Face Sculpt

I busted out the Sculpey and watercolors today and this is the result of my efforts. I forget how much I enoy making puppets and faces. Eager to do more.

2nd Avenue and 20th Street
4:50 PM

I'm on my way home when I encounter a middle-aged African American mom and her beautiful daughter, who looks to be around twelve years old. The daughter is goofing around reenacting the Thriller choreography -- zombie arms and all. Our eyes meet and I SMILE. I can't help myself -- I am delighted. After a moment, she smiles back -- her smile starts out small and hesitant (Who is this random crazy white girl smiling at me?), but it quickly grows to a wide, twinkling grin. We both light up. We both know. By that time, I've walked past them. The moment is over, but it will remain with me forever.

I made a tarot card for MJ.

Bizarre Clouds at Sunset in NYC

Taken from our rooftop. We stood there gawking at these clouds for about ten minutes. The little droplet thingies started out small and almost seemed to be "falling" and expanding in slow motion, which was kind of scary. Very weird and very beautiful. Does anyone know what type of clouds these are?

UPDATE! Apparently they're called mammatus clouds. According to Wikipedia:

Mammatus (also known as mammatocumulus, meaning "bumpy clouds") is a meteorological term applied to a cellular pattern of pouches hanging underneath the base of a cloud. The name "mammatus" is derived from the Latin mamma (udder), due to the resemblance between the shape of these clouds and the breast of a woman.

That explains why someone on Twitter was calling them boob clouds.

Full of life and light and energy. You will be missed and forever celebrated.

Eric ordered this documentary a while ago, The Mindscape of Alan Moore. We finally got around to watching it last night and it totally blew my mind. It's basically just Alan Moore sitting there with a bunch of crazy rings on his fingers, staring at the camera and spouting genius. I really loved the section on art and magic, so I've taken the time to post the video and also to type out the entire thing, because it's that awesome.

"The problem is that with magic, being in many respects a science of language, you have to be very careful with what you say, because if you suddenly declare yourself to be a magician, without any knowledge of what that entails, then one day you are likely to wake up and discover that that is exactly what you are. There is some confusion as to what magic actually is. I think that this can be cleared up if you just look at the earliest descriptions of magic. Magic in its earliest form is often referred to as 'the Art'. I believe that this is completely literal, I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be writing, music, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic.

Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols -- words or images -- to achieve changes in consciousness. The very language of magic seems to be talking as much about writing or art as it is about supernatural events. A grimoire for example, the book of spells, is simply a fancy way of saying grammar. Indeed, to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change peoples' consciousness. And I believe this is why an artist or writer is the closet thing in the contemporary world that you are likely to see to a shaman.

I believe that all culture must have arisen from cult. Originally, all of the facets of our culture, whether they be in the arts or the sciences, were the province of the shaman. The fact that in present times this magical power has degenerated to the level of cheap entertainment and manipulation is, I think, a tragedy. At the moment, the people who are using shamanism and magic to shape our culture are advertisers. Rather than trying to wake people up, their shamanism is used as an opiate to tranquilize people, to make people more manipulable. Their magic box, the television, and by their magic words, their jingles, can cause everybody in the country to be thinking the same words and have the same banal thoughts, all at exactly the same time.

In all of magic there is an incredibly large linguistic component. The bardic tradition of magic would place a bard as being much higher and more fearsome than a magician. A magician might curse you -- that might make your hands lay funny, or you might have a child born with a club foot. If a bard were to place not a curse upon you, but a satire, than that could destroy you. If it was a clever satire, it might not just destroy you in the eyes of your associates, it would destroy you in the eyes of your family, it would destroy you in your own eyes. And if it was a finely worded and clever satire that might survive and be remembered for decades, even centuries, then years after you were dead people still might be reading it and laughing at you and your wretchedness and your absurdity. Writers and people who had command of words were respected and feared as people who manipulated magic. In latter times I think that artists and writers have allowed themselves to be sold down the river. They have accepted the prevailing belief that art and writing are merely forms of entertainment. They're not seen as transformative forces that can change a human being, that can change a society. They are seen as simple entertainment, things with which we can fill twenty minutes, half an hour, while we're waiting to die.

It is not the job of artists to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn't be the audience -- they would be the artist. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need."

Priorities

I hate that this idiot politician's extramarital affair is receiving more coverage than the situation in Iran. Thank you, mainstream media.

On Synchronicity

The problem with synchronicities is that they are very alluring and you can follow them around forever and everything just keeps getting more and more complex and interconnected and laden with crazy archetypal meaning. I think there's a kind of trickster energy at work in that, because it doesn't ultimately lead you to any answers, it just keeps you circling around and around, feeling like you're almost there, that you've almost got it. It's very beautiful, actually, once you apprehend it with humor in your heart. There's a lesson in the fact that the pattern exists everywhere, you can find it in anything and everything, but it's not telling you what to do -- it's not really giving you directions at all. Everything is still one hundred percent virgin creativity. The path is not linear.

"Whenever a feeling of aversion comes into the heart of a good soul, it's not without significance. Consider that intuitive wisdom to be a Divine attribute, not a vain suspicion: the light of the heart has apprehended intuitively from the Universal Tablet."

[Rumi via Rigorous Intuition]

I haven't posted any art in a while and this drawing isn't really in keeping with the overall theme here (too girly?), but whatever, I don't have anywhere else to put it.

I secretly would LOVE to do fashion illustration at some point in my life. I know nothing about it and I suppose it could actually be a really hellish, stressful job, but in my mind it would involve me spending my mornings at a gigantic drafting table in a huge, serene apartment overlooking Central Park. There would be lots of skylights and french doors everywhere, and it would smell like freshly brewed coffee and Nag Champa, and various fancy lookbooks and magazines and photos would be strewn about and pinned to the walls, and the cats would keep me company and sleep in my lap and gaze approvingly at my creations instead of knocking shit over and eating spools of thread.

Eric found this Art Magick website. Fun to browse via the "Random Images" link at the top.

"ArtMagick is a virtual gallery dedicated to the continual quest of seeking out obscure 19th century artists and long-forgotten paintings and poems illustrating a 'magic world of romance and pictured poetry'. The majority of the content in the archive covers the Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist movements."

Food, Inc.

A little poking around on the Food, Inc. website led me to an amazing organization called PAN, or the Pesticide Action Network. PAN's awesome mission statement is as follows:

"Pesticide Action Network North America (PAN North America, or PANNA) works to replace the use of hazardous pesticides with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives. As one of five PAN Regional Centers worldwide, we link local and international consumer, labor, health, environment and agriculture groups into an international citizens’ action network. This network challenges the global proliferation of pesticides, defends basic rights to health and environmental quality, and works to ensure the transition to a just and viable society."

They also have a neato "campaigns" section where you can read about the politics and health effects of specific types of pesticides, such as:

• Lindane
• DDT
• Endosulfan
• Fumigants
• Organophosphates

Get informed!

A little Empire of the Sun to inspire your Wednesday.