retention

I’m still reading random sections of Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas. They have a heading like

Eroticism

and entries that vary from a paragraph to a couple pages. He tells stories of visits and encounters, the characters in his life, and the men he’s slept with. He recounts arduous travels as “odysseys” and makes moments of life into passages of literature.

So far I’ve heard of his enormous capacity to swim long distances, his many sexual encounters across several stages and places throughout his life, and the persecution he faced as a writer and homosexual.

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vibes

places to go hypothetically (aka reasons to wear cute outfits)

• work
• bars
• clubs
• apartments
• rooftops
• thrift stores
• restaurants
• museums
• parks
• shops
• the subway
• the movies
• the dentist
• the eye doctor
• concert venues
• music festivals
• groceries
• bookstores
• galleries
• airplanes
• cars
• outside
• remote work offices
• the.. library
• laundromats
• houses
• porta potties
• aquariums
• protests
• liquor stores
• bodegas
• church?

fear is the greatest human emotion, perhaps the only one.

fear is the greatest human emotion, perhaps the only one. even love is a sub-feeling, a by-product of fear. we love out of fear. no matter what fear, it doesn’t matter. fear of loneliness, mostly. fear of death. wanting to last in people’s memories.

not sure where this is from

To all the clothes I loved before..

I’m trying to be a lot more deliberate in my looks now that I kind of have nowhere to go. For hair.. I’ve had a pretty boring series of haircuts all my life; I’ve never ever dyed my hair, never done anything wild in styling it, and have never had an unusual cut. I cut my own hair now, which is an easy 2-minute buzz of my back and side hair and a 20-minute to an hour long haphazard job with my top and front hair which I hack at using a pair of scissors and a wild amount of self-doubt.

So, I’ve had some haircuts that I preferred. For a long time it was really long hair – so no haircut at all. More recently it’s been short hair.

into this- last last summer

Here’s me with messy short hair (and overall messy look) which I liked a lot at the time:

also from last last summer

I still like the messy short hair – it’s easy, and looks alright sometimes. Having looks look good by chance was my style philosophy for a while. Intentionally stylized looks could be fake, or forced. But they could be beautiful too.

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Electric cut and color combo 💚🦠 @exotismos ・・・ Seu cabelo também é expressão! ✨ #mullet #crafthairdresser #cutstyle #hairart #mullethair #creativecut #creativehair #fadehaircut #neonhaircolor #crafthaircolor #greenhair #cuthair #cabeloverde #kamaleaocolor

A post shared by Hair Party / Tools / Media (@elevatehair) on Aug 30, 2020 at 12:46pm PDT

full on

My lazy style meant throwing on all the clothes I loved, messy hair don’t care. Now I guess I’m thinking of paring back, wearing maybe just 3 colors at most lol. To all the clothes I loved before.. I’m still thinking of clothes I love as items that I can still love…just not all on myself 100% of the time.

Hair is still a WIP. I love my black hair, I don’t think I’d ever dye it. I also don’t like gel, so the best I could do is something wild with the buzz. Or I could start wearing wigs.. Khruangbin vibes?

with big sunnies 😎

asos haul- !

very important content

A note-to-self on race, public platforms, and more

At the moment I’m struggling between wanting to post all about BLM and also finding space for other things that are important to me like art, writing, and creativity.. not that these are mutually exclusive. For my personal accounts, I’ve been inactive after going full-time social media for work. I’ve been promoting BLM anti-racist works on those accounts. I’ve used my personal accounts as an amplifier of those professional accounts, but I’m in need of a vector that communicates more directly about the issues.

About the issues: Since late May, the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDale, and more and more and more have catalyzed a dystopian flash-forward in the world’s consciousness on issues of race, Black Lives Matter, and violence. The tide of politics has risen exponentially, and I’m struggling to stay afloat. 

My personal issues with confronting the issues: Honestly, even in the past when BLM exploded with the death of Travyon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman and the shooting of Michael Brown, I largely stood in silent solidarity with my left-leaning peers. Silence is violence. The dialectic has to be shared among everyone in 2020. 

And that’s where I trip up. I need to educate myself more beyond my education. I need to read and note and participate. What that looks like: reading, highlighting, sharing, and engaging with works by radical Black authors and organizers. Sharing action items (petitions, email templates, other accounts, and places seeking donations) and continuing to take part in these action items yourself. Checking in with yourself about how you can do better each and every day. Understanding the weaknesses of your past and calibrating for the future. 

My issues with the issues is deep. It shows itself in my shallow distaste for the look and feel of organizing, for the lack of aesthetics, for the blunt edges of realities that I’ve happily excluded myself from. Maybe I tackle these with solutions that I’ve seen other use: design for politics*, social media for politics, community building for politics

*politics as protests, resource sharing, collective healing

I need to: build tolerance for the boring but necessary, exercise speaking out as a muscle

I need to: conceptualize a queer future 

the best place to be on a wednesday afternoon

the best place to be on a wednesday afternoon is the fourth floor of the paley media center library, where a quadragenarian with long brown hair greets you within the striated lighting of closed blinds. the greeting is soft and open. you are offered two choices of archives specific to the current season, but you choose neither* and are led instead to the classic archives, a section past two others, near where you can see vintage models of what-seems-to-be monitors lining a back wall. 
a comfortable chair with armrests is pulled out for you. you sit. say thanks. the archive is a computer system, and the librarian tells you of its various components. curator’s choice, made in nyc, interviews with cast members. mrs. maisel is referenced and you smile – there is a lot to see and watch. headphones – the type available in public school computer labs and libraries, small and bendy – are pointed out to you.

the exhibit below says upstairs in the fourth-floor library, paley has interactive exhibits. i guess public computers are interactive exhibits. the time allotment of 1:30 hours is given to you and you’re told accommodation for more time afterwards is possible. you find a mrs. maisel paley panel video that’s about that length. but it’s been five minutes – time to go back. you hit the lower left hand corner back button a few times just in case, going back in the session’s branching click history made in nyc > tracy jordan on conan > log out. before you leave you hear a different librarian explain the computer system to a new guest. are you familiar with it? -here’s how much time you have- 
smile at the person who helped you on the way out. 

*the choice is non and feels open and friendly, opening immediately to another thing – and I process it by looking away from my love of this ease.

Break break

I haven’t posted anything on this blog in so long! These days I’m working from home – thank god for the remote capabilities of digital marketing!

It’s odd to say, but I miss the office quite a bit. WFH has made me realize how easy it would be to just have the majority of work out of office…all I do is capable of being done from a laptop!

Some things I don’t miss are my near-hour commute time and spending $20~ on Midtown lunches. Getting off the J train after the sun had set also bummed me out most days. Then the days started getting longer, and I’d get home and still have a couple hours of sun left. It felt like a whole new life.

This first week of fully remote work has been a bit of a non-week. I don’t know what the phrase for the feeling of life becoming media is (like a reverse fourth-wall break), but I felt that walking back from the groceries today.

I’m starting to enjoy remote calls. I love that for lunch I can just walk over to the kitchen and make something new instead of microwaving a Tupperware of meal prep. There’s also an appreciation for your own bathroom that can only be grasped in contrast with public bathrooms. 🚽

Might post some private reflections/misc. backlog l8r.

Friday, December 6 – Digesting Subway at the MoMA

Muff

going back in time. here are 10+ drafts from my tumblr vault–a washed out look into 2012-2015. Age 13-15.

Music to Check OUT/ download

http://blankkytt.bandcamp.com/album/heavy-crazy-serious

http://www.insaneproject.com/2011/12/2011-10th-best-tracks.html

http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Paperhead/Live_at_WFMU_on_Talks_Cheap_July_28th_2011/The_Paperhead_-_04_-_Cant_Keep_My_Eyes_Open

Engorgio

Just more thoughts while I’m on this machine. I feel unfortunate because this will make the total number of my drafts reach thirteen.. oh well. Haha well, this art-blog-scrolling-music-listening hobby of mine is getting nowhere. It has no point, and yes I don’t know. The music is nice though, very goood. So I am going to watch television series now I guess, which is so dissapointing, but there’s no helping it. I’m sorry.