|
[12.17.09] |
All that is left of you is your face, an empty guise in photographs. The skin and the bone, the laughing mouth and dark skin and bright teeth, the smooth muscles of your back and the hard immovability, your arms taut and wired.
Your darkling shadow haunts me, taunts me.
"Somewhere in here" it says "I still exist. Won't you find me?"
But you are gone, gone in a haze of smoke, girls pulling you drunkenly down onto beds that belong to neither of you in red-cup-strewn houses. I can see it so clearly, how who you used to be became who you are. Where your innocence and desperate desire to live would bring you. I guess, maybe, you were never really innocent. But you tried. And you were good, so good. I mean it. You made me want to be a better human, too, unselfish. I hope you know that.
I don't care so much anymore. I don't think of you every day. It is a slow-burning obsession, the ashes still flickering softly with glowing embers hidden amongst the gray dust. Sometimes, I just see pictures of your face. I can't help seeing pictures of your face.
And it brings everything back.
|
|
|
|
[12.16.09] |
A girl
pudgy, her eyes dripping condescension, sits surrounded by the glow of the screen-world. Her mouth twists, scorn-contorted. Her fingers fly and she is off, sending casual barbs and making attempts at witty banter about things like Hitler and tiny infants, dead. She creates stiff and calculated worlds, populated by the logical, the refined, the eccentric killers and the silly masses below. She feels so perfectly original, so totally superior.
She stands in front of a friend, and, with mock-pity in her voice, says
"I am most distressed, but you, you are Darwin-condemned and have not long for this world."
"But I want to live so badly."
"It is too bad you can't manage it, then." She replies mournfully, with Randian authority. "Don't look to anyone else for help."
"Alright."
And the girl's friends slip away, and new, better ones come in and take the empty spaces. They talk about algorithms and statistics. They invite her to take part in their business ventures and they discuss the relative straightness of lines.
|
|
|
|
[12.8.09] |
|
sending out a frequency to radio pluto, won't you play my request, on a star's behest...thrum goes the bass boost up to +5 and the lights outside flicker as we all breathe and mew in the dark interior of space, this taxicab a tangle, limbs and faces, oh baby, don't send me a message, don't broadcast advertisements, we don't want music we don't know how to use it, boom boom boom boom boom boom
|
|
|
|
[11.23.09] |
|
Do you know that feeling, that feeling of looking over a great height and being frightened...not because you might fall, but because you feel like you might hurl yourself over? That you could..
|
|
|
|
[11.22.09] |
Nobody lives in this city.
People come here in cars,in planes, in buses, in the screeching silver subway. We pass each other on the street, dressed in our best clothes, pressed suits and tight skinny jeans, bomber jackets, crazy hair, slouchy high-heeled boots.
People don't sleep in this city.
The lights of modern industry crank out manuscripts, fashion designs, sketches of paintings to come, formulas for lipstick and eyeshadow, sports contracts, sex bots with dead people-eyes.
Nobody stays in this city.
We are all arriving with a purpose and leaving when we are done.
|
|
|
|
[11.20.09] |
"
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, ‘She is near, she is near;’
And the white rose weeps, ‘She is late;’
The larkspur listens, ‘I hear, I hear;’
And the lily whispers, ‘I wait.’"
-Alfred Tennyson
(this is perfect for RGU)
|
|
|
|
[11.19.09] |
Take me for pancakes at the all-night diner at 2 a.m. I want to get up early and stay up late. Let’s go see the fireworks down by the bay and drink frothy café au laits, the foam licking our mouths like the salt spray on our feet. I don’t want to take your soul out through your open mouth, I don’t want to breathe promises into your auricle. I am self-contained, but you can spend a little while with me if you don’t mind midnight.
The carousel horses in the park, after dark, have stories to tell. One, about the bottom of the sea, another, of how his master fell.
I think of my dreams in the suburban street, licked by flickering, lonely lights. I take off into the still air full of dreams and silence. We have traded our consciousness for oblivion; we favor one star to many. But I am so icy and alive, alone in the darkness. It is my darkness. These are my shadows; I know them. This darkling hour is a secret that I can tell you.
Oh, it’s lonely late, when light abates, I could use one more. Is the allure of a shadow-girl enough to invert your circadian door?
Persephone is wandering through the underworld. Demeter is asleep. She is afraid and exhilarated. Ghosts whisper and shriek. She is Alice is Underland; the vegetation whispers: Eat me. Drink me.
|
|
|
|
[11.17.09] |
Even if the thought of it makes me want to curl in and quell my inner sickness.
I must pile up all the good reasons...
like jenga blocks
and as I play through my unhappiness
reasons will slip away
until my whole tower of convincing lies
just crashes in front of me.
|
|
|
|
[11.11.09] |
Already I am suffocating, just a few hours with these photocopies and German receipts, mad phone calls and emails with paragraph-sized signatures of contact and affiliate information.
The price is right, so I will curl up in this box no matter that it is far too small. Once again I am making up reasons to convince myself to do what everyone else wants me to. Have I really learned nothing? Have I really not realized that to have alternatives, I must make them?
"I want to get you into more interesting things. I want you to like this job." He says. But he knows I am a writer and an artist, he knows, so why does he believe I can enjoy this tedium. Stranger employers turn me into such a demure lackey. I am not a real person, sir. I exist dangling from the noose of my paycheck, to do what it is you ask.
Oh, and these electronic letters drive me mad. Yes, we are looking forward to meeting with you! Those dates are fine. We are so excited you are interested in our product! We don't know you, but we're sure that you're a fine, upstanding citizen. After all, all businessmen are.
I am looking past the color printer at the abandoned gazebo in your backyard. The sky is muddled aluminum. The trees spread their stripped skeletons to forever.
This is real life, forget your dreams. They are just carrots in front of cart-donkeys.
|
|
|
|
[11.9.09] |
I hate people who feel it is necessary to point out all your minor shortcomings, because they want to help you "improve".
Perhaps you and I have very different ideas of perfect, eh?
|
|
|
|
[11.7.09] |
What is real life?
Does it mean
worrying about so many things you cannot keep track of all of them.
Feeling sick with everything, with all the masks
you don
to play the parts
required
Does it mean
that I haven't been truly living
until I reach a point
where it's no longer
worth it?
I don't want to go to work on spreadsheets and business trips and almost-dying in a car. I don't want my life measured by a clock trapped in amber dripping minutes like slow honey in stagnant air as I complete task after meaningless task.
But
this is such a good opportunity!
The economy isn't doing so well!
It's very good pay!
It would be beneficial for you to have business experience!
You can always quit if you don't like it.
|
|
|
|
[11.4.09] |
|
So, if you listen to DA, the epitome of great art is kitten pictures.
|
|
|
| On Perfecting Art |
[11.2.09] |
I love to work on art for a variety of reasons. Creating something, be it music, illustrations, paintings, dance routines, film, is always cathartic to a degree. What I enjoy most about art is that there is no right and wrong. I enjoyed algebra for the opposite reasons. In algebra, I knew exactly what to do. There was no discussion, and there was a degree of perfection you could reach that was the apex of your ability and everyone elses. Art, conversely, is never perfect. Often, discussion and debate surrounds it. Ethics, technicalities, composition, etc. It is one of the few practices in society where you do not have to worry about measuring yourself by anyone's standards but your own. If you choose to delve into photorealism, or abstract, or a specific style, you can of course measure what you are doing by a certain scale. But there are no real rules to just sitting down and creating something. Only the rules you make, or choose to adhere to.
Art has always been, for me, mostly important conceptually. It was artistic concepts that got me into drawing in the first place, ideas or images that I wanted to record out of my head. What inspired me to push on was my frustration with the level of technical skill I had as a child. The things I was seeing, the things I wanted to record, I couldn't. Not adequately. So I practiced, and I learned what I needed to, to do the art that I wanted.
Beyond being a personal venture, art has true importance (or none additionally at all) in the context of an audience. It is often nigh impossible to know what people as a whole will like, dislike, find incendiary or find boring.
The reasons that people enjoy and/or connect with something as entertainment are never finite and measurable. Even high-powered execs in the entertainment industry often make the wrong predictions about what will sell and what won't. The public is unpredictable. They often conform, rebel, or protest in completely erratic ways. And, they are each individual people with contesting opinions. Chances are, if one person hates what you've done, someone else will like it. Cultural issues are often hugely important as well. Society's moral compass has changed drastically (at least here in America). Artistic freedom has never been easier or more unrestrained.
In conclusion, I contest that art is most important personally, to the artist. The audience is secondary and fickle. You have to create for yourself. Otherwise, you might as well be working in a cubicle.
|
|
|
|
[10.25.09] |
The worst thing about growing apart from someone is:
seeing them
or thinking of them
and not knowing them enough anymore to even say hello.
|
|
|
|
[10.21.09] |
The Guggenhiem. Kandinsky. French food. NYC. New Muse on the Radio.
This is the apex.
|
|
|
|
[10.15.09] |
So, in response to that issue I had months ago with an entire post being lost while trying to go up, Livejournal credited me $5, the equivalent of 2 months of paid accountage. I've never had a paid account and I'm interested to see what it'll be like. I think it was dead decent of them to credit me something over the issue. :)
Yay for people who actually get back to you on stuff.
|
|
|
|
[10.1.09] |
The idea of banning anything has seemed pretty ludicrous to me for ages. To assume that someone young ( supposedly "impressionable") will automatically adopt a viewpoint you find negative just by being exposed to it factually doesn't make any sense at all. Trying to control what people are allowed to think about, what they are allowed to see is, if anything, going to have the opposite effect. To all those parents trying to get YA books taken off of shelves for teens, ask yourself: Is there anything more intriguing than finding out something your parents don't want you to?
|
|
|
|
[9.30.09] |
And she told him
I'm sorry that it bothers you that
I am a real person and not
a china doll
that doesn't sweat
or eat
or sneeze
or demand that you think of her
and not just yourself
but
my lips are not always red
my hair won't always lie flat
I get sick
sometimes I don't want to wear blue jeans
does this scare you?
you
just a boy
who always thought that girls
were exotic aliens who spoke nonsensical poetry
and smelled like summer
and scored just a little bit higher
on every exam
but you see
I am not only
a girl
|
|
|
|
[9.29.09] |
"The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They're Caesar's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, 'Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.' Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore."
Ray Bradbury
|
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
vivian_aivre's journal