normally I am a meek peach, but I got sassy rotten.

On monday I spoke to Thylias Moss (the most helpful poet), who has become a really great outside resource to this project. She is also obsessed with conjoined twins and the tension created at the point of conjunction. I am working on an epic dynamic system built of subsystems, the system stabilizes as I work to build the landscape. I won't know what I have until I have it, and if I tell myself what it is before it is complete, I won't be giving it the full right to evolve. Or that's what she said.

Or that's how she works, which is wonderful! She holds the sass-encouragement, also. and the sound part of my project without sound (that is hopefully going to work itself out)- encouragement. But less sass, more running fast.

Conceptually, I am going to square one to rebuild. If I am going to acknowledge that these works are an evolving system, I have to take the whole thing apart periodically.

WHY AM I DOING THIS?
I like it. okay.

WHAT HAPPENED TO ME TO MAKE ME MAKE THINGS LIKE THESE THINGS?
I tried thinking about this in terms of life changing moments. I have eight or nine. Most of them are really awkward and have little to do with this compulsion. But I whittled it down to this:

While in Ghana I spent a lot of time seeding tomatoes. Essentially everything is tomato based. Or everything is made of Ghana-sauce, which is tomato based. But there is a well known ghanian superstition that consuming the seeds of the tomato is bad luck. Already cooking is an extensive and time consuming experience, the family I stayed with had no kitchen. The ghana stove stayed outside and there was a pot with a long beating stick for making gooey rice balls (so we could eat our soup without a spoon. The first time I went to the market, I got smacked in the face with a dead fish. (too skinny)

So what I mean is, just to survive there is an incredible balance of resources. But they are using time and disposing of the juicy innards of the tomato that could be used in the ghana sauce or ground-nut soup because their mother and their mother's mother did. This habit is only slightly debilitating, really. But it is ingrained in a belief system. I LIKE IT.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

The works are a proof of the use of a resource. Time is a resource and habit is a use of time.
I am making a habit out collecting aesthetic habits that may or may not be an efficient use of resources & creating a (time consuming) pattern with them.


There was also the time I thought I wanted to be a creative writing major or something in LSA. And I was, but then I missed painting. So I transferred to the art school. Now I don't like to paint. Now I draw. And now I am just obsessed with wasting time.