#from the time i wake up till about 8pm i maybe have a box of apple juice | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gagosiangallery · 4 years

Text

Richard Prince at Gagosian Beverly Hills

January 15, 2020

RICHARD PRINCE New Portraits Opening reception: Thursday, February 6, 6–8pm February 6–March 21, 2020 456 North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills __________ In 1984 I took some portraits. The way I did it was different. The way had nothing to do with the tradition of portraiture. If you wanted me to do your portrait, you would give me at least five photographs that had already been taken of yourself, that were in your possession (you owned them, they were yours), and more importantly . . . that you were already happy with. You would give me the five you liked and I would pick the one I liked. I would rephotograph the one I liked and that would be your portrait. Simple. Direct. To the point . . . Foolproof. I started off doing friends. Peter Nadin. Anne Kennedy. Jeff Koons. Cookie Mueller. Gary Indiana. Colin de Land.

They didn’t have to sit for their portraits. They didn’t have to make an appointment and come over and sit in front of some cyclone or in front of a neutral background or on an artist’s stool. They didn’t have to show up at all. And they wouldn’t be disappointed with the result. How could they? It wasn’t like they were giving me photos of themselves that were embarrassing.

Social Science Fiction.

Another advantage was the “time line.” If you were in your sixties and you gave me a photograph that had been taken thirty years earlier, and that’s the one I chose, your portrait ended up in a kind of time machine. I couldn’t go forward, but I could go backward. Vanity. Most of the people I did liked the younger version of themselves. So the future didn’t really matter. Half of H. G. Wells was better than no half at all.

Who knew?

After friends, I did people I didn’t know.

I had access to Warner Bros. Records and their publicity files. The files were filled with 8 × 10 glossies of recording stars that they had under contract. How I had access is beside the point. It was a long time ago. Let’s just say an A&R guy gave me access, “permission.”

I spent time in their LA headquarters, in Burbank, and went thru the metal cabinets and took the “publicities” I wanted, took them home, put them in front of my camera, and made a new photograph. The first one I did was Dee Dee Ramone.

I did Tina Weymouth, Tom Verlaine, Jonathan Richman, Laurie Anderson. I did the two girls from the B-52s.

Not knowing these people, having never met them, or talked to them, but still being able to do their portraits, excited me. Satisfaction. I spent weeks in the basement of Warner Bros. I thought I had an advantage. My method, if you could call it that, was far more flexible than the regular way portraits were taken. I didn’t need a studio. A darkroom. A receptionist. A calendar. Makeup. Stylists. I didn’t have to deal with agents or the “personality,” good or bad, of the sitter. My overhead was minimal and I could do the portrait all by myself.

By myself. That was the best.

Why I Go To The Movies Alone.

At first I thought this could be a business.

Up till then none of the art that I was making sold . . . or sold enough to make a living. I had just quit my job at Time Life the year before and was trying to make a go of it living near Venice Beach in LA . . . sharing a house with three roommates and living off the occasional sales that Hudson, my friend from Chicago, would make selling my “cartoon” drawings.

This idea of a “portrait business” made sense to me. Who wouldn’t want their portrait done this way?

I continued to do friends. Paula Greif. Dike Blair. Meyer Vaisman. I did everybody’s portraits for Wild History, a book that I put together for Tanam Press of downtown writing. The author’s portrait accompanied their contribution. Wharton Tiers. Spalding Gray. Tina L’Hotsky.

By the end of ’84 it was over.

I’m not sure if it was the lack of interest in me, or in others. (My energy evaporated.) Maybe it was the inability to convince people to commit to a commission. It was a good idea, but after doing about forty of them, I put them in a drawer and moved on. Bored? Restless? I don’t know. Let’s just say it didn’t take off.

Leave it at that.

My cartoon drawings turned into jokes and the jokes started taking up everything. In the end, I think most people would rather have their portrait done by Robert Mapplethorpe.

Thirty years. Time passes.

The social network.

I looked over my daughter’s shoulder and saw that she was scrolling thru pictures on her phone. I asked her what she was looking at. “It’s my Tumblr.” “What’s a tumbler?” I asked.

That was . . . four years ago?

About three years ago I bought an iPhone. Someone had shown me the photographs you could take with the phone. I had given up taking pictures after they got rid of color slide film. I tried digital, but couldn’t make the adjustment. I never liked carrying a camera and was pretty much inkjetting and painting anyway . . . so the idea of using a big boxy camera with all its new whistles and bows wasn’t for me.

Enter the sandman.

The iPhone was just what I needed. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to point and shoot. You didn’t have to focus. You didn’t have to load film. You didn’t have to ASA. You didn’t have to set a speed. The clarity . . .

I could see for miles.

The photos you took were stored in the phone. And when you wanted to see them, they appeared on a grid. The best part: you could send a photo immediately to a friend, to an e-mail, to a printer . . . or, you could organize your photos, like my daughter had, and post them publicly or privately.

When worlds collide.

I asked my daughter more about Tumblr. Are those your photos? Where did you get that one? Did you need permission? How did you get that kind of crop? You can delete them? Really? What about these “followers?” Who are they? Are they people you know? What if you don’t want to share? How many of your friends have Tumblrs?

What’s yours is mine.

My daughter’s “grid” on Tumblr reminded me of my Gangs I did back in ’85 . . . where I organized a set of nine images on a single piece of photo paper and blew the paper up to 86 × 48. The gangs were a way to deal with marginal or subsets of lifestyles that I needed to see on a wall but not a whole wall. Each gang was its own exhibition. Girlfriends, Heavy Metal Bands, Giant Waves, Bigfoot Trucks, Sex, War, Cartoons, Lyrics . . . were all rephotographed with slide film, and when the slides returned, they were “deejayed” and moved around on a custom-made light box until the best nine made the cut. The “cut” was then taped together (the edges of the slide mounts were pushed up against each other and Scotch-taped), the nine taped slides were sent to a lab where an 8 × 10 internegative was made, and from the internegative the final photo was blown up. I’ve probably lost you. Technical stuff . . . application and technique. Sometimes it’s better to leave the “background” out of it. Better to “take it for granted.” Why should I care how a photograph is made?

Only sometimes.

How was it called back then? Sampling?

Primitive now, but back then . . . 50-inch photo drums were few and far between. The paper was 50 inches wide and came in a huge roll. If you wanted to, you could take a roll and roll it down the street, roll it down the sidewalk, roll it all the way down the West Side Highway.

Shakespeare’s in the alley?

No. Philip Roth is in the alley.

Joan Didion is in the alley.

Don DeLillo is in the alley.

What’s up, pussycat?

There’s a lot of cats on Instagram. Food too.

And there’s tons of photos of people who take photographs of themselves. (Yes, I know the word.)

On the gram. I was just asked why I like Instagram. I said, “Because there’s rules. And if you break the rules, you get kicked off.”

I got to Instagram thru Twitter.

Twitter first.

I’m not sure when I first started tweeting, but I liked trying to fit a whole story into 140 characters.

I call it Birdtalk.

I used to bird in the early ’90s for Purple magazine and birded in my first catalogue for Barbara Gladstone in ’87.

Short sentences that were funny, sweet, dumb, profound, absurd, stupid, jokey, Finnegans Wake meets MAD magazine meets ad copy for Calvin Klein. Think Dylan’s Tarantula. Then think some more and think Kathy Acker’s Tarantula.

Or, don’t think at all. I know I don’t.

Sometimes.

Sometimes I write down the first sentence that starts off my favorite novel.

Relative. I’m not much of a theory guy. But sometimes I think there was a reason why Einstein was a technical assistant in the Swiss patent office.

Let me fill your cup.

Twitter accepts photos, but is mainly text-based. I like to combine the two and tweet both photo and text.

I called the photo/text tweets I was posting . . . “The Family.”

I posted photos of my extended family . . . mother, brother, sister, nieces, cousins, uncles, aunts, in-laws, stepchildren, boy- and girlfriends. I would caption the photos with a short description of who, what, why . . . measuring my words so that they fit into the guidelines of the platform.

After posting the photo/text, I sent the information to my printer and inkjetted an 11 × 14 print of the marriage. I made thirty-eight “Family” tweets.

Distribution.

I placed each “Family” tweet in a plastic sleeve and pushpinned the sleeve to the wall. The wall was at Karma. I put all thirty-eight up. Salon style. It was Saturday. The doors opened at 12 pm. By 12:15 pm all thirty-seven were gone. One to a customer. I kept the one that had my father, mother, and sister in it. (My father and mother were naked, and my sister was sitting in between. My family wasn’t like yours. Hobnob doesn’t begin to describe them.) I sold the “Family Tweets” for $12 each. First come, first served.

Well, well, well . . .

In ma ma ma my wheeeeeeeel house.

I used to stutter. By the ninth grade, the sparkle was in my eye. It got so bad, the impediment turned me into a clam. I slept all day, every day. I wouldn’t get up until Sunday. I waited for Bonanza to come on the TV. I loved the cowboy father and his three sons.

Two summers ago, my niece was working for me out on Long Island and she showed me how to screen save. I didn’t know about the option. What other options don’t I know about?

Screen Save.

This might be one of the best applications in an apparatus that I’ve ever encountered. All-time. Hall of fame. First place. Just what I need. MORE photographs.

Hey kids . . . what time is it?

Now I have a theory.

I was beside myself.

Congratulations.

This past spring, and half the summer, the iPhone became my studio. I signed up for Instagram. I pushed things aside. I made room. It was easy. I ignored Tumblr, and Facebook had never interested me. But Instagram . . .

I started off being RichardPrince4.

I quickly recognized the device was a way to get the lead out. If Twitter was editorial . . . then Instagram was advertising.

A gazillion people.

Besides cats, dogs, and food, people put out photos of themselves and their friends all the time, every day, and, yes, some people put themselves out twice on Mondays. I started “following” people I knew, people I didn’t know, and people who knew each other. It was innocent. I was on the phone talking to Jessica Hart and had just looked at her “gram” feed before picking up the phone. I asked about a picture she posted of herself standing in front of a fireplace wearing what looked to be ski clothes and big fur boots. The post was in black and white, head to toe, full figure, and behind her, above the mantel, there was a portrait of Brigitte Bardot. I told her someone should make a portrait out of this photo. She said, “Why don’t you?”

Come to think of it.

I’m not sure if she knew about my Family Tweets. She might have. I think we even talked about them after she came to my studio for a visit. After I got off the phone, I thought about her suggestion: “Why don’t you?”

I went back to her feed and screen saved her “winter” photo. I sent the save to my computer, pressed “empty subject,” pressed “actual size,” and waited for it to appear in a doc, checked the margins and crop, clicked on the doc, and sent it to my printer. My inkjet printer printed out an 11 × 14-inch photo on paper . . . I took the photo out of the tray and put it on my desk.

Looking at Jessica’s feed reminded me of 1984. Except this time I had more than five photos to choose from. I went back to her feed a second time. I scrolled thru maybe a hundred photos she had posted and looked at all the ones that included her. The one in front of the fireplace was still the best.

Walk on.

Jessica had tons of followers. Thousands. And a lot of them had “commented” on what she posted. I read all the comments that had been posted under her fireplace photo. There was one comment I wish I could have gotten in my original screen save. When you screen save an Instagram image, you can get maybe three, four comments in the save if you include the person’s “profile” icon that appears on the upper left of the page. I decided early on I wanted the person’s icon to be part of the save. But what else could I save?

I went back to my desk and kept staring at the printout of Jessica. What do I do now?

I didn’t want to paint it.

I didn’t want to mark it.

I didn’t want to add a sticker.

Whatever I did, I wanted it to happen INSIDE and before the save. I wanted my contribution to be part of the “gram.” I didn’t want to do anything physical to the photograph after it was printed.

Five cents.

I went back to the comment.

I commented on Jessica’s photo in front of the fireplace, but my comment was one of hundreds and showed up outside, way down at the bottom . . . out of the frame.

If I wanted my comment to show up near her picture . . . how?

I got lucky.

I’m terrible when it comes to the tech side of technology. But somehow I figured out how to hack into Jessica’s feed and swipe away all her comments and add my own so that it would appear under her post. The hack is pretty simple and anyone can do it. You hit the gray comment bar and pick a comment you don’t want and swipe with your finger to the left, and a red exclamation mark appears. You press on the exclamation mark and four things come onto the bottom of your screen.

1. Why are you reporting this comment?

2. Spam or Scam

3. Abusive Content

4. Cancel

To get rid of the comment, you click on Spam or Scam. It’s gone. Just like that I could control other people’s comments and Jessica’s own comments. And the comment that I added could now be near enough to Jessica’s photo that when I screen saved it, my comment would “show up.” Make sense? It’s about as good as I can do. What can I say? Einstein and cuckoo . . .

So now . . .

So now I was in.

Waiting to follow.

Richardprince4 would appear at the bottom of Jessica’s final portrait. My comment, whatever it would be, would always be the last comment. The last say so. Say so. That’s good. That could work. My “in” was what I ended up saying. And what I would say would be everything I ever knew . . . what I knew now and what I would know in the future.

Tell Me Everything.

Finnegans Wake meets MAD magazine.

Zoot Horn Rollo. You seem to be where I belong (emoji).

The first three portraits I did were of women I knew. Or almost knew. Jessica, I knew. Pam Anderson, I knew. Sky Ferreira? I didn’t know, but was following her and had been reading about her new album and seeing posters of her album broadsided on sheets of ply on the Bowery and on Lafayette near Bond. I wasn’t sure what I was doing or why I chose these three. I just had lunch with Pam and had seen Jessica in LA. Sky, I was following because she seemed interesting. There was nothing more. No attraction. No fan. No desire. No date. No wanting anything from her. And the pictures she posted were candid, boozy, and seemed to be letting the viewer in on some kind of backstage diary. She also had thousands of people following her, and I could tap into her followers and follow them. I can do that? I didn’t even know I could follow the followers. Like I said, the hardware was all new . . . and I was just getting started.

The shoreline is never the same. (Like it should be.)

When I first started getting rid of comments, I thought the person whose comments I was getting rid of might get pissed. “What happened to all my comments?” I found out quickly that “the getting rid of” only affected my feed. The deleted comments didn’t affect the followers’ feeds. Their comments were still there even though they were gone from mine. All that happened is that MY comment showed up below their photo. Was I allowed? Yes. I guess so. It’s hard to explain. But the process is open, and at the moment, it’s the way it works and anyone and everyone can do it.

The language I started using to make “comments” was based on Birdtalk. Non sequitur. Gobbledygook. Jokes. Oxymorons. “Psychic Jujitsu.”

Some of the language came directly from TV. If I’m selecting a photo of someone and adding a comment to their gram and an advertisement comes on . . . I use the language that I hear in the ad. Inferior language. It works. It sounds like it means something. What’s it mean? I don’t know. Does it have to mean anything at all? I think about James Joyce confessing to Nora Barnacle. I think about opening up to page 323 of Finnegans Wake. Then I think about notes and lyricism. Policy. Whisper. Murmurs. Mantra. Quotation. Advice.

Chamber Music.

Didn’t Duke Ellington say, “If it sounds good, it is good”? He did say that, didn’t he?

Who are these people?

Larry Clark, Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe take great portraits. I’ve watched Larry take photos and I don’t know how he does it. I wouldn’t know where to begin. I could never go up to a stranger and ask them if I could take their picture. I’ve done it maybe two or three times and didn’t enjoy it. That part of art is in Larry. It isn’t in me. I feel more comfortable in my bedroom looking thru Easyriders and poring over pictures of “girlfriends” that are right there on the page. Page after page. Looking. Wondering. Anticipating. Hoping. What will be on the next page? Will I find a girlfriend that I really like? That’s my relationship with what’s out there. It’s as close as I want to get. That’s what’s in me.

IG is a bedroom magazine.

I can start out with someone I know and then check out who they follow or who’s following them, and the rabbit hole takes on an out-of-body experience where you suddenly look at the clock and it’s three in the morning. I end up on people’s grids that are so far removed from where I began, it feels psychedelic. Further. I’m on the bus. I feel like I’m part of Kesey’s merry tribe. I’m reminded of Timothy Leary’s journals, which I purchased years ago from John McWhinnie, and the concentration that came over me when I discovered his hand-drawn map of his escape from jail. How he literally shimmied on a wire that had been strung up from an outer utility building to the perimeter prison wall . . . and how I would trace with my finger his overland express to Tangier, where he hooked up with Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and spent the next year seeking asylum in different parts of North Africa, ultimately ending up in Switzerland where his ex-wife ratted him out, and how fighting extradition took up the rest of his life. Wow, now it’s four in the morning.

Tune In, Turn On, Come Out.

“Trolling.”

If you say so.

I never thought about it that way. The word has been used to describe part of the process of making my new portraits. I guess so. It’s not like I’m on the back of a boat throwing out chum.

“We’re going to need a bigger boat.”

Included.

Everyone is fair.

Game.

An even playing field.

“Outside my cabin door. Said the girl from the red river shore.”

Men. Women. Men and women. Men and men. Women and women. Blacks Whites Latinos Asian Arabs Jews Straights Gays Transgender. Tattoos and scars. Hairy.

I don’t really know the score.

The ones I adore.

I just know where I belong.

“Oh, there I go. From a man to a memory.”

How do I tell you who or why I pick? I can’t. It would be like telling you why I pick that joke. WHY THAT ONE? There’s thousands of jokes. I read them all. It takes days to read just one joke book. 101 of the World’s Funniest Jokes. Days. If I get one, find one, like one, out of the 101, it’s a good day.

People on IG lead me to other people. I spend hours surfing, saving, and deleting. Sometimes I look for photos that are straightforward portraits (or at least look straightforward). Other times I look for photos that would only appear, or better still . . . exist on IG. Photos that look the way they do because they’re on the gram. Selfies? Not really. Self-portraits. I’m not interested in abbreviation. I look for portraits that are upside down, sideways, at arm’s length, taken within the space that a body can hold a camera phone. What did de Kooning say? “When I spread my arms out, it’s all the space I need.”

At first I wasn’t sure how to print the portrait. I tried different surfaces, different papers. Presentation? Frame? Matt? Shadowbox? I tried them all. Finally this past spring my lab introduced me to a new canvas, one that was tightly wound, a surface with hardly any tooth. Smooth to the touch. Almost as if the canvas were photo paper. It was also brilliantly white. I don’t think it could be any whiter. And . . . the way the ink jetted into the canvas was a surprise. It fused in a way that made the image slightly out of focus. Just enough. The ink was IN and ON the canvas at the same time. When I first saw the final result, I didn’t really know what I was looking at. A photographic work or a work on canvas? The surprise was perfect. Perfect doesn’t come along very often. The color that had been transferred from the file of the computer to the jet, from jet to canvas, was intense, saturated, rich. If someone I followed had blue hair, their hair looked like it had been dyed directly onto the canvas. Dye job. Rinsed. Beauty salon. It was brilliant, great color. You might call it “vibrant.” The vibe between the image and the process was “sent away for,” seamless, effortless . . . all descriptions I used to use when I tried describing my early “pens, watches, and cowboys.” (Has it really been forty years?) The ingredients, the recipe, “the manufacture,” whatever you want to call it . . . was familiar but had changed into something I had never seen before. I wasn’t sure it even looked like art. And that was the best part. Not looking like art. The new portraits were in that gray area. Undefined. In-between. They had no history, no past, no name. A life of their own. They’ll learn. They’ll find their own way. I have no responsibility. They do. Friendly monsters.

Speak for yourself.

To fit in the world takes time.

For now, all I can say is . . . they’re the only thing I’ve ever done that has made me happy.

http://www.richardprince.com/writings/bird-talk

#Richard Prince #Gagosian

12 notes · View notes

terresdebrume · 5 years

Text

Random rambling about a random day

So today was A Day You know when you do a thing you were totally capable of doing before and then your body is like ‘you’re turning thirty next year you numbnugget’? Yeah, that’s me this week. Actually, that’s been me since last Thursday, when I stayed up until 3am ish to write The space between, and then proceeded to send what little was left of my sleep schedule straight to the trash can. To be fair, my working hours just do not work for my natural rhythm. The most refreshing time of my existence was right after I came back from visiting Fel in Korea, when I’d gotten in the habit of being in bed by nine and waking up before seven (no forced methods necessary, it just felt like the right thing to do). This worked because, at the time, my at-work work day started around 10am and ended at 5:30pm, which allowed me to be home by 6pm and do all extraneous work on weekdays before I got to the workplace. (Also I had less teaching hours, which takes a buttload of work off your shoulders, let me tell you.) Unfortunately, I specialize in teaching younger students, who are in after-after-school-classes-classes when they come with us, which means the earliest of them start as 5pm. And I have to be available for them. So I’m stuck with that for the foreseeable future, unless the new boss decides to stop the children’s classes entirely (they are, apparently, not profitable enough). And I mean, I love teaching the kids’ classes, but boy does that make me tired xD

Which is honestly 98% of the reason why today was A Day: I went to work without my wallet, then came home to get it back because, although a friend lent me some money for the day, I wouldn’t have been able t afford lunch and my journey to and from my physiotherapist appointment. I got home, had lunch, got in a tuktuk to the physiotherapist’s and then realized my appointment is actually tomorrow. And I couldn’t change my destination because the driver spoke no English and I couldn’t think of how to express what was happening in Khmer at that moment. (I did, obviously, figure it out right as the tuktuk was leaving, after I paid :P) Then I got back to work and, because I’d been away longer than planned or necessary, I had to finish a thing I’d planned to finish earlier, meaning I didn’t have time to prepare my kids’ class (which I guess is one more reason why I should try to do that on the weekends/in the morning but that’s my free/sleeping time, NO) so I had to improvise 1h30 of class which was...interesting. I’m just glad I have a couple time-consuming rituals and their languages skills are small enough to make any new activity a bit of an ordeal (so anyway, they learned the word ‘and’ and how to pronounce a bunch of letters combos that they didn’t know before, so there’s that). The strange thing is, I’m super tired (and should be in bed rn but I got home past 8pm which means I haven’t even had two hours of post-work leisure time yet so we’ll deal for another couple minutes) but at the same time I’m proud of myself because I managed to improvise in a constructive and somewhat interesting way! We’ve been doing a lot of talking about kids’ classes these days because up until now the motto was ‘who cares about writing, we want to make them want to keep going with french’ which was cool but also led to some problems...and anyways, the new (well, he’s been here for nearly six-ish months now so…) boss wants to introduce written French in these classes. Meaning I’m experimenting a ton of new stuff with my classes (I have a double level this session! it’s exhausting! And complicated! But I’m managing! it’s doing me a proud!) and setting things up in a more efficient way! Which I have to say is doing wonder for my self esteem and ego. Like, literally, this morning my friend Julie called me organized which LOL, one more point in favor of the fake it till you make it column xD Anyways, I don’t know, this post suddenly just turned into ‘things I want to do at work this year’ and I’m not sure how but I’ll take it. One of my medium-length term projects (in between putting money on the side to visit trovia this summer) is to invest in a school supplies box of wonder for myself and my class. I get MAJOR envy whenever I see people post pictures of their classroom which is THEIRS and they have all the material needed and whatnot! And I’m not planning on bringing everything I need to work with myself but I’m tired of always having to split insufficient material between three classes (because HR gripes about buying scissors for the kids to often but apparently okayed a new TV screen for the lobby, which I’m a little salty about) and so I figure if I could just make sure I always have:

1 mini whiteboard (whatever you call these in English, I don’t feel like looking it up rn) per student

1 whiteboard marker per student (I actually had that at one point until I forgot to ask for them back one too many time (or someone needed to borrow one idk) because I tend to pick up the ones my colleagues don’t use anymore and they’re refillable which is good enough for what I do with them)

1 box of color pencils per student (or at least, per two students)

1 pencil, eraser, pair of scissors, stick of glue, pencil sharpener and black pen per student

My life as a teacher would be that much easier and less stressful tbh. Not to mention I might get work to pay for some of that, which would be double nice, but I’m not counting on it too much. I’m just tired of having to ruffle through my own cases and realize I keep losing stuff because the kids plain don’t remember to hand things back and I don’t remember to ask for it often enough. (Also I don’t want to deal with the hassle of fighting a ten years old who doesn’t even seem to realize that ‘his’ marker is the freaking marker he forgot to hand back, I know because I remember the use patterns on that one). Anyway what I get from this post so far is I’m tired (which I knew) and more than a little anal when it comes to work and I let myself indulge in it (which I did not know for many years but am more and more acutely aware of, and also I might make a post specifically about that) and all semblance of coherence flies right out the window as soon as I’m not a) at work or b) writing—and even then, sometimes it’s a tenuous grasp. Man am I rambly. Oh well. Maybe one day I’ll talk about work more, it’ll do me some good to reflect on my methods and/or brag about my progresses in organizational skills. In the meantime, I’m gonna sign off and go collapse on my best for a while—kudos to anyone who read that far, and see you all later. Also, reminder to self: I need to signal boost a thing from DW sometimes this week. Maybe tomorrow morning.

#My Posts #Matt has a life #Shit from work

4 notes · View notes

stephka · 7 years

Text

I was thinking this morning why should I write about my year. I don’t know how many times I’ve done it but I feel it’s a way to recap everything that happened, to process it, and see what I can learn and leave behind. 2016 was sort of a blur, if not completely one. Seasons kept confusing me, I still think my summer happened a couple of months ago and I felt so lost (a bit still). I’m aware that time is continuous, that although I hate that we measure it, passing from one calendar to another makes me a bit optimistic for whatever it may bring.

I came back from my studies abroad in mid February (thing I regretted a looong time because, man, I could’ve stayed like another month if it had not been for that wanker); came from cold to really hot, from lovely and friendly faces to the same old shit in uni-crappy teachers and crappy classes-, from not being afraid on the streets to being harassed 1 day after I arrived. It took me so long to get used to the chaos, the traffic and the rude people, missing every damn day the life I had in Germany. After one month I got a (badly) payed internship because my mom could no longer give me money and c’mon, I needed to start paying for my own stuff. The job wasn’t so bad, I had the chance to go to Oaxaca and I liked the people there but it was definitely not what I wanted to do and I was stressing too much with uni and arriving there on time. I asked for a two week break until I could catch up with homework and when I wanted to go back there weren’t things for me to do. They told me to wait but I felt my mom’s pressure and got myself 2 interviews, I was accepted on both but one was part time, low pay and with time to do my social service and the other was full time and really good pay. The activities that they told me I would be doing sounded great so I went for that one and decided to wait for the social service. While I was doing my internship I struggled to maintain a relationship, at least a friendly one, with the wanker. It obviously didn’t work out because he’s a fucking idiot (guess I’m still mad at him -but already healed!-) and when I confirmed my suspicions, well, it wasn’t pretty but as a good member of this honorable society (I’m being ironic here) I had to keep on going and pretend everything was alright, that I wasn’t hurt and that my mental health was normal. This never works out but the summer came and with it the lovely visit of my oldest friend and “love of my life” Dariush.

My uni went on strike, which was really good because I couldn’t stand it any longer and I didn’t wanna do anything so I hanged out a lot with him, his brother and another friend, Horacio. Just thinking about him makes me really happy, I really cherish him. He bought himself a tattoo machine and I let him practice on me. My first tattoo, done by one of the persons I trust the most and absolutely adore. I love looking at it still.

That same day that he tattooed me, a friend I stumbled upon on March 2015 -in a music website- and I could finally skype. We talked from about 8pm till 3 am. I remember when he looked straight to the camera and I felt he was making eye contact with me, I felt something strange running through my torso, kinda like butterflies in the stomach, but different. It was nice, though. I let it pass. Our conversations began to grow, not taking 3 weeks to answer one another and even having more video calls. By then I had started my new job. Whenever the owner arrived he would give me the most awful stare, so after a while I started doing the same. The people I worked with were amazing and I had fun but the job sucked and although the pay was really good everyday I grew frustrated and felt so aimless and lost because I wasn’t learning anything new or doing something that I liked. The bosses didn’t like me either so those bad vibes from them also started getting at me. I still had to turn in some final projects at uni and it was a pain in the ass to ask for permission, even when I told them when they interviewed me that I would have to go some days for paperwork. I decided I’d hang on until January to save some money but at the end of October I was kinda fired. I say kinda because here you get a 3 month trial, I didn’t “pass” it so I was laid off. I was relieved but then worried about the money. The next week I started the social service. I had already finished uni and only felt the weight being lifted from my shoulders until I lost the job. My birthday was surprisingly good but I still hate getting older. I was celebrated by my new friends with songs in German and some new ones in Spanish, flowers and gifts from abroad. That was lovely. Conversations with my friend kept on going and one late night he told me he feels attracted to me. Until then I hadn’t consider the idea, or the feeling but it made sense so I told him all of what he had said, I feel it too. He laughed because I was so tired that I just wrote, “yeah, all that”. Ever since, we have had many discussions about relationships, what we want, what is our idea of love and also some frustrations since we can’t be in the same place and in each other’s presence. I planned a trip to California late September/beginning of October to see my friend Bobby and catch Freddy. It didn’t happen because of the new job and I felt really sad and frustrated that I wasn’t going to see them. I still had a voucher with an airline and chose New Orleans as my destination since I’ve been wanting to go there for a long time to listen to all that Jazz and know more about the history that place holds. The idea is to meet him there. November and December were really tough. My mom and I being jobless and depressed, well, we don’t go out much and she has a lot of demands and negative comments so that made me really anxious. Social service became so boring and I just want to get my degree and a job. So this week I started a new one in the mornings, and just two days in I’m feeling better with getting up at 8 am and making a short trip to do stuff. Let’s see how that develops but at least I’m not all day home rotting on my bed.

Been clearing some boxes because in two weeks my friends Ari & Geri come visit and also because I have so many useless things. I’m a hoarder of memories. I used to have a redbull can only because it was in Portuguese... I still have to clean more spaces. I have a ton of magazines and I don’t wanna get rid of them. Many photos and negatives. What am I supposed to do with all these things when I move out? Because I’m definitely doing that this year.

I kept my 12 wishes or resolutions very real (I think) and I finally changed them because I kept writing the same things and never got to do any of them. So, 2016 might’ve been a year filled with tears, tension, frustrations, too much anxiety but it was also filled with lovely friends, many nice memories and above all with a lot of learnings. I’m gonna get so much shit done this year, I promise this to myself. And I’m definitely kissing that guy! Now I’m going to bed because I still find it difficult to wake up early. Maybe this helps me as a reference of what not to do again, to not let my sadness and anxiety control me and just know that everyday I can start all over, even though sometimes that tires me.

#stefko

2 notes · View notes