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Open Wound

Open wounds. What are open wounds? A taunt not forgotten. A joke that hit a little too close to home.

Anxiety. An open wound to live with, your entire life. You might get used to it gradually, but it's always present at the back of your mind

Burning like embers after a bonfire, and if added a little more wood, it would burn a little too brightly, a little too painfully.

And the smoke makes it a little harder to breathe, the initial smoke that is. Later on, you would need oxygen masks for it.

And when your chest tightens a bit too much, when the wound is poked a bit deeper, and you really cannot breathe. It gets harder and harder, more difficult, like an out-of-body experience.

You watch and watch, helpless to do anything because what can you do? how could you stop it? how could you hope for it to stop, when it hasn't for years.

But then it does. Slowly, steadily, like a train coming to a stop. And then it's gone and there's relief. Relief as it's gone and relief that I don't have to feel like that anymore.

Until you do. Until you do again the next time ⁓SS

withastorytotell

The problem with being too much is not knowing where to put it and how to hide it. When I was in grade 5 I had a friend. I loved her enough to want her to have all of the world that I knew and had. I didn't have much, but on her birthday, I wanted to give her a big gift. So I took a pink shoe box although I didn't have much to put in it and put in the best of the things that I had. Despite them being used, I wanted her to have them. A beautiful key tag, a colourful pen, a card, an artificial flower and a lot of old things. My mom took one look and gave me a lecture that it's not appropriate to give old things as birthday gifts. But it was everything that I wanted her to have and everything that reminded me of her. It was all I had. I couldn't ask mom to buy me things when I knew she had it hard. So I hoped for the best and gave the gift I put together to my friend. I felt proud to see her smile at the big box in spite of my overwhelmed broken heart. Because I wanted her to have the best but I could not give her the best. I could only give her all I had. It was things like this that made me inappropriate. I cared too much, I wanted to give a lot, I wanted to solve your problems and feed you tasty home made dishes and hear your opinions and ideas and difficulties but it was nosy, unnecessary, overwhelming, serious, boring, elderly, over-sensitive, fragile, problematic and all the terms that they used to put off my strongest of feelings. I was simply too much, although that made them happy they didn't want that normal. Not too often. So I hid it. I grew tougher, stronger and even though I was too much and i hid it well, I still wrote my friends love letters with essays too long which I could only send on their birthdays and hope I put it in a safe place

#art

arthoeacademia

my blue and yellow

everything i wanted to be in the cup in my hand, i find it in the cup that sits on the table in front of me. staning the papers that were laid out beneath it. i look hopefully inside the cup in my hand. it is the most favourite utensil of mine. its handle is broken and it has cracks at the edge of its mouth. still i do not seem to care and hold it layering both of my hands clenched to that cup. even though it sometimes leaves stains on the collar of my shirt due to its uneven cracks. it sometimes also burns out my hand due to the hot coffee in it. it doesn’t have a handle, remember? that cup is still so dear to me. it is blue in colour. i look at the cup that sits on the table desperately wishing to be picked by me. it is yellow. i feel bad for that cup for it has all the things that my blue cup lacks. it is new with soft edges and a very fine handle. i eye the insides of my blue cup and it suddenly shatters in my hand leaving me bruised. blood slides down from my fingers and i can taste the feeling of abandonment. again. my blue abandoned me yet again. i cry and fill up yellow with my tears. it stays calm and collects everything without complaints. i don’t pick yellow up. i am scared of abandonments. i ask yellow how long will it stay? how long will it wait? “you know waiting is so beautiful if it ends with you” yellow has this carved besides its handle. and i tear up again. i look forward to the day i can pick up yellow without any hesitation. when i can fill it up with my favourite desserts. i really hope blue is at peace though. i miss blue. it is still my favourite cup.

hamletthedane

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

butt-berry

Treasure hunters!

zenaida-auriculata

AI “art”

Yesterday I argued with an idiot that thought giving directives to an AI makes you as much of an artist as someone that is actually capable of creating art. It’s extremely worrying that our youth is so incapable of understanding this topic, too self absorbed on their own rigid conception of reality and utterly detached from the real world and the importance of the people you share it with, of consequences, of tangibility. They don’t know how to define art, such a core concept for our species, they are unaware that it’s an exclusively human practice a machine cannot produce by itself or for them.

Some of Oxford Language Learner's Dictionary definitions if you want tangible sources for something that has existed for longer than any piece of technology;

Definition of an Artist: a person who creates works of art, especially paintings or drawings.

3 definitions of Art:

1) the use of the imagination to express ideas or feelings, particularly in painting, drawing or sculpture.

2) the skill of creating objects such as paintings and drawings, especially when you study it.

3) an ability or a skill that you can develop with training and practice.

(defining a piece through words could turn into literature, writing is an outlet for creativity and imagination too, the problem is that they want to claim a graphic piece they had no part on as their creation…which makes no sense for obvious reasons. This might blow your mind but you actually have to be involved in the making of a piece in order for it to be an artist. Writing a brief description of what you want the AI to make for you is not a form of creation, it’s a directive for a machine to do what you can’t)

If you don’t have mental resources, talent, skills, capacity of handling different tools, mediums and techniques then you are not an artist (and that’s okay), but you could be if you tried. Writing a prompt is not making art, everyone with enough mental capacity can come up with a concept for a piece, people that commission artists do that and that doesn’t automatically make them artists.

An AI won’t do shit the way you request it even if you say it does. An AI makes an interpretation of the request but asides from mild guidance, you have absolutely nothing to do with the process or the final “piece” (Frankenstein monster of already existing pieces, taken with or without consent).

An AI without regulation isn’t a new medium or something comparable to the fucking Industrial Revolutionjust, specially considering it isn’t a new, easier way to do the same task (like with an art software). It’s but a shameless way of reusing or straight up stealing pieces produced by the same artists you deem to be now useless and outdated. What you call the future is nothing but plagiarism, the usage of things that already existed in a much higher quality, a wonky replica that is only valued because it’s free for your cheap ass.

“Good artists have nothing to worry about, only shitty artists will disappear” im sorry you have to find out this way but every good artist had to be shit first. We reached a point where we are unaware of periods of time any artist needs in order to grow and develop. This logic is baffling because if only good artists are worth of being respected and having stable jobs then we’ll eventually run out of artists, which is not only silly but impossible. This is but an excuse to avoid the obvious issue that represents stepping over people and making it seem as a fair, natural process.

Finally, If you wanna draw, learn to draw first, nobody stops you but yourself. If you wanna paint learn to paint, if you wanna sculpt, learn to sculpt, if you wanna be an artist then get your ass to work. Not everything is laid out for you in life, you actually have to put work into something, as shocking as it sounds. There are people that draw masterpieces holding pencils on their mouths, you have no excuse other than self pity for being useless, being jealous of those that can actually make things and, ultimately, the unreserved, unapologetic disinterest in those affected by this monster y’all wanna have fun with.

thenewhoreker

what frightens me is that a mother's hate is a mirror to a mother's love. neither know law, neither know words. and they both come from a mother before.

i see the disdain flash in my mother's eyes when she is compared to my grandmother. i watch as she catches the fury under her eyelids.

what frightens me is that a mother's hate is a mirror to a mother's love. but the stretched ropes and falling eyelashes hold me in place, as they hold her. she is the reflection of my shadow. in another day, in another time, her mother is a reflection of hers.

you could set fires to a forest, but what will you do if the roots remain intact? i know she tries to let it go. i see her try every day. but she is the mother she had, no matter where life takes her. and i fear i will be the mother i have.

because a mother's hate is like a mother's love. it is far too difficult to leave behind. and when you do, you lose sense of who you are. that leaves a deeper cut. i love her, i love her with everything i have. and she loves me back. but the angry hysterics don't seem to stop. how will they ever, when the blood runs deep and it always has?

whogivesmestrengthhh

Today, a friend said something to me that made me sad but hopeful.

That the last time you left, it really broke me apart. But this time, I’m really healing from it all.

It’s been painful and it’s hard, but I’m healing what was broken. What was broken back then, and broken again wasn’t like the first time.

I’m proud of myself for the growth of how I’ve been processing my pain, but that does not mean the depth of my wounds have not been the deepest they’ve ever been.

With you, I think for the first time with anyone. I really started to let my guard down, let you break through my walls and unveils my masks. I really started to trust you, I really wanted to try. I gave my everything into what I hoped would be a lifetime together. I pushed myself past limits I didn’t know I had or could and challenged myself in ways I never dreamed. I gave my undying devotion, maybe even past the point I should have. Because I believed in us. I wanted so bad for it to be you and me. Even against all signs and all actions showing me maybe it shouldn’t be. I really have no regrets for all the work and effort and love I outpoured into us and into myself. I want to hold true to all the goodness it brought out of me, and the testimony to my willingness to keep trying.

I’m grappling with the pain that despite all the efforts and all the trust, we so devotionally tried to built back between us, was shattered in a single moment. That everything in the aftermath was just thrusting the knife deeper inside. Ripping apart any last shred of hope between us. And even though I have to keep reminding myself that shreds and shattered pieces can never be whole again, I know my heart will heal. It may be battered and bruised with slashes and holes, but it will find new hope again. When I can fully let go of the grief of what I hoped would be, and I release myself from your grasp of good memories and the drowning of bad ones. I will come to a better place of clarity and peace.

For now, I go through the process of the waves of emotions, from relief, to freedom, to despair, to reminiscing, to confusion, to anger, to hope, to sorrow, to all the waves of ups and downs to come. That I know will bring me closer to deeper understanding and stronger growth, with a soft and open kept heart.

analogmartt

“Ci sono fotografi che pensano in termini di "doppia pagina", "copertina", "orizzontale", "verticale". Non mi interessano (…), non li voglio frequentare anche se riconosco che sanno come commuoverti, come fare le foto. Ma io preferisco i fotografi che vanno, incontrano, escono.

In una scuola o un'accademia di fotografia e pubblicità, o qualcosa del genere, ho chiesto ai ragazzi di dirmi il nome di un fotografo o di una fotografa che gli piaceva. Silenzio assoluto. Va be', cito Koudelka, Cartier-Bresson, oppure Berengo Gardin, Ugo Mulas, per parlare degli italiani... Niente. Dico: "Ragazzi, ma avete mai sentito parlare di Pier Paolo Pasolini?". Giuro, hanno risposto "No". Gli insegnanti non gliene avevano mai parlato! Questi ragazzi sono letteralmente "vuoti". Ho chiesto loro: "Ma allora cosa studiate, di fotografia?". "La tecnica". Che è il peggio che si possa insegnare, perché ormai la tecnica non esiste più: fai degli scatti, e basta. Mentre il linguaggio, la trasmissione, il racconto, il documento, l'invenzione... niente!

lo sono sempre stata fortemente ancorata nel presente. La fotografia bella ed elegante mi interessa, mi piace, ma mi interessa di più quando racconta e denuncia lo stato delle cose. La resistenza la si fa anche con le piccole cose, come una mostra, un dibattito... (...) Non è che mi metto lì a fotografare i trulli di Alberobello, no, io fotografo quello che mi è vicino, che mi interessa, che mi coinvolge. Qualcosa da difendere, da amare, da apprezzare, da odiare..."

Letizia Battaglia - Volare alto volare basso: Conversazioni, ricordi e invettive.

#art

alvivaarts

Writing Tips For You (as if I don’t currently have insane writer’s block)

-Can’t start a scene? Write the setting instead. What is the lighting like? Is this place comfortable? Is it familiar or not? What should you point out now so it doesn’t suddenly appear when it becomes important for the characters? SET! YOUR! STAGE!

-Everyone says “show, don’t tell”. I like to think of that as “what are your character’s physical reactions? What are they feeling?” You can say “Character looked dismayed”, or you can say “Character grimaced with dismay.” See the difference?

-Struggling with dialogue? Talk to yourself while you’re writing. You might be blocking yourself if you subconsciously think some dialogue feels unnatural.

-Context, context, context! This applies to everything from the small interactions to the big plots. Every force has an equal and opposite reaction, allow interactions and events to grow as such.

-Context, context, context pt 2! But worldbuilding! If your character is performing an act, how does that fit into the physical reality they already exist in? How is it possible? Can you imply (imply, not explain) that these things are commonplace or why they wouldn’t be?

-Build the action. (Stealing this from theater class like twelve years ago.) You can’t just put a character into the scene and say ‘they made a sandwhich’. What has to happen for the sandwhich to be made? Your character has to walk into the kitchen, open the cupboard, get out a plate, get out the jam and peanut butter, get out a plate, get out the knives, open the fridge, get out the bread, close the fridge, open the bread bag, lay down two slices of bread on the plate, close the bag, open the first jar, pick up the first knife, scoop up the jam, slather it on the bread, put the knife down, close the first jar- and so on and so forth. Every small step is necessary for you to understand, and to engage your readers. You don’t have to go into ridiculous detail like I just did, but even understanding that for yourself.

-See above, but it’s not a scene and a sandwhich. The scene is your whole story and the sandwhich is your plot. What small steps MUST happen to reach the climax? Does changing one of those small steps change the result? How?

-Emotions are best portrayed when you have experienced them or can get insight from those who have experienced them. Let yourself get emotional in a scene. Allow yourself to be empathetic and vicariously experience what your characters are.

-Reread your own work! Your writing style and characterizations can change over time, but if you feel like you’re losing them, don’t be afraid to look at where you started to ground yourself!

-Proofread your own work 2-12 hours after you finish a section! Not while you’re writing! Don’t let yourself get carried away with writing things ‘right’, just get the ideas out.

-Have a friend or volunteer proofread for you too! This can help pick out things you repeatedly say, words you might misuse, grammar and punctuation that might need correction, and phrases that are hard to digest or don’t make sense.

-Make sure you’re making an effort to use regionally/era specific words and slang both in dialogue and in your writing. There are plenty of websites and videos online that list and discuss regional and era slang worldwide. Not to mention, we can connect with people all over the world using the web just to ask! Using incorrect phrases can really break immersion and make characters feel- well, out of character! I.E. an 80s jock saying ‘dope bruh’, American characters (generally) saying ‘lift’ instead of ‘elevator’, so on and so forth.

-Research research research! Research bloodloss limits, research how laws and jobs operate in different regions and countries, research weirdly specific myths and biblical themes, research as much as you can! You can only build a richer environment to write in!

-If you actively want to implement themes, allow them to reflect the experiences of your character. Example character is an Italian American who was orphaned at 13 after his orthodox Catholic parents died, he has been in and out of foster care his whole life, and the moment he got out his military job became strict and he allowed himself to be blackmailed to protect a child in a similar position. This has plenty of fun themes and symbolisms, like sacrifice, fate, lack of control, love, losing autonomy, etc, all of which can be framed under the impactful history of his Catholic childhood. This evokes the imagery of farm animals, servitude, animal tags/dog tags, holy spaces being used for other purposes. Play with it!

-Build three base playlists! One for your overarching story, one for songs that remind you of the main character and their story arc, and one for how you feel when you’re writing/songs that weirdly remind you of your story. You can cycle through these to help get into your mood.

-Consume other media! If all you do is focus on writing, you WILL lose steam and inspiration. Don’t be afraid to watch new shows, read new books, look at more artwork, read more poems, listen to more music. You might get a flicker of inspiration for themes, motives and ideas, and you’ll continue to fill yourself instead of dumping your focus out on your writing.

-Understand how each major character thinks and instinctively reacts to things. Some characters can stay calm, but others might instinctively react to things ‘angrily’, others might try to run away. This is an easy way to figure out character flaws and impliment easy conflicts.

And last but not least:

-Take breaks! Don’t worry about forcing yourself to keep a posting schedule (unless you’re being paid. I’m not. I’m doing this shit for free and for funsies) if all you do is spend all your time worrying about your writing, you won’t be able to relax your brain. Spend time with friends, play games, go outside!

I hope this helps!

tuurverheydepoetryandprose-deac

In some corners of the internet there is a readiness to call anything pretentious whenever it is complex, abstract or deliberately alienating. Some people are also eager to claim that artists are too self-serious, snooty and elitist whenever they create something that is not straightforwardly understood.

They pretend art has always existed to appeal to the greatest number of people and appeal in a way that is simple and explicable. If you look at the history of art that could not be further from the truth. Even art that was performed to an ‘illiterate’ public often maintained layers of meaning and ambiguity throughout long periods of history (just look at the global historical traditions of oral storytelling)

The simplification of art and the expectation that everything should appeal to a wide audience is the result of commodification not democratisation. Art has arguably never been less revered than now and still there are people who think it has further to fall in esteem. Just look at the AI movement’s desire to undermine artists while stealing their work.

I believe that the ‘it’s not that deep’ crowd who is eager to wield the accusation of pretentiousness whenever something doesn’t connect to them is part of an anti-artist, anti-intellectual movement to do away with mainstream non-consumerist (non-recuperable) art.

There has been a concerted effort by corporations and those purely interested in consumerism to erase the notion that art is primarily a human expression that is not necessarily made to pander to a wide audience. Every day we see more efforts in the social media & technological culture wars to devalue art and demonise artists who wish to create artistically fulfilling works rather than crowd-pleasing content.

I think we need to push back harder against this. The anti-complexity consumerist mindset is not only incurious and subservient to corporations, it’s also anti-intellectual, anti-cultural and insidiously reactionary.

#art #entertainment #culture #AI

thepeacockangel

Art and Experience

I am thinking about art and thinking about how there is a vast gap between the parts of art observed from life and experience and that which is inspired by other art. And I am not denigrating one in favor of the other.

I think art sort of requires both. But I guess I am focused on the modern "Why is my YA space opera not as respected as Toni Morrison" and I think there's something to be questioned there.

I was inspired to this train of thought in comparing my own work to that of Jean Genet, and his minutely observed portraits of the French Underclass men he was attracted to (and who frankly he was) and then I was thinking about Tolkien and his endless imitators, and how much of his work is deeply inspired by the like... actual experience of being a linguist and his time in the trenches. And like Toni Morrison is not at all a writer who resists the fantastical in her work, but again there is that core of experience derived from life that informs the work.

So, it's not that you can't write a good or interesting or artistically meaningful space opera, but I think your source material must include not just other space operas, but also some of your own actual experiences. And I think perhaps as more and more of our lives have been consumed by the most mind-deadening labor, and our leisure time increasingly devoted to the consumption of media rather than the experience of life... perhaps art has suffered as a result of that?

I am someone who adores reading, and who loves art and artists very deeply, but I do see a lot of stuff we're getting as a photo-copy of a photo-copy of a photo-copy with relatively little added. And I think as well in a world of the sort of atomized cloistered banal horror at lot of people live in, it can be very tempting to throw all the lived experience of being one's self out of art, except perhaps for some shallow nods to identity category to make the full escape into fantasy more effective.

I also think perhaps the... rise of the aesthetic over the subculture is also somehow connected to this.

A subsculture was rooted partially at least in connection with others, and also with the lived experience of being oneself.

But you can have a cottagecore aesthetic, a cottagecore fantasy life while working at a call centre. It is derived fully from fantasy and disconnected from actual experience.

This fantasized self, replacing the actual conditions of the self also has a bad effect on political activity. We can all lose ourselves in our inner worlds, in an attempt to escape the horrors of the outer one.