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artdjgblog · 5 years ago

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Innerview: Stephanie Haselman / Indie Workshop May 2005 Photo: Travis Wears, 2004

Note: Blog feature.

01) Your work seems to have quite a range. Can you talk a little about the various mediums you work in? Many people ask me this. It is not that I set out to use a certain this or that. Most of the time it is intuition, or whatever lies in the path. Sometimes it’s really what’s in front of me or whatever I find that solves the problem efficiently and effectively. Every day is different. Every day my mind is different. I sometimes get silly because I obsess over if a project should wait because the ideas could be in a totally different language tomorrow or next week. Though, sometimes I only have a small hoop to jump through…and thus, must crank it out. There are times when I will try not to approach the same thing, and in the same way twice. I do have strict rules with myself about recycling my own work…unless I truly need to. There may be a definite feel and/or look to my body of work, but I try to reach each solution in a different way. It’s more about idea and process than trying to earn cool points. I’m not really concerned with the current styles and trends in the news, books or galleries. When a person spends their time worrying about that stuff, they can become easily lost or burnt. It’s all a vessel. It’s all chaff. I was never really a fan of piggy-back riding. The majority of my time is spent not thinking, rather doing. I may pick things out of the street, off of my floor, or rummage stores/sales and keep them for my boxes-full-of-potential-goodie-use, but sometimes I never know where and how they will be conceived (sometimes they just find a place in a scrap book or on a shelf). However, there are times when I will get a certain image in my head rather quick…and I will instantly know how and why it needs to be done in a particular medium. Every time somebody starts asking, or saying why and how…or, that I’m a this or a that…I start to overthink. That’s when it can become dangerous. That’s when I consciously try to get one step ahead of myself. The only competition I have is myself. 02) Is there a particular era or movement that inspires your work with collage? There are definitely certain art & design movements and individuals that have inspired me with collage, cut-paper and a more hands-on technique. These include: Constructivism, European Art/Design, Hans Schleger, Lester Beall, Paul Rand, Saul Bass, Ivan Chermayeff, Push Pin Studio, Ray Johnson, Art Chantry, Stanley Donwood, Philip Cheaney (it keeps going and going). Really, design is collage in the truest form: cooking up a batch of ingredients to get a final product or solution…in hopes the audience will eat it up…or it sometimes eats them (sometimes it can eat the birth parent too). I started doing collage work at a young age with my older brother, simply thumbing through Mom’s magazines and cutting out fun words and imagery. Eventually, after struggling with drawing I found that I liked to illustrate with collage. It’s not that it was easier, I just enjoyed it better and I enjoyed the very hands-on appeal and variety that came from it. I could be more aggressive or I could be more subtle with it. I especially liked doing things from scratch more and more after I was taught design on the computer. I didn’t like, and still don’t like that screen barrier that keeps me from actually touching my work. The first semester at college we didn’t even touch a computer, and I was so naive to them anyway that I didn’t care. We were mainly doing a lot of hands-on, fundamental projects. It’s funny because one day I was talking with some friends about our second semester of design, and beyond. They were all gung-ho about finally getting on a computer to do their design. I mentioned how I was going to take the non-computer route of the graphic arts. They all kind of looked at me like I was stupid and told me that I had to learn the computer if I wanted to pass school and get anywhere in the modern design world. That is so funny to me now, since I’ve started my own thing and have had a little bit of success with my creations. Designing on a computer was quite a struggle at first (and still is at times). For a short time in college I even considered not doing design because the computer was a huge road block to me. However, after the struggle with myself and with computers, I soon realized what a valuable learning experience I was in. But, I didn’t completely realize that, and I didn’t really find myself until school was halfway over. My design/illustration professors hailed from Eastern Europe and Russia. They stressed drawing and more of an old fashioned hands-on approach. They taught the computer, but they also preached that the computer is only a tool. The instructors at Southwest Missouri State University (now called Missouri State University), being from a different part of the world and culture than I, had a tremendous amount of influence on me. Along with the fundamentals (which I use more than anything each day), I was taught to find my voice of expression. It took me a couple of years to really process it and really understand what I was going to do with design. When I started doing so, it was in more of a hands-on way. If illustration or drawing communicated more effectively, then so be it. If strictly a typographical method…and so-on. It was a very creative environment, with so many things mixed in the pot. Towards my last year I didn’t really have an emphasis that bent me in a significant way. I had kind of learned to put it all together, draw from that pool and focus more on idea…with the methods of reaching being unhandicapped. It was an incredible learning environment. I not only looked up to my instructors, I also fed off of my friends/classmates. The energy there is quite incredible (it’s one of the best kept secrets in the country)….that is, if you really “get it”, and are willing to partake and work. I just wish I would have worked harder. However, I think I did work hard, it just took me a bit longer to develop and see my potential. There isn’t really a formulated way of “getting it” in design (or life for that matter). The “getting it” comes more individually…finding that certain thing that lights the fire. After visiting several design firms and professional working atmospheres, I would always come home disappointed and unfullfilled. I felt the things that I could do best, and really enjoyed doing, weren’t found in a lot of design firms. And being very protective of my creative abilities, and very private, I did not want to work in a potentially smoothering situation. I don’t see anything wrong with designers working in those environments, it just wasn’t my calling and I just didn’t want to go that route personally. So, after doing a few music related projects on the side and being inspired by a lecture from legendary designer Art Chantry (who simply told me, “Expect to starve…several times over.”), I decided to drop-out of school, move to Kansas City and begin my own design adventure. Fortunately, I kind of hit it at the right time because music poster designers are getting a lot more creative recognition than they used to. Of course, now you can throw a rock and hit a poster designer. 03) You obviously do a lot of work for local bands in Kansas City such as the James Dean Trio, Namelessnumberheadman, and The Elevator Division. What can you say about the local music scene there and how it has influenced your work? In college I befriended the band Elevator Division, started designing for them, and we all eventually moved into a large, old house in January of 2002. For over two years that orange and poop-brown Kansas City ghetto home leaked with productivity. It was an incredible creative monster at it’s peak of development…DJG Design operated out of an old photography studio in the basement and a nook in the garage that was literally made out of old doors and mattresses, Elevator Division practiced and recorded in the basement (along with four or five other bands/projects along with a part time recording studio), there was creative writing brimming out of the top floor and much chaos on the two floors in between. At one point you couldn’t fit another person in there. Full-time inhabitants were sleeping on floors and couches and touring bands/musicians would stay there about every other weekend and there was always a visitor or two. I think there were close to ten or twelve people actually living there at one time (which I’m sure is illegal). When we sat down to do the exact family tree of our time in the house it was astounding as to how many people stayed or lived there….we even had rats coming up from the local doughnut shop and random birds coming out of the walls��even a cat or two. However, all great towers are toppled and thus Bunker 5032 collapsed in the Spring of 2004. I am very thankful for the time we all shared, and we all peacefully departed our own ways. A lot of things came and went in the wake of that, but I think we all took a little bit of that magic with us. The thing I miss most is the brotherhood we had. We all helped each other, and not just as friends but on a business scale too. For instance, the bands that lived there (I think there was about three or four at one time) and the ones that visited, all needed graphic design…and I could easily be found tormenting myself in the dungeon. For some of my clients/friends who didn’t have a key to the place, I developed a special knock on my West basement wall for them so I could run up and let them in. I’ve never really had to go out of my way with self-promotion…it has been mostly a trickle-down effect. So, this is how I officially started my design odyssey. This is how I was creating at such a rapid rate and meeting so many bands and people that needed my sword of protection. One of my favorite memories from that time is when I was creating the packaging for Elevator Division’s “Whatever Makes You Happy” EP. I had wrestled with my design for a couple of months, and finally completley changed it at the last minute of the production process. This project was made out of cardboard, with each design individually cut, glued and spray painted by my shaky hands. In one of the biggest rain storms that I can remember, my idea (and I) came alive like Frankenstein’s monster. I was spray painting out of a small room in the basement and was starting to get a little nauseous from the fumes and pure madness of it all. In the third hour, a loud crack of thunder shook that mighty house frame and I bursted out of the basement in a large puff of red, and with red paint streaming out of my nostrils, ears and hair. I then dived off of the front porch, head-first down the small grass embankment and into the gushing current in the street…all of this in full view of the drug dealing squatters that stayed across the street. Anyway, it is one of my favorite designs and favorite design moments. Since moving my operations into a small apartment on my own, and not really getting out to shows much, I don’t have the outlet for client potential and client relationship like I once did. Though, I gained great assets in privacy, two kitty cats and keeping things in order, it was a strange transition because the life in some of my friendships died a bit and I didn’t know how I was going to continue my design quest. In the past year I haven’t done the amount of work like I did in the first two years, but I am still doing a lot. And no matter how much I do I still need more to pull out from under my pillow in the morning. I do set goals to make at least fifty posters a year, but I always feel like that’s a wimpy goal to accomplish. My main client right now is The Brick, a really great music venue in Kansas City, Missouri. I still make posters for other various shows/bands/musicians, but the ones I do for The Brick are always some of my favorites. I also have an exhibition there every December. It’s kind of a yearly DJG Design bowel cleaning. I still design for local indie lable The Record Machine from time to time and anyone else who comes knocking. I also have many things in the works and some plans to get my name out a bit more too. A milestone in my new place was having sixteen nice design girls from Iowa State University visit. It was so nice. I don’t think I could have done that while living with a bunch of guys. There is a pretty decent music (and art) scene here in Kansas City and in Lawrence, Kansas. Though, at times it feels non-existent. But, perhaps that’s because I’m not really into the whole thing…which is kind of strange because I like music and I like producing music graphics. Also, scenes can be very band wagon-like sometimes…and sometimes bands have to show their worth by making it in other cities before they are fully recognized and appreciated here. The older I get the less shows I go to, or even want to go to…I kind of maxed-out my concert punch card a couple years ago and I am usually too broke or tired. It’s not that I don’t care, I kind of just stay home more, watching movies and studying…or designing. It’s kind of funny how I slipped under the radar here. I am so out of a loop that is so small and fragile that the people who are in it are probably behind at times too. I’ve got nothing against it all, it’s just kind of interesting how I’m not really a part of it. I’m well into my fourth year here, and though I’ve got my work up around town, and nationally recognized in magazines and books…it seems like I’m still not really known here. I’m ok with that though. I’ve always kind of kept a low profile without even trying to. I just get up and do my thing. And as a designer I don’t really have to show my physical face…though, I guess I do expose many faces of myself through the work. But, that’s left up to subjective interpretation. Anyway, It would be detrimental for the city if they had to watch me give the six o’clock news every night. 04) Your paintings and illustrations seem to feature a lot of animals. Is this a personal interest of yours? My most vivid memories/experiences have all involved animals in some way. Growing up on a farm extremely helped me pass the time. I was never bored. There was always a new adventure and animals played a major role in my life. I have too many random incidents and stories to tell (and I do not want to take up all of the indie workshop server space). However, one of the things that had a major role in my life was a dead animal backpack that my grandmother made for me. It was denim and lined with plastic for easy cleanup. Very quite brilliant and I wish I still had it. Sadly though, I think it was tossed for stinky reasons some time ago. I don’t really think a lot about the animals depicted in my work. A lot of times when I work it’s like a “Choose Your Own Adventure”. Things just keep building until they are complete, or they just kind of happen. Hardly ever do I consciously make a decision to draw an animal unless I truly need one. Once I had a thought of doing a Noah’s Ark-like tribute. Perhaps I’ll jump on the boat this instant. The best thing I’ve done since I was a child, depicts a lonely handicapped water buffalo that I brought to life while on hold with the phone company. Sadly though, precious Mortimer was stolen at an exhibition…and more so, I did not have any copies, slides, or scans…nor can I even begin to reproduce him. He is sadly missed each day. Hopefully he will come back to me, and justice will reign on the poor soul(s) who cheated me. If I do really start thinking about animals…which you have gotten me to do… well, apart from animals adapting to man and invention, I think about how they haven’t really changed much (at least from my unscholared animal knowledge). I find their need for survival and reproduction so much more intelligent and superior than ours. Sometimes I sit and wonder what my voice sounds like in an animal’s ears…or what their thoughts are about me. I also think about the beast in man…that constant wrestle. And if I could be an animal, I’d perhaps be a centaur with dust mops as hind legs with a cookie dangled in front of my crooked teeth. However, most centaurs prefer to romp naked, and I would not be comfortable with that. 05) Personally, I’m interested in how an artist’s childhood has influenced their creative output, particularly Midwesterners. How do you think your life so far has inspired your work? While developing in my toddler and grade school bedrooms/art classes, I really enjoyed that head-to-hand doodling and scribbling…that awkward imagery, in a world that was mine (and I still do). I think that those glorious and beautiful naive drawings and things that we all did…and more importantly, our young ways of thinking…that stuff is the real meat and potatoes of life and has a higher value of truth and purity than most professional art and design, business and so-ons. Growing up on a farm in the Midwest definitely played a major role in my artistic development. It’s so interesting because I don’t know where I got my artistic jeans from. There are very few artists in my collective family tree, that I know of. As I extend those jeans in design form, my siblings are too in their own ways…my younger brother is a musician, my older brother works at Disney World and my sister has a young child of her own, so I guess she is going through all of that art and discovery stuff right now too. We were definitely raised in a rural society, but it’s almost like we never finished growing on that branch in some regards. I feel that in some weird way a mold was kind of broken. I don’t know how it happened. It’s not like we were gifted, considered golden or special by any means… we started as children like everyone else. We were always drawing or creating, every week we were into something new. My brothers and sister and I would always be in the sand box, yard, creek, timber, and bedroom, re-creating the places or things we had just visited and experienced: tractor pulls, theme parks, state fairs, museums, sporting events, cities, movies, television…you name it we framed it. I don’t think my parents ever really put a cap on our creativity or with what we could or couldn’t do, even with movies and television programming. I can remember always watching cartoons and creative movies and tv shows…sometimes violent and filthy ones. Always playing war, building forts and tree houses, drawing WWII battle scenes with my dad, dragging dead animals into the yard with the dogs, even hunting at a young age. Even in high school, when everyone else my age was moving on with dating, going out…the typical stuff, I managed to continue to hold onto a large chunk of my childhood. Sometimes I would rather spend my nights and free time drawing or researching in my room…hmmm, actually I haven’t really changed much. One of the little things growing up that I remember (and try to apply with life) is how some of the kids had the giant boxes of crayons (you know, the box that had fifty different colors or something ridiculous like that?). Well, I always had the small pack and I knew it took more than a bunch of colors or a name brand to get me where I personally wanted to go. I could go on and on about my childhood (short snippets of it can be read on my website). More importantly, I and my siblings were raised in a good home. We were taught right from wrong and we knew our limits. At times we certainly weren’t the best kids, but my parents gave us everything they could. I am very thankful for my upbringing (Thanks Mom and Dad), and I appreciate it more and more the older I get. It’s funny because when I was in high school there was a hunger in me that wanted to get out of that rural environment so bad…but, now that I’m older, it’s nice to to go back to the farm. I think that someday I would like to live on a farm, but I would want to be a little bit closer to a larger city. Perhaps I’ll even get a chicken or two. Anyway, it’s not that I thought I was a great artist as a child/young adult…I just enjoyed it. However, when I finally decided to pursue a future in art and I got to the point when I started recognizing for myself what “real” drawing and “real” design was, I realized that my skills lacked (or, at least I thought they did). This I especially found out with my first couple of years in college. It was like starting over. At times I didn’t think all of this was meant for me. It was really discouraging and I fell behind a bit. It wasn’t until my third year, after finally getting the strength to take illustration classes, that I really started getting comfortable with myself again. I really started “getting it” and learning how to apply myself to “it”. I finally started discovering things about myself again. It was such a crucial moment in my life. I was like a kid again and having fun with it…actually getting something out of it and not just doing it for a passing grade. From there I stopped wrestling with my drawing self, and with a few other parts of myself. Through the more recent years I’ve also found my eyes popping-in-love with Folk Art, Graffiti, Polish Posters, Push Pin Studios, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Saul Steinberg, Cy Twombly, Paul Klee, Joan Miro…I could go on and on. However, it seems that so many kids really find their sense of design smell by picking other people’s noses. They may be really good at it, but hand-me-downs can only get you so far before they begin to fall apart. I think it is great to study others, maybe even borrow a piece of yarn or two. Everyone does it, everyone has their influences and certain kings ‘n’ wings in their own design heavens. But, it can be dangerous if crucial development doesn’t take place on a personal level. I’m not saying that you have to be one-hundred-percent fresh, or have to go a certain route…that’s near impossible, nothing is completely original anymore. However, it’s putting your own touch on it…a thumb print…a soul. That is what gets me off the couch to do this. If I couldn’t find myself in my own work, learn more about myself, and really get my hands dirty, then I would take a scoop shovel to all of it ( and roast a hot dog or two). Somedays it’s like learning to walk again…or Indian arrowhead hunting…or plucking fatted ticks from the farm dog and squishing them with a stick…or studying for a fifth grade spelling test when the words were starting to get a bit more challenged…or stressing over who to take to the prom, when you honestly don’t want to attend…but you end up going and having a good time anyway. So, I’m a believer in everything that has made up my life has brought me to this point in this here interview. I don’t think I’m explaining all of this in the exact way that I want to…but it is close, and foremost I trust you “get it”. Thank you for your valuable time, patience and showing interest in me and my work. Spread the good word. Now, get to work! -djg

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 7 years ago

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My life story, Part 42

I was beginning to have a poor attitude towards society in general. I had always been a little off, a girl who walked around imagining things that weren't there, dazing off, obsessing over small interests, talking to myself just a little. I had been bullied in small ways, belittled by teachers and abused by my family, but I had more or less kept this sense of innocence about me. I think late 2004 was the year that I became resentful. I used to keep a journal for instance, and I would chronicle the lives of my fellow students, noting if they had had a rough time that I had noticed, or if they were dating someone. I never dehumanized anyone, no matter who ridiculous or mean to me they were as a person. This was starting to change around then. I would see society as this towering feeling of oppression, and the people around me as one choreographed mass of human-tools, sucking up whatever was given to them, be it the top 20 radio hits, television shows, what people wore or dressed like, religion, political parties. It seemed homogeneous and empty to me now, and people around me were smiling slaves working for whatever force it was that Zack had always told me about. It was baffling to me that I had once been somewhat taken in. I had never of course succeeded in fitting in because I was already been too weird to belong to these people truly, but I had more or less gone through my entire life unquestioning.

It was hard for me to smile. I truly felt alone and opposed to almost everything around me as I walked down the halls. There was a thick skin between me and everyone else. I had been shamefully open with high school jocks who had always looked to making me perform my silly ideas out in the open. I had always trusted that the world made sense, your friends were really your friends, society was mostly good and also not worth thinking about, and the latest fad was popular because of it's merit alone. Now I was guarded, and slightly on the attack if anyone intruded my space, and willing to tear anything apart to find something not to like about it. I suffered from black and white thinking, and a need to dismiss people, places, things and ideas without truly studying them. The things that were good were almost religious to me in nature, my aesthetic taste had transcended to a moral objective truth. The bad was corrupting, evil and by it's very existence, an insult to me personally and everything I loved and found worthy of defending. I didn't see a lot of middle ground.

As I am much older now, I know my way of thinking at the time was largely due to fear and a lack of trust. I was beginning to develop a set of defense mechanisms, and one of those defense mechanisms was a very oversized ego about my own opinions and what I liked and what moved me being better than the fake feelings that were sold to the masses. I didn't think I was great or anything personally – as I was very insecure in all reality, and I would not say that it really developed into true narcissism in the DSM sense. I was giving myself certainty I believe. I was setting up an enemy to confront my own pain really. The modern world was too confusing and I was rejecting it in some way to embrace a cultish tribal feeling against the rest of the world as a whole. The enemy was some force that I didn't understand. It seemed to dictate the lives of every seeming adult I had ever known, and every aspect of the society I lived in, and yet it didn't have a face. Zack of course, in his cliché' things he had read or heard called it The New World Order. So I blindly clung to that feeling of an impending need to cling to the art I held dear, in much the same way a Christian might cling to their faith and be willing to die for it.

The only person that I emotionally felt open to was Zack. And I was bent on keeping him around. But I had chased him away. I had some luck with him after I had used Noah to make him jealous and then changed my mind, but in a sense he never quite sat at the lunch table with us. I remember one day quite vividly. Zack and the rest of us had snuck into the small seldom used basketball court. Zack had taken his shoes off. He was talking about love, and about how loving people was the one thing that the freemasons couldn't stop us doing. He talked about how he had this deep painful and profound love for everything in the entire world. I admired him, and wished I could be more like him. He somehow convinced me to take off my shoes and hippie dance with him. And then he told me, looking me straight in the face, that 'Everyone deserves to be loved, Renee'. I really felt blown away by this statement. It kind of tore down the defenses I was making. And it felt good, even for a moment, to escape from the inner prison I was living in. The notion that everyone deserved love rehumanized everyone. The hordes of mindless jocks and popular girls no longer seemed like empty shells, but uncertain souls trying their best to maneuver and often stumbling through life trying to find meaning and love in some form just as I was. Of course, Zack was also the same person who told me that the entire school had been replaced by robot replicas. I had never bought into it, much as it seemed right to agree with whatever Zack believed. So I cannot entirely verify that Zack knew what he was really talking about. But I held onto that statement, and for many years of my life, I think it kept me sane, and I held it near to my heart, like a psychological locket I wore under my clothes.

There was also a day where Zack introduced me to a very strange and odd technique for 'waking yourself up' when you were beginning to feel like you were dying inside and becoming 'one of them'. He walked out of the school, ran and leaped as high in the air as he could and forced himself to land on his knees. He threw his entire body into it. His knees were scraped and bloody and stung. At first I was hesitant, but I took a deep breath and did the same thing. We must have looked insane to onlookers. We started doing it over and over again till our knees were bloody. Sarah tried it but didn't care for being in pain, and Samantha probably thought we were morons. There was something addictive about the pain of jumping and falling. You were throwing yourself to the winds, using yourself as a weapon and at the same time accepting that you were your own weapon. The stinging pain was surprising and addictive. Both of us had bloodied knees by the end. There were times when I wondered if Zack was trying to start a cult. He talked about the world very much like a cult leader at times, and liked creating barriers between the world and a small following.

Ava showed up midfall one random day. She now had a license and wanted to drive around. She took me in her car and instantly put on Manic Monday by The Bangles and driving the car in sharp circles till we were both sick. Typical Ava. We were all mad about the war in Iraq, but none of us understood why. It just seemed like something an evil corrupt group of powerful men decided on arbitrarily. Honestly, I was mad for the sake of being mad. I didn't care about war on a grand scale, nor could I really comprehend it. I just felt strangely against it at the time. Ava was probably more aware of what was happening than I was. She had a friend named Emily with her, who was a quiet mousy girl. Ava, Sarah and I got in her new vehicle. She bragged about her never ending gas card. She could basically drive around however she liked, with nothing stopping her. We got in her car, and throughout the afternoon, went through our town, and all the neighboring towns looking out for Support Our Troops magnets. I guess we felt that stealing these magnets was the ultimate act of defiance against the government. I think we stole twenty or more. The only time any of us got caught was when Emily got caught. They called her to come to the car, and she got chewed out. But she was small and mousy and they chastised her but left her alone.

In history class one day, one of the classes I paid no attention in still, I was randomly called upon in front of the class to explain what I thought what the government was for. I immediately told everyone that the government was there to push people down and make them subservient and submissive to the real masters of the world. Mr. Bradley looked at me surprised. He told me I was wrong, but seemed amused overall. The rest of the class looked at me like I was crazy. At some point, a preppy girl named Mary stood up and explained that people like me didn't belong in America. She said that if I didn't like America, she would like to see what they would do to me in Saudi Arabia. I was annoyed, but I didn't get much of an opportunity to defend myself. But this was by and large how people in the school felt about me. If I didn't like it, they would just assume that I disappear.

At this point in my life, I was very invested in my sort of self-righteous atheism. I think this is probably fairly common with first-year atheists in middle and high school. It wasn't enough to have my own personal developed sense of the world – I had to make sure others knew they were wrong in their faith. I still have retained many of the beliefs I had back then, but honestly, half of my reasons for not believing in a higher power were more based on a mistrust for church, and an incredibly limited historical look at Christianity specifically. I knew next to nothing about Islam, Judaism, any of the beliefs of Asia. My thinking was so all or nothing in those days that I scoffed at anything that didn't hold up to my version of reality, or didn't seem obvious to me. Basically, I was beginning to turn into Ayn Rand, though I didn't know who she was at the time. This is why, in the present, I kind of understand why some people gravitate towards objectivist thinking, towards believing in 100% free will, anarcho-capitalism, and a more traditional libertarianism (I was never a tea-party or Obama is a Muslim type of person). I have retained nearly nothing of this former belief system of mine, and I chock it up more to having to personally try to rationalize what I had personally grown up with. You don't want to believe that the world has failed you, or that the people in your life have let you down. There is a strange satisfaction in believing that you are 100% in control of your own destiny, that your life doesn't belong to anyone else but you – unaffected by society or anyone around you, and that if everyone behaved as free and openly selfish creatures than there might be something honorable to derive from that.

The truth about it was that I was actually dealing with a combinations of realizations about the world, and an enormous amount of emptiness and grief. It was easier and more favorable for me at the time to see the world as an eat or be eaten kind of world, where my value was only as good as the amount of my own dreams that I could make happen. It was easier for my to divorce myself from being a victim in any way. It also made it a lot easier for me to judge other people and condemn them when they did and said things I didn't agree with. It was a way to keep myself guarded from trying to love and understand others. And honestly, the only thing that I held dear that I kept an open mind about was that one time Zack and I hippie danced and he told me that everyone deserved to be loved. It undid the belief, but I couldn't seem to live on the day to day with that understanding. It's a tall order for anyone to buy into for one, and so much easier to live in a world where you can dismiss the pain of others as being self made.

So in history class, I sometimes, in a very arrogant manner, would question and harrass Mr. Bradley, about his Christianity. He was of the belief that the world was only 6000 years old. He went to church every Sunday and had always been very religious. It was obnoxious on my own part. I wasn't trying to learn anything new, as much as I was demonstrating that I was smarter than him, and could mentally overpower him. I tried to tell him that religion was invented for people like him to be ruled over. I at times accused him of being a puppet of those in power. I mocked him, and eventually made jokes that he was secretly cheating on his wife to date a man. It was incredibly rude of me. He took it well all things considered. I eventually pissed him off though, and he called me up to his desk one day and told me to knock it off. Which I definitely had coming. It would have been one thing had I paid attention in class and known to question what was being taught in that class. I could have used our lessons in history to question his logic on bigger things, in a respectful manner that would have given us both something to take home and think about in a bigger context. But attacking him because of his religion, however scientifically in the dark his beliefs were, was really messed up on my part.

I still was babysitting more than ever. I started seeing my position in a different way however. For the last several years, I had helplessly fallen into a sense of distress, self pity and resignation about what my parents forced upon me every weekend. But at fifteen I started seeing my position as a blessing in disguise. One of the realizations that came to me was that Allison and David were people. I hadn't really treated them like they were, but I was beginning to clearly see that now. Secondly, I felt excited that I might have the potential to mold them into cool people. I looked over my empty childhood, mostly siphoning through bad music, movies, styles, searching for something meaningful and falling short always – lucky when I found a small seed of something valuable in the garbage of the mainstream. I had no one to guide my thoughts or beliefs. My father and mother didn't think people had many layers and didn't acknowledge any of us as individuals outside of their understanding. They had no concern or curiosity for what any of us kids believed or what we felt about things personally, or how they impacted us. My father had some strong opinions and he would often tell us about it, but this was very much a one sided discussion. I started seeing myself as being responsible for improving Allison and David's life.

I also started seeing this as a power grab, mainly against my father. He had belittled me and pushed me down in any way he could and made me feel like nothing. There were elements to how he knocked me down that I would never recover from, but I could start taking the power back in increments and he would not even know. His kids could slowly become decreasingly his children and more my own. All I really had to do was befriend them and gain their respect. Before this time, I had never been able to appreciate or differentiate the difference between fear and true respect. For my father, he saw no difference. For both of them really – mother and father, this rule held/holds true. They would do what they could get away with. They had no respect for anyone save themselves.

But what they did seem to respect was anything that put fear into them. And likewise, when either of them wanted to feel loved or validated, they would do something mean. They were criminal in this sense of the word. And it was strange, but even with all the influence they had over me, even underneath my own power trips, I had more class and benevolence towards the world. I saw the beauty in being kind when there was nothing to be gained. I could see the value in being patient and open – even when I was having difficulties getting by without my own personal closed off nature. Obviously, I still retained some of their opportunism, but I didn't generally see my friends and family as tools, even when I considered myself to be some kind of libertarian. It was strange, but there was something about that previous year that had really opened my eyes. I understood how to love people because that person was who they were and not because they offered me anything. I appreciated what pain had taught me and the finer details of what it meant to be a person. I accept that the world wasn't meant to be easy. And unlike them, I quite defiantly decided to live my life with a sense that I was going to try to be honorable.

I also saw the value of making friends out of both Allison and David so that I could have friends. I wanted to include them in my struggles, and perhaps this was a little selfish, but given they were growing up in the same homes that I was growing up in, it felt necessary to start seeing the three of us as being able to help one another out in some way. I wanted to reach them emotionally and make them understand me. I didn't want to admit it, but even with Sarah, there were things I just never felt understood for. She didn't seem to care about anything. She didn't get mad, or feel motivated. She loved dreaming about being a rock star, but what I wanted to see was anger and passion and I saw very little of that. Sarah had this void in her personality, and she often times would cave to whatever felt easiest. She was more interested in being comfortable than making her dreams come true, and she wasn't as readily ready to fight for a cause like I was. It bothered me, but at the same rate, she seemed to understand me in a way that people can't understand about themselves. Like, she seemed to perceive when I was going to feel hungry, or how I was feeling even when I myself didn't quite know. But in other ways, she simply didn't seem to understand. And that's what I felt Allison and David could be good for.

I started reading to them every night. I started to read A Child Called It one day to them after school. I remember reading it in one go. I knew the book, having read it a year previous, and the story was very painful and sad. Allison and David's faces were both streaked with tears by the end of the evening. Especially David, who was particularly sensitive. I warned them about never trusting authority or the government in any way. This did little to no good naturally, since I didn't know what the heck I was talking about and believed every website I came across that had some conspiracy theory to spread. A lot of it was lies. Some of it was downright detestable. I really just didn't know. In an attempt to 'see through the bullshit' I was myself just as naive as I had been before, and maybe even more so.

One thing that was most memorable was my starting a home tape of something I called The Clown Show. Allison had this karaoke machine with a tape deck in it. It was the same one used to tape I'm A Big Man that summer. There were knobs that I could control my voice with. I distorted my voice to where I sounded like this clown voice. It wasn't quite male, nor was it quite female. It sounded like me and it didn't. I was able to create this weird echo, and I was this character, a clown, who ran this fucked up insane talk show that you could listen to on a weird broadcast that was hard to get on an AM station. I had this insane chanting audience, and I made these awful dissonant jokes that I would laugh at. I wanted it to be creepy and upsetting, but not like an overt and obvious killer clown in a cliché sense. It reminded me an awful lot of what Tim and Eric sometimes was if you watched Adult Swim late at night. Or more specifically, it reminds me an awful lot like the work of this really bizarre lo-fi musician that has been around since the 70's named R. Stevie Moore. I really could never explain that to anyone unless they listened to it, and it's incredibly unlikely that anyone would know unless they heard. There is a lot of random singing, random vintage commercials, psychotic sounds. Very strange tape music.

Allison and David were several characters. I had David make these weird impromptu car commercials, Allison would sell soap in a soft voice. Then I would have them be guests on the show. I would interview them for the audience, and they would come up with these insane answers that they perceived adults would say. David was Billy Idol, except he clearly wasn't. And Allison was Britney Spears. Then they would sing a song that Allison or David made up on the top of their head that they perceived a musician like Billy Idol or Britney Spears would sing. I made these tapes, and I would show them to people. Most of the time people said it made them feel really empty, disturbed and slightly nauseated. They were funny, and horrifying at the same time.

Zack and I were just starting to get close again. It had only been about six weeks or so since school had started. I had managed to drive him away, had to contend with his girlfriend for awhile, and then had to win him back. I seemed to be doing it. I came to this sense of calm about him. I just had to accept that I was still very much in love with him and always would be. I wasn't going to worry about the future, or worry about the attention I was being given. I was simply going to love him, for whatever that was worth. I had to forgive him. I had to forgive everyone. I was not going to give up my own sense of identity, but I wasn't going to try to hurt him to prove something petty to myself about who I was. I was going to expect nothing, and just be happy to have him around.

And then one day we were in health class. He sat next to me and scooted his desk up next to mine. Earlier that day he had come to me and explained that there was a school assembly last hour. He wanted to make sure that I was sitting right next to him. I was very happy. It felt like maybe things were going back to normal. So in health class, we were just waiting for the bell to ring and the intercom to sound so we could go to the gymnasium together. I remember people looking over at us strangely, perhaps judging us as the class freaks, trying to figure out if we were dating. I felt this soft sort of confidence inside.

Then the intercom came on and we all assembled to the gym. As Zack and I were walking together, Cody Smith – Ava's ex (It might be worth mentioning that the Smith household left him in Kendrick even though they had moved), came up to Zack and told him to come with him. Zack looked at me, and then looked at Cody. He smiled and told me to save a spot for him. I felt really rattled and confused. I went into the gym and saved a spot for him, but as everyone piled in, Zack didn't show up. I looked around. And then I spotted him, though just barely. He and Cody, were running out the back door by the boy's locker room, going out the secret way through the weight lifting room. Zack had been quickly convinced to skip the assembly. And he had forgotten all about me. And I had this really bad feeling that he was never coming back to school again.

Two weeks went by, and he didn't come to class. There was no word of him at all. Samantha knew nothing. Soup hadn't heard anything. I kept telling myself that he was just skipping for a few weeks like he had last time, but something about this felt a lot different. For one, he had been seen skipping the assembly, and if he returned they were waiting and ready to put him in several days of suspension. So why would he even want to come back? Secondly, he had just turned sixteen and he was legally able to leave school now. He never liked school. He liked playing music and smoking pot all day. So why would he want to be here?

I had troubles smiling. Noah was now talking to me all the time. He was friendly enough and I liked him. But he was incredibly engaged in trying to get my attention now. He wanted me to read his Invader Zim comic books, and I didn't really get into them. He wanted everyone to listen to Ween. I didn't like Ween that much. He wasn't pushy or anything. But he bothered me for some reason. And I mostly just missed Zack. I started comparing Zack to Noah, and finding that Noah annoyed me. I felt like Zack had been taken away from me and been replaced by this other person. I didn't want Noah. I wanted Zack. Eventually, one day at lunch break, as I was sitting in the parking lot, Zack and his father drove up unexpectedly in his father's red pickup. His dad didn't look too happy. But he was there to sign Zack out of school. Zack was quitting for good. He ran to us briefly, but his father didn't want to wait around. He was only able to explain what was happening, before he was called back to the truck and they drove away.

I was despondent and I felt empty. It was one thing when I had felt betrayed, or broken. But this was another thing altogether. I was somehow going to have to make it through life without him. Somehow, a big portion of my life had just floated away, and left this big empty space. I avoided everyone around me. I was short tempered with Sarah when she asked what was wrong. Noah came up to me at one point and offered me chewing gum and tried to be nice to me in a very Meyers-Briggs INTP kind of way. I took it resentfully. And yet, the world went on, and for the most part nobody paid too much attention. Nobody really seemed to understand what I was going through. And I had set it up that way. I hadn't been honest about how I felt. Which was of course what kept me safe, but also kept me trapped.

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trigafy · 8 years ago

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Who is Using Golf Hypnosis for Golf Improvement? Thinking about all this, I just wish a few other top golfers would admit to using hypnosis for golf improvement then I wouldn’t have to keep talking about Tiger Woods. Come on Phil Mickelson, it’s obvious you’re using self-hypnosis; you couldn’t … News story posted on 2017-04-03T12:07:24 It’s official: I declare it an Herculean task to attempt to diet (or even just limit the damage) during the holiday season. Another day, another party. It seems my life consists of an endless round of social gatherings characterised by endless amounts of irresistible temptations of the food and drink category.

In desperation, I have devised some new strategies for weight loss. One of them is actually relatively effective, although it does cause a few raised eyebrows. I have decided to have some of whatever I feel like, but only have a couple of bites of each temptation. Anyway, most of the taste is in the first to bite, thereafter eating is a mechanical process.

Many of us are brought up from childhood where we have been told they we are not allowed to leave the table until we finished all the food on our plate. While this was done generally with the best intentions in mind it is not the way that we should look at eating. You don’t need to eat everything that is on your plate.

So I have a bite or two of whatever is on my plate and leave the rest. I then spend at least 20 calories re-assuring my hostess that there is nothing wrong with her food; it’s just that I’ve had enough. If you’ve had enough to eat you should stop whether there is more food available or not. These days there is no need to get rid of food as excess food can go into the refrigerator where you can eat it tomorrow.

Don’t feel obliged to eat all the food that is placed before you when you’re eating out. You should only eat to feel comfortable and not feel full. If you are constantly finding there is additional food left when you are satisfied then you need to reduce the quantities that you serve yourself. Where possible put the food on your plate that you intend to eat at any particular meal and then take that plate with the food to the table. This will encourage you to put limits on the amount of food that you will eat and is one of the most effective stategies for weight loss.

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You don’t want to end up in Jack’s shoes: When he reached the grand old age of 88, Jack and his wife died in a car accident. He and his wife of the last 60 years were in excellent health, due to her obsession with healthy eating and exercising.

When they reached the pearly gates, St. Peter took them to their mansion that had been fitted with a state-of-the-art kitchen, marble bath suite complete with Jacuzzi and power shower, pool and landscaped garden bordering the golf course.

As they “oohed and aahed” the old man asked Peter how much all this was going to cost.

“It’s free,” Peter replied, “this is Heaven.” Next they went out back to survey the championship golf course. They would have golfing privileges everyday and each week the course changed to a new one representing the great golf courses on earth.

Jack asked, “And what are the green fees?” Peter’s replied, “This is heaven, it’s free.”

Next they went to the club house and saw the lavish buffet lunch with the cuisines of the world laid out. “How much does a standard meal cost here?” asked Jack. “Don’t you understand yet? This is heaven, it is free!” Peter replied with some exasperation.

“Well, where are the low fat and low cholesterol buffet?” the old man asked timidly.

Peter lectured, “That’s the best part…you can eat as much as you like of whatever you like and you never get fat and you never get sick. This is Heaven.”

With that the old man lost his temper, threw down his hat and stomped on it, shrieking wildly.

Peter and his wife both tried to calm him down, asking him what was wrong. The old man looked at his wife and said, “This is entirely your fault! If it weren’t for your obsession with healthy living, I could have been here ten years ago!”

Dr de Clermont is an experienced medical doctor, a certified NLP practitioner and hypnotherapist. She is the author of several weight loss articles. She firmly advocates self hypnosis for weight loss at www.hypnosis-for-diets.com. Subscribe to her Gorgeous Gourmet newsletter to get the “Secrets of Weight Loss through Hypnosis” report FREE. Her weight loss ebooks are at www.browse-ebooks.com

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