Sunday, January 30, 2011

Structure Theory

You need to pick up and organize your studios; the whole apartment. With every project it's becoming more and more difficult to maneuver from one spot to another, to keep track of where you're putting things.

Speaking of keeping track, this is what's on your plate for this week:

1. ink and color work for EP commission
2. Balance finances
3. Nemion merch
4. finishing Line art for next Enrod The Clockman update
5. Nemion rehearsal
6. Nemion show
7. meeting of minds
8. assisting the auto-didactic economic researcher that you often talk to at the cafe
9. and of course the day job

There's something you're forgetting, and the other may know, but he's not talking to you right now, so you'll just have to remember after it's too late.

You really should get a big calendar board that shows the whole year to help you keep track of everything. A band you're friends with has one and you can tell they'd probably loose their minds if they didn't, and you're about to do the same when you don't even have a fan base yet.

You really should take a shower and go to bed.

But first you need to reflect that this marks a week of near-daily blogging. It has helped you greatly, helped you put the other away. Doing this makes it easier to resist things that suck out your time. You've been more focused than you've been in years, and you should keep it up. Sure that little boy keeps whining about a girlfriend or some such nonsense, but you've almost gotten him to accept how things are going to be from here on out.

"We're the Indigo Children..."

"Can I get a hell yeah?"

A couple of days have passed and you're going to just let things flow for this post.

This morning, or rather yesterday morning, you purchased the .mp3 download of the debut Puscifer album "V is for Vagina". Part of you is wandering why purchase it when you can probably find it on a file sharing network; answer: time is valuable and headaches are costly, and your experience with FSNs is generally one that leads to headaches; answer: you enjoy the feeling of supporting an artist who's work is inspiring you in a way that hasn't happened since Nine Inch Nails: Still/All That Could Have Been was released.

You've been dealing with yourself a lot lately. That part of yourself your trying to let go of, to move on from. Conflicts, arguments are becoming more and more regular. You were able to keep him mum and unobtrusive for the past couple days, but today he was starting to get a little out of hand. Friday night he kept you from enjoying yourself as much as you could have. Despite this you were still able to fully appreciate and enjoy the Chant show; Bradley continues to be an excellent underground performer, inspiring even. After the show you got some good news for Nemion in the upcoming Terrorbyte festival.

You keep talking to yourself, actually you're talking to people that you've met in real life, only your imagining having a conversation with them and responding as though they were actually right there in front of you. You've been doing this since you were a kid; you're not sure how far back. You're not sure if that's really you or that person you're trying to put in the back room who is doing this.

At least today you got a bit of commission work done. The EP art is still in production, but progress is underway; the organizational logo is just awaiting confirmation of satisfaction from the client. You also got the all your fliers posted/distributed for the show this Thursday at Headhunters, and managed to get the inking on the last page you worked on completed - a lot of little things to ink that were starting to make your stomach ache - actually that was the cafe mocha reacting to the Mexican Coke you had earlier that day.

You need to sleep now. You have rehearsal tomorrow, and you need to really hit that shit like Ariana Jolie.

"Naturally you're still wrestling with it, so sometimes...you're still you."

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

An Evening With The Queen

Today you walked by that local gym where the hardcore fitness people go to work out. It's partially outdoors, so you get to see everybody pump their iron. Most of those you see there are impressively muscular, men and women. You watched two women snatch and lift above their head a bench bar with very large metal discs on the ends; they looked to have about 150lbs total on each bar. These women were primarily muscle, still feminine but warrioresque. After they drop the bars to the ground, they walk about with absolute control over their limbs. The feminist in you finds this display of female physical strength and athleticism to be attractive, but not to such a degree that you'd actively seek someone like that out. Actually you've been meaning to go there and see if you can meet one of the female trainers as an interview subject to use as reference material for a character in Enrod The Clockman. You don't do that today; but you will eventually.

You don't go to the cafe today. You save a few dollars and use your drawing table at home, and besides, Queen Puscifer has come to visit. She whispers the most inspiring things into your ears while Jack and Tyler dance in the background and you go to work on that page you didn't finish on Monday. She keeps you zoned, for the most part. She only leaves when you ask, and she's always happy to return.

A compatriot of yours calls you up about commissioning something for the project he told you about the last time you saw him. You work it out, it's simple enough so you should be able to work it in with the other things you have on your plate. And the Queen returns with her voluptuous curves; what's your favorite caliber baby?

What do you know? During the day you consider various philosophical concepts you'd like to bring to yourself in these little documents you make before bed, but then you get here and you have no inclination to talk about it. What do you know? There's too many beautiful things bouncing through your ears and they taste like butter with a touch of honey and spice. What do you know? You miss the grind.

Just witness the thickness, and on we ride.

Sure, you can get a "hell yeah".

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Mud Is Good For You.

Today was going pretty swell until you accidentally obliterated that gecko's head with a 35lb slab of metal. That made you feel a little ill. But that's life for the small creatures living in the wake of your kind (not to imply any species self-hate ).

It was another low workload day. You're going to enjoy it while you can, because your project manager has already informed you that a bunch of work is about to come in for which you're one of the few people trained to do, so your days are going to start getting longer in the next couple months.

Instead of drawing, you end up spending you're entire afternoon getting the Nemion website up and running ( http://nemion.ginckmedia.com ), after you've gotten your nap out of the way of course. Like everything you do it continues to be a work in progress, but at least you've gotten that much out of the way. Now if you can just figure out how to have a voice that doesn't sound like total dog shit.

You're exhausted now. You've just gotten back from your Lindy Hop 1 class, you failed the exit test miserably. You haven't had this much frustration since learning Tai Chi, in fact you're pretty damn sure this is even harder. You're frustrated because you know part of your problem is that you can't learn in group class settings for shit. You've been incompetent at it your whole life, on account that when the teacher starts talking, you almost always zone out and start daydreaming about something irrelevant to the task at hand. So when he tells you to do something, you have no idea what the fuck it is he wants you to do. You're embarrassed, you're pissed at yourself, and you have to resist the urge to retreat into a dark hole somewhere.

You have to resist bringing yourself down into the Abyss for doing so damn much but having yet to accomplish a fucking thing. You have to keep on climbing up that hill no matter how soft and slick the mud gets.

The left side of your brain/eye aches like you've been writing left-handed for the last couple hours, when you're right-handed - evidence that you've been learning something new. It's good for you.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Cycle

You wake up, either because you need to take a piss ( as has become a bodily morning ritual that you can almost set a clock too ) or because your annoying alarm clock has gone off. After you pee you lay back down. It's cold. You're tired, sleepy, you went to bed way too late, having gotten accustomed to being up til 1am over the weekend, as has become your regular routine. You're head feels heavy - you're that kind of sleep deprived.

You take care of some things. You get up 15 minutes too late to make breakfast. You fuckoff online, and so you end up walking into the office 10 minutes late, but it's okay, there's a meeting and it hasn't started yet. You get lucky, because it turns out you have a lot less work to do today than usual, so you won't be hurting too much from the sleep deprivation, and your back at the office before noon, and home shortly thereafter. Time for a nap on the floor. Take care of some things. Fuck off on the internet. Shower. Eat lunch. Or wait, wasn't it eat lunch and then shower?

You finally manage to get the hell out of your apartment and down to the cafe where you aren't distracted by the Succubus of the World Wide Web. You touch up the page you almost finished on Saturday and then move on to the next one. You still haven't finished that two-page spread because it's a fucking bitch and it's giving you small sensations that are not unlike nausea, especially since there are perspective issues that you've already irreversably fucked up, so you leave it alone and start inking a different page. At least the guy you're sharing a table with is pretty cool, a seemingly successful web retailer, and you have more than a few things to talk about.

Frustratingly, it isn't until after dark that you really start to feel like you're in the zone for getting work done, taking time out to get some concept designs drawn for the commission you picked up over the weekend. Your feet are getting cold as the temperature drops and the building's heat rises away from the floor, weakening your concentration. You're a little annoyed at yourself. You're not going to finish inking the page you started, partly because you kept having conversations with your table-mate, but they were needed, healthy, or else you wouldn't have been susceptible to them.

You're home. You should be in bed, but there's cafe mocha running through your veins, so you're vegging out on the net.

At least you know how to destroy angels.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Nemion Update and other works

Right now I'm a bit exhausted, and don't feel like doing more than vegging out, but I have so many other things I need to be working on. Laundry is first and foremost at the moment, and the clock is ticking until I need to be back in bed for the day job tomorrow.

After getting up around 9:30 ( it was cold, so it took me a while ) I spent the morning finally designing a website for my little band Nemion. I'm keeping it simple for now. Just a homepage with three links - one to a show date list page, one to a streaming demo page with links to youtube videos of some of our live shows, and then one for merch, all of which are still being developed.

T-Bone came over just before 1pm, and we lugged my new bass cabinet ( which he'd had in his van since I bought it from OED drummer Jason Rufus Sewell aka Jr ) up to my apartment. The plan is to pump our drum track mix through it, as it has some very effective tweeters in it. After getting the sound checked, we burned through the set we have planned for our Headhunters show coming up on Feb 3rd. Took a break, learned from the sound issues we had the first time around, and went through the set again.

The week is going to be busy. I have a cd-art commission to start for the band The Scars Heal In Time ( The S.H.I.T. ); I have swing dance class on Tuesday night; a lot more ink work to do for the next Enrod The Clockman update; Swing dance practice on Thursday, which I might have to skip; and getting more stuff done for Nemion.

But I'm so tired right now...if only I didn't need to do the laundry.

On a pleasant note, over the weekend EnrodX.com gained 3 more Likes on Facebook.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Memento

I finally watched Memento. It was cool; I can see why so many people praise it, but I found myself a little underwhelmed. Most likely because of all the hype raising my expectations to unreasonable levels, and the movie naturally not being able to attain those levels.

I'd been putting off watching it for various reasons. Partly because I just wasn't in the mood for that kind of story; partly because the idea of not having any short term memory, while intellectually intriguing, I find emotionally discomforting.

"My memory is me, if it dies, I die." - Johnny 5, Short Circuit 2.