harold_maude's journal

I'm as happy as a bug who has found a left over cream puff on a sidewalk.
We got this baby back up on it's feet!
Ya hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This morning, the thoughts from last night are still there.
This vague sense of being like two day old coffee, or one day depending on how useless it is to the coffee addict.

I'm beginning to think that being an artist means along with all the other stuff, that there is this intense feeling of tradgedy that sits on your shoulders and pecks relentlessly at your head.

I'm beginning to think that no matter what else we are, we are prone to major bouts of depression anger, lonelyness and self abuse.
We feel so intensely the moments that are brilliant that the fall is way too high not to get smashed up from.

But looking at it. It's worth it.
I can say that because the end result is the work that gets birthed out of that place.

I think about all the geniuses of the past who created the things we look at and go wow to and want to grab hold of and keep tight to our chest, as if to find some deep loving warmth with in thoes things.

I think they felt exactly what we do and it didn't matter.
They were as driven as we are now.
And were destine to feel such intense things so that they could create thoes peices of wow that make people have mental orgasams.

I'm also of a mind to think that in this world of over priced plastic life we are more depressed and more sucidal off and on than our genius forfathers.
And we are more desperately seeking someone who can touch us and make us know that we are real.

I know this is true for myself anyway.
I would love to know that I'm real inside this skin all the time.
Instead of feeling it on rare occasions.
I love my art.
But sometimes I wish it were human and could reach out and grab me with such intense hands that all I would feel is this deep gutral primal scream of every thing well up in me and end up blasting out of every pore in my body.

I would love to have it rip me to peices and then put me back together with a smile on it's face.
I would love to feel it look at me with such intense hunger in it's eyes and wisper things that you just lay there and shake at because it's like being plugged into a transformer waiting for someone to switch on the connection so that you end up blowing up like some star going super nova.

I wish my art were human, instead of just a reflection of my soul.
Maybe then I wouldn't go through the emotional bulshit that beats me up.
And sits there reminding me of why I'm here.

I was thinking about emotions this afternoon and it occured to me that wandering around in this
place was maybe a good thing to do.

Since emotions often keep us from things, or help push us tord them, that the exploration
here would be good.

In the movie dune there is a line that says this "Fear is the mind killer."
I love that line because it's the truth.
Fear destroys things, and holds people captive to things that end up controlling them.
Phobias are a great examle of that.
So are obsessive compulsive behaviors.
Both of which I have experienced.

The obsessive compulsive behavior was in place due to the load of anger that was deep inside.
I couldn't deal with my anger, because I was afraid of what would happen if I let it out.
I don't think it's all that uncommon for people to feel like that.

Life is full of things that happen that make us angry for one reason or another and rather
than dealing with it when it happens we burry it and try to act like everything is just fine.
But it's there. All the time. Building and building until it shows up in some strange behavior
that we can't figure out why it's there.
Or we get sick.
Or can't sleep, or a hundred other things that happen when we don't face and deal with the deepest
of emotions inside us.

If we have a problem with the feeling that if we can't control our world, the end result of that feeling
might end up showing up as anexoria or self injury.
It's easy to feel like you have no control in your life.
Take all the expectations that come at us from every direction. We have a boss that expects us to
perform to a certian standard.
We have family that expects that we will be a certian way.
And we have the expectations of ourselves.
And with all of thoes things, we can feel completely like we have no control at all.
We are ill at ease with the straight jacket of expectations.

And well we should be. Living life in a straight jacket makes everything difficult.

Then there are the emotions that we don't ever touch. The grief someone is experienceing
at the death of a loved one, or someone close to us.
We are uncomfortable with how raw we feel inside. It's not approprate or polite to let people
see how raw our grief can be.
At least not in this country or culture.

In other parts of the world, death is greeted by howling and sobbing openly with no shame
or fear of reproach.
It's a part of life. It is embraced as part of life. And loss hurts, no matter what anyone ever says
loss always hurts.
But here in this culture, death and all it's after math are kept in hushed uncomfortable tones.
Just like sex, and talking about it, and dealing with the emotions that encompas that particular
part of human nature.

We fumble about, and get embarresed when the subject comes up and to ease the tension we feel about it
we make jokes about it.
It just shows how uncomfortable we are with it.
In other cultures sex is not seen how it's seen here and is part of life so it's addressed as such.
It has it's place in things.
One thing I noticed about how other cultures deal with these two very uncomfortable to american
thought processes, is that there are no unnatural fears surrounding thoes two things.
They are part of life, and treated as such.

Then there is the emotion of love. That's a huge one. What most people see as love is mearly passing
lust.
It fades. Unfortunately people who believe they love each other marry and they have no idea
of what it means to really love someone else besides ourselves.
We can be very narcisitic when it comes to loveing ourselves over the person we marry.

A really good example of this is the couple after getting married find out more about what they dislike
about each other rather than what they really like about them.
Little things that before marriage were wonderful and charming and endering have now become annoyances
that make us angry.
Before we get married to someone we only spend so much time with them, even if we have sex with them
before marriage we really don't have a large enough idea of who we are really stary eyed over
simply because most of the time we marry for the wrong reasons.

I believe the best marriages are based on friendship rather than physical attraction.
A best friend will love you no matter what you look like. No matter how you struggle with things,
and they will stand beside you when your really emotionally a basket case.
A best friend loves you for who you are, not what you can do for them.
They find that just being in your company is enough.

That's an awesome base to grow a life time relationship with anyone with, whether you marry them or not.
A best friend loves you even when your being an asshole.
They may tell you your an asshole but they will still love you.
They will be honest with you, and stay no matter what. It reminds me of how a dog is with the person
that means the most to them.

So what is love anyway, besides an emotion that is this big vague thing that everyone seems to throw
around like so easily.
From what I've seen in life, this is what I've come to the conclusion love is:
Love sees with eyes that know what someone is like and wants to be there anyway.
Love makes a person want to be honest in what they say and do.
Love takes the other person into account when making decisions.
And love would rather see the other person happy even if it means that you watch them walk
away from you.
Love doesn't build boxes or cages around someone.
And never asks for anything back when giving something to someone.
Love makes you want to do for other people in a way that makes you forget about yourself.
Love reminds you that we all are human and it's a dangerous thing to stand in judgment of anyone.
You have no idea of where they are or what they are going through, and to judge them without
really knowing them is going to come back and bit you in the butt.

Love is willing to be hurt. And willing to forgive.
Love wants to protect and wants the very best for another person.

And love grows. Real love will do everything it can to grow even when it's neglected.

Love is a choice. And love sees all humanity as the same. The skin on a person doesn't determine
whether they are worth of love or not, love is blind that way.

That's what I know about what love is. A very strong emotion.

Love doesn't happen over night. Love takes time. But when it's there, it's awesome.
And when it's gone, it feels like death inside.

The rain dances in the morning light
a left over of the dark night that is past.
Ashes make room for growing things
sometimes it's hard to remember that.

Transparent shafts of light fill the sky above me
make me think I'm somewhere else.
It's easy to get lost here.
I can feel morning on my skin
and I want to get lost in that feeling.

Clouds that wept in dark places
dry their tears on my face.
It's easy to forget that you can have a life time
in a single perfect moment.

And it's easy to forget when things don't make sense
that the people who love you
will stay no matter how strange things get.

Just like morning when it comes.
It doesn't remember the storms
and it doesn't stop happening
when the days get shorter.

It's there.
Something you can touch
and that will touch you
and it will be there again
when you open your eyes from sleep
tomorrow.

In the past 24 hours somethings have again taken another shift.
I talked to the new roommate and things are better.
One less thing, and something else has been happening, a flood of thoughts.
I've been writing off line due to the length of each chunk of thought processes that take place.

Sometimes taking large volumes of thought into perspective can be a little overwhelming
or like a very large train running over you at high speed.

Either way, it's going to make a huge mess of you.

In the last week my head has gone from just being on overload to being on overload
at light speed.
Which means, that threads of thoughts that I try to follow through on are crashed
into by other thoughts.
Non stop.

Even at night the last two days my head feels like traffic that never sleeps.

Here are some of the thought threads, the one's I have been able to grab hold of
for 10 seconds:
The power of words and emotions, does the emotion change what you speak into
something that is going to happen?

More stuff on sound and light

Watching the different platonic solids mulitply and move around each other until
different types of larger shapes show up and start and this question is accomplained
by this view, if different chemical molectular structures make up different things
then by changing the differernt molocules would that make the thing look different
than you expected?

How fast does light have to move, as what lightspeed does it have to move
to change the level of trasparency of any given color?

Immages of traveling under the astroid belt so fast that the asteroid belt
looks something like gravel on a road.

Words, lots and lots of different words, and what each of thoes words means
in the deepest definition.
Not the dictionary definiton, but the definition that brings it from being just a word
into the place where it's real.
As real as something you can pick up and hold.

I've talked before about my head being on overload all the time.
Maybe now would be a good time to explain what I mean by overload.

Overload from my perspective is that so many different ideas and thoughts are pouring
into my head in a way that resembles loading docks with semi's backed up for miles.
I'm sure that some of thoes semi's have been waiting years to unload their particular
cargo.
I'm learning very quickly, that the fast means of communication for thoes thoughts
is typing.
Everything is either too slow or a major distraction.

Even the sound of my own voice is a distraction. I've tried taping some of my thought
threads and I just get lost.
Nothing runs in a straight line. And I forget what I was thinking about.
Often times due to my attention has gone off on to something else, or someone says
somthing and I loose the train of thought.

I would love to have a way to just put on some kind of virual head gear that would
record all the thoughts, not missing any and then after 24 hours of recording
taking a look at what has all gone through my head.

I suspect that it would make volumes of reading material.
Not all of it would make sense, but I'm sure that at least some of it would have
some kind of value.
I would also finally be able to show people the immages and pictures that go on all the time.
I could finally maybe unload enough of what's in my head to be able to concentrate
long enough to simplify things.

I've said before I talk too much. I'm still convinced I do. I know I write in volumous
mass simply because of how much is there.
And I know that's part of the reason that I've got over 60 paintings and drawings partly
finished, and why more keeps happening.
I can't keep up with everything.

I've been pondering this problem for a while. And one of the solutions that have presented
itself is to create a way to make an outline where the perfect word would be used
to trigger that particular thread.

Now my outline skills have never been the best. And when I've taken notes before the words
I've chosen have often left me wondering what I was reading about.
So what I need is to find perfect words.
Single words that contain keys that will help me remember.

This is important especially now since I'm about to begin to delve into quantum physics.
It's the direction that my sacred geometry studies have taken me.
I'm learning that my approach to math, chemistry and other parts of the world of art
have always been from a back way approach.
That I find it works best when approaching a new thing.
It allows me to pick up the tools of that thing and check them out.
Play with them, see how they work and ask my own questions relevant to my own
path of learning.

Going through the normal doors of something for me often makes no sense.
And when I try, I ususally have to go back and re-study things because when it finally
does make some kind of sense, and when I'm ready to know it, I'm way down the road.
Usually on something else related.

I discovered that I learn best this way when I finally found that watercolor was home for me.
I had tried to work in watercolor when I was in my 20's, and before that when I was
exploring art in highschool.
I hated it back then. All the rules made it an impossible media to work in.
It wasn't until I was put in a possition that I had to create a curriculum for art to teach
kids that are home schooled that I started back into watercolor.

This time however, I just played with it. I didn't follow the rules. In fact the rules
went straight out the window.
They don't work. They just confuse the issue for me.
Play works much better and there is no stress involved with it.
It's how kids learn about their world. Through play.

What I learned through playing with watercolor, that it is the cheapest visual media
there is.
That it isn't the prima donna that it's been built into and that it's accessable to anyone.
The only thing to remember about watercolor is that the amount of water used with
the paint will determine how thin or heavy the paint is.
And depending on what your looking for in it, will be determined by how much water
you use.

It's a tool. That's all. And all thoes rules that someone somewhere attached to it
were probably put into place by people trying to put watercolor into a box.
I hate boxes when it comes to creativity.
I want to blow the boxes up and distroy all the rules of how to do this thing or that thing.

We all learn differntly. And to try to put a thing like watercolor into one box is crazy.
That's why people are terrified of it.
I've talked to artists who say that watercolor is one of the hardest media to work in.
They look at my work and what I've done with it and stand there in complete awe that
I'm doing what I'm doing.

I look back at them and am puzzled by their fear of it. I've sat down with people
who don't believe they can use watercolor at all.
With in an hour they are painting away, having a blast and want to do more.
I tell them to forget all the rules and just play.
See how it feels against the paper. Watch the color as you move it around.
Stuff like that.
Touch it with your fingers and use them as brushes.
And the light goes on and off they go.
I talk to them about water durring this time, and tell them that watercolor is simply
a dance of paint and water.
And the amount of water will determine what happens.

Their own creativity applied to that media will end up taking them places.
It's awesome to watch. It frees them up.
And they end up likeing watercolor because they finally got to actually touch it
with out worring about making a picture.

Colored pencil is the same way, so is pen and ink.
And the last two days, someone pulled out my collection of crayons and have
put them on the front room table and along with coloring pages and different people
have been coloring pictures.
Right now the coloring pages are from Alice in Wonderland.

Then there is the Bare Bones Project that is still going on.
The Bare Bones Project started when I was still the event cooridantor at Michaels.
It was after Halloween and there were all these wooden, jointed skeletons that
were down to 29 cents a peice.
I bought them all.
How could I not?
More stuff to do art with.

At first, on the drive home I was thinking about going with a Greatful Dead theme
with all of them, but then my thoughts got really broad and the idea came to me
that this should be a large group project, with lots of people participating.
Each of them taking a skeleton and painting it or drawing on it and making one peice
of the project.
It's been an on going project for over a year now, and how it works is that when people
come here I invite them to participate in the projec.
Not everyone has accepted.
The only requirement is that they sign their name to the back so when it's all done
their name can be included in the list of artists who have participated.
I would love to see someone take one of the skeletons and cover it with words.
I did one that has mirror eyes and wire wrapping on it.
Makes it look kind of like head lights.
If you hold it just right in front of your face your eyes will be in the mirrors.

Then there is the dragon and maden series of works going on.
These are a series of paintings started over two years ago, and the main theme
of these is based on the name.
There are ten in the series.
I'm somewhere on the 6th one.
I've had trouble with it because I made definate requirements for the series.

Now as I have been studing sacred geometry there have been paintings related
to the studies that have shown up and more starts keep happening.
Pen and ink drawings over watercolor underpaintings are happening.

When I looked at all of this the other night and couldn't relate to any of it, I freaked out.
completely. And I went sideways.
I was convinced that it was all gone in me.
That I had given it away.
I've given away lots of art, but never the place where it's birthed.
That's what I was convinced I'd done.
It freaked me out so bad that I figured it's gone and everything else I've created in writing
must be just as dead to me now.

Anyway, after talking to some people, my sister being one of thoes people, reminded me
that I have the skill, and I have the knowledge. I will always have that.
So last night, when I sat down to write again, and I discovered that the computer is no longer
capable of anything on line, I turned off the computer and went up stairs and sat down
at the keyboard and just started playing.
I let go of everything. I let the music that was happening to me take me to a place of
cleansing in my soul.
I was completely oblivious to the fact that people were gathering in the front room
listening.
They had heard what I was playing and thought there was a cd in the cd player that is in
the front room.
They didn't disturb me. I'm greatful they didn't. I needed to be there. Touching that
place of living fire in that way.
I've been so stretched over and pulled in so many directions by so many people lately that
all I've wanted to do is hide out.
Disapear.

After a while I started comming back to awareness of my surroundings. And I saw them
all there.
They started clapping when I looked at them.
They made comments that they thought they were listening to a cd.
I didn't really believe any of them. I think they were just being really kind.
All of it, all of the music that happened and took me where it did was like a river of tone
and light and color like a huge pool.
I felt the pain I've been in being touched. It felt so soothing and relaxing that I didn't want
to leave.
Durring this time a thought slowly floated up out of the pool.
What does this look like in paint?

I'm going to find some way to make a cd of one of thoes excursions into the music and see
what it looks like.
I think with the computer genius that lives here, that will be possible.
We also have a music genius living here as well.
Although he doesn't see himself that way. He's done studio recording with a four track
recorder so he has some idea of how to do this.

I want to see this place in visual expression. I want to see what it looks like when I take
what I know in watercolor and apply it to what I experience in music that comes out of
that place of art.

I wonder what will show up.
I can hardly wait to see it when it does. Maybe it will be like giving birth to a new place.
I wonder.

Raw thoughts. Things that fly at me high speed.
That's were I left off.
That's what most of what I'm writing when I write now. Just trying to keep up with what's
going on is taking chunks of time to write,
I can only immagine what it reads like.

Immages in words

Tumbled translucent speheres of light

Liquid moments of music being bent into ideas

Fragments of exotic heady fragrances

Electricly charged rivers of life flowing through the veins of leaves

Twists of rain that become long strands of light

Oranges pregnant with music

Apples on trees that are universes

Leaves going through metamorphises into dolphins

Elephants with huge brilliant star studed wings

Feet having a major revolutionary war against shoes

Mushrooms dressed in formal atire

Bars of steel. Maybe giant creatures made entirely of metal eating candy bars made of steel.
Or adds for steel candy bars...steel shoes, steel hearts, steel eyes, or clothes made of steel,
clothes from the 1940's illustrated to look like they are made of steel.

Bands of light and dark over the reverse covering two immages at the same time
both positive and negative immages, passing over each other.

The perfect kiss, now that would be interesting, how do you visually illustrate the perfect kiss?
And how do you define the perfect kiss so that you can illustrate it.

Molten glass turning into rain, glass going from fire and becomming rain, intense reds, whites, yellows,
ambers into violets and blues and greens and then reflecting immages that come through drops of rain.
I don't know if that could be put into any kind of small format, maybe a series.
But doing that might cause the idea to become seperated, and so miss the idea altogether.

Rain that resembles eyes...this one I can see. An eye up close with all the parts made of rain drops that
reflect immages upside down.

Eyes that are in spiral geometric patterns...could get motion sickness doing this one, needs more
imformation. but it's a great possiblity.

Ears that have legs

Ears that are eyes

Lips made of words

bodies made of words

Trees that are made up of different animals

Rocks that look like two dimensional angles

Feathers that keep getting smaller in definiton

Ocean waves in a progression of movment
stop motion animation so that each frame contained one act of movement by the wave

The sound of waves crashing, what does that sound look like?
Not the normal reperestation of what waves look like, but rather what that sound looks like.

Blades of grass taken to microscopic definiton. The cell sturcture. Are there cosmic immages
in that somewhere?

the sacred geometry of different stones, drawn out

The space between thought, right now I don't know if any exists in my head.

Taking a hand print in paint and putting it under a microscope and seeing what it looks like
and then translating that into visual immages in paint.

The taste of different food translated into visual immages. Not the food, but rather the experience
of what it tastes like.

The immage of time as it was shown to me, the liquid movement in color.
Sort of a transparent dirty steely opal filled with sparks and flashes of color.

The music of saturn translated into visual immagery

listening to aborginal music for several hours and painting

listening to lots and lots of pink floyd and painting

listening to lots and lots of other music that I love for hours and hours and painting

Putting that music into visual form.

Working the other way, looking at an immage and translating it into musical expression.
That one might be more difficult since what I've been hearing as I play sounds like someone
who is completely lost and has no idea of what they are trying to say.
I would need to be able to record the sesson of this so it wouldn't be something trasitory.

Explorations in crayon

The feel of light

The smell of light. Now this one would take some time due to the fact that I haven't had the opportunity
of enough time alone to really explore what light smells like.
All the senses are connected.
And if all the senses are connected and recieve information through waves of energy, then every thing
that we see we should in theory be able to smell.
I wonder if that's possible.
Just a thought.

The smell of night. Does night have a smell at all. Not the way things smell in the dark, but the dark
itself.

I know different types of water have different smells. The ocean has a distinct smell, so does rain.
So do streams and rivers and lakes.
I wonder what thoes smells look like without drawing or painting where they come from.
Completely seperate from the source of where they come from.

Time is shutting down for this right now. I find it extreemly frustrating that when I'm going
in this flow that I have to stop and get into another gear and leave this process.
I feel the same way when I have to stop painting.
It makes me want to scream sometimes.