7 Needles & Jillian Mayer

Two cool things happened today.
               
             1. I got this awesome acupuncture treatment that rocked my body in some pretty radical ways.  I could feel the energy move, disappear, relocate, transition into various intensities, manifest with various sensations, and then go away.  I had waves of energy moving through my body from head to toe.  My throat tightened.  I coughed.  The heals of my feet began to hurt as if a lot of weight was resting on them.  I could feel energy moving in my ear canal.  Different parts of my head began to hurt.  My eyes fell shut upon themselves my body relaxing and then abruptly they reopened, wanting to stay open they focused on the halos forming around the light fixtures in the ceiling.  I don't think I blinked for a while.  I felt circular energy forming around each needle in my body. Three in my belly, two on my belly and two on my feet.  She asked me to come back in a couple of days and wear a tank top.  She was going to do my back. Before my session started,  she told me that my session could possibly be pretty intense.  We exchanged words that I can't remember, me trying to understand her.  Then I said "like the energy that gets moved when reiki is being performed on the body." "Yes!" she said.  When it was over.  I told her that it was freaking radical, bizarre, and wild and that I was totally into it.  I could see her smile and nod.



I am sure more than two cool things happened today.  It's just that right when these happened I felt my world being rocked.  May be a bit dramatic.  However, those are the words I chose.

              2. I discovered Jillian Mayer.

This was my first introduction

Ok, now I look at the hits on this video and it appears that over 2,000,000 people have watched it. Whatever! I don't care! I saw it for the first time and was excited to see a young women doing something strange that I am pretty sure would knock all my freak friends into total freak love.

I have for some time been a creator of scary art.  A teacher once took his students to one of my shows, it was a commentary on sanity and insanity in society.  I asked him what they had thought, he told me, "They asked if you were insane." Now I don't think Jillian Mayer is insane. Heck, I don't even know the gal.  But what I do know is that she produces odd, strange, sometimes scary, avant grade, bizarre videos that sometimes have a pop song to them.

I love a woman that is willing to put a bunch of crap on her face.  I mean most of us do on a regular basis.
Inner Voice: "Chrystal, that is using your judgment mind and is rather untrue and not very kind."
Oh well I am commenting on a video by an artist that commentates on society so opinions and loose language are running a bit free in my world.  Moreover, I love that she is a face drawer! I mean she really is! And so am I!  Many of my projects have involved face painting, body painting, and not in the whimsical oh I am a Faerie connected with nature kind of way, instead, the I am not afraid to make a statement kind of way.  One that makes me uncomfortable and could make you too. Though I promise, I am not doing it on purpose.  I really appreciate how this video is done in her living room to further imulate  tutorials on youtube and how she continues to reference a way of integration and repulsion from the technological world.

  "Scenic Jogging" created some fear in me and I love that.  I love when art makes me feel something.  An inanimate object is creating emotions that validate that I am freaking alive, and not in some cellphone, tv, alcohol, drug, sex, shopping, or food induced coma.  Go Fear! You really rocked it this time!

  When I watched an interview of her she talks about how in this video she plays a character that is is running after the unattainable.  I am reminded of reading an article of how westerners will not ever be happy because they can not enjoy their current state of attainment.  Meaning that they have a dream, they work very hard to reach it, they achieve the dream, and the amount of time that they spend enjoying that state of being is much smaller than easterners.  Instead, Westerners move onto, creating a wonder of what it is that they can achieve next.  There for there is a long period of dissatisfaction in our lives.

Speaking of which, I bet you didn't know you needed a new coffee mug?

On a very quite sidetrack to something that is a bit off track but I felled compelled to write it out anyways.  Well here it goes,. After getting home from my acupuncture appointment,  I had one memory from my past repeat in my head.  It was when one of my best friends and I finally connected for the very first time.  We didn't really know each other and had been doing the whole, "We should hang out some time," for about nine months.  Then one night on the steps outside of the art building we had a discussion on energy.  How everything was energy.  How we could feel the space between people as energy.  How we felt energy in our body. How the stones that we were standing on were even energy.  It was one of those moments, where you look over at a person and realize that you have understood something beyond words.  Something that goes down to the core.

Well I could go on more, and so more properly and with better grammar and stuff with a more reserved way of showing some new found loves, but obviously I didn't feel like it so I gut all pumped up and now I got to stop because I need to slow down the blood pumping system and call it a night.  Seriously, my heart is beating pretty hard to me.

Is there something that has rocked your world? Is there another artist out there that almost the majority of the internet knows besides myself that you could open my art loving eyes to? Anything got you all excited that you didn't care and threw standards of how to be out the window? I'd love to hear about it. Or hey, how about you invisible data searching machines, no not you if your a real person, I am talking about the websites that traffic my sight that I am pretty sure are not real people, think about how technology affects your relation to mankind.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQz4k2_wseo

Dream ON!

I just reread my post and I am kind of embarrassed how I talk about myself a lot while referencing her work.  I guess I just got excited about "getting to know" someone over the internet that reminded me of myself in some ways.  A kindred art spirit on another plain.  Oh, how stuff comes out of my head when I don't refine or restrain it...

A Drawing For Today

           Sometimes in life, we pick things up and then we drop them.  Sometimes it's a bowl of cereal, a crush, a style, a diet, a job or a hobby.  For a big part of my life I drew.  I would draw for hours, forgetting about time, the world around me, my problems.  Fully pulled into whatever marks I was placing on the paper.

            I haven't finished a drawing for a while.  During my drawing drought,  I have done some scribbles, doodled while talking on the phone, started something, didn't like it, then either quickly turned the page to either stare at it and close it or make a couple marks and then move onto something else.  I couldn't find a drawing inside of me.  There was nothing to pull out. The whole process was extremely uncomfortable. 

            Several years ago, I went through a writers block.  It happened sometime after my mother passed away.  I didn't write anything for several years.  Not a page in a journal, not a postcard, not a holiday note, or a wish for a Birthday.  I finally wrote a birthday card.  The process was painful.  My handwriting was shaky and my writing seemed forced and extremely unnatural. I would even go so far as to call it painful.  1 year later,  I was filling up a notebook a month with thoughts, desires, dreams, nightmares, obsessions and memories.

            Well, on November 11, 2013,  I finished a drawing! In fact I did two, but the first one I consider more to be my warm up.  For the sake of it though, we can go ahead and say I finished two.  To my astonishment, the process wasn't painful, wasn't forced, nor was my mind  filled with thoughts of judgement.  I simply went along,  made some marks and continued till I said that it was done. I accepted it for what it was.  Not passing judgement was a relief I wasn't even mindful of at the time.

             Someone famous once said something along the lines of "If you don't know what to draw, just draw lines. If you still don't know what to draw, draw more lines" that is of course loosely quoted since I can't even remember who said it. Draw On!

All is Beautiful...

                                                                    Right now

 What is here in this moment

 Is beautiful

 No one can say otherwise 

 No one owns this moment

It is already gone

 But while we still have each other

 We shall dance to a tune for the things that we love

The sun shines

Our bodies are  filled with breath

 We are lucky to have each other

We are gifted

We are love

Take Me To The Ocean

          I am hesitant to write this.  It seems that there are a countless other amount of posts that chronologically fit before this one.  Many stories and photos that lead up to this very moment.  I want it to make sense.  For there to be some order.  Somewhere.  Yet, lately I have been feeling exhausted, depleted, sad and despondent. My mornings have been filled with to do's and my evenings have been occupied by me passing out or zoning out to whatever noise I hear in the background coming from the ocean, from the tv. It hasn't been all work,  I've made enough time to take many photos, appreciate the flowers and remember many stories. 

           I traveled to Kauai to throw the mixed ashes of my grandma and grandpa in the ocean.  With to do's from my mothers death and family obligations and arrangements for my grandparents final memorial,  I have been feeling like a fragmented form of myself.  Self care had gone out the window.  That being the case it took me some time to remember that a swim in the ocean can solve almost any problem.  At least for me.  Its a recharge.  I have always said "Take your problems to the ocean and she will take it away." I had made no time for swimming for three days and the result of that was a shell of myself.  So like most self care acts, I made the time to go swimming.  I left the rest of the world behind and dived in.

When I came to on the other side. Walked on land and found a long lost friend.