Tuesday, September 14, 2010

A Story [with Mike]

I.

I remember the day as if it were just a few days ago, how many I don't know. The sun came up as the clouds parted, birds began making poetic noises in vain attempts to understand one another, and the familiar, unfortunate smell of tobacco wafted downwind towards me, as it always seems to do. There I sat idly, scratching my head at the cafe, wondering; waiting.

“I don't get it.” I said, aloud. A flash of a Mick Jagger effigy with a mechanical mouth, singing about needing something he wanted hummed through my head. I shook my head, and the lights dimmed.

It was at that very point when my lingering frustration that involved groups of people, grouping together, came up: “Who are we, anyway?” I thought to myself. Nothing but a bunch of insolent- “People.” Answered Mike, to a question that was obviously rhetorical. And as rhetorical-question-answers often go, I found it to be both conclusively true and stupid. And furthermore, uncalled for.

Mike beamed with sincerity as my face went flush with the depressing hue of stale teen angst. Maintaining eye contact, I began formulating a plan to kill him and eat his body – not just for the protein and assorted nutrients, but also to join the hordes of people who have joined a Club not far from the lowly depths of the Mile High Club. The Club in question was a gathering that shone bright the proverbial light at the other end of the tunnel: the Perfect Crimes Club. Yet as quickly as it had began, my light-hearted fantasy of a perfect world faded into a dramatic picture of battle.

What if, instead of focusing on lowly single digit crime sprees, I attempted to incite a revolution? It didn't matter, what it was about, really. That I knew from countless examples of the false tenets of major religions and the layered paradigms of social thought and strategy. Assumptions that remain proved conclusively 'true' based on faith and numbers, and perhaps some elbow grease to hold the entire mess together. But another daydream took place!

Another daydream took place, this one awash with a God-sent-me-here attitude followed by a series of moving-people-out-of-the-way motions. I finally knew what I had dropped out of college for – to figuratively incite the revolution of a gigantic group of hopelessly hopeless people, to give them something to first fight about, and then smile about. I would commence with my perhaps megalomania-induced, grand scale social psychology experiment. I would cast an entire group of people, unified in their collective despair, against another, significantly smaller and more rich group of people - and I wouldn't even have to think of a team name. My proponents? The Untouchables, of India.

Bereft with hope, these Untouchables were the perfect medium to impregnate with my voracious idea. Not to mention that I felt quite the altruist sitting at the coffee shop with Mike that day, periodically letting out laughs that would make both Rupert Murdoch and Bernie Madoff blush with envy, staring out as a cow grazing would, across the masses of materialistic splendor that I would happily skip over to achieve my end-goals. The most dangerous game was a story of human nature perverted to a point by an individual who owned an island. Mine, I reasoned, was a story violent and vile in its truthful virtue; the everlasting story of human nature.

My dream had reached a Mariah Carey-like climax, but now it was time to gain weight. Mike shook me as I stared as a cow grazing would (oriented in a north-south position), “Let's hit the pot-shop,” he said, in a tone unbelieving that his request could be feasibly granted, “You know, get some herb.”

'Get some herb', I repeated to myself. The way he shad aid it made me shudder. If any other state looked at the California Example of Marijuana Legalization they would find out just how quickly things went awry: blatant examples of legalized 'drug-dealing apartments shops', countless amounts of illegally run 'Marijuana Collectives' operating well within 1000 feet of public schools, and pro-pot advertisements virtually everywhere.

As far as the eye could see, a picturesque suburban landscape lay littered with small plastic medicinal tubes with stickers that boasted what city had last been successfully grown in, what area code remained lenient in green matters, and what strain proved to be hip. What other state in their right mind would attempt releasing their ban on the green leaf with results like this?

Visibly annoyed, Mike grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me once more, so we got the pot.



II.
'The Sickness'


Back at the apartment I dragged opposite the lit, ever-receding end of the joint. I could feel the sickness take a step back, pick up its fists as if ready to fight only to motion with one hand that a second or two would be necessary. Finally, it began taking steps back and fell asleep pantomime on what appeared to be a chair laying near the door. The sickness was gone, and this plant was perfection.

One could practically see groups of societal undergrowth arranged darkly, in a circle, laughing lazily, passing lit yellow-wrapped sticks around. Soon the world would find itself covered in a colorful mix of these small plastic medicinal tubes and assorted 'sticks and stems', the melting pot of yesterday quickly being overridden to a simmer, to become tomorrows medicinal stew.



III.


Mike fell asleep at the apartment so I took a bike ride around the block. A unique transparent fog hung in the air, thick and like a blanket, sagging. The pedals clanked in rhythm as the freewheel kept time and etched notes that rang for days. The clouds that lay above bore scenes of fluffy armor, unfolding.

Each formation of cloud recreated an aging youthful fantasy of cute, pillow-armored, fighting animals profiled, before battle. I began thinking of how similar the cruel realities of war would be for both humans and animals, so relentless and unforgiving in its ugly consequence – even for one wearing coats of cloud-mail.

And then it happened - a gargantuan flurry of red motion and machine had narrowly avoided colliding with me and had veered too far left into oncoming traffic. Pedaling again, I realized there was more honking accompanied with most of the sounds and smells associated with burning rubber.

I checked the crotch of my pants to make sure that I hadn't wet them. I hadn't, but it was close. No one checks for no reason. I just couldn't believe: In ancient Rome, the streets were alive with chariots, horses, slaves, animals - and here, in this bustling megalopolis of millions of modern people, complete with a complex light-controlled traffic-controlling infrastructure – here, we couldn't handle this? A lone biker in the midst?

Frustrated, I forged a path to the corner store. The corner store is also known as the 'convenience store', for rather obvious reasons. Inside, they will sell you every vice you could want, except for marijuana.



IV.



I walked into the convenience store feeling like I had just cheated death. That's another subtle joy and reason why I ride a bike on a daily basis, because it really makes you stop and think. It makes you lick your finger and put it to the wind even when you know exactly where and how hard the wind is blowing from; because it's obvious. Because your hat flew away in the wind, behind you, and when you chased it, it fell in the gutter and got soiled and you began to cry.

So I went inside and got an ice cream bar. Though it wasn't that easy. I had to weigh out and strike a gentle balance between the sacred forces of logic, and reason. Intuition told me that I had wanted ice cream, and I knew that to be true - but two of my favorite brands had merged together to fight for the cause of my ultimate cold-food desire. I stood there, a mentally beat man. Lost in anguish I pondered, “Klondike, or Snickers, Klondike or Snickers?” but couldn't know, I couldn't know.

I began to think of the almost quantum amount of things I would do for a Klondike bar at that time, it was an infinite and temporal regression of my frontal lobes and I felt like it was necessary to achieve it in a snack. I stood there though, quiet, silent and had realized quite suddenly, that I would do almost anything feasible of man, for a Klondike bar. Even, in general.

It was then that, though that a thought wafted over me and I began to think of Heaven and Hell, and right and wrong. The eternal struggle; Good versus Evil. The color black and the color, white. Opposites and things opposite to them. All of these are thoughts that I thought at that moment, which is, and was, and always will be the same moment that I saw the Snickers Ice Cream Bar.

I laid eye on the glorious Snickers bar almost immediately following my previous thought. That glorious king size looking bar just begged me for my forgiveness, and I was just ready and willing to accept. Such a subtle charm, I thought to myself, Such a subtle charm! I was living the life of a man, in denial. That Snickers was the devil, and I knew it. I was like the U.S. Supreme Court Justice who said that he'd know pornography when he saw it. It was awful, though. Simply awful. So I got the Klondike bar and rode my bike home slowly, with one hand.


To be continued.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

: ) / :(

Drug Talk
E. Allweil


You don't know how much it bothers me that I do drugs. Not 'bother' in the sense that it was wrong, and it's a bad thing, and that I shouldn't have done it. Rather, a bother like certain heartbreak; an ever present constant reminder of the fact. A fact like you've done it: you did it and now it can't be taken back. It's been done and it's over, but it keeps coming up.

I think it's somehow due to the intertwining of the senses. You smell the taste that got you to feel high. And it comes up again, when it is smelled on the street or worse, in a friend of a friends, or a given family's function. It flirts with your mind and permeates the soul, the smell of opium on a crisp day, the lush verdant green of a sticky smoke, a lovers lips tinged with a tar like tobacco.

Yet sometimes life reaches up and touches the top of the objective happiness chart and one begins to go over feelings that brought them great joys and pleasures. With a smile one continues to go about the pleasantries of daily existence; the smells, the feeling, the various joy. The people, the places, the events, and the experiences, all shared underneath the umbrella nest.

Until a thought creeps in, familiar and forgiving at first, but quietly becoming hostile in its pretense. A 'what if' moment, of unrefined decision, an executive decision waiting to be made, one with implications both great and small, and one that will define a certain avenue of your life forever.

Nothing bad, though. Perhaps a rocky road of truth that would have lay uncovered, hidden, hiding; growing recessively and silently in the overgrowth, just waiting to be awakened. Beckoning to be heard in a forest of thought. An El Dorado of potential for pretentious thinkers.

So you did it, and now its been done. No turning back, you're on the road to El Dorado! And yet a new thought springs up. Like fingers quick to point blame.

You remember a time past, one long ago that seemed only to exist in a bubble. Thousands of plants surrounded you, and so you reasoned that at some point they must have grown. You saw them hard at work, building as they were being built. Allocating resources left and right, their self-perpetuated growth happening, the structure closing in. A garden was forming it seemed. The very light was being converted into sugars and building together from the bottom, the sides, and the ground, up and in.

Everything was in a state of tug. Pulling and tugging on one plant over, and then the next. Each gravity being pulled and pulling, each plant now becoming part of a phalanx, each strain being pushed for their own weight and their own victory, each species for themselves until the few realized that the odds go up, for all of them, if they work together.

With every passing moment, comes more understanding. The image on the minds screen closes in on truth and begins to respond. It's as if in seeing truth it becomes a blatant roar. Or rather, it became a blatant roar. Once then, one looks around and slowly realizes that the garden is walled in, and in this realization comes the thought that in this moment of understanding, lay all of the time in the world.

This digression into a plane holds true an eternal example of a prime moment of intuition and understanding. The Ohm that everyone spoke so highly of, that that is recognizing every individual noise and sound, knowing that every drop of water flowing through the river took the high road down. Maybe this was it.

A wise man once said, 'A drop drops confused in the midst of mist and opts for Ohm, the path of least resistance'. Explaining further that this is the weary way of a conservative world trying to stick to what it's been doing for so long that it deems it best. And so it trickles down with the assurance that all will soon pass, and that it will find itself back on top of the mountain of reason, for reasons unknown, but sacredly kept. Because that is the way.

Again, I find myself on a plateau built of rational thought. Screaming from the top down, takes time until it is understood below. 'So many reasons,' the bottom ponders, 'for why he might be saying this'. A rock moves laterally underfoot and I struggle to regain balance as it crashes down below. Introspection. So I go down a different road, for here I've gone too far.

I don't know much about what I just learned, but I took this:

In the beginning I said that 'no one would know how much it bothered me that I do drugs', and I then digressed into an inquiry on 'bother(s)'. I said that this bother was recurring like an itch; begging to be scratched. I likened it to many things. Like, it doesn't matter how hard you scrub when you brush your teeth, it wont get them any whiter. It doesn't matter how much you try to get at it and where you attempt to reach it, or anything of the sort. It's ever present and will remain a constant for as long as it will linger, and until you forget. Which seems like purgatory until you collect reason.

The text also illustrates a substantial loss in memory, during and 'in' the formation of creating new memories. Many varying points were brought up in the text from the beginning to the end, and each time a different field of associated thoughts were swept in. Some sentences were about shortcomings and others were about goals. All involved the world and the reality of our construct as we know it. Mentally it formed an elegant Venn diagram mosaic, many times larger and smaller.

In the formation of new memories, and as they come along new ideas appear many and varied at a time. Some calculations and notes become lost in the process, and so they must be noted and redrawn again. Like reading a sentence over to better understand it. You reach a crossroads of sorts. If you don't understand it you begin achieving a different, perhaps less objective vision than the one you are trying to parallel. So a wise person would reread the sentence until they fully understood for the sake of knowing what it was that was implied.

So there's still hope, is what I was getting at. Different things must be significantly characterized in hierarchies of value, values, and importance. And different things must be processed one at a time, quickly, for different reasons and seemingly all at once, but all in a single file. Each given a moments time.

So what is this paper talking about, if anything at all? Perhaps that the answer to all of it lies in the pursuit. That you can technically step in the same river twice, and on a long enough time line, that anything is possible. That these fun disproportionate truths are what make life worth living. So much larger and so much smaller than the rest of us, and in provocative ways too. It keeps things fresh and interesting, change 'is what we need', right? And after needing change you step into the river again, but this time it's dried up, like some post-apocalyptic ending to a short story, or essay involving few things but 'philosophy'. Consider this paper a footnote for the new dawn.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Grass-hoppers.

At first the truths Phaedrus began to pursue were lateral truths; no longer the frontal truths of science, those toward which the discipline pointed, but the kind of truth you see laterally, out of the corner of your eye. In a laboratory situation, when your whole procedure goes haywire, when everything goes wrong or is indeterminate or is so screwed up by unexpected results you can't make head or tail out of anything, you start looking laterally. That's a word he later used to describe a growth of knowledge that doesn't move forward like an arrow in flight, but expands sideways, like an arrow enlarging in flight, or like the archer, discovering that although he has hit the bull's-eye and won the prize, his head is on a pillow and the sun is coming in the window. Lateral knowledge is knowledge that's from a wholly unexpected direction, from a direction that's not even understood as a direction until the knowledge forces itself upon one. Lateral truths point to the falseness of axioms and postulates underlying one's existing system of getting at truth.
To all appearances he was just drifting. In actuality he was just drifting. Drifting is what one does when looking at lateral truth. He couldn't follow any known method of procedure to uncover its cause because it was these methods and procedures that were all screwed up in the first place. So he drifted. That was all he could do.



-Robert M. Pirsig
'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Real Life Old Timer



COLTON HARRIS-MOORE - aka 'the barefoot bandit' is at it again. That, or he's just never stopped.

Last sighting: The Bahamas, after crashing a single-engined Cessna he flew over 1,000 miles to get there.

He was 18 and stealing airplanes and crash landing them away from authorites. He's 19 now, about 6'5 and still at it.

Keep running, kid!

Colton Harris-Moore

Bahama Chase Article

And he's non-violent to boot!


Colton Harris-Moore Fan Club!


More posts to follow, i promise.

-e.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

High Times, May 1978

WHY I LOVE TO LIVE FAST
Andy Warhol
May 1978


FIRST OF ALL, IT'S best to be born fast, because it hurts, and it's best to die fast, because it hurts, but I think if you were born and died within that minute, that would be the best life, because the priest says that way you're guaranteed to go to heaven. He says you're born to die. “Born to die” – you could write a song about it.
I know I love to live fast because all my favorite things are the fastest – the new Polaroid Super 8 movie camera, the Roy Rogers Family-Style and Sony tape recorders, the Concorde, drive-in movies (because you can go in your pajamas). And my favorite person is Tom Seaver, because he pitches the fast ball and he gave me the fast bat I'm holding in this picture taken by the fastest photographer in America.
Ever since I was a kid I've wanted to live as fast as I could, so I always try to find ways to do things faster: I like to sleep fast, that's when you just snooze, and I like to love fast, that's when you have a one-night affair (but remember, a fast person can never have any kind of relationship with a slow person). And I really like Swanson's TV dinners when you have friends over, because there are no greasy dishes to think about afterwards. When I get up in the morning, it doesn't take me any time to get ready for work because I wear the same thing every day. So uniforms are great, and the fastest uniform today is the jumpsuit: you just jump in it, jump out the door, and jump to work.
Some people complain that you should have slow sex-- like in India I head that it takes fourteen hours-- but then they have all these problems with, what do they call it, premature ejaculation? See, I always thought that was the best kind. You should never even get it in before you come. I mean, you might be able to get to the point where you just shoot it inside your pants, thinking about it, and that would be the best.
Frankly, in my opinion, there's nothing it's good to do slow, so the only thing is, how to live fast if you live slow? I don't know anyone who takes amphetamines anymore, but you could hang around with girls who take diet pills, because they'll get you nervous and jittery and that makes you go fast. But what really makes you go fast is if you knit: you never can stop once you get started, and it teaches you that it's best to keep doing something all the time because that way you live faster and faster. I paint faster now, because I use a sponge, and I make movies faster, but I think new movies will be even faster, like only half an hour. I mean, for me time goes by so fast I find myself asking everybody on Friday if it's still Monday.
Funnily enough, America isn't the fastest country. They live faster in Japan, but the Japanese are such completely different people you can't make any comparisons. And, anyway, fast Americans are the most glamorous people: they do more, see more, learn more, and get more money because they get fast money. I love to live fast, because then you don't have to think about anything. For example, writing this took me four minutes – which is the time it takes to eat a Big Mac – so I did it in my lunch minutes, and I was glad because, instead of just eating and talking to the kids in the office about my problems, I was eating and writing an article for High Times, so I got more done and made more money and felt better faster. And that's what we're here for, isn't it?

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Quanta by ETGAR KERET

I've mentioned the name 'Etgar Keret' quite a bit as of late. Seldom do people follow up on my Biblical beggings, swearing to this and to that about his work, begging with furtive hand gestures that this gentle mans' work is nothing short of exemplary. But basic laws of human nature apply and too many of you have settled into the comfort of the couch.

So, without further ado, a short by Etgar Keret, simply titled 'Quanta'...




Quanta.


On Yom Kippur Eve, the quanta went to ask Einstein for his forgiveness. “I'm not home,” Einstein yelled at them from behind his locked door. On their way back, people swore loudly at them through the windows, and someone even threw a can. The quanta pretended not to care, but deep in their hearts they were really hurt. Nobody understands the quanta, everybody hates them.
“You parasites,” people would shout at them as they walked down the road.
“Go serve in the army.”
“We wanted to, actually,” the quanta would try to explain, “but the army wouldn't take us because we're so tiny.” Not that anyone listened. Nobody listens to the quanta when they try to defend themselves, but when they say something that can be interpreted negatively, well, then everyone's all ears. The quanta can make the most innocent statement, like “Look, there's a cat!” and right away they're saying on the news how the quanta were stirring up trouble and they rush off to interview Schrödinger. All in all, the media hated the quanta worse than anybody, because once the quanta had spoken at an IBM press conference about how the very act of viewing had an effect on an event, and all the journalists thought the quanta were lobbying to keep them from covering the Intifada. The quanta could insist as much as they wanted that this wasn't at all what they meant and that they had no political agenda whatsoever, but nobody would believe them anyway. Everyone knew they were friends of the government's Chief Scientist.
Loads of people think the quanta are indifferent, that they have no feelings, but it simply isn't true. On Friday, after the program about the bombing of Hiroshima, they were interviewed in the studio in Jerusalem. They could barely talk. They just sat there facing the open mike and sniffling, and all the viewers at home, who didn't know the quanta very well, thought they were avoiding the question and didn't realize the quanta were crying What's sad is that even if the quanta were to write dozens of letters to the editors of all the scientific journals in the world and prove beyond a doubt that people had taken advantage of their naiveté, and that they'd never ever imagined it would end that way, it wouldn't do them any good, because nobody understands the quanta. The physicists least of all.


Sunday, May 2, 2010

A Worthy Rep

This goes out to my favourite pastime as of late; [figuratively put] losing my mind one picture at a time, in an arrangement, ornate, as if godly met, or maybe the code for all life made, is random?

In plain English:
GreyHandGang is a blog that is an assortment of pictures uploaded one by one. Whoever chose them has quite the keen eye. This blog has been a staple of 'my' time lately. Give it a whirl.

http://greyhandgang.com/

-e.


Monday, April 19, 2010

(( El4D ))



New tunes for interested parties.

(I suspect a leak of schizophrenic sorts)

Whoops, i slipped it on purpose.

Freudian dick.

http://drop.io/el4d_music

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Edgar Allan Poe, mmm.

For a long time i wondered what drugs would do
Then i took them
And knew for ever that i knew.

Though i forgot what i saw
and things that i thought
The experience washed over me
Like tide in an astrological inquisition.

As creeping misery worried a slippery felt down my side.
Creeping worries matched those, parallel in stride..

So i decided to document it:

I took pictures of my skin,
Then darkened it with ash-dust.
I wanted the colour
So I turned the lights up

[For contrast]

But each time as the pixel grew
As the light illuminated the charcoal
And it changed hue
So subtly, it went
from a black to a red

And as the walls
Like the Mirrors
grew with intensity
The brighter they grew

I laughed
with misery
for the darkness knew.

'What?' i asked
[Do drugs do]

As the sunlight fades in a darkened room,
Different quests embark
On questions they already knew

[A facet of drugs and what they do]




(Looped to Pulp Fictions 'Zed's Dead' dialogue 3/21/10)

Personals.





























































Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Worth a mention..



"Paradoxically, perhaps, the photographer without a name creates extraordinary art by restoring the identities of the nameless."

Anonymous 28mm shooting, ex-graffiti artist, now street 'photograffeur', JR broadens the horizons..

More on JR here..


Wednesday, March 3, 2010

The Sweet Root



My friend Miles Gussin and myself had embarked on a musical journey, months past. Aptly titled 'The Sweet Root' our song-mix has finally come to fruition.

An interview, 13 minute mix-demo, and a bonus track [Strings] are all available for download (pro-bono) at Radio Hotbodies, presented by our good friend Josh Boyd.

The mix-list goes as follows:

1. Fur Edith/The Schizophrenic Sound
2. Test 1 <--- Miles
3. Alan, Revived
4. Sample Two
5. Beginning <--- Miles

Enjoi




[picture up top is 'Ecstasy' by 0M3R]

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Bank on Banksy


“I won’t be doing any more big gallery shows for a while, it’s all a bit dodgy. I’ve come into contact with a lot more villains since I moved from vandalism into selling paintings. The art world is full of shady people peddling bright colours. Anti-graffiti groups like to say tagging intimidates people, but not as much as modern art. That stuff is deliberately designed to make normal people feel stupid. I could try and get more legitimate mural work, but scaling a drainpipe is still probably a lot easier than getting an original idea past a committee.”

-Banksy

The entire intelligent, eye-opening interview can be had here..

Thursday, February 25, 2010

In Regards [to time healing all wounds],

i don't think it does. I think it gives an opportunity for new scars to form, if anything. And if anything, time stretches our pores and pours salt into them as it grinds away the gears of each minute as they turn to day. And yet, the most peculiar aspect to time must be noting the familiar beauty of endless days passed, once enough time has elapsed to note them.

However, the last thing i want getting between us is, philosophy.


((incoherent mumbles, brooding))


Well, by god.

Then i'll do my best to disappear.












Only to reappear again in times of great strain and/or moral equilibrium.










And if you get nothing else from me, then put this into your pocket:


Life is no fairy-tale, my love. And the morals that were written in all the great books, that humans reflect on with a kind of innate, optimistic and nostalgic familiarity, were only metaphors set into script by humans, too.










And so to conclude, i suppose,



Darling; take your time.

I want all to be well, and only more for all to be well.

But i'm fully aware that this shit comes in circles and we'll be here, together or separate, separately here in situations like this again.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

I'm not dead

I've just been dreaming.
And I'm not sick,
For I was just singing.

Things could be worse now
And yet isn't.

All i can think about is
World history and vogue.
They keep on spinning.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Saw Wei said:

Arensberg said:
Only once you have
experienced great pain
And madness
And like an adolescent
Thought the blurred
photo of a model
Great art
Can you call it
heartbreak.
Millions of people
who know how to love
Please clap your gilded
hands
And laugh out loud.


Then Saw Wei was put in jail for two years.

The first letter of each of the lines in the [translated] Burmese poem esoterically criticize the head of Burma's military junta leader, General Than Shwe, by reading something akin to 'General Than Shwe is crazy with power'.

[Please clap your gilded hands]..

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Alice.

Lao Tzu said:

Fill your bowl to the brim
And it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
And it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
And your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
And you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.

Monday, January 18, 2010

O crescimento pelo crescimento é a ideologia da célula cancerígena.

“During 1860, the citizens of Point Pleasant, Ohio, were distressed by the daily sight of a slightly rundown-looking store clerk in his late thirties. The man had been in the military, resigned under suspicious circumstances, failed at farming, failed at real estate, and ended up working in his father's leather-goods store. He was a poor excuse for a salesman, a worse-than-incompetent bill collector, and didn't even seem to know the establishment's stock. What's more, there were rumours that he had a problem with the bottle. Then, in 1861, the Civil War broke out, and the town failure enlisted in a regiment of volunteers. Less than two years later, he was promoted to major general. Eventually, he became president. His name was Ulysses S. Grant.”

--Excerpt from Howard Blooms' 'The Lucifer Principle'




[in Moscow]



Introducing Alexandre Farto aka 'Vhils'

Vhils uses a giant assortment of mediums and techniques to achieve his brilliant art; from etching into dilapidated stucco walls to homemade bleach concoctions and from said homemade bleach concoctions to good old fashioned Pollock inspired paint chucks, Vhils leaves each piece adorned with his unique weather-stripped signature. These pieces only get better with time.

http://alexandrefarto.com/




“Nothing Lasts Forever”




'Untitled'








'Burned Memories'








Introducing fellow musician, artist, and friend; Colin McCaffrey.





O Fortuna (2007) - Graphite




Self Portrait (2007) - Pen, charcoal, and marker.




Dans Smile 2007 - Pen, colored pencil, and marker – from a photo where Dan Anderson (a member of the Paul T. Anderson clan), had painstakingly kicked his own teeth out at a show.





Self Portrait (2008) - Tissue paper and sharpies on cardboard




Untitled (2008)




Autophagy 2007 - Colored pencils and pen and chalk. Freehand duplicate of circulating postcard.




"Growth for the sake of growth is the idealogy of the cancer cell"
(O crescimento pelo crescimento é a ideologia da célula cancerígena.)
-Edward Abbey





Klone in Tel-Aviv (Photo courtesy of Unurth.com)


By the way, Unurth is definitely worth a check-out, their email list is unprecedented – new street art from around the world every day!