague notion of love into my bloodstream and give a rush to my little heart. I held it together and acted cool with my Jnco jeans and Korn t-shirt.

One after another we would hold hands, skate with what appeared to be lost souls floating in pair before and behind us. We'd talk or not talk and felt absolutely comfortable in each other's presence. I didn't know what it was to be someone else's lover at the time but I was definitely ready to learn for each one of these absolutely beautiful girls. Around and around we went, time frozen, and time completely irrelevant we created a moment and then shared it. The slow R'n'B music, something of the Boyz2Men sound catalog, would end and hip-hop music would replace it, along with the gelled multicolored lights of the room. The feeling was still there, not on our flesh but in our hearts. Some of us would make out with our Snowball partners behind the broken-down arcade machines, others would dick around on the skating floor.

I remember having a broken cell phone in a holster on my belt, maybe even a pager. And in retrospect that was completely dorky of me but at the time was completely awesome. In that small bubble of time, it was cool. What was also cool was sneaking in booze or pot into the joint, and during 98' all-night skate I brought my first stash of weed there. One of my older sister's friends had given it to me and three of us took off our skates and headed for the sand dunes outside to smoke it for the first time. I can't remember if it was a joint or if one of us had a pipe, all I remember is Megan, KC, and I were out on the sand dunes far enough from adults and the music of the roller ring and we were alone amongst the stars (there were a lot to be seen). They say you it is rare to get high the first time you do it but what I experienced was something out of the ordinary. After smoking a joint or a couple of bowls, we were looking up at the stars. Towards the northeast was one particular star that seemed to be moving closer and closer. It was slow at first to the point it appeared to be questionable for its movement but then it moved faster and towards our direction. It was coming after us! In all of my memory I remember this being very much real and not any sort of trip from the marijuana I had just smoked for the first time. This was very much happening as this star-like light approached us. Eventually it just hovered in place as if watching us. Minutes passed and then, out of nowhere, it moved back towards the northeast in lightning speed and vanished into the darkness of the sky. All three of us witnessed the same cosmic event and all three of us had just finished smoking a bunch of pot but I can say this much, all three of us were not nearly stoned enough to simultaneously had imagined what appeared to be a UFO approaching our direction just before zipping away into the night sky.

We returned to the scene inside the roller ring and continued to skate, talk, rap, and breakdance. We were holding something within us that could not be told to anyone else, and we believed that no one will ever believe us.

To this day I still believe that event had happened and to this day I still believe no one will ever believe me. The only difference is that I no longer care for anyone to believe me because they weren't there, that event did not happen to them, just as they weren't skating, holding this girl's hand or that girl's hand in perfect clamminess or dryness, when we were twelve or thirteen, living in the desert just below a grand scene of the cosmos. I still believe in everything this story had to tell; of simple romance, the ambiance of love, going in circles in the night, smoking pot, and having moments that deny all logic and rationale. That the twelve year old boy is still alive today and that he is just as open-minded for the sky to part and present something of cosmic mystery, and that it will haunt me my entire life just as the love in my heart that has taken on many names still aches my very soul so today. The only thing that has changed is that the cellphone in no longer broken nor in a holster, I no longer listen to Korn nor rollerskate, but everything else is still relatively the same at the same time as it is completely different. What is important is that the importance of that person to whom I was is still important today. I am still making loops around and around, they just aren't as simplified as the ones made in a roller ring.

The hands that I hold, the climate that is created when two humans meet down there and their flesh is matched with the flesh of another, and all this while the cosmos slowly move across the sky made have changed, but the essence is still the same. Just because it is daylight or there is too much light pollution in the night sky, doesn't mean the stars have disappeared, nor has the possibility of things existing outside of one plane of reality lessen or disappeared. We can still go crazy, we can still dream, we can still imagine, and things can still take us away from the reality of the everyday, without drugs, without extreme emotion, and with just chance and an open heart (willing to give anything out of the ordinary a chance to manifest) can still very much happen, and are happening.

Oh Yeah

(Untitled Image, from My Room in Kaua'i, 2011)

(And the video that influenced the Untitled Image above, 2011)

Perhaps it is more true than said that we are creatures of all sorts of natures, from all sorts of origins, and the older we get as a species the more complicated our identity becomes - as we grow further away from nature.

And even truer is that we are wild, wilder, and wildness, with some of us taking on the wildside more than others. Whether you bare a lioncloth or you roar from swinging vines or you just like to let loose and drop trou, there is an instinct within us all that wants to let go of whatever this plane of existence is for another. Slip into the skin of a beast and run wild.

When was the last time you yelled? Yelled not out of aggressive anger but out of wildness? When was the last time you made animal noises in public? When was the last time you alienated yourself amongst humans? Have you lost touch with nature? Do you feel like an animal wearing human clothes in a human world? When was the last time you were naked in nature, feeling the harsh ground of the woods, of a creek, of a driftwood covered beach with your bare feet? When was the last time you felt free?

If I could I'd run on all fours but my legs and arms are disproportionate to each other. If I could I'd roar like a lion but instead I'll meow like a large domestic cat. I'll bring my face to a face painter and ask for her or him to paint the face of a fierce-looking lion over my non-fierce-looking face. I'll grow my hair out like a mane. I'll stop talking. I'll wear fake fangs. I won't talk to anyone. I'll hide out in caves and look outside and see a world which is my domain. Paws crossed, lying on my belly, drunk from the sunlight of the day, and sober from the darkness of night. I will not think of emailing this person, checking my facebook, shooting off a text message to that person, ordering a latte, waiting in line, having phone sex, tweeting my thoughts, instead I will wait till I become strange, and when I become strange I will become normal again.

A gallop, a chase, a smile on your face! Doesn't it. Doesn't it feel great? To be wild, child. To be freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee (breath) eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Goddamn! If a wall of bricks cometh before us then a wall of bricks breakth before us. And in the debris and in the dust and particles flying everywhere our faces emerge. Grimish, crazy, wild, I say, you say, "let's be crazy", "let's", "let's run free", "let's". "Yes." "YES!". "Alright". "Aaaaaaaaaaalright".

"OH YEAH".

Nostalgia for the Present

(Mysterious Beach Babe, from Aloha, and HI, 2011)

Thanks to the lovely ladies at Laid Bare my snapshots will finally be exhibited for the public to see in real life. The entire exhibition is a collection of snapshots from a wide range of photographers and artists, with some being street photographers and some being conceptual artists that like to take snaps here and there. There's some fantastic work in this show so I suggest if you're in Toronto on February 2nd you should probably come.

The show opens February 2nd, 2012, at Forgetus Collective, 163 Sterling Rd, Unit 29, 7 - 11pm.

Here's the complete list of participating artists:

Alexander Alekseenko, Pauline Beaudemont, Kyle Brohman, Timothy Burkhart, Michael Raymond Clarke, Kira Crugnale, Nathan Cyprys, Erich Deleeuw, Lisa Folkerson, Ben Freedman, Aaron Friend Lettner, Amy George, Hudson Hayden, Eriver Hijano, Abby Hutchison, Vid Ingelevics, Chelsee Ivan, Andrew Jarman, Joachim Johnson, Michael Juneau, Dimitri Karakostas, Santa Katkute, Gavin Keen, Nicole Kim, Brendan George Ko, Sasha Kurmaz, Lindsay Lauckner, Drew Lint, Elena Malkova, Fraser Mccallum , Joshua Macdonald, Andrew McGill, Ania Mokrzycka, Andrew B. Myers, Ryan Nangreaves, Katie Newman, Mark Peckmezian, Andrea Leigh Pelletier, Deanna Pizzitelli, Claudia Puchiele, Marishka Radwanski, Anne Rawn, Van Robinson, Andy Schmidt, Kelsey Stasiak, Kyle Tait, Matthew Tammaro, Michelle Louise Wilson, Kavin Wong, Aaron Wynia, Aabid Youssef and Carina Yu.

learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 21

(Ωmega, from We Soon Be Nigh!, 2012)

Replica (on Loop)

In a cave. In a swell. In a dark and secret fold in the earth where one can yell and scream as loud as they wish and give it their all is swallowed whole and taken from them. Where you can lose yourself. Lose a part of you that is dying and in need of renewal. There's fragile things along the cave walls and there for you to grab and throw deeper into the cave. You can hear the sound of porcelain shatter into a million and sprinkle down into powder. You can burn the world a new down there. You can forget all your troubles. You can be swallowed whole yourself and eventually you throw yourself into the mess of darkness and uncertainty, -and be forgotten, destroyed, shattered, and lost yourself.

But unlike your yells and unlike those fragile things you threw into the darkness your body and mind will not produce a sound. It is almost sad that they don't, giving no satisfaction in destruction. But that is exactly it, nothing is being destroyed, just renewed. Your bones crunch and crack, your flesh is tore and ripped, the sound of bones breaking resonate internally and your nerves are burning with pain. You shake and you see white flashes as your face smacks against a solid rock wall, which is just darkness against darkness -an invisible wall. Eventually your body, lifeless in its decent, comes to a rest upon the jagged rocks below. You call for help but only the echo in your mind swirls around and eventually fades to nothing. You are high from the pain your body is feeling, you are lost for the darkness that is absolute and all around. Your flesh is burning and your thoughts are distracted by the pain occurring throughout.

No angels come to rescue you. No guiding light from the world above shine on your hopeless mess. Instead you get up and crawl out of the cave. Each step you crawl hurts like hell and you laugh at how ridiculous this all is. You keep pushing yourself further and further until you no longer hear the drops of cave sweat falling from the ceiling above. The sound of a jungle surrounds you, the softness of soil meets your dirty hands and though it is completely dark and there might be tigers or panthers or other things that can very much kill you you feel relieved, perhaps even safe. You have the strength to walk again and so you walk. Brushing against you is the softness of leaves and branches. You wonder where your body is taking you and realize it doesn't matter, -for you are in a jungle in the middle of the night, surrounded by the calls of nocturnal creatures and the howling wind. Your feet are shoeless, your legs are pantless. You are naked and your gentiles are vulnerable to things that can catch or poke them. You realize you have the strength to run and so you run. And by some sort of miracle you run and you run freely without hitting something hard and something that could stop you. And though your feet laid bare there is no pain in the peddles and twigs. The dry blood on your flesh and the open wounds give you strength, they tell your body that any pain your endure now is a joke, is a half-ass excuse, is only just the tip, to what you have gone through, that you can perhaps survive just about anything because you have survived just about everything. Bullets could come flying at you, they can even hit you, they matter not to you now. That panther can come roaring out of the bush and it could grab you with its teeth and tare you apart, -it matters not to you now. You run, your face is smiling, and you are laughing again.

Isn't it ridiculous, isn't it amazing, aren't the gods crazy, and aren't the cosmos and everything in-between absolutely absurd and amazing and beautiful and fucking grand, great, and puzzling? A grain of sand on a beach. A drop of rain in a hurricane. A brick in New York. A leaf in a forest. A key in all of the music there ever was (past, present, and future). A comma in every written word. An "uh" in every talk. A cancer cell, a particle of light, a single-cell organism, an earthworm, a flake of dust, a woody cell, a pigment, a pixel, a dot, a sample, a clone, a cry, a river, a bend, a wind, a word, a thought, a feeling, a place, a history, a nothing, and everything. All fading, all folding, all going away and coming back, blowing, touching, rolling with the tide, in and out as the moon comes closer as the moon moves farther away, away, away. Until...Until...And then...and Afterall...Is Said. Is Done. Undone. With Vengeance. The Return of. pt. II. pt. III.

The sky above / The clouds rolling by / In patches of gray and grayest blue / A white and rainy dreariness / Rolling by / Just / Rolling by

On repeat. Endless. Endlessly. Rolling by. In time-lapse. In slow-motion. In a still. In a moment. Everything lost and everything found. Slowly coming to an end and then a deep breath in and a final exhale. Ahhhhhh....

Infinity and Beyond

(Workers Disappear in Stanley Park in the Summer of 11')

The times are a'definitely a'changing. And so Wildly Beau-Billy goes into a drunken fist-throwing rage screaming about the apocalypse and his sister's second child. We were wild and wilder then but the times have changed and who we are today are ugly adults of what we once were: ugly kids.

-When was the last time you cried?

-I'm not sure if I was crying sad tears or just tears of pain but it was definitely in the summer.

-What made you cry?

-I felt like the doctor was cutting my umbilical cord. I came screaming into this world and I swear I remember being born and being content in my mother's womb. As soon as that fucker cuts that connection with you and your mother it's over you're stuck with this world, -there's no going back.

-So what happened this summer?

-What?

-This. Summer. What made your eyes swell up out of pain?

-Oh. I felt something being shivered from me by someone else's hands. It was after the funnest week ever and when it came to the end, that end that just had to happen I was driving home from the airport and came home to a household that was suddenly quiet and abandoned. It was all too obvious that something was definitely missing and it wasn't something I couldn't put my finger on I knew damn-fuckin' well what was missing. The feeling of lost is like being free from a day job for an entire week in the summer and the weather is just perfect, I mean PUR-RR-Fect, and you're having one adventure after another and you are in a state of absolute carefree-ness and then you have to go back to work, it starts to rain and get colder, no one is around anymore to hang out when you finish work, and you realize you're broke and broken and summer is over. So I was in my empty bed and I felt this well inside of me press hard against the cavity of my body it forced my eyes to swell up and cry. Not bitch tears, I wasn't sobbing my whole was just dealing with this intense feeling. It was how I imagined my father crying, some heavy shit just happened and his eyes would more or less bleed tears out.

-And this was the last time you "more or less" cried?

-As far as I can remember, yes.

-Did you feel any better afterwards?

-Probably not, but I feel like I have some dark well of sadness and shit inside of me that would prefer if I cry. In crying you release some steam, you let it all out. I remember when I was much younger I would let it all build up inside of me and then just release it. It was like eating a lot of food for months without taking a poop and you have the urge to go number two but you don't let yourself do it. Weeks go by and you're practically sweating it out and then when you can't take it anymore you still hold it in. Gofers and Turtleheads. And then when you pass that threshold and you are now in the space which is Infinity and Beyond you release it. It comes raining down and by then what is pouring from your eyes aren't sad tears but painful tears. And the feeling felt like a weight being lifted from your shoulders having lived a significant amount of time with it pushing you down. I can't remember the last time I did that and I feel like some damn rock got lounged in the pipe that lets it all out.

-So what chu sayin'?

-I secretly want to cry like a small child. Cry uncontrollably and with no sense of reason or rationality.

-But you can't because of this theoretical rock that is lounged in your theoretical pipe of emotions.

-E x a c t l y.

WWB told stories but most of all he told strange predictions that always turned true. All of a sudden his eyes would roll back at any second and his voice would grow deeper and slower as he told you of his foresight. Hauntingly, his altered voice would narrate a tale of soontocome. It would be sometimes hours, days, weeks, and even years (which were the most troubling since you were waiting for something to happen for a long time,anticipating and it was always when you were relaxed about it when it would strike) before the predictions came into actualization.

-Watch Out!

-What do you mean? Why are your eyes rolled back? Why are you talking that way?

-It will come to you when you least expect it. It will strike you when you are down. It will bring you even further down and you will swear you feel the heat of the hell below. And when you reach that threshold you will continue down and when you finally reach Infinity and Beyond it will disappear. As if waking upon a dream you will return to normal, but this normal is suddenly renewed, you are relieved, gaining another chance, a new lease at life. Everything will taste sweeter and what you have is suddenly rendered precious. We all need to be renewed.

[faints and falls to ground and starts to shake violently]

-WWB. You alright? What just happened? Stop shaking like that! You're scaring us!

-MOTHERRRRRRRR! NO! NO! STOP MOTHER! NOOOOOOOO!

[wakes up and stands up on his feet, looks around, and says:]

-Why do you all have that look on your face?

The bike ride home was haunting. I couldn't shake what was shaken from his words as the street lights passed by I felt as if hovering above my former self. What is going on? My world was now a strange dark place and even the comforts of home were robbed of their safety. My bed felt colder than before and as the cat crawled up to my feet and my eyes felt heavy I escaped. Leaving one world behind and entering another. What a strange feeling lingered on the end of my tongue before becoming tasteless. I was asleep.

EVERYTHING THAT HAS HAPPENED TODAY. HOW I FELT. WHAT I DID. ARE ALL BEING DECONSTRUCTED AND RENDERED INERT BEFORE BEING PLACED BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM.

(All while I sleep deeply of tropical adventures and a place called Kokomo, that's where I wanted to go.)

A faint light glows in the darkness before becoming brilliance like a thousand suns. Within the glow is a face, it is too bright to see any features but my mind knows it is a face, one of the first abilities we learn as new borns. I try to peer through the brightness willing to go blind to see but still nothing but pain. Something draws me to this vague face, I feel its gaze upon me and yet I struggle to realize it. My voice calls out but it seems does not acknowledge me. It continues to glow too brightly for me to see it. It continues to stare, watching me struggle to look into it. All I want to is see it, it is so bright, it makes me go crazy, I feel the sanity bleeding from my eyes in a warm ooze. I have a fever. And before I overheat from its glow it disappears. Just. Like. That. A flash, a fart in the wind - gone.

This brings us up to speed where we are now. Waiting and occupying our time as if we are doing something greater than waiting but that is exactly what we are doing. The time spent between represents the void that is being filled but the void is still a void and still very much a canyon, a valley, a grand lower plane. And as the rain spits upon the window and as the cars swoosh by on slick surfaces the sky above is painted a gray dull that can't seem to quit nor change for an entire day. Why if moments like dull rainy weather only lasted for half an hour, that they'd come and go like the sunset. Would we romanticized them then, and what would become of the sunset if it were to stay a brilliant red, orange, yellow, and pink for days on in and never change? Like a beautiful moment on repeat, some minimal piece by Philip Glass repeating over and over with moment made exactly the same replaced over and over. Like each great moment of life replaced over and over. And whether you want that moment to last, whether you are trying to hold on to this light, oh so brilliant light, it will be replaced and it will move on just as the sunsets and Philip Glass arpeggios. A dance, a furious cycle, an endless ending, or the final hour of The Return of the King. Where mercy is meaningless and the beginning and ending are forgotten and all you have is the middle. To look at your future before you with squinting eyes for it is far too bright and far too grand. Over time you become desensitized and the light is now easier on the eyes and what you see fits the phrase, "It is what it is". What then? No more Trouble or trouble, no more distraction, no more no more, just this. And what is this, I ponder, what we have, in our hands, before us now, standing, sitting, waiting, but not waiting, and hovering through time above its former self. What do we have, baby, what do you not, and everything in-between and all around. To infinity and beyond.

-We got something now, we really got it.

-What is it?

-I don't know but we got it. That's. All. That. Matters.

[The world grows dark and then bright and dark again and bright and it continues into infinity]

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 20

(Kevin on the Fire Escape, 2011)

Nothing Is.

If it doesn't matter it won't happen.

Before you is the air of your life and it is in reach of your hands. You can grab it if you wish but something is stopping you. You can't quite move and even your voice doesn't seem to want to speak. You're not frozen but are completely still as if something cut the connection from your brain to your hands and vocal cords. If you search deep within yourself you know what may be the cause of this but you care not too acknowledge it.

Like a shadow it has been following you for almost eternity. Over the years it has been growing stronger as you push it further away from you and your thoughts. Not letting it enter and ruin a good mood as you push on. But it follows you and it knows where you live and it knows who you are seeing. And worst of all, it wants to meet them all, it wants to interrupt a perfect evening party with close friends or that special someone walking naked into an intimate setting and completely ruin the mood. It will if you let it. And that's the whole thing, you have been fighting it forever. You haven't won but you haven't lost and perhaps you will never rid yourself of it. But this is not the end nor do you have much reason to fall to its power.

Your doubts, your fear of rejection, and its permanence in your condition are obstacles but taken on a case-to-case approach you can push on and you can conquer them. You may not win every time but you most certainly won't lose either. The air of your life is in front of you, you are sitting down with your hands on your knees and looking forward. You are thinking of running and you are think of getting up but you're not sure what is ahead. You try hard to focus your eyes well enough to see vague objects and the edge of the horizon but they are just blurs (you must go closer to see them to see for sure). The phrase, "Leap of Fate", in this case is more of a marathon of fate, and fate isn't some divine manuscript but your own will and your own destiny. And though you may feel powerless at times and though it may be too much and that you have too little these are just illusions. Your mind plays tricks on you. Your heart does too.

Your bum feels light after you lift up from your seat. Your fists grab the air before you and swing down towards the earth violently. Your legs begin to pace forward graduating at speed as a crawl turns to a walk turns to a light then medium jog and the jog turns to a galloping run. Something fires off in your mind as if there is something life-threatening scary behind you and you run like you are running from the devil himself. But there is no fear in your heart as you push yourself you're just running crazy. The wind starts to scream by your ears. Your breath becomes hard and your legs light. And soon that horizon starts to take shape. You are having a moment of clarity. Things such as failure, doubt, and regret are non-existent for now. The feeling is good, at an utmost positive and the reality is: Nothing Can Stop You.

Carry on, burn your legs and grab that air. Look all around you, your movement makes this world and makes it possible. Without you there is nothing. Never forget that. Nothing is the opposite of you.

ARTBOMB

Tomorrow I will be having a piece up for sale in an Auction, ArtBomb. It is done through email but if you wish to participate you can do it directly, here.

ArtBomb is project curated by Andrea Carson, publisher of View on Canadian Art, link, which serves as a need-to-know blog on what's really going on with Canadian Art.

The bidding begins at 6am on January 11th, 2012, and ends at 11pm. Now Is Your Chance. Chance. Chance.

(now dance)

I Don't Want To Live On This Planet Anymore

Curling up in a ball I imagine myself like Sputnik readying itself for a voyage beyond anything imaginable at the time. I will be shot toward the heavens at extreme velocity and I will meet the point in which nothing man-made has ever surpass and I will surpass it. Passing that point I move on and until I reach infinity. And though my body will fail me before I arrive to the end of the universe I will die knowing my body was on its way there. The words, "On Its Way There" linger in the silence of space as I float on.

In the deep of the night I cannot think and my mind lingers into cycles of endless dialogue. The person on the other end of my mental conversation is always me but who it represents always changes. Tonight and like nights before it is the same person. Cycling over my head what steps I will take next, the words I will speak, what questions to be asked. All of this stirs to the point where it upsets my natural sleep cycle and I listen to ambient music until sleep finally does arrive. Until then I talk and talk and share my thoughts and listen to this person which is myself but is someone completely different share theirs. I turn and turn until my head starts to itch and I feel lonely knowing the moon is too far and too obscure to see. Did you know I wanted to share its sight in fullness and shine with someone else I ask myself. Did you know I wanted to replace myself alone with its site for one in which I share it with someone else? Perhaps not, those words though thought and said were all within my mind.

The wall stays and I rest my bottom on its top and dangle my legs off. I can see the ground and I can see the grass which is greener on the other side. I do not leave my post nor do I retreat behind the wall. Instead I just wait and watch the horizon. What I wait for is probably someone but who I'm never too sure of. In the past it has taken on the form of many and ultimately they had failed just as much as I failed on them. Where I rest now is not a shear drop nor a painful one I just simply can't move from my spot. If one were brave enough one could give me a push or grab my hand and pull be down. I watch the sun set and the night take over. Here, in my mind, I can see the moon. There is no smog nor an ominous cloud to obscure it. I am out in the country and running free. Of course I am just sleeping and what wonderful sleep it be. But the truth remains I am still sitting idle on that wall which rises not much nor too little and I feel too comfortable doing so. The worst part of it is that I can't help it, as if my buttock has turned to brick. All I want to do is tear it down and split and crumble the brick. All I want to do is escape, to disappear, to forget, will a brick come flying at my head and bam, I forget, I really did forget.

The moon sings, "Not Until The Time Is Just-A Right, (Tonight-Tonight), Not Until the Time Is Just-A Right!".

(Tonight-Tonight)

Long Long Long

(Coconut Palms, 2011)

Long, without looking at a dictionary is extensive, on-going, and sometimes appearing endless. When used for longing, the feeling which comes from a withdrawal of something pleasing and favorable. To miss is to long?

Belong, without looking at a dictionary is to be apart of, to be joined by something else and to be one element that is connected to another and be rightfully placed. When you remove "Be" from belong you have long and when you think of missing something, and missing something you felt you belong with, than that separated notion of "be-long" is now just long missing be.

Being, without looking at a dictionary is to exist as something, as simple as that you simply just are. To be or not to be. That really is the question.

So we have longing, belonging, and being. And in this context I understand this notion of longing, the lack of being and the lack of belonging. But to break down "long" even more it is a adjustive that describes distance and to long is to have distance from something and the idiom is what is associated with long distance is to notice the distance -to know your position to what you are comparing it to. And commonly it is act that comes from noticing something is lacking and missing. This thing whether far away physically or far away emotionally is baring some distance, long distance.

The top of the lower half of the building I live in is far from actually being a ship with a bridge that extends to an island but I cannot help but always think of it this way. Standing between the island and the ship I look up to a midnight sky and search for a moon. I find nothing but small points of bright light. These points aren't stars but man-made from construction sites high in the sky (the heavens) and passing airplanes. Above is a thick foggy cloud that is diluted and more milky than that of a nimbus cloud in consistency. Perhaps the moon is there in its imperfect fullness but this milky cloud doesn't have any concentrated illuminance and shows no sign of hiding anything but darkness and faintly glowing stars. And in this night it feels as if the moon simply does not exist where I am. Elsewhere and especially in places with little or none light population the moon is there, but here where I stand in-between an imaginary island and an imaginary ship it does not exists.

My memory remembers a time with a moon in the same location but it was of a different time that is clearly separated from this current moment. For some reason my memory holds the consistency of a dream in comparison to what is happening before me. And perhaps this moment feels more or less like the dream and the memory is the one that is real. And then I am caught between the two, what is real and what is not between a not ship and a not island and where a moon very much should be isn't but where my memory tells me it is.

I reach a point where I hear a voice telling me what the world is. I trust this voice and yet I know it isn't always right. But it is the most right thing I know and so it is I follow it as my primary understanding of the world around me. Usually I am not aware of its existence but right now in a quagmire I questioning it. And when you question your notion of reality and the constant voice of reason that exists within you the grounds that you stand on are not as solid as you think. And what is solid what is not and value itself from one thing to another and what the thing is and concept that makes a thing that particular thing are all rendered without color, density, mass, or reflection. They are all indiscernible and meaningless.

On longing to extend outwards and to bridge and yet never make it there and left in a quagmire that is neither being or not being and is simply is a state of missing. Where the moon should be is not and where my mind tells me is neither, my thoughts float up and take me with it to heights too high and frightening to look down. All because I can't place a moon in the midnight sky and all because I want to see it and perhaps it was the very thing ground this world to the next. I seem to have misplaced it somewhere. I long for it to return.

Luna

(In a Trance, 2011)

This wall will fall. And when it does I hope it takes everything with it. The people surrounding it will be engulfed in smoke and will lose touch of security and find themselves naked. The world will seem new and although only just a simply wall fell everything will be completely different. In the time of leaping horses and raining frogs we carry the burdens of yesterday. To which and to why is a question beyond our understanding. The modes of survival have made us and form the very reason why we are standing today. But what I propose is an alternative in which we abandoned any form of safety and where we set ourselves free of any security. Let the wall fall, let our voices return to us as if we were reborn. And perhaps that is exactly what it is, to be reborn for not a chapter to be simply turned but a completely new book to be made before our waking eyes. I grow mad with furious each and everyday I let myself place another brick on the wall. And as I look up the tower I had made around my body I see a faint light of the day. I want fire I want the mightiest of guns to come smashing it all down. I want to cry for a moment as I watch all that I had made in careful measurements and exactness to be rendered into rumble and for rumble to be turned to dust and dust to float and flutter far away.

The oceans turn and the tides come in and roll away what was left behind. The moon hovers above and I am taken to a time when palm leaves cut the silence of the evening with a dance of the coming of wind. The world is not complete darkness but it is very close to it. All the traces of humans are gone as I sit before an ocean swell. The ripples covered darkness tipped with moonlight and everything around me would be fine if I disappeared. I dig my bare feet into the soft moist sand and watch the approaching tide come closer. The air is hot almost sticky and the taste of sea gathers in my mouth. Many memories roll pass me and I remember them all being alone; sharing a moment with the moon; and being under its power. The clouds roll by and pass the full moon. In an instant they are illuminated like ground glass before a bright light and the bridge between reality and dreams is blurred and obscured. That's what it is, the moon, a bridge between one world to another.

On somedays I am surprised to see the moon high above. I can't help but feel like the only one that sees it there in the bright and clear sky. It followed me outside of a dream-like scene and is there to watch over me. Its hovering presence is there to remind me that my reality isn't any more real than the night before. Its glow is absent and yet it still holds some power over me. Confused I sit and reevaluate my memories. If it wasn't for photographs I'd lose touch with what happened in this world and what was a dream. A collection photographs with a white sphere hovering in the sky, clouds in blur, and little of the moon's surface detail gather dusts in a box somewhere in storage. I used to be obsessed with capturing the moon many years ago and I wonder what has changed. Perhaps after many failed attempted I gave up. That I came to realization that there are somethings that I cannot capture with any device but my memory. And rather than scrambling to retain as much detail as I can of a moment I should let it pass by as I enjoy it to its fullest. The grip in my hand eases and eventually lets go and the memory passes by floating, drifting, hovering away. Without a goodbye and without a look back it disappears. All I am left with is a feeling and a sequence of events that slowly dissipates from my recollection.

There are somethings I never want to forget -things that are so beautiful they seem to make the everyday feel unreal. There are moments that capture the soul that hold the power to take the individual away from whatever it is he or she is doing and leave (without a second thought). Like a flute with magical powers we can be lured into a moment just as a the moth flutters to the light. And perhaps it is that we have been waiting for that very moment to arrive and when it happens you could be sure as hell we will not let it pass without us being caught in its storm.

The full moon approaches and I wonder if this moment which is before me now will also be like the memories of all full moons, watching it alone and isolated somewhere on earth and somewhere high above floating amongst the clouds. The stars tinkle and the glow of the moon bridges the gap between one reality to another. And when the sun comes burning through the darkness it will all be over. Or will it.

The wall is still standing but for how long I am uncertain. Perhaps something will appear from the darkness and take the form of a wrecking ball. They will, "OH YEAH" their way through to the other side. And as they make their grand entrance what their face look like, will they be a stranger or friend, will they be happy or sad, or nothing at all. The words, "Take me away to a moony full and await the days to come..." appear on a single brick which has escaped total destruction.

Veine Magazine

A couple of months ago I did an interview with the France-based fashion magazine, Veine. In the interview I talk about some of my uncle who disappeared, the bridge between the present and the past, why I shoot square, my installation work, what I'd rather be doing, and future projects. I learned through this interview that some of my images might be considered violent and calm, at the same time. The interview is in both French and English, and if you know french I'd suggest reading that over the english (apparently I sound proper in french).

Click for the interview.

Plenty of Fish

(Galveston, 2004)

Shark eyes.

A battled wind.

A topple down.

To and in.

The deepest of pits.

Whispering.

Down.

Down.

Down.

(to himself)

A solid wall, a solid ground, a thud on dirt, a slap of flesh, a crack of bone, an ouch! without a sound, just the feeling, God, this is pain. I look around, and give a good-grief to myself. It can only be, yes, only be this place again. This place, like an old familiar, that person you can't quite shake from your past, nor from your present, like a sibling at the distance of a cousin, coming in and out of your life without warning, without you ever liking it. This place is exactly that, I've been here so many times and over so many years I can see my progress from early caveman drawings to life-like renditions by hand. How I get here is completely different every time, this cave has a million entrances, just one exit.

I forgot what I was looking at, some ad that was covering the window, I just looked at it without ever reading it, I don't think I could have read it anyways, my mind was somewhere else. The train kept screeching away on the tracks like it shouldn't have been moving that way in the first place, and that ad, there in front of me, telling me I was far from home, and home wasn't any better. Similar to having the wind knocked out of you, it felt like that to my soul, a soul punch, something interior, a mental broke rib, a black eye, a fall in front of too many strangers, but at least then they offer you help, what do you do when your heart just feels messed up and your face and body looks completely normal, just regular sunny day in Florida, on my face. I was far from anything sunny, sonny.

I remember my father and I used to go fishing, we owned a Bayline, we used to take it up to Navajo Lake, and my mother with my older sister would go diving beneath. Underneath our rocking vessel was a flooded town, my mother and sister would go diving from house to house, shining their hand torches through the murkywaters of a house, through the window into the living room. It was as if they were looking into post-apocalyptic scene, the only thing missing was skeletons, gathering around the kitchen table, still in the same positions just before the world ended. Now fish would swim in and out of their lives, or rather, what used to be their lives, and the settlement would slowly bury their homes into the seafloor. While they were down there they'd spot out where all the fish were hanging out, they'd surface and tell us to move the boat this many feet or yards in that direction, and we'd throw our lines down. Never have I caught that many fish in my life, so many, so much, that I still look to that day when I end up with no fish on my line like I caught all the fish I would ever catch when I was twelve, on that particularly sunny day in Navajo Lake. Every two minutes I'd be pulling my line back up, oh here's another fish. It even got to the point where if I simply pulled my line up fast enough a fish would get hooked by the gills. That many fish.

My father was never anything like the Hollywood stereotypical father, not by any means, but fishing with his son was probably as close as he ever got to it. When I go home, my father can't help but want to go fishing with me, and for some reason I can't help but not want to go, it just wasn't the same. I remember late nights in Galveston, TX, at the pier, fishing. Galveston at night was beautiful, I used to bring my Nikkormat with me, and take a few snapshots, my father taught me how to keep the shutter open by jamming the camera strap between the winder when the shutter is cocked. I never minded the smell of the live bait, sitting around and watching nothing happen, seeing the waves crash into the pillars, the smell of the ocean, the Mexicans smoking in the beds of their truck, telling jokes to each other, in Spanish, and I'd only know it was a joke by the smiles on their faces and the laughter in their mouths. Something in moments like those hold on to me, have become me, even.

I remember the most beautiful moment of my life. My father was there. We were waiting to catch the ferry out of South Padre Island. The sun was setting when we hit the long line, and it looked endless, with no hope of ever moving. My Mother and older sister stayed at the resort, and for some reason the boys just had to leave early, we had business on the other side, and I wanted to keep my father company. Night fell, and we still hadn't moved. Hours went by and we started our slow approach to the dock, someone next to us said they were finally loading the ferry again. Hours dipped by like the slowest dip coffee ever: one dip at time, with eons in-between. The landscape slowly changed, from the gates at the entrance to a winding road through forest lit by charcoal lamps. With engine turning on every half an hour, you'd see the slowest chain reaction of brake lights stretch on ahead until it got to us, it was our turn, and then it would pass through us and carry on to those even more unfortunate souls behind us. Sometimes I think that there are people still waiting in line, that they must have gotten there right when we got on the ferry. I wish I could've met them, I would've sent them letters, photos and stories from the world outside that line, but I didn't, I was too busy listening to The Strokes' This Is It and Beck's Sea Change on my portable CD player at the time.

Eventually we reached that ferry, but I don't remember that moment quite well. What I do remember is that it was three o'clock in the morning, that I had never waited in line that long in my life (and still haven't waited nearly that long even to this day). Once on the ferry, when all the cars were settled, and their headlights were turned off, and we were surrounded by almost complete darkness, looking out to that ocean, under a full moon, with all those stars twinkling above, all I know is it was the most beautiful thing I ever witnessed. If I was a painter I'd paint a canvas black, with small clusters of tiny white dots, a giant yellowish white sphere hanging somewhere in there, with illuminated clouds, and the faint detail of ripples before a surge at the boats edge. I'd look at that painting and see a moment without a continuum, without a twelve hour wait at the ferry dock, without the sand in my hair, without the four hour car ride ahead, with my father yelling at himself every ten minutes to wake himself up. No, all I would see is an imperfectly black canvas, with white dots and white smears, and a memory that can never be captured.

And so, there may be plenty of fish out there, but some, some can be hooked to a line, and put up a fight, only to rip away, taking a piece of your line, your hook, and of course, your bait. You can either head back to the truck and head home and sleep, or you can fix your line, rebait your new hook, and cast away. And though it doesn't seem like much of a process, and though there doesn't seem like that much time in-between, there has been change, something is different about this occasion, or at least you keep telling yourself that, as the hours dip-dip-dip by, something just may come by, and you just may catch it. But you never know. And isn't that beauty of fishing, the uncertainty, in both the not knowing if you are going to catch anything, and what you are going to catch in those murky dark waters below.

Photorama IV

GET READY TO RAMA!

Gallery TPW's annual group show/fundraiser, PHOTORAMA, is a'coming, and they need your help, love, support, and your eyes. In a collection of absolutely fantastic artists, TPW celebrates its 25th anniversary of Photorama. I'll be showing alongside these fine forks, a beautiful space, new work.

TPW @56 Ossington Ave, Toronto, ON

Collectors Preview Thursday, December 1, 6 – 9 pm
Opening Reception Friday, December 2, 6 – 9 pm

Sale continues Saturday, December 3, Noon – 6 pm
Tuesday, December 6 – December 10, Noon – 6 pm

For more info, click here.

City To City

(A Younger Version of My Father, Cruising Around in Someone's Boat, Feeling Rich But Feeling Free, 199-)

Did I ever tell you how my folks met? I'm not sure, I probably talk about myself or movies too much, I'm really sorry about that.

Both my parents came from boats, they came to this country (Canada) on two separate boats, coming from two completely different places, and then their paths one day, one fateful day, met. And it wasn't just seeing some beautiful stranger on the street, or in a cafe, smoking and reading Catcher in the Rye or some Vonnegut book, or off the internet (which didn't exists at the time), it was something romantic, something that if there weren't two people in the world that can back it up it would sound like a work of fiction, something old people in their eighties or nineties say how they met. Well, it isn't, ok, this actually happened, and I'm not lying on this one either.

In 1970-something, downtown Toronto, in City Hall, on the iceskating ring the city prepares each and every year, open to the public, my dad was figure skating, graceful like a bumble bee glided over hard slick ice like it was air. It was night, the mood was just right, people sipping on hot chocolates, bundled up, keeping each other warm, it was colder then too, but my dad was out there in his dark red leotard and shiny black skates, Italian made, probably the most expensive thing he owned at the time. He was all but missing a headband, in the same dark red as his leotard, but he had long hair, smiled a lot, loving every minute of it, doing a 360 in the air over the fat kid who fell on his face. Somewhere in all that mess of tourists and clumsy idiots a white swan, also in hi-end Italian made skates, pierces the crowd like shots fired in a riot, my dad, who wasn't my dad at the time caught sight of her, probably in mid air, floating back to earth like freaking angel, and saw her, long red hair, soft white skin, blue in the eyes, grooving along the ice in her own rhythm, in her own world. My dad probably thought that his moves would one day get him a girl, and that one day that girl would be his wife. He probably spent all the money he had on those hi-end Italian made skates, and probably someone, one his few white friends at the time told him, in Canada, that's how you get 'em, by skating. I was never told how my father came to learn and become so well at ice skating, let alone figure skating, I couldn't imagine it being that popular in China during his youth, all I know is he was a natural. A Natural.

My mother, who wasn't my mother at the time, caught glimpse of my father, she was watching his moves, he was moving for her, without ever looking over, confident like a stray bullet, curve after curve with that grinding of ice being shaved by perfectly sharp stainless steel blades here and there, to show off, points for style. Eventually he had gotten my mother so riled up she couldn't take it anymore, she wanted to know this man, this graceful asian man on ice. And so she went up to him, and started to skate beside, and they just moved with each other, in their own grooves, but in the same rhythm. All night long, or at least until City Hall ice ring closed back then.

I could imagine them doing this every night, at the same time, for weeks before actually dating, seeing each other outside, with non-bladed shoes on. They both had to know, without words, that they were meant to be. And they have been with each other ever since.

Now this part of my father not knowing English at the time is true too, at least he didn't know a lot of it. Which is probably why he just skated and communicated in that way. And with his moves, the only one that could understand those wordless words was my mother, who is very understanding. They would eventually date, and a few years later they would marry. How much English my father knew when that happen is still left a mystery, some say he never knew he was getting married, he wondered why this event just for him and his Irish girlfriend was happening outside of their anniversary. A priest spoke to him, telling him to repeat after him, and he tried his hardest to replicate those meaningless sounds as good as he could, and when the priest motioned to apply that ring around my mother's thursday finger he did exactly that, sealing a bond that which he may or may not have known he was sealing. Whether he knew mattered not, for they are still married, after over thirty-four years. And these days, when everyone is surrounded by divorce, dysfunctional families, whether you're in one or were in one, close to one, had friends, or an uncle, that bond is cheaper than some hollywood version of what love is, it appears beautiful, wonderful, amazing, everything at first, and for a while, but the movie ends, ends before things could get bad, and if you think about it, why do so many Hollywood romance movies end with marriage, like there is any reinsurance on that shit, happily ever after, like a skipping stone, or the ending of Inception. Is it all in our minds, no, there are some things that stay together, that are tales of true romance, and it is real, it is possible to love someone forever, but you're going to probably hate them, possibly imagine killing them but never doing it of course, just curious, and you will find love again, in them, and things will be good for a while, and just like your life before marriage, it was up and down, but this time you have someone, which makes it harder, easier, harder, ahh-idontknow-anymore...,better, worst, like a square wheel rolling down the road, the sky is clear, animated birds are singing, the sun is whistling, and everything is good, until that pointy edge of the wheel meets the ground, the weight on both of your shoulders hits you, and some of the load is displaced, your wife is covered in oil, your husband in covered in manure, then the point passes, the threshold is over, and you're back to the planes, and you suddenly appreciate when shit isn't crazy, when you're not yelling at each other, ASK FOR DIRECTIONS, I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING, YOU'RE DRIVING THE WRONG DIRECTION THERE ARE CARS COMING AT US!, YOU FORGOT TO PICK UP THE KIDS, THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE! When you aren't using all caps in your voice, when you're able to stand each other, when the sting is gone, when it is easier. When it is easer, ahhhh (relaxed, deep exhale, ahhh, the opposite of a sigh). Easier.