Art Thoughtz

To be honest, I missed the beginning of this video because I was too focused on his Spiderman hat. It is just odd to see a pair of eyes on top of another pair of eyes. Eventually I was able to follow the meaning of the video and comprehend the powerful message, however, my eyes kept looking at the hat. I do not know if it is the red shirt with the red hat or it is the shape of the hat that makes it seem the front is padded. I understand the point he is trying to get across about the struggles of being successful in the art world, which seems to be a white dominated area. But then I become confused as to which eyes to look at, so I choose the large white eyes that seem angry because they contrast more with the color of the hat. Ambiguity is something that can be appreciated in the art world, but it should not be the only thing that is treasured. Art is important because it is different, therefore all art should be different from one another. While a blank canvas is intriguing art, so is a speaker that yells a direct message on repeat. I think I figured it out. This video only has three colors in it: white, black, and red. I feel like this is a difficult thing to pull of, but that may be why it is distracting.

Scout Sabo 

Mania: Is it Real?

March 26, 2015- "The edge, there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who know where it is are the ones who have gone over it."


There are a lot of people in the world, whether they be characterised by "normality" in the clinical sense or "mania" in the Greek etymological sense. Going over the "edge" can mean anything, but mostly it is losing your grip on reality within the context you choose to live your life in. Dick Hickock and Perry Smith start to lose reality and go over the edge as soon as paranoia regarding their rendezvous sets in. But when does the paranoia start, or even end? Their lives have been disassociated and disoriented for years now, hopping between towns and states and cities, Alaska to Kansas, Kansas to Alaska. Never have they seen so many strangers, will they come back, the people- themselves and the victims (whomever that may be defined as legally or literally by definition)? But you cant just explain the events and expect everyone to understand. No one will understand.


But is that bad?


no.


It's always okay to go past the points or reality, whatever that may mean for your sense of mind and circle of self-awareness, but you always have to come back. The best guidance and reference for reality is our dependency on family values, but more generally familiar values. Without the familiarity in our lives, there is no relativity, there is no reference to a reality. The best guidance and reference is our dependency. Without familiarity we are nothing. Without social, even propagandised, structure we are nothing. Let's hope we all become something.


Stay at the edge, but don't bury yourself in it.


Rushing Freedoms

February 10, 2015- "For where does one run when he's already in the promised land?"

I was walking from my dorm on 3rd avenue and 11th street this afternoon before my writing class at 2:00 and my pop micro-econ quiz at 3:30 and my cultural foundations (or as my professor likes to call it "Shifting Cultural Geographies" class) at 4:55PM.

My day was long but my time was short.

I kept up the pace, my mind was rushing. I could feel. I could feel the chemicals in my brain swirling and synapsing to create my "healthy" self. I finally began to feel focused for the first time in weeks, and when I say weeks, i mean maybe 8 of those long moments in time.

I hit the corner at University Place, coming from the busy streets of Broadway but throwing myself into the homey-welcoming feeling that arises when nearing Washington Square Park. In my unchartered sense of rushing, I almost run into a man and his dog who is in front of a wooden restaurant column painted red with a base of black. The small white furred pet was merely looking down, sniffing out a place to pee.

I reach down to pet the dog and quickly relinquish my thought of appreciative or acknowledgeable touch towards the "pet". I kept up my pace and apologised to myself for stopping in the first place.

There's no promise land, I keep running, running to learn, running to reach my promise land.

The Edge

"The edge...There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who know where it is are the ones who have gone over."

People love to empathize. Excepting pleasantries, there's no one phrase more frequently repeated to me than, "I know how you feel." It's a kind sentiment, but it's nonetheless bullshit. Nobody can sit there and tell me how I feel. That they would even presume to understand is a bit insulting.

My mother, the self-appointed expert of all pain that has ever been felt, loves to tell me that she knows exactly how I feel. She's been there, she understands. But that's just not correct. Pain is different for each person. It's relative. Her breaking point is certainly not the same as my breaking point. She'll never completely understand my shit, just as I'll never fully comprehend hers. When it comes to the edge, we're all a bit subjective; we're all jumping off our own cliffs.

I knew a guy once who absolutely went over the edge. He used to show me the scars on his hands from where he pushed his knuckles through the blades of a fan. Though I am no stranger to self-harm, I still don't know what the hell that was about. Yeah, he told me his life story and I feel for him and where he's coming from, but I'm never going to be able to know his suffering so well that I can explain it honestly.

Without getting too deep into philosophy, let's all just acknowledge this: pain is relative, truth is relative, and we really won't ever be able to honestly explain that.

Lexi Rotnicki

Picture

Seriously? No, really, seriously? It's bad enough when I have to write something about a song or some quote that I don't relate to, but, Jesus Christ, this doesn't even have words to it. I have no idea who this is or why he matters or if he even matters at all. Am I expected to know who this is and why he's relevant? Really, excuse me for being so ignorant of this clearly important fellow's existence. Or maybe I'm supposed to be drawing conclusions from this friggin' picture and connect it to our reading. Prisoners? Tattoos? I have no idea what to do with this. I am baffled. I'm so confused about what I'm expected to do here that I'm getting angry.
But only a little angry; I got my Lollapalooza tickets today. 3-day passes for me and my entire group back home! I already have a place to stay, as one of my friends has an apartment. It's in Lincoln Park and the festival is in Grant Park, but hey, I'll take what I can get. I got tickets to see John Mulaney in Chicago as well! He's my second favorite comedian. I can't wait to see his awkwardness in person. I shall also be attending with friends who are as wonderfully pessimistic as I am. This is going to be a real treat. May 30th. So much to look forward to and hardly anything to dread–except for the next paper in this class. Jesus.
I got an expensive fancy pen from my mom's boyfriend for my birthday. They all think I ought to be a writer. I'm not too sure. If I can't even come up with something coherent to write about a picture, how promising of a writing career can I really have?

A Picture of a Man- and Maybe More

“That’s your prompt.”

Well, thank you for the helpful explanation.

What do I see? I see a man, dark skinned, broad nose, brown eyes, no hair, bald head shining, with what look to be facial tattoos boldly stamped across his forehead and cheeks. In an odd way, the dark shapes on his cheeks accentuate his bone structure.

He is wearing blue scrubs, like a doctor or nurse, but the tattoos don’t seem to fit into that description very well.

His face is blank, his eyes don’t show much expression but he looks towards the slightly more amused end of the neutral spectrum. The walls behind him are concrete, and he has what looks like a single blue curtain over the only visible window in the room.

Oops, I just messed up the formatting on the page, I guess I’ll have to fix that later...

Anyway, I wonder what his story is. How broad a question that is... Maybe not his story, maybe just the context that led him to taking this exact photo. It looked like it was a facebook post- I can see the “do you want to tag this person?” box around his face.

Terrifying that Facebook now has a facial recognition software and a database of every single photo that’s ever been uploaded of you so that they can continually grow their artificial library of YOU. Your face. Your smile- the way you look by romantic candlelight versus blinding sun. The way your eyes crease when you laugh and the way your facial structure looks when your hair is pulled back from your face.

There probably aren’t even that many real human beings who know that about you, who study you and catalog you as extensively as Facebook does.

Does facebook think about you when you’ve left? Does Facebook miss you when it can’t look through your laptop camera and watch you watch your screen?

Oh Facebook, you’re so romantic! What an age to live in- My computer knows more about me than most people.

Your Google search history can be more telling than the most personal conversations you have with your closest friends. Google probably knows what porn you watch, as well as your favorite foods, your medical mysteries, and your expensive tastes. 

Lexi Rotnicki

"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."

I don't know enough about politics to have hard opinions on these things. I only know what I'm told.

My 11th grade Econ teacher taught me that capitalism was the best system. It's not perfect, but it works with what we have. It makes entrepreneurs happy. It allows for constant change–advancements–good things. Stagnation is bad. Tradition is bad. Money is good. Our bills are basically just slips of debt-paper that are only worth what we believe they mean, but we exchange dollars for goods anyways and it works. Capitalism works.

Babcia–my grandma– grew up in Soviet Poland. She used to sit down on the couch with me and tell me all about the old days. It was interesting. As a little girl, she worked on a farm. I guess they didn't have pesticides, because she had to pick ladybugs off of the crops all day. She told me that her supervisors insisted that the evil Americans dropped the bugs on the crops because they wanted to ruin the system. She believed it. She believed in her system. When she grew up, she said, she was given a card for her rations. She would wait in line all day at the grocery store for the food that wasn't there. She couldn't feed her family. Nobody could. It failed. For this and other reasons, she moved to America.

The first system sounds a bit like "USA All The Way" propaganda. The second system sounds like a dystopian nightmare.

People are always exploiting one another. That's life. It's not fair. Pick a side and get used to it. I don't know.