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...

There Always Gotta Be a First Day

It was told to me by a dear friend, after I had shown up to class in the extremely inappropriate clothing.  It was my first day of glassblowing.  I knew nothing of what to wear.  You're supposed to wear loose fitting clothes and 100% cotton.  I showed up in tight non cotton leggings wearing a skin tight non cotton dress.  I felt like that girl that was trying to be hot.  In the end I was freaking hot and managed to not burn myself or melt my clothes off.  If the me now saw that girl then, I probably would've just shook my head and thought "poor girl."  As I explained this story to my group of coffee shop buddies, the embarrassment, the sweat, the jokes that came along with what I was wearing. He piped up and said "There's always gotta be a first day."

Sometimes the fear associated with starting something new can cause a type of frozen effect.  As an artist, when I start a project, I normally have a vision, what it is going to look like, the format is normally decided, along with how it is going to be displayed and the significance of the concept.  All this has stopped me from creating a blog.  The things that run through my mind are, 1.  I need an editor, I am dyslexic and I have learned from experience that not being able to speak well or write well can make people think less of you, believe that you are of less intelligence.  2. Where is that perfect title? 3. Will it be personal? Will I only show my art? How much am I willing to share? What does this look like? How do I create a format? 4. I technically have no idea how to even create a blog.

I have looked at some other blogs and I am left with a perception of their perfect lives.  And then I look around my apartment.  Does anyone want to see the dishes in my sink, my burning man gear which is still piled up in the corner almost three months later, my closet that looks more like a storage unit, my bare walls that are still bare despite the fact that I have lived in this apartment for 2 years already.  Oh, I have the art, I just haven't hung it. The Ego of Defeat says  "I am not one of these blogging women. What do I have to offer?" It's all just perception. The truth is simple.  What do I have to offer?  My self.   For I am an artist, a thinker, a person that desires to connect with others, a person that likes to document my thoughts, my journeys, the times in life that make me laugh and smile and the times in life that make me cry.

Yet, I felt stuck.  Where do I start? Then the answer appeared in my brain. "Start with what you know. Start with whats around you." So I know photography... Ok, I will start with that.  Then I remembered my back injury that had put me in bed for most of the day for the past two months. I remembered what I have been telling myself for the past couple of weeks "You can do almost anything for 15 minutes." So thats what I did.  I grabbed my camera, went to get a cup of coffee, and began documenting what would be my first blog entry.  Here is some of what I captured.  

Oftentimes my first view when I wake up in the morning are a couple of trees, this being one of them. I had been thinking "tree when will you become bare and lose your yellow leaves?" It was only after editing that I realized she was well on her way, with just a few leaves left.

  Shifting my perception to the street below.  Vibrant Trees with plenty of color left.

 Standing under the tree, under the branches, for a moment I forgot I was in the city.  It felt like home.  The smell of damp dirt and the scent of trees.  I felt a sense of security. Of safety.

The spider webs reminded me of one of my dreams. A Dream that is for another time.

I  passed beautifully crafted spider webs, took photos of every one, they reminded me of home. Of flowers bowing to the weight of the dew from the fog.  Holding on till the cold finally becomes too strong. I enjoy the chaos that nature creates.  It has a sense of order to it.

 We've been blessed with fog, with mystery.  I lay in bed and watch trees reveal themselves while the background hides.  The landscape comes in and out of focus only showing me what it wants.  It is a beautiful little tease that has become one of the greatest joys of my days.  I had been lying in bed thinking "I wish I could go and photograph it," thinking of a destination that I already had in mind, knowing that my body couldn't make it.  Remember, there's a beautiful world just outside the door.  One need not go far to capture the beauty of life.

Lately I have been thinking of death.  I have been grieving the loss of someone very close to me.  I have been thinking of transformation of space, self, energy.  The landscape around me is a reflection of my thoughts.  Every time I get on a bus, a new historic building has been torn down and they have already begun rapid construction on a new fancy modern apartment or condo complex.  Of course, which all will be too expensive for the majority of the people that live here.  It astonishes me, how quickly something can be torn down, forgotten and replaced.  I can't even remember anymore what stood there before. This building though is closer to home.  I don't know what it will be in the future, that doesn't bother me much, for right now, I am enjoying walking by it and seeing art. Thankfully it is art.

 There are some moments I cant help resist but savor.  One of them is watching the cream hit the coffee, swirling about, creating patterns and swirls of moving painting.  It shall be something that I never get sick of.  I attempted to photograph it here and my lens was fogging up.  So we have a coffee reading instead of a tea reading.  I enjoy looking in, seeing what symbols are created.  Is there a scene in here? What does it say?

That it's time to play with the perception of fog.

If you slow down, if you stop and notice what lies along your path, what beauty can you find close to home? What simple pleasures give you the most joy? It is there, that even in the hardest of times, I found moments of joy.

This post was brought to you by Migraine Fierceness and a Love for Imperfections! 

I would rather have failed many times than have never tried at all...Didn't somebody famous say that?