Piano Time!

Love finding the artists

Graveyard Rock

Once upon a week or so ago, I went to an underground rock band concert.  And I mean underground.  Literally.  Masses of invitees crowded the cement basement of a Western Washington girls’ 3-story college home.

No windows down in that basement, no doors to the outside world, just a series of beams and pipes supporting the old house and its plumbing situation, and supporting an increasing number of beer cans as the night progressed.

This was the stage of the battle of the underground bands – so underground, I termed it the Graveyard Bands.  6 feet under your typical underground rock concert.

Literally ten feet under the ground, actually, if we want to be specific about the set up.  The basement, soundproofed by its insulation of pure cement and then layer upon layer of dirt, large enough to fit a small crowd but small enough to make a small crowd appear large, was to be the stage of my first experience of this Graveyard Rock, in which band after band after band battled it out to wile up the crowd into a frenzy.

Almost like an awards show where the audience claps for the winner, the Battle of the Graveyard Bands turned out to be a battle for the audiences’ approval…which seemed unfair, as the band who struck the beginning chords of the night played for a semi-sober crowd, while Apedog, the epitome and headliner of the fest, wrapped up to a drunken mob, moshing in joy to its lyrical lilts.

Each band was so utterly and indisputably unique despite playing off the same genre.

The first, with talent and tune lost in a series of drum strokes too loud and bass too overwhelming, readied the crowd for what was to come.

The scant, cheap bottles of hastily mixed booze passed among the four of us who stood watching as the first band strummed its first strokes multiplied as the attendees slowly followed the hums of rock from the upstairs rooms down into the basemet, lured by a musical finger catching them by the ear.  They exchanged with us their booze and in that exchange, although no words could be passed for the pure power of the amps, friendship was exchanged in each red cup as we acknowledged our mutual trust by drinking from one another’s.  It became a language of sorts, a greeting or a request for friendship, much easier to make without the power of voice and aided especially with the power of alcohol and the common purpose of listening to upstart young bands make art.

I did not bother recording the first band; they could hardly keep the audience in place.   Like any opening number, listeners strolled in and out and only about ten stayed put the whole way through – presumably their posse of friends.

But the second band, the Misfits, I did record.  They lived up to their name in dress if not in music.  While notably powerful in their musical capabilities, their songs began to blend into a type, so that each sounded far too similar to the first.  But that first one, and all its imitations, ROCKED! If only they had more variety.  Their dress certainly did.  The plump main singer sported a fashionable jail suit dirtied at the derrière, one of the two lead guitarists sported red sparkling pants and a similarly sequined shirt…see picture below for how he ended up….and the others wore less outlandish but no less garing and Misfit-appropriate attire.

And then, when Apedog preformed, after moshing like nobody’s business…..

http://cache.reverbnation.com/widgets/swf/40/pro_widget.swf?id=artist_2334996&skin_id=PWAS1002&border_color=000000&auto_play=false&shuffle=false

The painting process

So remember when I said that a painting I posted earlier was my “1st painting”?  Well here’s my first actual attempt at painting…enhanced.  I originally attempted to paint with acrylics on the incorrect canvas and was so frustrated at what I thought was just a straight up lack of ability I actually threw it in the back of my closet, to be collected by my father when cleaning out my room after I’d left for college for some years, and then collected once again by me when I stumbled upon it cleaning out his ugly room.

It just didn’t want to stand unfinished, sketched out in detail but poorly painted purple in some areas and not others.  So I wound up with it in my hands yesterday and began to paint with the correct media – oils, getting this:

Would you call my painting….sublime? : )

Today I woke with a deeply set inclination to actually finish this painting, forgotten so long ago in my closet, and to clean up where I had messed up.  Yes, it is a replica of the Sublime Sun, but I added specific changes, as most artists do when creating a rendition of this symbolic logo.

But getting straight out of bed and beginning my painting without first beginning on my coffee does not come without its consequences.  I failed to lay down any sort of protection on the carpet from the OIL paints, and ended up with it, well, all over my body and the floor on which I sat.

Like, on my face?!  Seriously?!  And look at my poor hands! So much for my nail polish.  Becoming an artist seriously has some drawbacks I needs to learn to deal with.  I’m such a princess usually but I have to say that I LOVE the messy gritty rawness of passion-driven art.

Yes I’m still in my PJ’s as I write this. And I’m taking those hands to the gym too – HA, watch out elliptical goers and particularly weak weight lifters.

But for starting out as my skeleton in the closet – almost literally – I think that the wrecking of my skin and morning was well worth the end product:

Tags: acrylic, Acrylic paint, art, canvas, Education, music, oil, Oil paint, paint, painting, paints, sublime, tribute, visual art

A trip to Oregon

It’s amazing the subtle differences from state to state.   How they trickle at first as tiny nuances across one state border to another, until that trickle becomes a stream of differences so strong and segregating that it seems almost as though the entirety of the United States is divided into a hundred little culture-nations of their own.

Perhaps that stream of change is what carries cross-country roadtrippers from border to border.  Perhaps the necessary evil of driving 50 hours in a cramped and smelly car is washed away by the fascinating river of nuances which create the illusion of multiple nations in one.

That lure never appealed to me.   Those waters never washed away the stench of fast food wrappers that I imagine littering the floor of my precious Prius if I were ever to drive further than one state over.  Take a plane, people.  Feel that culture shock like a nice slap of cold water to the face.  Don’t just ease in with a toe by driving through the country.  Jump right in.

But I drove, once.  This past week actually.  I drove only eight hours but they were eight long hours, hours which forced me to watch city fall away to farmland to fall away to town and then farmland and then village and then mountain.  I know that eight hours is a typical work day, but in a typical work day I do more than sit and stare…well, that’s not entirely true, but I do slightly more interesting things than I did when I was watching the road pass underneath my tires.  And sometimes at work I can get up and stretch my legs, grab a free coffee, say hello to Michael upstairs, you know, move.

What I miss, though, during my office rounds, which I fortune upon in a road trip, if eight hours counts as a road trip (I think that if you pass three airports on the way to your destination, you are roadtripping and that if you disagree, you’re straight tripping) is that trickle of cultural and regional changes.  The trees slowly getting steeper, the roads smaller, the air colder, until snow blankets the rocky cliffs and shaggy pines and ice stretches its deadly fingers across the winding roads.  I would miss that little, inconspicuous sign reading, “welcome to Oregon” in small white lettering, as humble as can be, barely seen as I zoom by it on the 5.  And then I would miss a much bigger sign a few hundred miles down the road reading “Welcome to boring Oregon City.”  What wonders.

And, of course, in the office I’d miss that amazing feeling of reaching our destination, the Eagle Crest Resort, and falling out of my car to touch real, solid and unmoving ground and to breath real, unventilated air.

The cost of breathing that mountain-crisp air of the Eagle Crest Resort is about $400 a night – and that’s the winter time prices, not the price of a one-night stay during their prime season of summer.  It’s a golfing resort, you see, with a giant course set in the middle of a hundred massive condos, each at least as large as my own home.  But in the winter, the geese take over and the courses are empty.  The main attraction lies 45 minutes away: the mountain looming large and clear over the resort.

Somehow my best friend and her boyfriend had decided to stay a pricey week at the resort – and wanted another couple so desperately to come with that they had invited my ex boyfriend (and now good friend) and I to come up at stay with them in their 6 person, two TV, two porched, French doored condo fully equipped with kitchen ware, washing machines, cleaning supplies, salts, and, of course, a Jacuzzi – for free.

So obviously I took my first eight hour road trip up with my ex boyfriend to the resort, with no regrets except that we did not eat enough fast food and did run into a couple awkward silences which lasted probably cumulatively about half the trip.

By the way, made it on one tank.  Don’t every talk shit on Priuses – I took that baby up a mountain and hardly lost gas. (Took a lot to make it look like it’s former self, though).

But I digress.  While at the resort, my friends and I, all newly 21-year-olds (except for Marcel, my best friend’s boyfriend, who is 23), drank.  And drank.  And drank.  By ourselves, in the wilderness, on hikes, whilst painting, whilst driving, whilst listening to my ex, Sam, play the same guitar chords over and over, whilst cooking and cleaning and bathing and walking leisurely about the empty premises and taking wholesome photos of ourselves to send to our parents or post on Facebook.

But in the end it was a mellow sipping of alcohol and smoking of substances and a mellow sort of hiking and activity-going.  I would stop on our hikes and grab rocks that looked like Indian arrowheads, and we’d all climb up on large rock formations now and again to rest and stare out at the raging river just in front of our boots, and take mellow photographs of plant life that I’ll never look at again and probably not even bother to print.

Aren’t we so cool.

I painted, awefully (can’t paint while drinking, just doesn’t work), and thought, all wrapped up in vacation bliss, that I was the next Picasso.   I painted to the songs my ex, Rick, strummed on his guitar, the same songs he would sweetly lullaby me with when we dated all those year ago.

We only went up to the mountain once – and once was all we needed for memories full of fun.  We intertubed for two hours down the steepest of slopes….steep to me, at least, and I’m sure quite impressive to all the five year olds around us.  Packed warm in all our snow gear, I felt the epitome of a fat and lazy American stereotype as they handed me an intertube and a pulley carried me up the mountain side.  All the exercise I got that day took place whilst standing in lines.  And screaming on the way down.

Check out this video of me going down!

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Despite that day on the mountain, the entire trip was an experience of utter peace in the wilderness.  At one point, Rick and I sat on two opposing rocks and just meditated to the sound of birds chirping and gentle breath of the wind.  It only took us five minutes to achieve complete and total relaxation, and after those five minutes I came up with the concept of my still unyet finished painting, “City In Nature.”

The words and image came to me and I quickly sketched them down for my memory:

We are always surrounded by nature, even in the city.

We stand on earth and breath its air and choose to pave over it and color it dark with smog.

But still it supports our feet and fills our lungs, gives us life and takes it back.

Until the cement creeps up our feet ad down our mouths and we are made of it, we are made of  nature, and it is made of us.

This is the ultimate reminder which my visit to the Oregon resort taught me.  I passed not homes and malls but trees and rocks 80% of the trip to the resort, and once there saw in the clarity of the air the massive woods surrounding us and the beautiful open sky above, and I realized as I sat within the woods and beneath the sky that even when I am surpressed by towering sky scrapers, I am no further from nature than I was at that very meditative moment.

Tags: border to border, culture shock, food wrappers, free coffee, regional changes, typical work

Nature in cities

Starting on a new painting.  Hope I turns out well – I’ve got such a vivid image in my head but translating that into an acrylic painting is turning out to be way harder than I thought.

Hey, at least it’s better than the first draft…:

 

 

…just kidding, I’ll spare you.

Tags: acrylic, Acrylic paint, art, city, colors, Crafts, earth, environment, nature, paint, painting, rough draft, Visual Arts

You Know You’re From Seattle When

1.  You are inexplicably proud of the Space Needle.

2.  You are obsessed with Starbucks.

3. You hate coffee and you hate Starbucks but you’ve been in and had a drink more times than you can count.

4. You will never accept that Boeing has moved.

5. You act like it’s not the coolest thing ever to see Bill Gates’ house from the waterfront.

6. Socks with Birkenstocks are fashionable.

7.  You wore a Northface, jeans, and Uggs every day in high school, and you were cool.

8. You despise the fact that all everyone knows about Seattle is “that fish market.”

9. You have been to Bubble Gum Alley and left your mark.

10. When travelling, hearing the rain makes you homesick.

11. You refuse to buy a grey car for fear of blending in too well with the ambience.

12. You think “The Ghetto” is a cute little neighbourhood with picket fences and flowers.

13. Crossing a bridge floating on water is no big deal to you…even though it just sunk.

14.  When you know that Starbucks cups are recyclable but their straws aren’t.

15.  When you pull out the compost from the garbage bin and act like it’s an absolutely normal thing to do.

 

16.  You think it’s the coolest thing ever when Seattle is featured on the big screen

 

 

17.  But you can tell it wasn’t really made in Seattle because there’s not enough rain.

 

 

Feel free to add on, Seattleites!

Tags: art, feelings, open air, oregon, paint, travel

My first real painting!!

Tags: abstractc, acrylic, africa, art, colors, colours, desert, field, first, painting, reds

My Rave Experience

1 thing off my bucket list: my first rave experience.

On the boyfriend's shoulders at NYE

I went to the NYE Resolution rave and let me tell you, it was nothing like seeing the individual concerts at clubs in your average downtown venue.

Having lived just months ago with a roommate fully immersed in Rave Culture, I strolled into the Stadium in a purple wig, sparkling gold tights and a multitude of colourful beads and bracelets tinkling off my arm.  UV orange face paint glowed up the sides of my neck and covered half my face, turning me into a sort of jackyl/hyde reverse Avatar every time the lights flashed off.

My mistake – a variety of women in clubwear repeatedly approached me for “party favours” throughout the night, despite the fact that the fluorescent pink fanny pack hugging my waist contained no such favours and neither did my mind.  Should have guessed the consequences of going all out in terms of get-up, but honestly, if I wasn’t allowed even a sip of alcohol until midnight (yes, I am a New Years Baby, and no it’s not as great as you think), may as well look the part of a true raver.

Looking the Part.

Red Bull, you saved me.  The rave truly was not like individual concerts.  Talk about intensity.

The crowded masses of people rolling like the fabric balls hanging from the ceiling waved back and forth to the deep bass of true house, both popular and underground at the same time.   We pushed our way from the sparkling lights of those dancing in the tight clearing between stages into the depths of the rolling ocean, if you get what I mean (if you don’t, you’re reading the wrong blog, or at the very least need a quick trip to Urban Dictionary.com).  Back?

Enjoy that chuckle – many more to come if you enjoy puns as much as I.

At first, swimming through the crowds proved more fun than difficult.  I’ll admit that the savage beast in all of us emerged a little when I realized when the thizzing feel no pain.  Stomping on feet and elbowing my way past the most muscular of men and tiniest of girls, shoving with all my might and poking at sweaty rib cages became an innocent game, until I realized that the pain probably delayed until the morning.   Sorry to the girl asking to wear my eyeballs as glasses, whose toes I crushed repeatedly in utter fear.  No touch-y.

http://www.facebook.com/v/10150583372654529

That’s the type of moshing I should have expected at a rave.  Not violence for the sake of violence but violence in the sake of love – too much love.  Love to the point where people like my eyes so much they want to wear them – and can’t understand why I won’t let them!!!

Walking was impossible, if only in the sense that the music from both stages resonated so deeply through the floor that the beats practically bounced my steps into the skip of a raver (see the above video of my attempts at dancing the part – hold the laughter, please).

Part of the “culture” of the rave is definitely in the artifacts and decorations.  The entire facade of the place, set up with dark drapes to create a maze guiding the highest of the high from venue to venue, to photo boxes and even a Top Pot Donuts kiosk, screamed the difference between “rave” and “concert” to all its attendees – even the confused ones, dressed in black tight dresses with going-out make up completely invisible in the flashing UV lights lighting up the entire venue.

And from the ceiling of the venue hung massive cloth balls in every color of the rainbow, creating a stratosphere of color above the otherwise dark ambience. I know this is a really corny analogy, but bare with me here.  There’s no other way to describe it – and I’m not sure if this was the interior designer’s vision, but it was mine and it hit me as soon as I entered the curtained-off main venue.  We, the colorful spectators blinking with our LED lights in the audience, otherwise carpeted in black, made up the sparkling stars, and above us were the bright lights of the Thermosphere, cutting sharp as blades through the artificial fog, but transparent enough to reveal the stratosphere of color surrounding the main, sparkling ball hanging in a metallic claw aglow with its own lights and the lights reflected from all levels of the room.  This vision hit me, and I wasn’t even high.  I can only imagine what thoughts wowed the audience members on drugs.

Playing the part of the sparkling star proved even more fun than I expected.  I glittered and glowed in the dark, and found my friends by their neon beads and face paint.  We never stopped holding hands wherever we moved, unless we felt safe enough to meander off on our own.  Water droplets moving to fill the empty space, we made our way both toward the stage when an area vacated or from it, enjoying both the close-ups of the artists performing and the far away experience of dancing in circles with strangers on the Love Pills.

I’ll probably never listen to rave music again as long as I live.  Or at least for the next few weeks.  The experience so wore down my body and my ear drums and indeed my entire being that for the next couple days I could do little more than sit in silence in my room and paint.  And blog about it.  Hi guys.

Now I see why the large raves only occur like four times a year.  They’re like holidays: stressful, expensive, preceded by too much build-up, but rarely a disappointment - and exhausting in all its facets.
I’ll definitely be going to the next one.

Tags: Clubwear, Disc jockey, Fiona Ma, House, Joe Biden, nero, Rave, Seattle Times, Subcultures, Techno, United States

December 17, 2011

The picture:

December 17, 2011.

(teklanika photography)

Never knew staring at a picture of a goat could make me feel the Christmas spirit.

Men Who Stare at Goats….Now I get it.

Bar West, San Diego

All the homies in VIP at a nightclub on the beach. Not going to lie, sitting here at night wrapped up in my warm blankets at my parent’s house, I can’t say I miss it.

We got bottle service to our house, prepartied with the DJ…at our house…and escorted in. Awesome experience. Completely different vibe in San Diego than from the north – or probably most of America.

But really, can’t say I miss it right now. Nothing like returning to your roots to stop the alcohol binges and techno from consuming your life.

Tags: alcohol binges, bar west, bottle service, home, missing, parents, party, recoupe, san diego, the beach, travel