so i haven’t posted for a couple days here… but i guess i have been avoiding writing down my thoughts… i’ve never really been a journal type of person… never been able to keep a consistent pattern of writing things down or keeping my sketchbooks from turning into notepads, lists, phonebooks, etc… all not really part of what i envision a journal/sketchbook worthy of keeping around for posterity to be… but maybe that’s something that i can let go of… i realize that ‘regularity’ is not crucial, tends to paralyze, and is kind of boring… but whatever, i still have a tendency towards it… and not seeing it when i look back is still slightly discouraging.

regardless, i’ve had some busy days lately… lots of noteworthy things happening and no record of them… i’ll try to recap…

first, i found out that a close family member has cancer… not the news you want to hear, really ever… i know i tend toward silence when i am faced with things i don’t know how to deal with and i also fear the cliche responses that accompany such revelations [which feeds the silence]… but i hope i have been able to convey my true concern and love… i am optimistic about the near future, the surgery, the long term… and i know that many others have and will offer support in many ways…

now onto more petty things which will invariably consume more space and more words… some things are easier to write about…

i went to the fantomas concert on monday which was amazing. st. andrews hall is a great place to see a band play, i recommend it to anyone who might be in detroit. also i highly recommend seeing fantomas if you get the chance… Truly a mind blowing experience.

anyways, i was supposed to meet a couple friends there [funny how friendster can actually put together a few people who have the same eclectic interests] but due to poor coordination and lack of communication on my part, they failed to make it to the show… so i saw it by myself, in a sea of unfamiliar [yet somehow not so different] faces… patton was amazing… i think i have discovered why i like him so much, he has tons of gadgets… even some small decapitated baby dolls with toy speaker boxes for bodies hanging over his equipment. but he also has a computer filled with effects and samples, a MIDI keyboard to control these, a series of effects and nondescript boxes connected to one microphone and another microphone that is cleaner… he’s very animated and in command of the scene… dave lombardo is also a maniac on the drums… i would have to say that while trevor and buzz add something quite unique, this was really the dave and mike show… i thought dave was going to pass out at the end of the show… dripping with sweat and looking like he could barely control his legs… the bass drum shook the building… and it was unrelenting. whoa… enough of that. go see them.

school has been a mad house too… the degree show opens friday evening and there are 70 second year students all franticly trying to finish installing their pieces… all of the rest of us have become unwitting moppets for their sometimes panic driven needs… building, sanding, moving, fetching food, injecting moments of rationality… i guess this is a glimpse of what i will be like in a year from now… scary…

i’ve also been trying to work out some plans for the summer… can’t quite seem to get everthing to come together in a satisfying way… starting to look at other options… seems like the only things i can find that i want to do either cost money or don’t pay much if at all… discouraging. maybe i can just find some independant projects… begin to work for myself and apply for some grants or fellowships… kinda missed the deadlines for a lot of that stuff for this summer though… we’ll see… summer approaches and no man [or woman] can hold it back….

been finding lots of exciting work on the web lately… in my search for interesting opportunities… but i guess i’ve rambled enough for now… we’ll save some of those for later and try to get some work presentable for my studio site… still having difficulty with the gps communication… thought i had the right connectors, but still not getting power… ugh…