Tiny thing Big Problem

So I went to Seattle over the weekend, I somehow managed to lose my glasses. I'm not sure if I left them there or if they're buried in my car somewhere. I have got to find them. It really sucks, my stigmatism distorts perspective which makes it impossible to draw without my glasses. I keep going oh, I should draw that, or oh, I've got an idea I want to sketch out and I can't because not having glasses sucks.

Its really annoying how there are all these practical things you have to take care of for your art practice to be successful, especially when the creative spirit moves you. You just want to make art, I know that if I went to my car and spent how ever many hours looking for my glasses, if I ever even found them, by the time I was done I'd probably have lost my inspiration. On the other hand its better to be motivated and find them as soon as possible so I can get as much work done as I can. Its so easy to be lazy when you don't have everything at hand to make your work but you've just got to make the decision to delay your self-gratification and do the toil work so you can get around to doing the fun stuff. To be real, you feel better you're more productive and when you're productive you feel better and conversely when you're depressed you feel lazy and when you're lazy you feel depressed so you've just got to make the decision to be self-motivated and break yourself out of your rut.

Tonight I'm going to get a goodnight's sleep and in the morning when there's light out enough to see I'm going to find my glasses. Try going out of your way to be as productive as possible in your art practice and see how much better you feel even if the stuff you're producing isn't your best work ever, the act of simply continually producing work will get the rust out of the gears and get you in tip top shape.

Finding Inspiration out of Frustration

So I've been trying to get financing for an indie flick in Hawaii and so far all I've been getting is doors slammed in my face. SO what I'm thinking I might do instead is attempt to do a shoe string budget documentary about the rise of social internet games and how the false sense of accomplishment is a form of escapism for people in today's down turned economy.

I'll need to do some research first but I think it could turn out really cool. Hopefully it won't turn into one long rant about how much the economy sucks. I think what it will be though is about how in a world where the American dream seems dead, that at least in the virtual world we can have this sense of pride of ownership not otherwise afforded to us in the real world.

Frustrating surroundings

I miss having something to take pictures of, to draw. I hate not having a space to create. I complained today to my father that there's nothing to draw here, nothing to take photos of, his response of was that there's tons of thing to draw and photograph. He brings up the sunset in the backyard. Its a shot I've taken hundreds of photos of since I was a sophomore in high school almost 12 years ago. Its an angle I'm never even been all that fond of. Its relaxing to look out at but its not something that works compositionally. I've drawn the backyard and all its pieces more times than I'd like to count. I hate coming inside to draw still lifes because I never feel comfortable and at peace here.

There is a definite awareness that if a space isn't really yours, its hard to make art in it. Basically I feel like if its a space where you couldn't feel comfortable walking around naked, its hard to really make yourself vulnerable enough to make art. I've seen this same landscape on and off for 11 years and its come to represent depression and being controlled, I look out my window and I feel sick. Its definitely time to move on when I can, but who has the money to travel these days?

I need an out, I really hope the financing for this film comes through.

How spongebob made me gay

For a supposed "man of science" my father is definitely on that list of people who try to force science to fit inside their own personal faith based cosmology and make wild leaps of logic to support these ludicrous systems of thought, ignoring anything which would disprove or contradict them. A convert to catholicism from an Oklahoman Southern Baptist upbringing, my father claims to be a reasonably rational scientific mind who disputes things such the theory of evolution. One should be intensely surprised at hearing such talk from a physician, but my father did receive his medical degree from the University of Oklahoma med school. University of Oklahoma being a school with strong connections to Oral Roberts and Christian faith healing, both of which were large parts of my father's upbringing, who actually met Oral Roberts as a child and attended many faith healing sessions at his church growing up. Need I say more? Though in defense of University of Oklahoma, while I have no idea what their policy was in the 1970's, their zoology department where my father studied for his undergrad has since passed a departmental statement validating and affirming the need to teach evolution. Ironic. If you would argue still that this isn't clear evidence for the man's bizarre state of mind, he claims he was accepted to both Yale and Harvard med schools on full scholarships but turned them down after touring because at the time what they were teaching conflicted with his personal beliefs.

Despite scientific evidence to the contrary, and just about any person who's ever met me, my father is convinced that I'm not gay that I only think I'm gay and that its a passing phase. My father has made statements to effect that if indeed I do have ADD (which I have indeed been classified as but my father does not believe exists, he thinks I'm just lazy) that it must be the reason that I've been suckered in by the malevolent forces of the world to being convinced that I'm gay. That somehow I went away to college and the liberals turned me gay, I being the child who begged for a New Kids on the Block doll for his 5th birthday and had to be expressly forbidden from being allowed to take ballet.

My father is a radiologist, he is not a psychiatrist, psychologist and has taken nothing past some mandatory undergrad classes in psych back in the 70's, and yet he claims to be an absolute expert on the subject. Like most physicians, he believes that because he is so "God touched" that he is brilliant enough to become a physician he must be light years ahead of anyone else that isn't, and in fact many that are as I've heard him on many occasion talking about what an idiot some other doctor is because he disagrees with them on subjects pertaining to their particular specialty. Physicians think they can do it all, like severely socially retarded aspergers kids, they lack the understanding that the type of intelligence related to science and math amounts to absolute squat when dealing with anything outside that realm. Every physician thinks he or she is a master pianist, artist, philosopher and any other "lesser" discipline that walks the face of the earth. They fail to understand that raw mental bandwidth is not enough. Aside from the basic fact that there are several different types of intelligence and mathematical intelligence does not translate into the required spatial, intrapersonal and existential intelligences required for making art of any substance in the contemporary world, the time and dedication taken to become a physician would completely atrophy any other talents they might have had at one time or another. It takes years to become an artist, I don't remember a single semester of college when I didn't have a minimum of 40 hours a week of homework in addition to the class time I had to devote, there is no possible way someone could keep up with that and do what it takes to become physician and maintain their knowledge to keep it up to date. The idea that someone should parade themselves as an expert in an entirely different field of medicine that they have no formal training in is ridiculous.

This evening my father brought up an article from the journal of pediatrics. My father knows I'm considering returning for a second bachelors in character animation. If you are unaware of this article, its sketchy to say the least. Its basic idea was that children who are allowed to watch fast paced cartoons have temporary attention deficit. The study seemed unreasonably biased. They compared the effects of watching spongebob to those of Calliou. The kids watched the shows then took tests. It seems to me that you might have compared it to other things that are fast paced and hold children's attention such as games like tag. The study is already been ripped apart on the web and people are making some really valid points, I'm not going to dive into them here. So regardless of the fact that I've had ADD my entire life and when I was going to college I had little to no television time yet still had a lot of trouble with my condition, my father suggested that all of my problems with ADD were caused by cartoons. He suggested that I should stop watching cartoons altogether and that that would make my ADD go away. In true Freudian fashion, his underlying message was stop watching cartoons and you'll lose the ADD symptoms, grow up and turn straight. There is no evidence that the effects of television are long term, and in fact the study seem to suggest they last maybe a few hours at most. I might go days, even months without seeing a cartoon, even now I rarely go a minute without thinking about guys. How's that fit into your cosmology dad?