Where do we go from here?

This is a new beginning

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:09:38 GMT

From here on in, art and life and love are together. Fused. Intermingling.

Any seperation of thoughts and feelings would be (has been) only artificial anyway. I've cracked open my heart and let art in.

What I'm making is how I am. How I am is what I'm making.
The allocations of yesteryear have since proven false. Creating is worshipping is me.

Canvas covers this unified creative/personal endeavor; canvas is the sail, wind is the calling. The calling which has never been addressed to some piece of me, some appendage, but which has always fished deep in my waters to catch my marrow, my foundation, my soul... though I was always already caught. I go forth now with a whole purpose, a singular wind, an unique direction.

Those close to me may or may not see my voyage. They may or may not be blind. They may or may not aid me. They may or may not hinder me.

A precious few will watch me navigate by the stars, and know already that I am heading East with such speed, I may just touch the sun.

Many will see a pretty butterfly, with wings (seemingly) too sharp to touch.

Most will never guess my depths.
Most are too afraid to jump, too afraid to ask, or refuse to believe in anything they cannot see.
Most have never seen or heard the kind of beauty which is my trade. Several would swear it does not exist.
Then, many simply live in fear.

I do not believe in the superiority of any being over another. I do know that some can see farther than others. It is their responsibility to speak, to guide, to teach, to show.

I want to remind us of the fires: the cosmic fires, the earthen fires, the human fires.

I want to remind us of the real, of wood and wind, fire and water, skin, muscle, blood, and breath.

I want to remind us that science proves the miraculous, that the spirit is not a myth, and that the infinite is all around us.

I wondered when I would be able to post this

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 08:04:26 GMT

I suppose the answer is now.

Scribbled in a small notebook.

5pm

I'm not really sure why life happens this way to me, but it sure seems to.

Here I am feeling sick from - gosh, I guess the meat I've eaten, certainly I'm not drunk enough to throw up - so here I am in the bathroom, right after M says "justo cuando te miro estas aburrido en mi boda," and they play U2 for the first time (I've been waiting for it), with or without you, as I stare into a toilet bowl, and you give yourself away, and I see if I can stomach it, and you give yourself away, I try to gather myself, and they announce something in Spanish I cannot understand or hear, but I know they are asking us to dance, with or without you, and I think I'm alright, I emerge into a crowd, and there you are dancing with her for the first time as man and woman, husband and wife (que dice la iglesia, que por cierto no me importa), and I am just trying to get to fresh air, to cool atmosphere, to escape --

August 22nd, 2009

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 04:21:58 GMT

I have a been a little absent lately. From myself as well as from this blog. By that I simply mean that I am out a lot and also working a lot. Always one or the other. Haven't been journaling much either.

Turns out I have more friends in Chicago than I anticipated. I have never had such a busy social schedule, I really have to say no to people just so that I can have a night to myself.

I also haven't been great about writing here because I've begun writing my book, Vincent's Yellow. It's been thrilling - finally! I feel like I've been waiting years to write a book (my, I say such precocious things sometimes, I hope you'll forgive me) but was just waiting for a solid idea. This one is of course more than solid, it has been gestating for years already. It's about van Gogh, of course.

I'm still working on the play, and hope to put it up in Chicago in a year. It will probably be a long rehearsal process, and I need to go through his letters with a fine comb before I can hand a script to actors - but that's pretty much all I'm waiting for. I'll attack the letters all Fall, and should be ready to get on our feet come Winter/Spring. I also am writing the music. But in the meantime, I've been writing the book. I found my angle, know where to begin and can't really help myself. On top of it, I leave in about two weeks for Europe, where I'll be visiting many important research sites for me. I'll be spending nearly a week by myself, traveling, and most likely writing constantly. I am pretty excited about it. I will enjoy the quiet and the solitude, to be honest. A writer's got to be alone sometimes...

I've also been working on the digital aspects of this project (I see it as a constellation with three stars: book, play, and website - no repetition, different expressions of this thing that has taken over my life). If you haven't seen it already, check out Vincent at Twitter and/or Facebook. I am posting daily quotes from his letters on both of these sites - his letters are really exquisite, he is such a deep thinker and just an incredible writer... It's part of why I'm so drawn to him. Plus, I'm picking the quotes so I only choose things that are interesting to a modern audience. Oh, I'm also matching the date as closely as possible (today I posted a quotes from July 25th 1888) which allows things to feel more contemporary. He wrote his brother Theo over 600 letters over ten years and so I have plenty of material to choose from every day.

The website will be coming very soon, and it will be where I do my updates while I'm traveling for all of August. I will post the address here once it is ready.

In the meantime, I have to start practicing French every day! The things I do for a dead man!

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:21:30 GMT

"I think it's something that will work itself out," he shrugs slightly, while squinting into the sun.

Her eyes try to dart around his glasses, but between the slight grimace and the reflection, there's no reading him.

"Come on," he says with a casual wave of one hand, the other tucked neatly in his pocket as he crosses the short bridge over the canal.

She looks down at the stones in the street, her brow quietly frowning, but a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth of its own accord.

She shakes it off her face and follows.

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:40:31 GMT

Oh sweet June night air:

How I recall and breathe in your heavy quiet
How unforgettable your starlight and crossing tree shadows
Your throbbing cicadas and your sleepy houses
Your razor-soft grass and your glimmering leaves
Your hushed, torn vibrancy…

How many of my tears shed here and how many of my kisses stolen?
How many of my nothings feared and how many of my hearts broken?
How many of my everythings lost
How many of my spirits mended
How many of my hopes did it cost and
How many of my lies tended?

How many of my smiles splashed with moonshine and my hands left trembling empty?
How many alones suffered on this cracked but clean concrete?

How many stories woven and forgotten…

Well I will keep them,

Those perfect gems of feeling
Quiet, deep in my chest.

Those virgin flowers with their first openings and first deaths
Those roads closed and
Those first adventures onto unbeaten paths…

May our heartbeats never slow
May our hands never settle
May we never really know

Yet always notice the
Porch light on

and the back door open.

My Vincent Map

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:29:52 GMT

Works like this:

Current locations or last known whereabouts of van gogh's paintings on display to the public. Numbers are more or less in chronological order, colors are for time periods.

Red: Paintings done in the Netherlands. (1880-1886 roughly)
Blue: Paintings done in Paris. (1886-1887)
Yellow: Paintings done in France, outside Paris (1888-1890)

Created by myself. Will be posting more updates soon.

Looks like this:

THE MAP

[ ] book spawns [ ] dream

Wed, 27 May 2009 16:13:06 GMT

I have been reading House of Leaves. It's good - actually, pretty incredible. Unique, convoluted, deep and thick and layered. I read a passage that last night slid seamlessly with a few sentences between a narrator whose voice sounds like I picked up a journal I would rather just put down (if only he hadn't happened to encounter something worth reading about) into a prose so poetic, so effervescent, it spun into the ephemeral, shimmering then disappearing from the grasp of my mind. I realizing I had lost content, I tried to reread it with more attention, but still found no footholds.

It makes shifts like these, it performs its own metaphor, it mutates in the shadow of my focus from academic to so every-day I'm bored to hair-raising. The only problem I see is that it is, supposedly, a horror book. If that is all this 650 pg book does - scare - then I will feel very sorry for the energy, hours, creativity, and intellect spent making it. But I'm on 50 pgs in, so we'll see.

Perhaps more interestingly, I had a dream about the author last night. Only I believe I called him David Foster Wallace (another great male writer of the same generation, who I have yet to read and intend to - also worth noting that he committed suicide last year). However the man I was interacting with did not look like either of these authors, who both would be in their mid-forties. The man I spoke with was in his sixties, and looked more like the French theorist Roland Barthes (whose writing I adore).

Even more interesting, the dream began with my having sex with him (yes, with Barthes). The sex was great, and then he attempted to treat me like some pretty little thing who had accidentally wandered within his snarling reach. He had had his way with me and was done. He tried to just toss my clothes at me and tell me he had work to do.

I then told him that I hoped that with his next book he'd use his intellect towards more fruitful ends than simply raising his reader's blood pressure. He raised his eyebrow at me in shock, told me to fuck off, that I didn't know anything. I told him I was a writer too, and that while I admired his work, I thought he could do more.

"You? A writer?" He scoffed, looking at me up and down (I was still wearing nearly nothing).

"Yes," I said without hesitation. "I've been writing poetry since I was ten-"

"What did you study in college?" He approached me at full speed and stopped inches from my eyes, which he squinted into, doubtful that a thoughtful soul could be inside my body.

"Theater and art history. I already found my voice as a writer, and didn't want to study english." He squinted a bit more.

"Pah!" He waved me away and went over to his computer. I heard the door to his house open, fellow intellects were coming, four or five of them, to discuss their work. I fumbled to get my clothes on, but they mostly ignored my presence. I was nothing to them. They were five white, old men.

They began discussing things, but I wasn't listening. I instead stole over to Danielewski/Wallace/Barthes's computer, which was projecting the screen on the far wall of his loft. I tried to go to livejournal, wanting to call up the poem I wrote about Hillary. I was going to copy it into a word document, save it on his desktop and leave. However, he had remapped his keyboard so that strange symbols appeared when I typed. For some reason it took me to dunkel_mentat's page. The intellectuals mocked me as this was all projected, and for some reason livejournal was looking as flashy and gross as myspace at that particular moment. They hooted at the flashing pictures of partially clad partiers in the margins. I ignored them, knowing all I had to do was leave them with a little poetry of mine and they would shut up.

I woke up as I clicked on dunkel's friends page.

...oh...my...goodness.

Tue, 26 May 2009 19:21:37 GMT

not sure what else to say.

(credit to Tim for sending this my way)

She spoke at my graduation and the deafening applause reminded me of everything else.

Mon, 18 May 2009 12:41:26 GMT

Ode to Hillary

Oh Hillary,
Beautiful and strong
Once could do no right
Now can do no wrong.

My, oh my
That twisting fate.

Between cat calls and cold calls
Fingertips reaching through the
Scratching through the
Bleeding through the
Many paper-thin layers of this
Thing we call woman.

But quickly, we must know:
Red or pink?
Garden or sink?
Milk or fuck?

Cockfucker, cocksucker, or cocktease?
Ballbreaker, ball-licker, or ball-taker?
(We must know what you'll do with
Our genitalia, you see.)

Can't answer?
Won't answer!
Bitch.
Let's poke at her.

Ohhh, she feels!
She's sad, then angry,
How dare she?
How very
Un-
presidential

Look at her
Breasts and heels and ankles
How very
Un-
presidential

Look at
Her voice whines
Her eyes sag
Her lipstick fades
How very
Un-
presidential

Look
how cold and masculine
Look
how hot and weak

Look she has no heart!
Look at her cry!
Look at the object!
Look she cracks when we break her!
Look she cedes when we make her!
Look she's a woman!

How very
Un-

I'm

Mon, 18 May 2009 05:10:07 GMT

i'm a realist
an idealist
a romantic
somewhat pedantic
but only on occasion

i'm pragmatic
enigmatic
i like details
and retail
but only on occasion

i like to drink
and sink
also smoke
and soak
but only on occasion

i'm a writer
and a fighter
a biter
an all-nighter
but only all the time

a poet
and a know-it(-all)
you know my wall
nothing to hide now
nothing to ride now
but my blood

a guitarist
an anarchist
a dancer
and a cancer
but only some of the time

a singer
and i linger
all day
my way
or highway
but you like it
and you know it

a shouter
and a doubter
a teaser
and a pleaser
and you know it

i like my cream
and my dream
especially in combination
a shape-shifter
and a sifter
a keeper
and a leaper
that's all the time

a fistful
and tad wistful
i sparkle
and darken
most of the time

soft
and rough
a lady tough
a diamond in the loft
most
times

i kiss
and tell
an honest
sell
you always know what i'm made of

the bravest blush
a fiery touch
a smile of
imperfect bones

a giving sigh
a brazen lie
but always taking care

an open heart
a vulnerable tart
i'm actually always at your mercy

but you wouldn't know

...would you?

probably
not yet

Sun, 17 May 2009 16:24:17 GMT

Cumulative GPA for my Masters?

4.0.

FUCK YEAH.

Sun, 17 May 2009 02:15:45 GMT

I turned everything in. I rocked every last final. ROCKED. Like blew people away. I finished on the best possible note ever.

My family was here all week and I went through all the offered rituals of my university to mark the moment. I saw Whoopi and Hillary speak - that was pretty cool. My whole family and various close friends got to see me perform in a piece I wrote as my final project for my Grotowski class. I've rarely been so proud of a piece, and my family finally got to ALL see what I do, what I really do, and what I'm capable of. I think they get it now.

It meant and still means the world to me. It meant and still means the world to me that so many of my friends were there; the performance was really conceived as a gift to the audience in many ways, so I was happy to share with those I care for.

Now my family is gone. Today was my first day since graduation that was entirely of my design.

I finally feel like an adult.

Today feels like the first day of the rest of my life.

It feels (I feel) great.

Sat, 09 May 2009 06:06:59 GMT

The worst is over, and now I am set free.

I have never seen my path so perfectly.

I know now what I am made to do.

Nothing could feel better.

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:09:51 GMT

I find it very strange how many people manage to upset themselves over nearly nothing.

They expected something else, wanted something else, hoped for something else other than what happened. They get mad: how could (s)he, how dissapointing... In the meantime, they almost never pause to think what all the other dozens (perhaps hundreds) of people (who are, in effect, responsible for the present undesired reality) are thinking. What do they expect, want, hope for? Never crosses their minds. So many people go around thinking about their own aches, their own hungers, their own experiences - and get pissed off at everyone else for not behaving accordingly (or, often, for behaving in the exact same manner).

If there are hundreds of people involved in the making of each encounter with another, how can we consistently attach ourselves to what we expect, want and hope for so deeply? It must be obvious that we cannot imagine how things will really happen, and most likely things will rarely happen exactly how we dream for them to happen.

Does this mean we should stop wanting things? Of course not. But please, enter each moment with an open mind!! How much of your life do you want to spend upset about that guy who drives badly, the woman who sneezed on your arm or the professor that didn't impart the piece of knowledge for which you were hoping, waiting, expecting? These are petty inconveniences.

Calm down. Breathe. This is no real harm. This is not really what you care about. Look around you. Learn something - anything - to make these breaths encourage your personal growth, and make this moment worth it.

What will you remember in five years?
How do you want to spend this second, this minute, this hour that is right now, right now passing you by?

We only have so much time - look, there goes more of it.
If you don't like your surroundings, change them. Only you can. If this place is a necessary step to where you want to be - make due. Find the bright side. Eat ice cream. Enjoy the breeze. Don't take things so seriously. Drink up the glorious gift of LIFE you lucky, well-fed, well-educated, free-to-say-whatever-you-want whiner. Otherwise, you are wasting YOUR time -- on nothing.

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:09:57 GMT

Seriously. What is going on.

I completed tonight the third day of a five day workshop with Rena Mirecka, THE actress of Grotowksi's Actor's Laboratory and who continued to work with him for ten more years after that, into his "paratheatrical phase". She spent 20 years under possibly the most brilliant, revolutionary, innovative theater director in the entire world of the past half century. Yes, arguments can be made against him being that but he is at least one of the top contenders, no doubt. So this actress is the Meryl Streep of alternative, experimental, ritualistic theater. She is in her seventies and has spent every fucking year of her life since she was twenty years old investigating the expressive and spiritual power of the human body, the human voice, and the human soul. She is a real-life guru if there ever was one and you can tell from across a crowd.

I have spent my last three evenings chanting with her, dancing with her, singing with her, and learning from her "The Way" - that's literally the name of her workshop/methodology.

And you could tell me, Teresa, you've joined a cult, and the only way in which I can argue with that is that she absolutely doesn't want people following her around all the timme, and this is all in the name of performance training. She goes all over the world. She is essentially a shaman who works with young performers for a week at a time, teaching them how to be shamans. What are shamans anyway? If you've seen really amazing theater that's slapped you in the face with a silence or rearranged your brain cells with a dance then you know it's not too different from a really, really good performer. In fact, shamans are performers.

She doesn't claim to be this of course, but others have made the analogy before me (namely, her director of twenty years, Grotowski).

So I have been spending a large amount of my very recent time going into alternate states of my being. This is a fact.

As if this weren't enough, on the other end of this spectrum - though not really unrelated; in fact, they are deeply entwined - I have Richard Schechner using his connections with NYU to let me do a performance for his class in the room that I want to use. Richard Schechner, another god of experimental theater, one could say the New York version of Grotowski. He actually "discovered" Grotowski, bringing him to the public eye despite his tiny theater in Poland. Schechner also founded my department, created "performance studies" (those'd be the words on my degree), and was the founder of the Performance Group, now the Wooster group, just in case anyone knows. That'd be the crazy corner of theater where Willem Dafoe came from. Spalding Gray, maybe ring a bell? So I have him doing me a favor. He offered to do me this favor, to pull strings for me. This means he likes me and my ideas.

This probably means that despite how much I am, deep down, a seventh grader who's endlessly teased all day and could certainly never, never EVER be an actress - who that dorky, ugly, hairy gorilla girl? - I AM an actress, I AM a theater-maker, and I make good fucking work. And this man who has the personal capital at this point, and I quote him, to "take a shit on this table" in front of eighty people and nothing would happen -- I have him offering to do me a favor. A favor that has entirely to do with retaining the artistic integrity of my final performance for his class.

What's strange to notice is that on top of all this, I am not really surprised he is interested in my work, and I'm pretty sure he'll like my piece. Yet on the day of this performance, any complement he gives to my work will completely unravel me. UNRAVEL. I may expect him to like it, but seeing or hearing him like it would be one of the most flattering things in the goddamn world. And I am surprised to find myself in this position of him doing me a favor. Flattered and somewhat reeling.

I feel like something awful has to happen. The back-of-the-head-Lifetime-channel paranoia in me worries that he'll ask for a blow job or something awful in return for his favor when I meet with him alone. This is of course absurd, (what is he blackmailing me with the final project for his class?) but clearly I am reaching to find something to worry about. (There's definitely nothing to worry about on that front, he's a very kind, funny, tiny old Jewish man - I regularly forget the immensity of what he is and knows)

But I can say without a doubt, this one class with him has been worth my entire Master's program. I have been searching for this kind of work forever, and I didn't even know what it was. And now look at the position I'm in. Studying with two of the greatest people to ever have a hand in it...

Another universe, I tell you. Another universe.

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:08:21 GMT

A Glass of Porto and a Slice of Carrot Cake

What glory
to watch you crumble twixt
my fingertips like
wet sand

What revenge
to unravel your quick tongue with
a raise of my brow

What sweet, sweet nectar
to destroy you with a
sprinkle of words
to debase you with an
idle association
to rip up your insides with
the gentlest gesture

What pleasure to level the leveler
to cut the cutter
to fuck the fucker

and sip my porto on the fire escape
while you slip out in embarrassment

go -
fool whomever you can, clown

I will be living
enjoying
inhaling
savoring
the fullness of truth

(another poem discovered on my phone a few weeks after the fact)

I know I've said this before but...

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:42:13 GMT

I FREAKING LOVE THIS MAN.

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:32:35 GMT

First, I will tell you that there cannot be only one true love - not for me - because I have had that identity-effacing, overwhelming, unstoppable, unending love from the deepest part of my being. There was no other way to be than with him for nearly two years; every fantastic dream and magical metaphor fit. It was true, whole, holy, binding, worthy of every risk and sacrifice. I have felt that, sustained that, fought for that. And I say - simultaneously - that it was not fake, and that it did end. Perhaps you sense the paradox. I further clarify: I have no regrets, and yet I witnessed and suffered the death of this most precious, perfect thing to which I dedicated my whole being.

Now, if this love was forever and was not, the only reasonable conclusion is that it can happen more than once. Forever reveals itself to be impermanent, subjective - not much of a surprise. The question then becomes - is that feeling, is that what I should continue to look for? I hesitate. Can I believe in forever again, just as much, when I have watched forever extinguish? And if not - what then do I pursue? A worthy question. I still want to love with my whole heart, even when knowing the double face of forever. I still want to desire with my whole body - but then, that is always easier to find.

Could it be the holy combination? The [un]godly trinity: love, desire and happiness? If I crave from head to toe, love with every fiber, and smile with utter radiance in one's presence, is this not blessed satisfaction? Can we dispatch with all the imagery, the fairy tale, the forever, the unstoppable and simply look at the now?

For our identities (if we live with eyes and ears fully open) change, we are not forever, nor even five years. If we are not ourselves forever, how can feelings forever last? And if I have personally overcome the perilous mountains of intoxicating, world-making love to discover myself now, without it, and yet both whole and desireless in regards to he whom I had followed like a light, to he whom was worth everything, to he whom I swore and believed I would love forever... then how can I name any feeling as truly unstoppable, insurmountable, unchangeable?

I, of course, cannot. There can be no soulful addiction greater than what I have felt, and it had an ending.

It seems then that dedication must be the key. Loyalty, fe... with trust unlocked, the heart-soul-mind is discovered in the dark naked, utterly vulnerable and trembling for the embrace of another's insides. The outsides must hold each other too, each layer folding into and around each other and the other's - creating consummately cultivated concentric circles of lust, learning, and love.

Is this magic, or simply (and terribly) rare?

It is not intrinsically forever or unstoppable, but it is certainly the only embrace worth fighting for.

Perhaps that is both concrete and romantic enough to satisfy.

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:51:58 GMT

Hopefully the title of this cut made anyone who doesn't really care about me decide not to read this.

So I wrote out this whole long entry and then lost it.

I will try to sum up.

I am too paranoid about men. I think I have a fear of abandonment that is definitely pre-Andrew. My paranoia manifests itself as me thinking, then talking too much about men, and then my female friends sometimes get aggravated by me, think I am bragging, etc - when it is so so so the opposite. It makes me sad because I feel like I have to hold back my feelings around some of my friends, which makes me feel dishonest, then I decide to say something, then I feel bad about it... But after a long, convoluted entry about the whole interior battle, I concluded that the real problem is that I am just too paranoid about men. To be honest - like I always strive to be - about men is to submit someone to my paranoia.

I have to work on this fear that the people I most depend on will leave me. Going to work on it.

That's all.

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:08:20 GMT

(music by The Quavers)

I record videos while I drive... I am very dangerous.

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:43:59 GMT

Back from the road trip

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 02:05:15 GMT

But I will be putting up my videos day by day, so as not to rush and be done too quickly...

Yellow Road Trip

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:52:56 GMT

Named Yellow for the name of the play I'm writing...

This was a bit adorable...

Then the alarm went off on me on one of the paintings! The culprit:

So... I hoped you like it, as this is definitely an experiment. I'll keep doing it if you give me feedback, yes? Cool.

Right now I am in Providence, RI, but unfortunately there was nothing to see here. :( Tomorrow to Boston

Gondry's gift

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:11:01 GMT

If you are interested in seeing the results of my gift for michel gondry, I have just finished posting all the photos at the link below.

Enjoy.

www.flickr.com/photos/arte_soy/sets/72157615193158563/

Road Tripping

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:18:26 GMT

So I have been planning this trip for spring break, and it's quite exciting. I wanted to share.

Back in January I bought one of those big posters of the world map, specifically for part of my ongoing Vincent van Gogh project. It had occurred to me sometime last Fall that the man's paintings are located all over the world, from Tokyo to Melbourne to Sao Paolo to Moscow. Apart from this being touching as regards Vincent's hopes - namely that his paintings would be enjoyed by the public as much as possible - it means even more when thinking how few cared to buy/display/look at his paintings while he was alive, and because I regard his paintings as possibly the most honest pieces of his self. In fact, I regard them to be him. He is and is in them.

I got increasingly curious about where and how exactly he exists in the world today, so I bought a map with the goal of marking the locations of all his paintings (or at least their last known whereabouts) and cross-referencing this with a book of his complete works by numbering the prints in the book, and numbering the stickers on the map to match. This is still an ongoing process; I'm closing in on getting through half his ouvre. Since starting I've also decided to color code the stickers according to the three major phases in his work: when he lived in the Netherlands, when he lived in Paris, and when he lived in Southern France and Auvers sur Oise. It's been quite a trip so far.

What has also occurred to me is that his wide distribution allows me to continue discovering him and seeing his work for the rest of my life. This is something I am very, very happy about. Most all art objects are different in person than in their documentation, but given the importance of texture and color in Vincent's work, I find prints especially divorced from the real thing. You cannot really see his paintings in a print. It's something akin to accepting one photo of a sculpture to be the equivalent of seeing it for yourself.

(my photo)

will never be seen in this:

(a print)

So, upon realizing that many of Vincent's paintings are in the United States, and within driving distance, I have decided to see as many as I can. Thus, for Spring Break, I am going on a road trip to New Haven and Hartford, CT, Providence, RI, and Boston and Williamstown, MA.

I am very excited. It will be an adventure, so I will try and take some videos and maybe update while on the road! I leave this Tuesday, so we'll see how things unfold.

love you all!