farewell 2012, hello 2013

2012 was an eventful year... let's recap a few events:
• started the year temping, freelancing, and doing odd jobs to survive
• started seeing someone for the first time in four years
• had a mini art show on valentine's day
• spent spring break gathering driftwood for a new project
• started my new job at the norman transcript in april
• missed getting hit by a tornado by less than a quarter of a mile
• turned 26 years old on the 26th of july
• started going to frontline church and subsequently a new community group
• moved from the northwest side of OKC to the paseo district
• puppy got hit by a car and sentenced to 6 weeks of crate confinement
• sold a page out of my sketchbook to wayne coyne at a bar

2013 could hold any number of things... here's a few i'm waiting/hoping for:
• get new glasses for the first time in 5-6 years and stop having migraines every week
• finish driftwood project in time to have an autumn art show
• have a fully functioning puppy again
• get my blue hair back
• for the writers of new girl to finally get jess and nick together

assumptions

i love being caught by surprise. it forces me in that moment to learn that no assumption is safe. there is so much more than meets the eye, to every person and situation. perspective is such a limiting thing.

meet Oswaldo Gomez.

(photo by Humans of New York)

what do you assume about him? i can guess... he's insane, he's gay, he's wasting his time, he's this or that. would it surprise you to learn that he was in fact a lawyer in Columbia and earned a master's degree in art from New York University?

Oswaldo Gomez was pursuing his Ph.D. in Spanish literature when he was diagnosed with AIDS. After processing his diagnosis he decided he should enjoy what little time he had left. So he put on a costume. “People think I’m crazy, but they don’t know what happened to me,” he said. Gomez has a habit of making strangers smile, and those who know him well say his mission is to make other people happy.

“There is no tomorrow... I live day by day. And I enjoy my days like it’s the last day of my life.”

i have a lot to learn from him.

read more about his story here.

Humans of New York

I have found my new favorite thing!! This photography blog/facebook page called Humans of New York. SO MANY fascinating stories. I've been adding them to Pinterest but this man's story was too long to put on there. 

"In November of 42, my unit was building airstrips in Scotland when we received an order to pack up our things. They put us on ships in the middle of the night. You couldn't see anything, and they didn't tell us where we were going. When the sun came up, we saw that we were part of a giant convoy. There were hundreds of ships, all across the horizon: cruisers, destroyers, transport ships. It

 looked just like a movie. Turns out we were headed to Algeria. When we hit the Straight of Gibraltar, all the ships had to come together, which made us vulnerable to air attacks. So suddenly the sky was filled with British fighters giving us cover. Tons of them. When we landed, we built runways so that the Allies could supply their North African operations. I was behind the lines because I was an engineer, but the Germans were hitting us pretty hard in North Africa. I remember all the boys heading toward the front on tanks. Lines and lines of them. They knew it was the real thing this time, so their faces looked pretty grim. "

appearances

Appearances: What significance do they have?

The visual appearance of things can mean everything, or absolutely nothing. As a visual artist, the way things look can mean so much... just with variance of line or change in color pairing, the entire meaning or feel of a piece can change. For example, Carnovsky's RGB mural that is chaotic in white light but perfectly ordered in red, green or blue light.

Yet at other times, physical appearance holds no meaning whatsoever. 

So let's talk about Yellowman.

Born in 1956, Christian Winston Foster grew up in a Catholic orphanage called Alpha Boys School in Kingston, and was shunned due to having albinism, which was usually not socially accepted in Jamaica. Then in 1986, Yellowman was forced to undergo a very invasive jaw surgery to remove the malignant tumor that had formed from previous skin cancer. This surgery permanently disfigured Yellowman's face, as a large portion of the left side of his lower jaw had to be removed to successfully extract the tumor. (Thanks Wikipedia!!)

By most standards, Yellowman is not a handsome fella. But... does it matter?

Take a listen to the first 40 seconds or so of this song:

The melody of Yellowman's single "Zungguzungguguzungguzeng" has been sampled & imitated over 30 times since its original release in 1967 by such artists as Sublime, Notorious B.I.G, 2-Pac, and P.O.D. He is widely credited for leading the way for the succession of reggae artists that were embraced by the growing hip-hop community in America during the 1980s. Yellowman continues to tour and perform to this day. One reviewer of Yellowman was quoted as saying "Listening to Yellowman sing is like watching Michael Jordan play basketball. He knows he's got it, you know he's got it, and it's a trip just experiencing him perform." 

The beauty of the stories contained within books aren't based on their covers.

The nature of the souls within people are not contingent on their physical attributes.

So tell me... of what significance are appearances?

men with knives

or,
"past experience vs. paradigms vs. trust"

...

say that one day you meet a man on the street.
the man has a knife.
the man stabs you with the knife.

on another occasion, you meet a new man on the street.
the new man also has a knife.
what would you expect him to do?

should you trust in your experience,
to teach you to be wary of men with knives?

would you form a paradigm in your mind
that each and every man with a knife will always stab you?

how would it change your paradigm
if every single man carried a knife?

would you go through life
fearing every man and every knife in the world?

if all the men with knives have always stabbed you,
how do you navigate through life
to find the one man you could trust?
how would you find the one man
who would use his knife
to protect you from the rest of the world?

daddy's birthday

i'd like to take a moment on this glorious 74° day to send happy birthday wishes to my loving, ornery, fabulously insane father. you have taught me so much about how to work hard, play harder, & appreciate life for the infinitely beautiful and messy adventure it is. you have shown me how a real man carries himself and treats the ladies in his life, and every other man in my life is held to your standard. you are truly The Man With A Heart Of Gold, and i try every day to make you proud. i love you daddy. ♥

what are you missing?

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that 1,100 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. 

Three minutes went by, and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace, and stopped for a few seconds, and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping, and continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally, the mother pushed hard, and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money, but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians in the world. He had just played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?