I don’t know why I started the Stranger Dinners. Maybe it was out of loneliness. I was living in a new town with my two best friends. I had just graduated college, an environment where hundreds of familiar and interesting faces greeted me as soon as I walked out my door. I had been so excited to finally be free of the isolated bubble of school. I thought it was holding me back, with its assignments and requirements and obligatory hoops to jump through. I was ready to be set free so I could finally do what I wanted: make art.

I often likened concentrating in sculpture to majoring in possibilities. As I learned more and more about contemporary art practice and theory, my definition of what art was and what it could be expanded until there were no limits. A sculpture could be anything from an idea to an action, a crafted situation, a social experiment, a conspiracy, a business venture, an anecdote told at a party. I spent my last semester trying to walk on the edge of what art could be. I planned field trips, elaborate parties, chance meetings, experiential devices, and rumors. I was a little misunderstood, but I was very happy, and I was excited for the day that I would graduate and have the freedom to do even more.

It soon hit me that school hadn’t prepared me for the reality that lay beyond. In the real world, people didn’t have time to make art. Work that actually earned money took over life. I longed for the creative collaboration between people who had time to philosophize, to create, to experiment, to discuss, to learn and to teach. In school, I had been isolated, but at least I was with hundreds of fellow students and faculty. In the real world, I felt, everyone lives in their own little world, working to pay their rent and provide for themselves.

Working part time in a frame shop, and spending my free time working on projects alone at my house, I felt a very basic, almost laughable question begin to surface.

What is everyone doing?

I felt like I missed something. Is this it? You have a few friends, you wake up, go to work, pay rent, and get some fun in when you can? I would make a painting and look at it, thinking “what is this for?” I wondered how people were spending their time. How were people figuring out how to balance their obligations with their pleasures? How did they make decisions? How do we all decide what is right for us–what to sacrifice and what to invest? What city to live in? What jobs to apply for? What to do with our lives?

“What I want to know is where all the people are, and where they go / and what I wouldn’t give to know where everybody gets together, where it is that they really live” — “The Sky Opens Wide like the Tide” by The Blow

I asked everyone I came across what their life was like. Did they like what they were doing? How did they do it? Why did they like it? How did they get to that point? What did they do before? What were the obstacles? What were the perks? What were the downfalls?

I felt like I was lost in this big labyrinth and the whole world was at a party in the center of it.

Slowly it dawned on me: no one had the answer. There was no right path. Everyone stumbles their way through. Some people get lucky breaks, some people have lower expectations, some people are unhappy, some people are happy. It is always changing and evolving. Everyone just works with what they have, and from their own perspective.

So what if we all started collaborating? What if we shared our perspectives? Not just with our family and friends, but with everyone? I wanted to know what a real life was like, and movies weren’t really helping.

The internet has been a huge tool for doing just this. We can share the most intimate details of our lives with strangers, from vacations pictures to opinions, to skin infections and the latest fashions. People type out their greatest fears, aspirations, confessions, and successes for the vast unknown sea of people to read and comment on. This gives access to a seemingly infinite amount of information without having to even get out of bed.

But there’s something so isolating about the internet. This screen we use as a portal to connect ourselves to each other creates an invisible barrier between ourselves an others. The voyeuristic nature of Facebook allows us to keep up with our acquaintances and friends without them even knowing, and without the exchange that let’s them know we care, and without actually having any kind of relationship with these people.

I just clicked over to someone’s twitter page. I don’t know this girl, but I’ve been following her life for almost a year. The background on her twitter page says, “I thought I was a narcissist. That is, until I met the rest of the internet.” It’s true, we are all broadcasting the stories of our lives (some more than others). We are posturing as ourselves in order to make superficial connections with as many people as possible. Social capital is suffering from inflation. It’s not enough to have 50 people in real life you really care about, you have to have 500 facebook friends too. What? You don’t have 1,000 followers on twitter? You might as well be shouting into the void, because no one hears what you say.

Communication has been one sided too long. We are starting to learn how to make all this technology work for us. It’s starting to occur to people that these amazing networks we are building can help us improve the communities where we actually exist. With the internet, I can now find all the garage sales in my neighborhood, order takeout, find a date, join a pillow fight, and locate my favorite food cart when I get that special craving.

In response to all these ideas and questions, I started inviting strangers to my house for a potluck. With the Stranger Dinners, I seek to bridge the gap between personal and impersonal, between the mass communication and face to face interaction. I want to bring what is good about the internet and relocate it from the ephemeral everywhere and nowhere plane and bring it closer. I want to create the opportunity for people to find something they might not think to look for. I want to take the idea of StumbleUpon and bring it to the dinner table. Let us cultivate an open flow of information without the anonymity. That way, the value placed on the information or opportunities we come across are tied to real people who live in our physical communities. I want the humanity back. Instead of going to the library and researching on the internet, I want to stroll through the stacks, smell the pages of old books, pick a random book off the shelf, and let some serendipity into my life.

Most of all, I want to keep myself open to the physical world around me, and all the people who live there. I want us to act as though we have the world in common. If we’re all in this together, we’ll have all the support we need to get us through. Through my art practice, I seek to create situations outside of our everyday expectations of the world. I strive to actively create what I find lacking from my everyday experience. And I want to explore the possibilities that can come from encouraging people to talk to each other without reason, motivation, agenda, self-selection, or presumption. They’re no telling what we will find if we look just outside of our everyday experience.

“The Stranger Dinners” is a series of chance events. Twice a month, six strangers will come together to create a collaborative meal (potluck), producing the potential for serendipitous meetings and unexpected happenings. The series will start with an invitation sent to my own list of contacts, who are encouraged to spread the invitation through word of mouth, creating a FOAF (Friend of a Friend) network. Anyone in this network can RSVP to one of these dinners, with a maximum of 5 new guests per dinner. This event engages individuals in a unique situation of spending one night at an intimate gathering with people they may have never met, and may never see again.

Guests will each bring something of their choosing to share for dinner. They are also encouraged to bring any other items they would like to use as entertainment, conversation starters, favors, or show and tells.

This project explores the idea of individual expression and temporal intimacy, and allows guests to explore the freedom of interacting with new people outside of expectation, commitment, prior knowledge, or self segregation. The intention of this project is to create new opportunities and possibilities by changing the way people view, respond, and interact with strangers.

To sign up for The Stranger Dinner email list, visit: http://strangerdinner.eventbrite.com/

____________________

Dear Stranger,

I think we need to talk.

My mom always told me never to talk to you, even if you offered me candy. The news tells me not to trust you–that you will kidnap, rape, rob, or kill me given half the chance.

But I never believed those lies. I know you’re just like me, trying to make your world turn as best as you can. I know you have dreams, ideas, and favorite recipes just like me. You might even have some insight to share that will make my life better. Maybe you know my future partner. Maybe you know the solution to something I’ve been trying to figure out for a long while.

Sometimes I run into you at parties, bars and parks. All over, really. I know we just never get a chance to really sit down together. Get intimate. You just always look so busy, and I don’t want to intrude. You might think I’m crazy, or hitting on you or something. But I’m not.

Because the thing is, you’re really easy to talk to. I can really be myself around you. I can tell you anything… things even my closest friends don’t know. I can be really honest.

Technology is changing so fast now. There are so many new ways we can communicate. We can trade books, furniture, stories, sexual partners, and ideologies. But it still feels so impersonal. I find myself staring at my computer, isolated, as you walk by my window.

I’m tired of the silent treatment. I hate pretending to ignore you, not knowing when and if to smile when you pass. I don’t want to feel afraid when I hear your footsteps behind me at night.

Well, it’s time for a change. Come over for dinner. Let’s sit down, eat, and finally have a chance to really talk. I think this will be a great opportunity for us. In fact, it might save the world, or at least help us work better together. Next week let’s do it at your house.

All my love,

Ari

My friend F came over last night, totally bummed. His boyfriend was in a funk. He had recently lost his job, and with summer coming to an end, he found himself without friends, without anything to do, binging out on television and feeling sorry for himself.

Since the fall of the economy, this scenario has gotten more and more prevalent. People become unemployed and have a hard time getting a job, which leads to feelings of helplessness and worthlessness. Without any money, it’s hard to go out, and many find themselves unmotivated, watching bad reality TV shows which just make them feel more resentful of their directionless, broke-ass lives.

Being in this cycle of helpless self-pity really sucks. It begins to make you angry with the world. Why do I have to live like this? Why do we cultivate a society that focuses so much on money? Why does it seem like we have to kill ourselves trying to get a job just so we can spend 60 hours a week doing something for someone else?

It got me thinking about the world I wanted to live in. Usually my utopian visions land me in a big meadow in the country near great swimming holes. It would always be summer, and I’d live in a giant house with a very large kitchen, a very large garden, and tons of friends living with me, as neighbors, and constantly passing through. I would spend my days gardening and planning activities like skillshares, storytelling nights, potlucks, band practice, dances, etc.

I don’t have room for work in my utopia, nor do I have room for money. I have plenty of room for community, creativity, sharing, collaboration, and mutual aid.

Now that I’m done being depressed that the utopia I have imagined for myself isn’t showing up on it’s own, and I’ve watched all the Rachel Zoe I can handle, I’ve been trying to think of ways to move my current reality closer to my imagined one.

Here are a couple strategies I have in mind:

1. Cultivate a community that helps each other get what we need without money.

Plan skillshares so we can educate each other. Start bartering. Sign up for those collaborative consumption websites like Neighborgoods. Trade books instead of buying them with BookMooch.

2. Entertain Yourself.

There’s no need to pay a $15 cover and spend $8 on a cocktail. Plan potlucks. Share food. Invite your musician friends over to play for you and your neighbors. Have a tea party in the park and invite everyone to come. Organize recurring events. Some days you might have more than someone else. Share, and let them help you out when you’re low. Some of the best times in my life have been at home with my favorite people around me.

3. Share information.

I read a lot, but I get tons of my information from other people. Whether it’s sharing an article online, forwarding a groupon email to someone you know would like it, or just sitting around and talking about stuff, talking with people face to face is a great way to cultivate relationships, come up with new ideas, get feedback, and inspire each other. If your bored, get a few other bored people together and see what you come up with.

Remember: Even though you’re being a revolutionary with these kinds of activities, you don’t need to tattoo “Anarchy” on your bicep or become vegan or stop shaving your armpits. Keep it intimate, keep it your own, and keep it casual. This is a way of living, not a way to join a subculture. This of these activities as a way of meeting people, improving in your quality of life, and living life the way you want.

I’m always on the lookout for good role models, but I rarely ever find them. Yesterday I came across this video of Oakland based artist Monica Canilao. Seriously, I want to be her. She is amazing and talented and hot and makes amazing things out of arguably nothing at all. I’m so jealous. I’ve been super interested in dwellings and shanties and indian head dresses and gardening and things that are broken, and she incorporates it all into her life. Seriously major art crush. Develop your own by watching below!

So amazing.

My friend Sean just called and suggested we start our journey towards world domination, and/or doing whatever we want all the time. I totally agree. We were thinking of having a reality TV show. It will be kind of like a cross between the Kardashians’, The Hills (without the vapid drama), and Colorsplash on HGTV. We will be really talented at doing really amazing things, making art and food, and having the most elaborate parties. We are innovative, fearless, cultural producers who will spend other people’s money and make the world measurably more exciting and fun. We will also throw in projects people can do at home. It will be a reality tv show about possibilities realized.

In other news, I’ve been making a lot of pie recently. I think I’ve almost got the crust down, though I still need  a pastry blender. Last night was vegetable pie with tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, onions, summer squash, mushrooms and goat cheese. YUM!

I’m getting out of this funk I’ve been in for a long time. I’m starting to see through the fog in my head that has made everything seem lame or impossible or scary. A couple weeks ago, my heart was crying out for a change, for something that would release me from one mind to the next. I missed my BFF, who always pushes me to see and experience and learn something new. I called and said I needed him to appear, and he did!

I remember him saying, sometime this week during our shenanigans, that even when you just want to stay home and hide under the covers, you have to make yourself go out and do things. Now I’m ready and have so many plans! Sometimes you just need to know that there’s someone there to hold your hand when you get ready to take the plunge.

I bought a planner yesterday, which is helping me keep track and get excited about everything I want to do. And when I get stuck, I’m turning to John Cage for some inspiration to keep going, keep working, keep learning and connecting and giving and taking–mining all I can get out of this city.

Reading:
The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World by Lewis Hyde
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

Listening:
Hot Chip – One Life Stand
Florence and the Machine

Watching:
Burn After Reading – Coen Bros.

——-

john cage: some rules for students and teachers or anyone else

RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.

RULE TWO: General duties of a student – pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.

RULE THREE: General duties of a teacher – pull everything out of your students.

RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.

RULE FIVE: be self-disciplined – this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.

RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.

RULE EIGHT: Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.

RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.

RULE TEN: “We’re breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.” (John Cage)

HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything – it might come in handy later.

dream house

Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a big city that was full of houses that looked like this? There would be little secret cafes hidden behind giant ferns and big swimming holes with waterfalls. Tree house venues with shows and secret passageways. Like the Ewok village, or Pandora in Avatar, but more urban. I would like to live there. Have dance parties every night, make fruit salad for breakfast and add wine for sangria in the evening. And it would be a totally normal place to live, not some paradise you run away to because you can’t stand the real world, where everyone is cultish or lost or both, and there are only the sharks and the vulnerable. The kind of utopian communal lifestyle appeals to me, but often turn into this and I wish it wasn’t so. Why can’t utopia be normative?

Ahem. I’m feeling unusually chipper today after some iced coffee and the first good night’s sleep of the week. I get my best dreams when I sleep in. I usually have very vivid dreams, involving a bunch of different people and traveling around different imaginary cities. Last night I was walking around a neighborhood where the streets were very narrow and there were one story houses all places very close together. It kind of reminded me of Seattle, the Mission and LA melded together. I went to this old movie theater.. one of those tiny ones that show weird movies at weird times and have tons of colorful paint all over the walls and outside. They played independent/experimental/artsy films and I just happened to show up right when a good one was going to play.

The thing I like best about dreams like this is exploring all these new places. There is a whole nother world out there. Sometimes I like to think that my dreams are partially seeing the future. Sometime they’re like an alternate reality I can access through a sleep portal through spacetime. I always go to new places in my dreams, but when I wake up I’m still here, doing the same thing I did yesterday. The change is much more gradual.

Dream City by Jay Gazley

I wish my dreams were real. Not the ones where I’m being chased or something bad is happening, but even the ones that don’t make a ton of sense take place in really awesome places. Once I couldn’t find my passport trying to get back home from some major city. The airport was a big mall with carnival games that looked like the Guggenheim Museum, and I was already late to meet the group I was with. I guess it was some class trip. I met these guys who I made friends with and they took me to their really cool apartment with tall ceilings, white walls, and pink lights, and we hung out and smoked and I was having a really good time until I remembered I woudn’t be able to get home and had to run and catch a bus back to the airport.

The thing I like most about my dreams, besides exploring the worlds within them, is that all these places get created in my head. And damn, if my brain could project my dreams onto a screen, I’d make millions. Maybe in a past life I was a bad ass architect and urban planner, or maybe I just watch a lot of movies, but the world in my dreams is so cool.

Last night in a different dream I went to this neighborhood that had this long street where every house was a big artist studio with awesome artists living there, and some big warehouse spaces for parties and shows and things. It was a very open community and you could apply to get one of the studios, and I was trying to convince the organizers that I belonged there. I kept running into artists I knew.

Dream City by Paul Klee

It’s especially nice to have dreams like this after spending all week working on paperwork well into the night and watching bad movies. Sometimes when I’m awake it feels like my little room is the whole world. The only part of my real life that resembles those dreams is the part that I can only imagine, the future. I don’t think that’s what people mean when they say “follow your dreams” but I hope someday my life gets closer to looking like what my dreams look like. New and dark and mysterious and dramatic where there’s something different just around the corner and I can still get lost and meet new people. If nothing else, it would be exciting.

On Saturday T and I went to check out the SF Fine Art Fair, that was apparently a big deal because we don’t really have international art fairs in San Francisco. It was lame. It’s like when someone buys you an art magazine and you’re really excited until you find out it’s Art News, which is basically “Couch Art in America.” 99% of everything are paintings that people buy to go with their furniture.

My favorite piece, the one that showed the most creativity and inventiveness and awesome use of materials was “Milky Way” by local artist Renee Gertler. Here’s a picture of it:

(photo credit: Eleanor Harwood Gallery)

It’s hard to see, but the insides of the paper bags are painted midnight blue, and there are mirrors inside the bags on the bottom. The top of the bags are little pinpricks, and the mirrors reflect the light that comes in through the top of the bag from the room. The effect is an entire “Milky Way” on view inside the bags.

It’s really awesome, like these bags are a portal into this amazing other place.

The fair made me inspired to paint more, but only because I felt I could do as well or even better than most of the things I saw. T felt the same way, and now he’s super into painting.

On Saturday we went to Dolores Park and we ripped open a paper bag and lolled about on the grass fingerpainting. Then he continued as I pretended to read my book and really listened to the people around us gossip and complain as they got progressively more stoned and drunk. T started painting with blades of grass.

Our ladylady/friend-whose-basement-we-live-in is going to Paris for a year and we are looking for a new place.

It is very frustrating because we really want to live in all the big converted warehouses with tall ceilings and cool windows and open floor plans that are so big you could do double dutch jumprope in them, but they are either too expensive or in East Oakland. And while I don’t mind living in semi-bad neighborhoods, I don’t know if East Oakland would be fun to live in. I don’t necessarily want to be nervous walking around my neighborhood, or worrying that T will never come back if he goes out to buy cigarettes. I wish I had an expert person who knew all the okay places to live and the icky places to live so I could just ask him.

Also, I keep thinking that maybe if I move there and lock in my cheap rent, the whole place will gentrify really quickly and then I’ll live in a bad ass neighborhood where I won’t get shot. Then I think that is such an elitist privileged thing to say and gentrification is bad!! And then I try and think if East Oakland is like moving to the Mission before all the hipsters and yuppies and maybe I’m missing out on being really cool and tough and avant-garde. But then I think I’d rather be alive than avant-garde and start looking for something in Emeryville, which has an IKEA so it must be safe, right? Also, swedish meatballs.

Even when I do find good places on craigslist, I can’t bring myself to call them because it’s scary and I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to pay rent once my temporary job is over. But I have an optimistic feeling that it will work out somehow.

I also wish I could combine the cheap rent and space of East Oakland with San Francisco location and make it all hot like LA so that I live in this awesome place that is spacious and has a garden, but also cheap and in an old dairy or firehouse but I don’t need a car. Also, I wish all my friends would move there. I would be so happy in this imaginary place. Also, I’d have the best job ever. I’m not sure what it would be, but it would probably involve me hanging out and throwing events for my friends and becoming brilliant and then famous and being the coolest person in the world, which I am already, I just have to find the right place.

I am going to ask Renee Gertler how she became so cool and creative to have shows and think of things like the “Milky Way” and maybe I will become cool too. And then maybe she will agree to be interviewed and then I’ll post it and you can be cool too.

See? I am contributing so much to society already!

I am sitting in bed and eating ice cream that makes me teeth hurt. Last night I saw Charlene Yi perform. She’s a young comic/musician/performer who wrote Paper Heart, a sweet fictional documentary about whether love exists. She dropped out of school and lived in her car to get to LA and follow her dream. Her work is funny and honest and seems to come from her gooey chocolatey center.

Lately I’ve been thinking about what it is I want to do. A lot of the time I think about what I don’t want to do, or what’s stopping me from doing what I want, or how I can’t do anything and have no talent or passion, or how the whole world is fucked up and I just want to run away and live in a cave and eat berries like the guy in the book Hatchet I read when I was 10.

Some people make Bucket Lists of things they want to do before they die. Some people have lofty goals and ambitions that motivates them to do things like go to Law School, or climb a ladder of business hierarchy, or work 12 hours a day making food for people for very little money.

I don’t know what it is I want to do. When I was a kid I had these vague ideas of travel and adventure, being a poor hobo and relying on the kindness of strangers to get me where I need to be, and letting life carry me through good times in bad.

I haven’t gone for this lifestyle because it’s full of worried relatives and sketchy situations and being homeless and not getting what I need to eat, poop, and sleep safely. It’s not ambitious enough in the “I’m gonna be somebody” kind of sense, and there is no end goal except for exploring and seeing what is out there for me to see. I don’t know when a trip like this will end, or what I should do when I’m done. I always thought something would just happen.

The other thing, is money. I don’t want to have to rely on people for money, but I don’t want to work 40 hours a week for a paycheck, either. I wish I didn’t have to have money to live. Right now I’ve been working a lot at a temporary job where I get paid $23.50 an hour, but I’m always disappointed. I calculate pay during work and then am horrified when $200 gets deducted each week for taxes. When I didn’t have a job a month ago, I was always worried, but it seemed like I went out to eat a lot more, made more art, read more books, and wasn’t so angry. I seem to have a very short fuse and money lights it all the time.

The thing about this vague traveling trip I keep/kept thinking about what this: I don’t have any other plans. I seriously don’t think I ever imagined myself as old as I am now, and my plans were never definite enough to seem like something I should actually make a plan to do.

So I’m trying to make a list of things that I would like to do. People always say we never make time to just do the things that mean so much to us because we’re too busy with jobs and kids and things. Well, my job is temporary, and I’m not very fond of money and I don’t want kids until I’m done fooling around, so I thought I might as well make a list of things that I want to have happen at some point in my life and then just go from there. I hope I can think of something. I hope they aren’t impossible.

1. Have a studio that is all mine.

I want a place to go with big windows and tall ceilings that is my place. I want to be able to go there and be alone and work or dance or sing or record things or draw or paint of make prints. I want a big counter with a sink and an electric kettle and a hot plate and a refrigerator and I want to be the only one with a key. I like company, but this is a place I can go if I want to be completely alone. I work best when I’m completely alone and I never quite feel like that. Sometimes I would like a whole week of just being alone so I could get into it and get the voices out of my head. I want time to do whatever I want and I want to take all the pressure off of myself so that I don’t have to worry about how what I will do will impress people or how it will effect my future. And I don’t want this to be in a place where I am scared of getting shot walking out of my building, but I don’t want this place to be in the middle of nowhere either.

2. I want to work part time at a mindless job.

When I was in Seattle I worked at this frame shop/gift shop. I worked from 11-5pm four days a week, I got foodstamps, my work was two blocks away, and mostly I put price tags on things, made stuff pretty, and kept it all dust-free. It left me a lot of brain space to thing about things like what I was going to do or make outside of it. Sometimes I wish I had never left Seattle. The weather was bad, but that’s all I can think of that was bad. My best friend and I had our own radio show, I lived in an awesome house, I met really cool people who were doing amazing things, and I got to go see live music and eat for practically nothing all the time. I couldn’t afford cheese or meat or wine, but I was really healthy and cooked all my meals from scratch and spent like $100 on groceries for two people every month. I want to live somewhere where that’s possible. I’m tired of being cramped into one room. But I can’t think of anywhere I want to move either, not even Seattle. I like the sun too much.

3. I want summer in the country.

Freshwater creeks to live in, gardening to do, bonfires, learning to play an instrument. I want to do all these things. I was thinking about the ukulele or maybe making stuff electronically. But I want to make songs and sing them at night on the back porch after a day of baking chocolate cake and swimming and drinking minted lemonade.

So those are three things for now. Maybe I’ll think of some other things later. I wonder if the place in my head that I want to exist is real or if it’s just the amalgam of everything I like about all the places I’ve been so far. Either way, I feel compelled to travel until I find it.

The mind is a funny thing. Truth is perception. What you see and hear and experience becomes your reality. The people you talk to, the books you read, the art you look at, the schools you go to all contribute to what you experience as your reality. When you decide to believe something, it becomes true. Sometimes we don’t know that we have made that decision. Putting yourself in new situations often challenges what you have accepted as your reality, and makes you reconsider your ideas and beliefs.

So I think if it’s so easy to chance your perspective, why not just do it yourself? Sometimes there are thought patterns you keep going after, and they can shape who you are and who you become. I’m looking to make some new thought patterns today.

My name is Ari and I am a 25 year old emerging artist. I am very creative, curious, and open minded. I love to meet new people and find out who they are inside. I can make pretty much everyone feel comfortable. I love feeding people and hosting them and making them feel all warm and gooshy inside. I like things that are old and worn, like buildings or books or furniture or metal. I like to cook and bake and I am very good at it.

I have amazing taste. I have the uncanny ability to find good, cheap restaurants and find really good music. I often find that something I was into a year or two ago has become amazingly popular. I am a good writer. I am versatile and creative and can write something for any occasion. I could be an amazing DJ. I always look effortlessly beautiful, whether I’m in ratty clothes full of holes or expensive fancy stuff. People want to know me when they see me.

I’m about to make an amazing body of work. I’m going to go to all the places I like to go to find things and I’m going to collect them all together and use them to make paintings and sculptures that are beautiful. You will like them.

I like creating new ways of interacting with the world. I try to treat everyone as if they are already my friend. Secretly, I am an incredible gardener with no experience. I am pretty good at almost everything I try. I am really smart and my memory is amazing. I have really good ideas and I’m on the verge of an amazing career being creative.

I am a traveler. I wander all over and I have good karma and amazing luck. I am open to new ideas and I love everyone. I am very generous. I see the good in people when even they can’t see it. I am well read and can see all sides of any argument that isn’t close to me. I am loyal and true and will fight for you. I have great ideas and I love to brainstorm.

I work hard and have a high standard for everything I do. I know how to have fun and I know how to dance. I am a great singer with a beautiful voice. I can make a mean martini. I am passionate and emotional and I cry easily. I am sensitive and maybe even a little psychic. I can feel your energy. I can feel your pain. I am hotblooded.

I have the most incredible life. It is full of love and twists and turns and adventure and new things and old things and change and challenges. One day I will live in NYC. One day I will live in the middle of the country. One day I may show up on your doorstep and I will tell you all the tales and show you what I have found in my journey.

Someday I will make a cake for you and put it in my bike basket and ride it to your house and you will be surprised, because you don’t know me yet. And we will sit and eat it and talk and laugh and it will be amazing.

I love you.

When I was in school, I was always excited for what I would do when I got out. Free from all the restrictions and requirements of education, I would be finally free to do what I wanted, and become the person I was meant to be. Then I got out and figured out that I have to pay rent and feed myself, which can be a little dream-crushy at times. Sometimes it’s hard to get back aspirations when you still have to get the everyday stuff handled. For a little while now, I’ve been trying to remember what or who I was striving for all those years I dreamed of graduation.

When I was really little, I wanted to be a talent agent. My mom was a producer and media trainer, and my sister was an actress, so it felt like a good fit. Little but fierce, I’d be able to haggle the most money and the best jobs with my quick wit, charm, and manipulative tactics. I’d take care of people who couldn’t do it by themselves.

Then there was the torch singer idea. I wanted to lie around on pianos and be treated like a princess and admired by all for my sweet, smokey, sultry voice. I’d hypnotize everyone with my satin dresses draping over the piano. My world would be slick, rainy cityscapes lit by streetlights, walking home on the arm of a tall man in a big coat. I’d drink manhattans and smoke with a long cigarette holder and basically live in the 1930s. I’d break hearts.

I thought it would be fun to be a diplomat’s wife. I wouldn’t have to deal with the boring aspects of being a real diplomat. I’d just get to travel a lot and wear fancy clothes and speak tons of languages and be super classy. I’d throw the best dinner parties and bring the best out of everyone and have an amazing place for entertaining. Everyone would adore me and I’d be like a slightly lower level, less famous, but more interesting and artsy Jackie O.

When I got to high school, I did this awesome after school arts program where I met a bunch of practicing artists. I’d visit their studios and go to their shows and that was when I first realize that there were people who actually made art for a living. I remember this moment, because I always loved to make art. It was my favorite thing to do, but I thought it was too fun to be something you could make a career out of. After that, I was hooked. My mantra was “Do what you love, and things will happen.” It led me to major in art in college, where I learned not only about making art, but I also learned how cut-throat and shmoozy the art world supposedly was. It was a big turn-off, one that I haven’t worked through fully yet. Plus, I became more interested in making events and parties than static sculptures or paintings.

When I really think about what I want to do, and who I want to be, I keep coming back to the same thing: anyone/anything I want all the time. I used to think that I could just do whatever I thought was really cool, but lately I’ve been a little blocked on the coolness front. My vision is a little blurred. But the fact remains that I just want to be amazing. I want to be that person whose presence changes a room when I enter. I want to be confident without being cocky, effortlessly beautiful, truly authentic, trusting, and candid. I want to make everyone I meet feel comfortable, like they are already my friend, and like they don’t have to pose or posture at all. I want to have so many good ideas that I give most of them away and inspire art and culture and projects and good deeds. I want to make magic happen, and glide through life, crushing obstacles and worry and troubles underneath me, as though they were nothing. I want to make art, make events, make dinner, make lemonade stands, and get people to stop and think about how lovely and beautiful thing moment is right here. I want to turn reality into a place that people think must be a a dream from which they never want to wake.

Yes, I want to be a faith healer. An artist. An organizer, a planner, a carouser. I want to sing in the street and give everything I am to everyone around me and get it right back. I want to dream and break the rules. I want to do everything, because I can. And I want to give people this perspective, that they can do anything too. And then maybe together, we will.