my new book Dr. Devil Spring Jungle

Here's my new book. It's called Dr. Devil Spring Jungle. This book has been in the making for the last 6 months or so. We just moved to a new apartment, a better part of town. Some of that came through with the pieces in this book I think. A lot of anger living back where we lived before. Not happy about that, but these books serve me too, to help me remember always remember what things were like because time moves fast. So glad to be moving on from there though. Ok. Here goes. Dr. Devil Spring Jungle. It starts with this picture and goes on from there.

THE END. 

why not leave a comment?

my favorite hemingway

my dad wrote about hemingway the other day on his blog. This is my favorite hemingway. The last page of the epilogue to Death in the Afternoon.

the sound of the engine at 5:12

New painting (oil on paper with the sun shining through the back of it)

Went to the mall yesterday to get my hair cut and they had a white 2012 M3 sitting right there inside the mall. That car is so gorgeous. Here's an oil on paper picture I finished up yesterday. The under portion is a giant sun painted with oils. Over that is blue chalk shading for sky and green chalk shading for earth (though you can't those colors too clearly in the picture below). Normally if you had a picture of grass and sky, the sun would just be in the sky, in this case though, the sun is behind both. On paper, the oil from the oil paint makes the paper translucent. When you hang the paper on the window, as I did with this one as I shot it, you get the effect of the light coming through the back of it and illuminating it like stained glass almost, except that this way has more texture than glass can for the most part.
 

Here's a detail if you want to look closer:

back atcha nepal

It’s been hard in the last few years. I haven’t much wanted to travel anywhere. Even if money were no object, I couldn’t say there’s any place I’d like to go. Maybe just home to see family.

I sort of had enough with traveling. Not with seeing new places, but with the routine I made of it -- looking on the internet for a place to visit, finding somewhere to sleep, printing out the itinerary or directions and a map. That’s a boring ass way to travel.

That sort of changed a bit with Nepal. Going somewhere was exciting again. I didn't plan anything, which meant no expectations. The drive from the airport to the center of the Kathmandu hit me sort of hard. Look around. Wood shacks with corrugated plastic roofs. Smoking piles of garbage. Dirt roads crammed with compact cars and mopeds. No stop signs. No traffic lights.

I thought about Kathmandu the other day and wrote this in my notebook: “I would like to one day get back there and organize some dumpsters and some respirators and some workers for a little money (workers are cheap there) to clean up the river.”

I was talking about the very unriver-like Bagmati River in Kathmandu, which you can see part of here:

there are actually a couple of people towards the top of the picture if you look closely

The million or so Kathmandese either burn their garbage or toss it in the Bagmati. The Hindu population of the city cremates their dead publicly on its banks and sweeps the remains into the river. Kids swim in it. Cows drink from it.

I was thinking, wouldn’t it be good to try to make things a touch better there if at all possible? At least to remove some of the trash. Not on the next plane, but maybe I could help. Then I was like, no.

That river can be sad, but I can't see it that way. To see those real and shitty things -- the river, the wild dogs, the garbage, the traffic, the awful smell -- to think them through, to see past them to something that even they can't touch. That wild dog on the sidewalk has severe mange, and he’s sound asleep. That woman around that black-burning trash pit has her son and a daughter with her. At the cremation place, a little boy with a broom and a bucket of water is helping brush the ashes into the river. That people live there. That there is life there.

Related posts:
(unfortunately these will only open in a new window if you right-click and choose that way. oh well.)
Back from Nepal
A photo from Nepal and some killer Browning
Couple of drawings in Nepal

interesting historical tidbit about NY

The history of the name Brooklyn Dodgers thanks wikipedia:

 "By 1890, New Yorkers (Brooklyn was a separate city until it became a borough in 1898) routinely called anyone from Brooklyn a "trolley dodger", due to the vast network of street car lines criss-crossing the borough as people dodged trains to cross the streets. When the second Washington Park burned down early in the 1891 season, the team moved to nearby Eastern Park, which was bordered on two sides by street car tracks. That's when the team was first called the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers. That was soon shortened to Brooklyn Dodgers."

nas

The thing about writing is how can you make it sound like this. There's nothing like a hungry human voice. You get that in rap, you don't get that in all music. That's the thing I have against crafting something until it just becomes writing, and not whatever you said when you were hot. That's the thing about how most writing is, it's like journalism or something. Then you lose all the taste though, and you just get the feeling from it that the writer has thought a lot about what he's writing and chose all the words carefully, and went back and tightened it. Sure they do that in rap music too but the delivery is a huge part of it. So you can show emotion even if the lyrics are really crafted. How do you do that in writing though when there's no voice, just the words. That's something man. Like if you look at my post about Pavla's dad, that's way crafted. I don't know man. I want the writing to be straight and real, which to me means not stepped on. But I don't know. It's tough writing something in one moment full of whatever and then leave it alone. Even though it's true in some way and in that moment it was perfect, when you look back on it cold, it's not perfect anymore. Still it feels more real if you leave it alone. I dont know.

Picture I made

I wrote this last night and colored it today at work. ignore any grammar mistakes pls. it's not about that.

yeah loved doing this this morning

Put these down in the park today in chalk. I found a nice little corner up on Vitkov hill this morning. So Marsh and I sat there and a couple of these came to mind. The first one is just about money and thinking about that sort of thing. If you rollover the image you can see the text.

I like playing with abbreviations of things that aren't normal (like the ABR and the TCOP). This second one is just about changing opinions about things and also about saying I don't know. Notice that no one around me ever says they don't know anything, especially at work. It's like some sort of weakness or something. Drives me crazy. I think it's not healthy to be like that because other people see it as a weakness.

And my boy marsh being patient meanwhile...

Emily Dickinson's "Four Trees — upon a solitary Acre —"

I like this poem a lot. Emily Dickinson's Four Trees — upon a solitary Acre —:

Four Trees — upon a solitary Acre —
Without Design
Or Order, or Apparent Action —
Maintain —

The Sun — upon a Morning meets them —
The Wind —
No nearer Neighbor — have they —
But God —

The Acre gives them — Place —
They — Him — Attention of Passer by —
Of Shadow, or of Squirrel, haply —
Or Boy —

What Deed is Theirs unto the General Nature —
What Plan
They severally — retard — or further —
Unknown —

the flag

not being home these days, i get to reading different stuff about home. i don't understand why the flag has so many rules. Isn't it just a symbol? How can disrespecting a symbol hurt whatever it symbolizes? Aren't we just people? Isn't letting someone trash a symbol of freedom part of letting that person be free?

I was reading this travel piece about Brazil. In Brazil people do all kinds of funky things with the flag.

g

Marcus Aurelius

I saw a woman being incredibly rude to the bus driver today. I was like ich, gross. I don't know if y'all like Marcus Aurelius.

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own–not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me.”

Oh and he was a badass emperor. If you like that, check out the whole book on amazon:

I mean, geez just look at how good the first page is...

hmmm...  

argh

@dad and mom, sorry about the vulgarity in this one, but I have to start speaking on this blog the way I really speak. Anyway I'm 32.

I work as a technical writer here in prague. today I got chewed out in a meeting at work for not being able to tell my boss what the software I write the user guide for does. There are a lot of reasons why I don't know. You could say it's because all of us writers here write about hundreds of different bits and pieces software, and it's hard to know what any of this shit does or why. But the BIG reason is I don't care. I've never given a shit about telecommunications in my whole life. I work here for the money and because there isn't much work. So I can write or do whatever. It's not that I don't work hard from time to time. When it's necessary I do. But it's rarely necessary. I probably could have bullshitted an answer today too. I've done it before to not look weak. But today I just said I don't know. My boss is actually my friend. He's a good guy. But there are rules and one of them is you can't call bullshit in a meeting. It never works. There's no ground swell of support. No one says peep. I'm tired of status reports. I'm tired of meetings. We all have email. Let's all just type to one another so I don't have to get out of my seat to go to another seat and talk about what I write about. I used to actually care though. Things have changed so drastically since I was hired four years ago it's not even the same job anymore. So many douchebags have come and gone. Seeing high up people come in, change shit up to show how proactive they are, and then move on is fucking exhausting. I disconnected myself a long time ago and told myself just to work on other stuff, write, put up a blog, post, make books, make pictures. Justify getting paid to sit here at a desk in front of a computer all day. I can imagine leaving this place but I can't imagine going for another interview somewhere. I'm so bummed by this stuff. People put their whole lives into this shit. It means nothing to me. Telecommunications mean nothing to me.

With Pavel in the barn

I’m standing with Pavel in the barn watching him clean the mousetraps under the rabbit cages and toss the dead mice into a pile by the door. Pavel is my girlfriend’s dad. Here in the Czech Republic you call people by their first name if you know them, so Pavel, not Mr. Veik as we might stateside.

The mice are smaller than I thought mice are. I thought mouse traps snapped further down the body. They actually snag just the head. I didn’t see any blood.

When you travel to North Bohemia where her parents live, you get the sense that it’s no-bullshit living. Pavel kills the mice so the mice don’t eat the rabbit food so we can eat the rabbits. Pavel shoots the birds in the cherry tree so we can eat the cherries. I wasn’t sure if it was actually even possible to kill a bird with an air rifle but birds rot like any other animal and one day I was walking in the garden and I followed the scent and came across a bird lying right there under the tree.

I have always had two feelings that I feel like are opposing. The one feeling that living things (animals, people, nature) are so beautiful and interesting. When I get in the right frame of mind like that (coffee helps), I feel like I’m seeing through things to how cool it is they’re even there at all. I get these intense overwhelming feelings of wonder. Then there’s the other feeling, the feeling that that’s shallow. That I might see beauty, but that I’m seeing just part of it. That there are things built into the nature of nature that aren’t beautiful at all. I’ve never killed a rabbit or any other animal for food, but I haven’t had to. It’s weird that there are two views of one thing. But maybe it’s about seeing both, or that it’s okay to some days see one, and other days the other. Or that maybe it’s okay to be confused about it. Maybe it’s supposed to be confusing. Maybe all that sounds obvious. Maybe it sounds nuts.

Anyway, the weekend was great. I wanna tell you more about Pavel and his wife Jana, my girlfriend’s parents, and how they came to be living here in Nová Ves v Horách. I’ll tell you later tho. This is long enough as it is. Stay tuned for more about them though. It involves Nazis.

Here are a couple other pictures I took up there:

pavla and her sister

pavla

the field behind their house

Libor and Phil Shoenfelt at U vystřelenýho oka

Soundtrack to this here blog post…Beachwood Sparks The Tarnished Gold (stream it)…very Neil Youngy, Byrdsy, Bandy, Big Stary. Big thumbs up for that one. Like it a lot.

I went with Libor to see Phil Shoenfelt at U vystřelenýho oka last night. It’s pretty amazing and a unique place. It’s on a dead end side street here in Zizkov. They have music outside. It's cool. liked the music. People were dancing and stuff.

Libor’s an interesting guy. He’s a sculptor. He restores statues and facades of churches around the CR. He has a team of workers and everything. It’s pretty interesting. He also has his own personal sculptures in shows around the city. He has some stuff right now somewhere. I asked him the name of the place and he doesn’t even know. He drew me a map. It’s funny but I guess he’s been doing it a while so he doesn’t think about it too much.

He wanted to know about Nepal because he wants to climb to Everest Base Camp. We got to talking about the trip and I was like, I’d go back, but if I did I would pay a Sherpa this time to carry my bags. Sounds strange maybe. It’s not that different than going somewhere and hiring someone local to help you get around. Sherpas know a ton. I told him how I met a few on the trail and they were interesting dudes. I learned they carry a max of 30 kilos (about 70 pounds) on their backs. My bag was probably 14kg or so, not super heavy but heavy. I even saw a man carrying a man in a chair on his back. I felt dumb passing that dude. One guy told me that carrying bags is one of the higher-paying jobs. He didn’t live anywhere near the Himalaya, so he came from far to work carrying bags.

Libor told me that once back in communist time he traveled with some friends to Bulgaria. They had to carry everything (tent, food, etc.) on their backs since where they went was nothing. They came across a house where they helped a guy cut tobacco. The guy paid them with bottles of alcohol and they all got drunk together. After that the guy offered them a place to stay, and his daughter. Libor said he was like ‘why not?’ I didn’t ask any more about that but that’s funny.

Libor’s a smart guy who knows a lot about materials. Once I was like why should I buy expensive paints? I like using the colors I can get from any store. I should be able to use anything, right? I don’t want to spend a lot of money to make a picture. Then he bought me 4 tubes of oil paint and a few decent brushes for my birthday and I was like, oh, so that’s what the hype’s about. Oil looks better, has more texture, doesn’t fade, etc.

But last night I was asking him about working with glass. He’s made sculptures entirely from glass before but I was curious how you go about making a colorful window, like a church window. I told him there’s an atelier down the street where they make custom glass windows. He said it’s better to go to north bohemia. There’s a factory there near his weekend house. If you bring them a relief, for example, they’ll produce a glass relief for you, which sounds amazing. He says it’s simple and relatively cheap, 3 maybe 4 thousand crowns. I asked him but how do you make the relief tho. What do you use? He said just use polystyrene, but then of course you’d have to cast the polystyrene form in gypsum. Then you bring that gypsum form to the glass makers and they make the relief in glass. Then you gotta get it home though. He laughed about that. And I was like, where to put it. Our apartments already cramped.

I have one painting on glass I made a while ago. Actually there are two, but this one’s the only decent one. It’s heavy as hell. I like paint on glass when the sun shines through the back of it. I like it when you paint on something, on any surface, and the natural light shines through the back of it. I don’t have a full color picture of it with me now because I’m at work. I only have one picture of it and it’s just partial. I shot my girl through it once…

I hope I actually get to make something with glass at some point. I always thought it would be interesting to use messed up glass, broken maybe, to make a church window. A real window not a fantasy window. I always liked Duchamp’s The Large Glass. We have a messed up window in our apartment block that looks like someone put a golf ball through it. The hole is interesting though it looks a little bit like a sun. You don’t even necessarily need colored glass. Why not just clear glass arranged nicely. That would be interesting. Hope I can do that at some point, but it’s also a question of having space to do that.
Hope you’ve enjoyed my rambling.
Peace y’all.

The thing about the paintings is that there is still something missing from those too. I should be writing or doing something with writing that makes sense. I want to make a book that is real. That has all parts of life in it. All the parts that are beautiful in some way. There are lots of things to do and Prague's a beautiful city but what about all the stuff that's missing. A real connection to art and artists and to other people with ideas and exciting things they'd like to get done. I don't know anyone like that here, but I know they're here. Every big city's got people like that. I have a new idea about some art pieces where there will be writing on the opposite side of a board (the writing faces away and you’re just staring at the back of a board). There will be two arm holes where you'd be able to reach in and feel the lettering on the other side, and you would read it by touch. It’s sort of another step in the tactile direction past the last few pieces I did. The reason for the backwards design is that I always think about the pace and how words get spoken and can change their meaning or give meaning where there normally isn't any depending on the pace you read something at. That's the problem with normal writing on a page. You can't control the pace. You could read it aloud yourself to people but who wants to do that. You can put a bunch of commas, but those don't stand out enough. You can break the writing up down the page so it looks like steps, but I don’t like that. You can put one word on each page, but that's boring and a waste of space. So I think about that a lot. How to play with speed and pace and how to read things in alternate ways. Once I got a dictionary from my Russian friend dmitry and i thought it was pretty amazing because sometimes you'd see an entry and next to that entry in English would be the Russian equivalent, maybe an example sentence in Russian, or something like that. Next to the Russian text was more text in English. I thought that was cool because I didn’t understand the Russian text, but it was interrupting my normal reading, and Cyrillic is a visually beautiful alphabet like Chinese or Japanese. I thought that was sort of cool. here's a sentence that is using writing in another language to slow me down better than a comma might or a period would. A while later I had a piece of writing after that in another book where there's a car accident and the writing switches from normal like this to backwards. 

It's still meant to be read but it's meant to take a bit more time to figure out the words, and then read them back in your head, because there's confusion because there's been an accident. Right now though that's for later. For now I want to make (I’m working on) a book that is a bit more extreme and from the perspective of a little kid in a desert or in Egypt or Morocco somewhere who is doing stuff like going to starbucks and looking at flowers and stuff and his voice talking about all that stuff, along with a lot of pictures and scans of different stuff too. I was thinking before I'll write a story about a kid who grows up in a village and then leaves the village and meets a warrior and goes on an adventure. I was reading a lot of a Hero with a thousand faces at the time. I was thinking I'll just take the Hero Journey skeleton and write a story with this different sort of language. That's not really gonna work though. It doesn’t feel right. I think it should be a boring sort of story in some ways that's just about a kid walking around. Somebody walking around and seeing things and writing about those things he sees and hears. All the writing and pictures are a result of the place, so the pictures and writing are the place and positive things that he loved doing and believes in. I don't know if that's interesting though, and the whole time, if you're me and you like writing and think that you have to keep writing to get to a better place, you're always worrying that something is too far out, too unrelatable. But to me the stories are unrelatable for the most part. I love a story, but I can't write a decent story. I don't have any feeling for character or pacing something and climaxes and all that. Just to write about what I see, and to maybe put that in the mouth of a character, but a very basic character ntl. So that's tough. Trying to make a book that i really like but that i think  people will read. you gotta think about that. you read konrath or any of those author blogs and you know these guys are doing something people might like to read. But a book about a kid where nothing really happens he just goes around spotting stuff and listening to people and he writes about it or about the feeling of it and makes a picture...I don’t know about that.

pitchfork's review of The future of the left and the bands blog response

Recently I was reading a music review on pitchfork for an album by the future of the left. it was pretty strong against the album and didn’t give it a very high score. I listened to some of it on spinner and it was good. for some reason though I ended up searching more about the album in google and came across this article which lead me to the bands blog, which has a pretty pissed off response from one of the band members about that pitchfork review. It's funny and clever and you feel bad for the band because most people are only gonna read the review and not the blog response from the band defending themselves. I wish in the pitchfork review or at the end of it as an update they linked over to the bands blog so people could read the bands side of things. So after I read the blog I was like, this isn't really fair, I'm reading one person's perspective of an album. Duh I know but I like reading about music. And there's so much music you really can't just listen randomly to everything that's available. So I'm back reading reviews and stuff, but I don’t know. They could do more. Now that I know how pissed the band was, and I know the critic rating makes or breaks albums, I wish the site would do more to show all the conversation happening. Maybe they did on other review sites. I don't know. But this is a time when things are connected and it only gives you credit I think if you acknowledge your opinion is not popular. That's something that's possible to do now, which wasn't possible in print. why aren't they doing that though. I would love it if a site reviewed an album and gave the artist a space to respond. I remember Kanye talking about that in the first 5 minutes of an interview on charlie rose. Goddamn must be frustrating to work on an album and have it dumped on. At least with books it doesn't cost anything to write a book. with music though it takes studio time and money and instruments and playing live and all that just for one guy with a ton of influence to make you or break you.

Pictures from my show last saturday here in Prague

I showed a bunch of pictures and writing last saturday here in Prague. man was I nervous I wanted to bail. but it was a good experience. I wanna describe the whole thing and show some pictures for anyone who may have wanted to see but couldn't be there.

Ok so basically the whole thing was to show some writing in a way other than by putting it up on this blog or in e-books. I wanted/want to do something with writing that makes it more tangible. So I worked on some pieces of writing about different things and wrote them on large boards and put the boards on easels to show that way.

Right off the bat, saturday was sort of a mess. wind was blowing knocking stuff over. Two of the boards were thin so the wind got caught behind them and blew them over. marshall was terrified, tail between his legs the whole time. So I had to lay two of the pieces on the ground rather than pick them up every five minutes. I could only really keep two of the easels upright. I had a chair there with a few copies of info about where the paintings and stuff came from and saying welcome. I wanted to have something saying welcome. I never understood why painters never write anything in their own voice to the people who come. At least where you're from, what you're doing, maybe some background. It took me more than a minute to throw that info together, so why not show that here...

It's funny. Writing about it now feels like I'm walking through pointing out the things I want you to see. It's completely different than if you were just looking at the pictures on their own on saturday, but whatever. maybe this is actually better. It's way more comfortable doing this than standing out there was. for sure. I don't know about the name materurbium. I haven't tried searching my name, but I don't think you reach the blog. If you search materurbium you end up here though.

Here are some of the pictures from the event.

This one is about Karel Rachunek, a Czech hockey player who died last November in a horrible plane crash. It's a tribute sort of. A few people asked about this picture. They were Czech and they recognized the name. That was cool. This picture is tactile, so you can touch the letters (which I hoped people would do). The style of putting something together that's tactile with writing I think comes from when I had a poetry teacher in college who told us if you write about something, describe as many of the sensations as you can. I don't remember her name but I remember getting sort of stuck on that idea. When I go see art somewhere I'm never sure if I'm allowed to reach out and touch the stuff I see. Anyway the text of this one goes like this "Rachunek thank you for scoring that goal against Sweden in 2010 with 8 seconds to go. We were watching on the big screen at Spirit Bar. Everybody went nuts. You're gone now. You were killed in a plane crash. But that goal that night...". And there's a sort of faded "I want to remember that night forever. Goodbye." towards the bottom if you look closely.

Another...

This one really has two parts. Straight up and down there's writing on the top and a picture on the bottom. The writing goes like this "Ovid said only god is form. There are no 3 clues. God is simple white patch in front of numbers before + after. So there's no symbol of age." The picture on the bottom doesn't look like much of a picture like this, but it is. It's just meant to be seen on its side, this way...

It's a picture of a person to the right in front of a desk in a room with a giant window in it. The desk has writing on it that says "hearing god is from form too". The writing about Ovid is inspired by this Ovid quote I read in Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Next picture.

The text of this one is a bit more personal. It's just a comment I guess. The words go like this "There isn't only one way. There's what works for me. It can't be for everybody. I'm in one place and they are in another. In some ways, they're right and I'm wrong. "You know the truth when you hear it," says mom. But I don't know if that's true. I change my mind all the time. There has to be love. But even that's sometimes...Sometimes I don't want to love the face of a closed down person. I want to just walk away." Just a comment really. 'They' is no one in particular. It's anyone who believes something different than I do.

and one more...

This is a more poetic one. More along the lines of the Ovid one I mentioned before and the types of lines you catch in ancient poetry. I like that language sometimes. Some of the letters broke off in transport, so I gotta glue those back on. I started writing this little piece of writing when I was in Nepal, sitting on the edge of a staggered rice field watching a yak munch on some grass. I loved the animals there. It was so interesting to see cows and yaks and goats wandering around. The text goes like this "Let me write the way the yak eats, burred in summer by the gold, seeing just what's right in front, turned by sounds. No friend of nature. Nature." Burred is not a word. But burred like bur is what I mean.

There were a few more pictures in the show, but some of them have a hard edge I'm not ready to show on the blog here right yet. I'm trying to let stuff write itself, but sometimes the results are sort of harsh and the language less than sweet. I'm not sure what to do with that. I want the language to be straight, but it's gotta work for me too. The impulse is to not care and just to go. Why not go since I'm only really talking to myself on this blog anyway. But I'll keep it just to these few pieces from the show for now.

honestly not too many people came by on saturday. I didn't have much in the way of expectations. I put together what I could. I was glad if anybody came by and looked. Some people actually did. There was a friendly taxi driver who asked what I had written about Rachunek. There was a drunk guy who wanted to know why in the world I was writing in English (point taken). A bunch of tourists. A few people read a piece or two, looked at me, looked back at the board. That was cool. I sort of got the feeling later that the writing on the boards might be coming off like protest placards of some kind. I really hadn't done enough to explain what I was doing there and what people were looking at. I thought people would read one piece then move on to the next. most people read a little and left. I expected people to read more and ask me something. that's what I do when I see stuff on the street. but pavla said that's not the czech way. she said I should have had more information up on boards the way I had my writing.

for some weird reason even though basically no one read very much I actually feel like things went okay. i didn't have any expectations really. i wanted to finish a bunch of stuff by then and I did. so I was happy about that. honestly, really proud of all of it. I put a lot of time into giving all that stuff a bunch of layers. It was sort of funny watching how people take stuff in. funny how I'm sitting there and pavla and marsh are there and we're standing in the middle of a square. it was funny. the most uncomfortable thing in the world though.

Later y'all.

It's so awesome having a blog. You can just write whatever you want. Finishing up a bunch of the writing and pictures I'll be showing tomorrow on the street. There's a bunch of stuff that's aside from that that I hope will come through. Like how to display. We've got four or so easels which I guess I'll use. The only other option would be some sort of display wall I'd have to rent. But that's a hassle. Funny though since I never used an easel. Never even used a canvas. Of course you have to think about the goal. The goal I guess is just to finally have something out there, even if it's done-it-meself. I tried to invite a few people I think are probably into writing and art, but we'll see how that goes. Every time you try to get yourself shown in a gallery somewhere they always ask have you ever had an exhibition before. It's annoying. Maybe it's better. They make you wonder what you want them for anyway. I can rent a spot, I can tell people myself. I can use the blog. I can just write to people I know and invite them. Whatever they can do I can do, and probably I'll do it better because it's for me.

Exhibition in Prague

I learned something from an old boss I used to have over here in Prague. He was a consultant that came in and had to get a group of technical writers up and running in the company. Dude was wise. I remember he said think about the goal before you put a bunch of work into something. yeah, I always remember that. He was right. I've had this goal for a while to turn the writing I do into tactile pieces of art, then show them in some sort of exhibition that people will come and read/touch and (hopefully) enjoy. The hardest part is actually getting the stuff somewhere people can see it.

Amazingly though (thanks to my miracle maker girlfriend) the hard part has been taken care of. On June 9th I'll be showing a bunch of stuff outdoors on Namesti Republiky in the center of Prague from 5pm to 10pm. June 9th also happens to be Museum Night here in Prague, when most museums and galleries in Prague are open to the public all night for free. So that's an amazing coincidence :)

I think the pictures/writing I'm finishing is great. Really. Proud of it. Sharing pictures and writing digitally has been missing something for me. I wanted to make some things that are tactile, so that's what I've done/am doing. I don't know too much art or writing that's meant for that. So here's to that.

So I'm working towards June 9th. Got plenty of work to do. I'm gonna have a bunch of pictures and writing there for y'all to see. I'm not sure how many people who read my blog live here in Prague, but feel free to stop by Saturday night and introduce yourself if you do.

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I want there to be a way for the travelling through the internet to be sort of tracked. Not tracked tracked, the way it is of course. Sometimes reading one thing, you follow a link somewhere else, then you see a word that you don't know, you open another tab to look up the word. Before I know it I have 5 or 6 tabs open. I think that's kind of interesting since it took time, and it's gotten you somewhere. Maybe there's nothing to that, it's interesting though. One day, I was reading the Pitchfork review of the reissue of Paul McCartney's Ram and there was the the line

"It's just the critics who say, 'Well, John was the biting tongue; Paul's the sentimental one,'" Linda observed shrewdly in a dual Playboy interview from 1984. "John was biting, but he was also sentimental. Paul was sentimental, but he could be very biting. They were more similar than they were different."

That led me over to the Playboy interview (really good) but more important to look up the word shrewdly. I heard that word in business, but I didn't really know what it meant. It means...

1. Characterized by keen awareness, sharp intelligence, and often a sense of the practical.

All that to get to this. I wanted to show everybody...

I just bought Steven Pressfield's The War of Art for kindle today. There's something to this particular chapter that I saw in the book preview that I think is said shrewdly.

Just because he says that so well I had to get the book. Just started it so I'll stop short of saying the whole thing's great. We'll see. High hopes though. So, shrewdly, here's to you...