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.

My boo and I went out last night. We drove through dark residential neighborhoods, looking into the lit windows of people’s houses. We drank tall boys on the sidewalk, listening to hipsters name drop and out-cool each other. We drank coffee at our favorite cafe, listening to a lady sing and a man strum his guitar. We listened to Journey in the car and when we got home we watched a movie about an epidemic wiping out 90% of the population of Earth.

I love my boo and I love the apocalypse.

A few months before I met him I was writing a column for  Sustainable Style. I had been watching all these documentaries about peak oil and energy and 2012 Mayan Calendar end of times junk. Sometimes I like to fantasize about the apocalypse. Usually I skip the bad stuff and end up somewhere safe with everyone I love. We build shanties and cabins and grow gardens and live this amazing communal-hippie anarchist-back-to-the-land existence where it’s always spring and everything is wonderful. When I think about all this I look forward to is as a time where I will be released from the confines of having to actually work for money and instead I can just build and grow things and do that whole mutual aid thing, which I’m totally into.

Then I met my boo, T. When he asked me out I invited him to this potluck series I was doing. Every month I would find 6 strangers and invite them to a potluck at my house. I’d sit in the kitchen, serve their courses one by one, and record the conversation they had. So our first date was really me listening to him relate to 5 other complete strangers about life, existence, humanity, philosophy, and experience. At this point, T was a stranger to me. He worked across the street from my shop, and whenever I saw him I got totally drunk by his charisma. Not that he really did anything special, but to me being in his presence was like being next to a pop star I was really into. Like Billy Corgan when I was 13.

In the kitchen, I heard him talk about jumping out of planes, traveling the world, talking to shamans. He whistled the sound of a hawk. He spoke of seeing visions while sick with ameobic dysentary. He talked about the philosophy of the Tao and traded lessons he’s learned about society and human nature with those around the table. It wasn’t just him, everyone at the table had their own piece to add to this night. At the end of the evening a pipe was brought out, all the wine was drunk, and people sat on the stoop smoking and literally singing with each other. It was the best potluck of the summer.

He stood out. We moved in together after a month. It was magic. He would bring me wild flowers and we would sit on the porch for hours looking at the stars and talking about the dragon that appeared every night in the bush across the street, under the streetlamp. He told me about all the different lives he has had, all the things he’s learned and seen and suffered. He even helped me build a shanty in the backyard one Sunday, and we spent the summer living in the backyard, watching movies, eating, sleeping, listening to music. When we didn’t have a barbecue, he made one using a pitchfork, a few bricks, and the rack from the oven. When we got locked into a park all night, he built a big fire and we spent the night talking and watching the trains go by. And when it came time to move, he spent the day cleaning the gutters, washing all the windows, and loaded the truck down the windy staircase all by himself.

And in the back of my mind, I knew. He was the person I wanted with me when the shit hit the fan.

Right now, we live in the city, struggling to keep a roof over our heads and food in our mouths. We spend days in front of our computers, learning, stressing, dealing with clients, and reading. But I dream of the day when the population is wiped out and we are stuck on our own, surviving on what we can do with our two hands.We will be the ones to build a safe haven for those we love. We’ll be really buff from chopping wood and gathering wildflowers and swimming in creeks. We will have an amazing hand built house, delicious hand-grown and gathered food, and all our friends will finally be in bucolic harmony.

But even if that day never comes when the apocalypse strikes, there is still the catastrophe of everyday to manage. And it’s so nice to know that no matter how little or big it is, he is always there, making it a little easier.

Since moving to the city, I’ve been working on cultivating possibilities. I feel like the more seeds I plant, the more chances stuff will happen. In the last couple weeks I have joined a ton of event mailing lists, found tons of calendars with things to do, researched the cheapest happy hours in the city, and thought of a ton of ways (read: art projects) to make new friends in this place. I might get a job with the census, I’m working on buttering up this bakery I really want to work at, I’ve applied to volunteer at the botanical gardens, and figured out when the collective bookstore has their monthly meetings to introduce new volunteers. I’ve even figured out what permits to get to become a street artist and started experimenting with making things to sell out of my supply stash. I also found a baking and pastry program at the community college that’s free. Though my next few months are still veiled in mystery, it’s nice to think about all the things that could happen as a result of all the seeds I’m planting. I hope something sprouts.

In addition to the now future, I’ve also been thinking about the future down the road. I try to remember what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a talent agent, a torch singer, an artist. I wanted to travel around the country, sit in the sun, find swimming holes, make forts, and live like an indian. Nothing has changed much. I envision myself learning to play the ukelele and sing on the street corner for passersby. Sometimes when things get tough I imagine just running away, walking out of town and just trying to keep going and see what happens. I went to a show for the first time in a long while on Friday, and listening to the music reminded me of how much pleasure music-making gives me. I thought about being at house shows in Seattle, and letting visions of art and sculpture float through my head inspired by the sounds going on around me. I want to sing loud, without fear, my own words with a strong voice.

Sometimes I dream of moving to the country, into a big wooden house in a meadow not far from the forest. I’d plant a garden, learn how to keep goats, make cheese, bake bread, build a greenhouse, and find somewhere good to go swimming in fresh water. At night we’d light a fire outside and sing and play music and look at the stars and hear the crickets. I would cook, make art, read and write. I’d invite people over to make things, eat, drink, dance, and make music. I’d take long walks and bring home wild flowers. I’d have special places to go for picnics, make forts, and hang birdhouses in the forest.

I am trying to get there. Guide my life in the direction that will lead me to this place, this time. Sometime the path seems invisible, blocked by lack of money and obstacles in my way. Sometimes I feel like I have to be able to trick society in some way to get this. Sometimes I just want to run away because that’s the only way I will get to where I want to be. Sometimes I feel like I need to sacrifice something to get to this place, but I’m not sure what it is.

Sometimes I wish there was a set, known path I was on. Where I could just follow the directions and go along the conveyor belt, not having to thing about how I spend each day, each hour. Just doing what they tell me and not having to think about it outside the hours of 9-5pm, and be able to have money to pay my bills and buy my groceries and go out and have a good time.

So I’m figuring out how to ignore the obstacles. How to think of what I want to do and just do it. How to stop waiting around for the right time or the right resources and just go for it. Get some failures under my belt. Learn. Be active. Stop feeling anxious or scared. Dance, sing, be good to those people around me. And maybe one day I’ll look up and realize that I’m already on the right path.

Cindy Crabb's desk

I don’t remember when I got my first issue of Doris zine. I was in high school, and had started going to punk shows at Gilman St. with my sister’s best friend from high school. There were ripped up couches and graffiti all over the walls and people yelling and dancing and smashing into each other. There were little booklets in the shop and my surrogate older sister gave me a bunch of zines, these magazines that real people like me wrote and glued together and photocopied late at night at Kinko’s. I started reading about all these people who did things differently with their lives. They didn’t grow up and buy a house and have kids in the suburbs. They traveled on cheap greyhound bus tickets, putting their fate in the hands of strangers, doing things you weren’t supposed to do like jumping trains and living in tree houses and reading books and planting gardens instead of working. I learned to dance like those kids in the clubs. I learned to yell my heart out and make out on the sidewalk. I learned to cut my own hair and I learned that I didn’t need anyone to tell me that I was good at something to do it. This is what I liked most about punks: they just did what they wanted and made art and music and culture themselves without waiting for permission or approval from anyone.

Somewhere along this path I found Doris zine at the anarchist bookstore by my school. I’d read it on the bus, and it was like I had a new secret best friend. Cindy, who started writing Doris in the early 90s spoke about her adventures. Traveling, running away, reading and trying to teach herself how to do things. She built boats that sank and danced in the rain and bailed water from her flooded tents. She taught me about things I never thought or knew about before, like herbal abortion, learning about your body, questioning society, living outside of meritocracy, anarchism, learning on your own, and doing things for for the sake of doing them instead of waiting or working for praise. Her writing reaches directly from her heart to mine, as she works through all the things good and bad and heartbreaking that happen when you live. She is my greatest role model. I want to be like her, making things with my own two hands, trying to learn even when I think it’s impossible, have courage against any fear to create and make things grow and learn about truth and community and being yourself and healing yourself and understanding other people. Cindy sees the world I see and her writings are a window into this universe I’m always trying to find.

By now, I’ve been reading this zine for 10 years and she has managed still to write in a way that’s so close to my heart I sometimes mistake her for myself.

“I used to worry about – what does it mean to be a real writer? Was I one? Was it good or did it suck? What if I didn’t spend enough time writing? Was I a fake? What if I was stuck? What was the point? I thought there had to be an answer, a key. I read books about writing and books about creating a writer’s life … and I couldn’t figure out, was I real. Was I a real writer or just a fake. Eventually I figured out that the whole question was bullshit. The question “was I a real writer” was part of the competative system I wanted to destroy, where everyone is suppose to strive to do something brand new that’s never been done, to make a mark on history, to be better than everyone else. I didn’t want that shit, so why was I looking to those models for legitimacy. I had to ask questions like – why did I write. and then hold myself accountable to my own reasons and standards.” excerpt from Doris #27 “Writing”

Her words have had such unknowable impact on my growing brain. I probably wouldn’t be who I am today if I hadn’t found her zine. You should read it to, it may change you’re life. Get Doris zines and Anthology here. Buy some for your friends too. And she makes cute skirts you can buy too. And read her blog. She is amazing and has tons of awesome stuff she does.

fall

Song of the Day: That Day – Poe

I woke up this morning, and the breeze coming through my window from the grey sky outside smelled like fire. Even when it’s sunny, the shade has a bite to it. The night is getting colder. They’re serving pumpkin yogurt at the frozen yogurt place. This is how we know it’s fall.

Fall makes me feel busy. It’s the beginning of the school year, and though I’m no longer in school, it makes me think of beginning things over. New schedules and activities. New priorities. Time to learn new things. In the past year, I think I’ve learned a lot, but it’s hard to know when you don’t have a syllabus on which to look back. I’ve written no papers, I can’t remember how many books I’ve read, and I couldn’t even really tell you what I did in any satisfying way.

It has been over two years since I’ve graduated from college. It has been a rough two years, and I don’t feel like I have a lot to show for it. I always wanted to be an artist. When I was a sculpture major, I used to say I was majoring in possibilities. It was clear from the lectures from visiting artists, from my professors, and from critiques that art could be anything and anywhere and involving anyone. I learned of artists whose medium was conversation. I learned of people who created great collaborations and mechanisms for making art that were amazing. I learned to see the cracks in everything, and view the world as a seething ball of potential, just waiting to be manipulated by me, the artists.

The other side to that was the art world. I learned about gatekeepers like curators, and the old boys club of art-making. I learned how Andy Warhol changed after his first major opening. I learned about talent, and influence, and corruption. I learned how little artists earned to live on, I learned how competitive the art market was, how if you wanted to be an artists you had to move to NY city, and how the more conceptual your art was, the less it was sold, the less galleries were interested in you, the less you made. “You have to have ambition,” my advisor told me. She had a show in New York where her pieces were selling for more than $60k each.

After school, I didn’t know what to do. I had this big idea for a project, based on a story I’d heard about another sculptor. The exact details have long escaped my memory, but this is what I remember. In the 50s, in a place like Austria, this artist went door to door, offering a piece of art in exchange for room and board. It worked, and he got his start that way. I read Travels with Charlie. Growing up in the Bay Area, and experiencing the vast differences in culture between East Coast and West Coast, Spain, and France, made me realize how different the rules of daily life are, depending on where you are. I wanted to check out all of these places. I wanted to make a slow trip through all the backroads, making art in exchange for my livelihood along the way.

I graduated, and summer came. I got a job at the video store where I rented movies growing up. It was fun, easy, and paid nothing. Halfway through the summer I was to go up to Canada and spend two weeks with my best friend. We had the best time, camping on islands off Vancouver Island. When I got back, my best friend from high school asked me to come with her on a trip throughout South America, expenses paid. I got some shots and we traveled for three weeks, visiting Machu Pichu, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Lima, and Quito. It was amazing.

When I got back, the prospect of living at home with my dad and working at the video store was grim, and both my friends were moving to Seattle for work and school. I came along and spent the year working in a gift shop, dj-ing at this amazing online radio station, and making my own little projects go. But I felt lost. I was broke most of the time. I didn’t have a community surrounding me. I was out of school for the first time in my life and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I thought I had to continue the education that I have received, and was always sad that I couldn’t recreate the same intensity. I couldn’t get the same amount of activity from myself as I had in the past.

I felt shitty. It rained a lot. I fought with my best friend. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I wanted to go somewhere. I felt isolated. Existential crises seemed to rule my life and my brain.

I didn’t understand it. No one tells you how hard it is to transition to the real world after college. In school, everyone is trying to help you. There are tons of programs that provide you with resources. There are many amazing, motivated, talented, and brilliant people around you all the time.

In the real world, everything is different. Everyone must fend for themselves. There isn’t as much cooperation between people. People don’t talk to each other as much, and the things they discuss aren’t nearly as interesting overall. There are always exceptions to this rule, but people are basically too busy trying to survive to focus on those other things. It has always been this way. This is why the rich have so much power: money and time.

It’s hard to go from living in a magical fantasyland where anything seemed possible, to living in a world where you have to struggle to feed yourself and keep yourself housed and clothed. I didn’t realize what a challenge it would be to do these things.

When I decided to move back to California, the economy was tanking. I had fallen in love, and I was working two jobs to save money for the move. I imagined we’d land at my dad’s house, get jovs, and move into the city straight away. But, my sister was pregnant, and she and her husband moved into dad’s house. We both moved in on the same day. I applied to job after job, without even a whisper of interested. I finally got a terrible job serving entitled rich white people. My boyfriend got a job at a packaging store. We worked, him too much, me too little. We were miserable.

It has been a rough year. With so many people unemployed, it seems useless to even apply for things. I have been depressed. I have gained weight. But I’m trying to toughen up. I’m trying to create my own business. I’m trying to take care of myself as best I can, and get a tighter grasp on all those things that make me happy. I try and listen to more music. I’m trying to dance more. I’m trying to connect with my friends, and be more involved in some kind of community.

I am just starting, and it is hard. All my ideas of what life is supposed to be like, and who I am, have been changing. Once, someone said to me that the best wine come from vines which have suffered. Bad weather, wind, drought, flood, all of these things that tax the vines make the grapes richer. The experience makes the wine more complex, more interesting, more satisfying to the taste. I keep trying to think of this place as temporary, of this darker time in my life as something that is just starting to end. Things will turn around, as they do. I can still make things happen, and I shouldn’t stop trying.