sculpted

I wasn't happy with the results of some of my last projects, but this last kiln batch had three gorgeous drinking vessels in it, one dramatic with its red and blacks, one swirling with blues like the ocean, and one with the perfect drips of white and orange over dark blue. Reinspired to pound out clay and shape into more graceful forms, incising and rolling, immersed in the act of shaping. These were meant to give away but they're so pretty that I have them sitting on the dining room table as inspiration while I plot future projects and refires of the duds.

It was so beautiful out that after dinner we walked down to the carnival where the life-sized cardboard cutout of Pope Benedict stood watch over the revelers singing Italian standards, eating greasy food, and screaming on gloriously creaky carnival rides. Bad tattoos and cutoffs, hipsters and guidos. There were even quarter games for the kids, gambling for the grade school set, colorful ducks floating in an inflatable kiddie pool.

I didn't have my camera or any cash, but one of my good friends from the suburbs to the east is coming over for a night of chillness that will probably consist of what most of my hanging out with anyone consists of... some combination of random discourse, loud music, food, and hanging out on the beach or wandering through the city. I'm easily entertained and like it when others are just as easily amused. It's the pleasure of the company after all, the destination is the afterthought.

I've set up a kitchen chair on the balcony, to pick up the neighbor's wireless signal, do some writing without being social and listen to Dead Can Dance while being the premature old lady watching the world go by. I've loved the sky these past couple nights, the way the moon ascends through a lace mantle of grey clouds tossed across the sky. I tried to take pictures off the balcony last night but they didn't come out so well, so I just try to remember, and think of samurai writing haiku about cherry blossoms in the twilight.

The inspiration has come from so many places, from stained glass and the myriad hues and shapes of leaves and flowers, wisps of sky and glimpses of sun, reading and listening and trying to soak in everything. There is only one true creator, and we made in that image have that impulse, but can only document the beauty of the light and what it reveals and rearrange the matter already in place, repurposing and recycling, taking ink and paint to paper, shaping the clay of the earth into things of use and beauty, painting with chemicals and flecks of glass and crystal, to catch a glimpse of vision and be able to hold its gaze for just a moment.

slipping by

I couldn't tell you where today went, we all seemed to have the lethargy, my guitar was distorted and languid this morning and my alto had less range than usual, coming home to zone out, go out and see the relatives, where the discourse is always thoughtful, coming home through sheets of rain listening to Alice in Chains, planted the rest of the seeds that might grow into flowers, lots of cleome that always reminds me of benevolent alien life forms or sea anemones, reading and drinking tea, bending copper wire into shapes with a pair of pliers because sometimes the words don't come. The cats have been lonely and interrupt whatever I'm working on, demanding attention and affection, bestowing sandpapery kisses.

I don't have much to say, so I'm not going to try too hard. It's a good night for contemplation, a comfortable moodiness, good for depressed brit-chick trip-hop and pondering of the good kind.

branding iron

Seriously people, this year on my corner of the world won't all be about Alice in Chains, generational conflict, and the travails of life in the Rust Belt.

Randal is way more entertaining than myself about a book that came through here about personal branding and I honestly don't know what planet some of these people live on. It had to do with shampoo and a trademarked "YOU" or something and talked about how the reason women are sexually harassed is because they don't wear proper business attire and that men are judged by what shoes they wear.

Because women are "totally asking for it" and we should judge a man by the pattern on his tie. Right.

It's bad enough to be judging someone by what brands they wear, but when we start talking about what brand a person IS and that some are more desirable than others, well, what the heck? And we do judge if we're honest. I don't tend to trust people who wear expensive suits who want me to vote for them or who try to sell me something, and I can't take someone's ideas seriously if they can't spell.

I guess we call this labeling and typecasting by any other name which I thought was a bad thing and there's this strange cultural social Orwellianism of all of us theoretically being equal but some of us still being much more equal than others.

I like to give my boomer compadres a hard time, but my fellow millenial spawn appear to be taking the narcissism to a whole new level and we don't even get some good music or something resembling the civil rights movement out of the deal. Just a lot of tweets and likes.

I really wonder about my generation when I see these other people who are my age who have bought into this whole idea of not just marketing as something you do to pay your bills, but as something you make a life out of because you're just so damn special and so damn interesting in a calculated kind of way.

And I know I don't work in an environment or culture with such individuals, and they probably don't attend the esteemed academic institution I work for because they consider state schools beneath them. I wonder where these people live, where they party, how they sleep at night, what kind of relationships do they have? Clearly they don't live here, I think, having blown this popsicle stand for places like Chicago and either coast. Their parents probably live in a nice house and wouldn't talk to mine because we don't have any social capital.



But then I remember that there was this guy when I was at Kent who was my age but throughout undergrad wore suits every day and was one of those people who everyone knew and all that. I think he's probably gone on to be successful and I guess people like him are the kind of people that get things done but that's just not how I roll I guess.

And the subbacultcha is all about the personal brand just in a collective tribal sense... having the right haircut, the right band t-shirts and accessories, the right attitude, and it can be just as catty as any celebutante reality show, only with a heavy dose of sour grapes and "at least I'm not like THAT" thrown in.



So I look at these nebulous questions like "What is YOUR personal brand?" or "How does your appearance enhance your brand?" or people promoting a "personal brand toolkit." It's already a soul-sucking enterprise to sell things, but to sell yourself often at the expense of others...

I don't even have words and it sounds childish and immaturely punk rock to say corporate whore but what kind of other real description is there? Not that I'm advocating the absurdity that is Adbusters, and it's true that people do still judge, but to wholeheartedly embrace it seems so profoundly wrong.



Speaking of branding, this one was big among my old crew back when Sub Pop was awesome.



I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? I look pretty good but I'm just back-dated as it is.

random thoughts

The city was blue and white this morning. I couldn't see the skyline at all. I found an old mixtape and listened to Massive Attack on the way in. Looking forward to seeing some good friends and hopefully a good show on Saturday.

I had to deal with a really arrogant and nasty person yesterday. I'd like to think it didn't bother me but I had a hard time sleeping last night. That, however, might have had something to do with the two cups of coffee I drank.

Other than that, yesterday really wasn't all that bad. I got a nice shout-out from a fellow dj friend on my drive home, grabbed dinner at Melt with some friends, and my friend showed me his studio space in the Lake Erie Screw Building and I would love to have something like that where I could ride the old-school wooden elevator and have space to make huge paintings and pretend I'm in 1970's New York.

So far the tutoring has been good. It's hard to balance between different age levels and abilities but the kids help each other out. I had a huge box of literacy materials and books for beginning readers that were donated and they were definitely used. Trying to find some good basic English kind of books that actually have a good story and aren't along the lines of "The fire engine goes Ding! Ding!"

i hate you chris cornell.

I used to think the Rolling Stones and Johnny Rotten were the primo example of embarrassment in the music world, but I think Chris Cornell has them beat at this point.

Being a grunge kid in high school a few years after the whole thing had died, working back from the horrendous radio rock that permeated growing up in Parma and driving around with your friends to "X-treme" radio, I found my sound in my dad's record collection and the four big Seattle bands (Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Pearl Jam). My dad and I used to listen to Soundgarden together and this was one of our favorite songs.



From there, I started listening to massive amounts of college radio and became a huge fan of the more obscure Northwest acts. I was totally that kid who wore chucks and thermals and flannel and did artwork to the sounds of the Screaming Trees and tried to learn all of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs on the vintage electric guitar I bought because it looked like Kurt Cobain's Jag.

When I think of my senior prom, I don't think about the bad top 40 they played there, I remember driving there listening to Mudhoney, debating the merits of Joy Division, and shouting out requests for Slayer and Rush from our chairs even though all the music had been pre-picked by the powers that be. When I think of my high school prom, I think of "Touch Me I'm Sick" rather than something more romantic and sappy.

My tastes have diversified since I was 18, thanks to friends and roommates who turned me on to world music, good hip-hop and soul, but when any overplayed 90's classic comes on the radio, I always end up rocking out.

I picked up some cassettes when I was in Columbus, namely Living Colour's first album, U2's Achtung Baby, and Soundgarden's 'Superunknown' which have been getting loads of rotation in the Sexy Saturn when it's not 'The Low End Theory'), but this newest shenanigan by Chris Cornell almost makes me want to forget he was part of that band. Good grief.

EDIT: So Youtube is getting rid of any uploads of this song and that's probably a good thing for the sake of humanity.
Dude, you used to be in a band that was actually pretty awesome. Now you're that creepy old guy in the club. You could have aged gracefully like Greg Dulli or Mark Lanegan, or heck, even Robert Plant, but nooooo... you thought working with Timbaland was a great idea. Seriously, the wrath of the nonexistent metal gods needs to smite you right now.

light, bright, and sparkling

So it's been an interesting week... almost-drama that's amusing in its absurdity especially since I was unaware of any previous relationship, strange characters in and out of my workplace, and the small wonders and frustrations that is the daily grind.

I wish I was as gifted of a writer as Jane Austen because like her, I find the quirks and small dramas and greater universal issues apparent in my small little corner of the world fascinating. I wish I could capture and distill like she did, but I doubt I will ever be able to do that.

When I look back at my Kent State education, I'd have to say the highlight of my English department experience was my Austen seminar I took senior year where we read everything she wrote, along with "Reading Lolita in Tehran," "Persepolis," and the not nearly as exciting "Jane Austen Book Club" which maybe I'd appreciate if I was closer to middle age, but I'm not there yet and will hopefully be reading more exciting things than that.

I was afraid that I would hate Jane after a whole semester of immersion but it turned me into a fangirl even moreso. Not that I run through the streets of Cleveland in empire-waist dresses figuring out when the next ball is, but I found the books entertaining in the extreme. I guess it's a predisposition for dry British humor that I always fall for and the hope against hope for happy endings in spite of my preconceptions.

revelations

One of my old roommates used to call me a random force of chaos, due to my tendency to get into interesting situations where the unexpected always ends up taking place.

While I believe there is something divine at work in this, it's not far from the truth.

In a sense, I'm embarrassingly provincial. I've never traveled abroad (Niagara Falls doesn't count), visited very few large cities, and while I would love to see other parts of the world that I've only read about or seen pictures of in National Geographic, I content myself in the meantime to seeking adventure here.

This is home, after all. And I'm realizing more and more how deep and rich the life of this city is, and that you need to go deeper into it to find it. And sometimes it just kind of happens to you.

My roommate and I have somehow ended up in the world of the African diaspora that live in this city. I ended up at a church last Friday with primarily Nigerian immigrants, only to hang out with the Burundi kids on Saturday, sitting in at Ethiopian church on Sunday, a mutual friend of ours from Kenya cooking dinner for us this past week.

I love being able to see the world from another's perspective, learn about other places. Not just complain all the time but actively seek to see things happen.

And they always do.

got no expectations...

when i'm hearing about this discussion of whether or not we the people are actually bitter, quoting barack obama, i don't understand what is so condescending about suggesting that "working class" voters are frustrated.

while i think he missed the mark in regards to guns and God, if anything, it's insanely elitist and out of touch to assume that people DON'T feel this way. because i hear variations on the bitter theme everywhere. i hear it in the hallways of my workplace, on the rapid transit, in conversations with relatives and friends. this is what my dad tells me that the guys he works with talk about.

(for the record, i've grown up hovering between the middle and working class. while my parents both have college degrees, my dad's been driving delivery trucks for the last 30-something years and wouldn't have it any other way).

we hear people blame it on the economy, on jobs going overseas, on "those people" being out to get them and hold them down, or "those people" moving into their neighborhoods, on the kids getting out of control.

maybe this is just a cleveland thing. because after all, we're really good at complaining and watching things go down the tubes for the last 30 years. but i do think it's more widespread than that.

because, as far as i can tell, a lot of us are pretty darn bitter right now, at least here in flyover territory where the politicians come in every four years, make lots of promises and pander to the right people and then forget about us.

there's no real period that we can trace our decline back to, or any one thing we can blame it on. there are so many factors at play and it's been a long time coming.

i think that the cynicism and disgust is pretty bipartisan. we all know how the democrats and those on the left feel about the republicans who've been running the show for the past 8 years, but i know there's a lot of bitter and disgusted conservatives as well, who feel like they got shafted. the agnostics and the atheists blame the christians, the conservative element blames those it considers degenerate.

either way, you'd have to be either doing really well or completely oblivious to think we're on the right track.

we're losing our jobs, the prices of everything are going up, so many people are really not doing well right now. this whole war thing is turning into a disaster and i feel ashamed that a president who claims that life is sacred has no problem with torturing people in the name of doing the right thing.

i see a lot of desperation all around me, much of it self-inflicted, but also a heavy dose of it just being hard times. and honestly, this is the first time i've ever heard any major political figure acknowledge that.

i try not to let the bitterness get to me, but it is hard. i am so leery of quick fixes, of large quantities of money being thrown at dubious projects and abstract goals, of promises to make this place better for "our children and our children's children." it gets old. i don't have a candidate to vote for that i believe in, which isn't surprising but is frustrating nonetheless. i feel overwhelmed by the despair i see in this city.

i'm glad in a way that i don't look for some person to fix everything, or expect all that much. that way i'm not disappointed.