BrownEyedElliot

the good life plays as an anthem while i reminisce. remembering where we were in february and thinking happily about where we’ll be in september.

i blinked and faith filled my mind. i don’t know how i got here, or when i grew so content with this “not thy will” life, but its been a long time coming. i somehow manage to feel so small and powerless in the world, and yet so poised to try and alter it. we discuss choices that affect the scope of our impact, and i’m so blown away to have found someone with the same convictions of conquering.

all this runs amuck in my mind while i watch the millions of cars creeping through tiny white lines. the dan ryan fills with people who will never know me. the city runs, trains and planes and cars and people, oblivious to me. and i’m just happy be sitting here alone with my pickles and potato salad, not oblivious to them.

and this is where i speak when no one here is listening. when typing silently to this screen screams louder than saying anything out loud. i fill with anger and resentment, putting distance in my stride. how will i speak to you, how will i turn your head?

i collect samples of other’s speech, to listen to those who also felt unheard. to give voice to another who feels without. i collect and i gather, i rehearse and i perch myself in a position to say things unsaid for those who wouldn’t stand here themselves. i tremble to be truthful. no one here wants truth.

we live as if lies are more powerful than truth, there is no absolute. so what do we say of our time, that no can know what its for or where it might take us. why do we speak if all that is said is relative to nothing.

relative. we’re all relative. subjective and unseeing. a collective mass of mindlessness, far more educated than generations past. our educations make us greater, we build higher, we fly faster, we push our population with the globe bursting at its seams. higher education, higher standard, lower value on wisdom learned through experience, lower value on faith.

you’re educated, sophisticated. congratulations, you’re a number. join the stack of papers left unread for a job filled by one who got there first. yesterday a teacher, living his life to fill others with his experiences, welcomed me to the workforce by saying,

“congratulations, welcome to working the rest of your life away.”

it’s crazy how it looms. after everyone has gone and walked away. i can’t explain where it comes from, and where it goes when others come around. but it’s here when i get home more often than not lately. in the sunshine of a clear sky, in the darkness of my room, even behind the blue of a stranger’s eyes. it found me here, when i’d thought i’d left it there.

when trying to write just doesn’t make sense, but you can’t let go of the pen. you just shudder, and shiver and quiver along the paper willing the ink to make something happen. when you can only stand the songs with no words, but the silence just won’t do. you play the songs you’ve never heard hoping to hear something you can relate to. when the deepest thing you’ve felt, is also the worst pain you’ve known. you survive on the calm contentment that comes from somewhere outside of your aching bones. when each glimmer of sun from a far off windshield makes you wish you were miles away. you drift in dreams to somewhere else and hope your heart simply learns to stay.

i’m restless. the thoughts squirm and flounder in my mind and i can’t nail a single one down. your words flow in one ear and out the other, jumbled briefly in the mess of my own rambling, meandering mindlings. i can’t stop, can’t pause, can’t produce or proliferate. i’m a mess in my mind, everywhere and nowhere at once. thoughts on faith and purpose jumble with trivial trifle on laundry and haircuts. i’ve drifted deep, into the dark crevices of my brain. the places that no good things come from. i wallow. i wilt. i want out. when it comes to mind over matter, it’s a question of what’s the matter with my mind. i paint, i type, i traipse about, hoping something will help. change scenery, change pace, change day, change week… and still stuck. its writer’s block of living. liver’s block. burnt the candle at both ends and right in the middle until it was just a waxy puddle of brain matter and tears.

i just want to curl up in a pew and never leave. it seems to be the only place i feel ok anymore…

maybe it is for the sheer evidence that i was here, or for the ever elusive confidence in my own existence. just a second quiver might do, a photo of a foot, or a touch that lingers beyond a city block. the curves of the bowls and stems help, descenders that dig into dreams. the simple comfort of words, the transference of thought establishes calm, humanity however flawed. it is a privilege, one that once demanded reverence, now squandered on your meaningless clattering chattering chirps.

let these fingers play carefully across keys that once carried such weight, let this be a beat worth drumming. though not my words but your be spun.

Lissitzky is not only proficient in his writing of his age, he also sets forth a theory for the future. He builds an equation of sorts that we, having read of his time and the time between then and now, can see proven correct. He states that there is no evolution of the inventions we discover in society, whether it be in art/design or other industries. Instead he insists there is a cycle of materialism and dematerialization. If you think of it in the context of our society as compared to his, now these once newfangled printed books are being replaced with digital matter. One could say that we are experiencing the dematerialization part of the cycle, where plastic is the new, less frivolous paper but I would interject that we have, in fact, passed that period. I think plastics and this digital matter that we case so sweetly in solid chemical compounds (and of course, more plastic) have already come into full fledge materialism. The invention of the computer has undergone what Lissitzky expresses as,

“With the passage of time different variations
of the same theme are composed around the
invention, sometimes more sharpened,
sometimes more flattened, but seldom is
the original power attained.”

We have seen the computer sharpened, we have even quite literally seen it flattened. Each with it’s own awe inspiring feature, variations have come and gone but nothing has had the impact of the original invention.

So what is next, what is the next large thud of innovation? To those of us that still treasure the feeling of a good book, dog earred from love in our hands, this all seems like catastrophe. For where we are headed is quite a bit like the time just before Lizzitsky, a time where only the rich and privileged actually have libraries of printed books. Not because so few people lack the technology to make them, but because the technology exists to make them irrelevant. So if the printers and the photographers made the paintings rare and collectable, do the web designers and programmers make the prints and tangible designs rare and collectable? If so what is the new form of creative expression?

In our society the fine artists are now the “starving artists,” and the designers have learned to make practical use of their creative genius. We make very little that is pretty for pretty’s sake. So what is the next step? And how will our generation adapt to this trend before we become irrelevant as well? What will “Our Book” be?

All things considered, I’m well adapted. I practically glide through the streets, end up at home without even thinking about routes or streets. The cold sometimes cuts, and the chatter and clatter of neighbors sometimes irks but it doesn’t phase me.  Sure, I miss the quiet. The utmost serenity that comes from a much less densely populated plain. But I can go without, for months at a time even. The bills here are biting, and the pay never seems to take into account the education I’ve received to be here but I survive. Sort of.

All things considered, I am doing quite well. It is only when I let the blinders fall into place, when I forget to consider all things, that the ache comes. I miss the people who I once held most dear, who once held me quite dear. I wonder if I’ve proven something or accomplished anything here, and long to be close and relevant to the ones who know who I was before I ever left. It stings to know that proximity holds such ground, and that out of sight sometimes really does mean out of mind.

All things considered, I’m more than a bit needy. I have no right to ask for the attention I do. Nor do understand the insatiable hunger I have for such regard. I don’t want to interpret these wants as needs, and I intend to break the cycle of it all.

All things considered, I ought not complain. Ought not, but am.

I’ve been in a honeymoon phase… with the ampersand. It is the most gorgeous and elegant piece of typography I can fathom. It varies from typeface to typeface, with some that resemble the original Roman ligature and others that are more traditionally accepted Carolignian style.  I love them in ways that are all completely justified. I use them in my screen prints, in my designs, and I have several decorating my apartment…. apparently the most recent Riv stage is covered in them as well (great designers think alike.)

And just because I feel like it, I post about my love here. Of course, I must include a full history and a photo of the first ever screen print I did ages ago… clearly revolving around the ampersand.

If you live inside the old graveyard
your skin and bones get kinda hard
you blame it on all of the ones who left you
If you’re in the closet with a broom
why don’t you sweep around the room
make little piles of all the things you don’t understand

But it’s in the mouth it’s in the blood
it’s sweet the taste this bit of love
poor skin too thick to understand
the gravity and graceful plans

in the place that’s made of old relations
where some got loved some got hated
how absently you move around
how listless
how in the night the battle raged
under the blankets where we brave
at least enough to recognize the storm is just a storm

Shine the lights across the bridge
the surface you can’t follow it
the glossy name the wind in fits
gets gerters bucklin’ at their beds

Will i be this way when i’m dead
will I go home and go to bed
will I wake up and wonder did something happen here
The weatherman well he should know
the doctor too from down below
they call to one another cross the wild and windy night

don’t forget
you’ve got love
you’ve got bravery
you’ve got trust
you’ve got bodies
responsibilities
there’s still mountains that’s pushin’ up from underneath
you’ve got pain
it’s not so strange but now you’ve had enough
don’t forget your bones and skin
or where you go
or where you’ve been

Bones and Skin, Mirah (A)spera