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denimbex1986 · 10 months ago

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'How do you approach a film that is constantly about intimacy? This isn't just a play on words, relationships of closeness are, if you can put it that way, the central concern of this film. The film formulates a very fundamental distance as well as an implicit question in its title: If we are all strangers to each other, how can we get close? Especially since the images quickly make it clear that the strangeness here is meant to be universal. It includes you, “All of Us” means you remain a stranger even to yourself.

The central image for this alienation of one another and oneself is a very generic one, an almost empty block of high-rise buildings on the edge of London, over which All of Us Strangers lets the sun rise in its first image. One of the two residents is Adam (Andrew Scott). He writes scripts, smokes weed, orders food, lies on the sofa and has no friends. Every now and then he stands on the lawn in front of his block and stares up at Harry's (Paul Mescal) window. Adam, in turn, twenty years younger than Adam, stands in front of Adam's door one evening, obviously drunk as usual. On the second attempt he is allowed to come in, the two kiss and sleep together. But it's not possible to stay overnight yet.

All of Us Strangers could take many paths from this point: a light romance film, for example, that simply takes for granted that its couple is formed by two men. Or relationship drama, passion, jealousy and so on. Director Andrew Haigh's script, which is (very) loosely based on a novel by Taichi Yamada, then takes another, unexpected turn. Adam visits his hometown, a dreary small town. In front of a supermarket he meets a man about his age who takes him home. At this point the film goes off course and questions the trust of the viewer. The man, played by Jamie Bell, is Adam's father. His mother (Claire Foy) is waiting for him in the terraced house. The two are very happy, they obviously haven't seen each other for a long time. And just for the consistency and precision with which Andrew Scott transforms his character into an eternal son in front of his parents' eyes, without appearing childlike, the man should be showered with every film award available.

The scenario naturally creates irritation, prepared only by the gentle drone music by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch. Adam is about the same age as his parents. The two of them don't know what he does for a living or that he lives in London. Nevertheless, there is no bitterness about the long absence of the prodigal son. They don't yet know that he became a screenwriter and made it to the big city. Adam says goodbye and drives back to his lonely apartment building.

Unreliable storytelling creates distance between the screen and audience bodies, and that is important in a film that is primarily about closeness. The denouement follows quickly, the house Adam visits is a haunted house, and the infatuation between him and Harry, which perhaps becomes love, occurs in parallel with his journey into the unresolved past. Things need to be clarified in the hope that the strangeness to oneself and others can be further dissolved through contact with the dead, which still has a hold on you.

The parents died in a car accident when the child was twelve years old. Now it is the existential things that should be discussed in contact with the ghosts. This is where All of Us Strangers gives its characters and the audience nothing. Adam wants to know why his father didn't come into his room to comfort him when the boys at school stuck his head in the toilet again so he could forgive him. And how his parents would react if they lived long enough to find out their son was gay. The son is also given one last Christmas, with Pet Shop Boys music (“Always On My Mind,” of course), and at some point you get the feeling that Andrew Haigh wants to wring his audience out of his pictures.

But the film never relies on pushing the affect button, but always wants to know something, just like its character. There is still a lot of crying, on and in front of the screen, tears flowing by the gallon. Adam explains to his mother that gays are now allowed to get married and raise children, it's not like it used to be. He explains to Harry that he doesn't like the word "queer". All of Us Strangers is also about different generations of gay life. Adam is twenty years older than his friend, and here too they are the ghosts of the past. Even though biopolitics today is gradually organized more liberally, the experiences (here: bullying, parental ignorance, small town confinement and probably a lot more that goes unsaid) continue to live on in the bodies as fear, narrowness, inhibition and lack of relationships.

Parallel to these ghosts, All of Us Strangers tells the story of how two strangers, who are also strangers to themselves, come closer to each other. The camera repeatedly allows Adam and Harry's faces and bodies to fill the entire screen. The scenes with the parents are constructed differently. Andrew Haigh captures the emergence of closeness between two people, as he did in Weekend and the series Looking , which he authored , with caution and tenderness in snapshots that still do not negate dirt and lust. The suspicion that credible images, language and body presentations beyond the compulsory heterosexual gender matrix are now at least easier to find in queer cinema or can be constructed with the camera is very apparent when watching his films.

Despite all the death and misery , All of Us Strangers doesn't weigh you down. For the people in Haigh's melodrama cinema, the flow of tears is never an escalation and drama, but rather a releasing, centering and, last but not least, a medium of knowledge. As we flow into one another on all levels (tears, body, past and present), the disruptive strangeness gradually dissolves. That's the promise of this film, which of course doesn't end well in the end.'

#All of Us Strangers #Andrew Haigh #Andrew Scott #Paul Mescal #Taichi Yamada #Claire Foy #Jamie Bell #Always on My Mind #Pet Shop Boys #Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch #Weekend #Looking

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childofthenight2035 · 6 years ago

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Noctivagant

A/N: Requested a damn long time ago by @deadlykai, even she probably forgot. Sorry I took so long. Heh.

Pairing: Jeon Jungkook x gn!Reader

Summary/Prompt: You can’t sleep and you don’t want to let your housemate know.

Genre: Fluff

Word Count: 1.3k

Warnings: Insomnia, sleeping pills

Noctivagant: Night-wandering

Insomnia was the worst. It was only about at four o’clock in the morning that I would finally be able to fall asleep. I would be running on three and a half hours of sleep for the rest of the day. The tender skin under my eyes grew darker each day but I always covered them up before I left my room in the morning. Jungkook shouldn’t know. I couldn’t let him know.

I had met Jungkook in the early years of middle school and we bonded quickly over music and a strong dislike for a particular teacher whose name I still dared not invoke. After high school, both of us found a cheap apartment close to our college because he really didn’t want to dorm and lose his personal space. We split the rent and bills every month, always abiding by the rule: “I couldn’t care less where the money comes from, on the thirtieth, your half should be on the coffee table.”

Jungkook was a month or so younger than me, and my parental instinct always kept me from discussing my problems with him, choosing instead to take care of his. Something he had been quick to notice. He often dragged me out of my room to make me talk when he felt like something was disturbing me. But I couldn’t let him know about this.

I lay in bed, staring at my phone, scrolling through Tumblr because I couldn’t sleep. My eyes briefly flicked towards the time in the top corner of the screen. 3:36 am. I sighed. What was even happening to me? I hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in weeks and I was too scared to use sleeping pills. I’d given up.

Unable to lie there any longer, I clambered unsteadily out of bed and silently padded to the door. I opened it slowly, trying hard to not let it creak. I cursed myself for not oiling it like I was supposed to. I managed to open a crack large enough for me to slip through.

I trudged into the kitchen, desiring a grilled cheese sandwich, a comfort food for me. I opened a cupboard and brought out the bread, but when I opened the fridge for the cheese, I found the box empty.

“Why not throw it away if it’s empty?” I hissed, tossing it into the trash, disappointed. I slid to the floor in the cramped kitchen, close to tears for such a silly reason.

“Y/N?”

I mentally groaned, hanging my head so he wouldn’t see my face.

“What are you doing on the floor?”

“Go back to sleep, Jungkook,” I said sharply.

“No, are you okay?” I heard him shuffling uncertainly and then he knelt at my side. “Y/N.”

“I’m fine, Kookie,” I said, covering my face under the pretense of rubbing my eyes. “I couldn’t sleep. That’s all. Go back to bed.”

“You have an exam or something tomorrow?” he asked, concern in his sleepy voice.

“Why are you up?” I retorted, choosing to ignore his question.

“Your door,” he answered. “Why are you staring at the floor?” Before I knew what was happening, his hand seized my chin and forced my face upwards. I locked eyes with him. His face fell.

“What happened to you?” he questioned, voice hushed. I pushed his hand away.

“I can’t sleep.” I brushed hair away from my tired face.

“For how long?”

“A few weeks.”

He burst. After ranting about why haven’t you told me yet and you will never learn to ask for help, will you? he paused. “We’re going to get you some sleeping pills. Come on. Get up.”

“I’m not going to use those,” I said as he picked up a small bottle of pills at the supermarket. “I won’t. I won’t.”

“Shut up,” he said calmly, reading the back of the bottle. “You are if I say you are.”

“Kookie-“

“You want anything else?” he asked abruptly, dropping the plastic bottle into the shopping basket. “Or are we leaving?”

I stood there in defiance, lips curled in a pout. He crossed his arms, eyebrow raised. I sighed. “You finished the cheese. I wanted to make a sandwich.”

“Oh, that’s why you were devastated,” he said, chuckling to himself. “Come on then.”

“You want chocolate milk?” Jungkook asked me once I’d chosen a box of cheese slices and set it in the basket. I shrugged. “Well, I’m buying some.” He reached out for a carton. “Is there anything else?” I shook my head, still mad at him.

As we stood in the checkout aisle, my eyes wandered to my housemate. This was a side of him that I’d never seen before. The responsible, caring side. I was usually the one who looked after him. It was a nice change, being taken care of for once.

The streets were deserted. Hardly any cars passed on the road. Both of us walked back to the apartment silently, Jungkook swinging the grocery bag around. As we crossed under a streetlamp, the lights flickered. I gazed up at the sky. It was almost clear of clouds and I marvelled at the hundreds of stars I could see. My hand found Jungkook’s and I stopped, making him stop with me. He turned around to face me, confusion etched on his face.

“I’m really sorry, Jungkook-ah,” I spoke softly, pleadingly. “Please don’t be mad at me.” His hard expression softened.

“Hey, I’m not mad at you, Y/N,” he replied soothingly, stretching his arms out to pull me into a hug. “I get worried about you, okay? I just wish that you trusted me enough to share your feelings with me.”

I stiffened. “I do trust you, Kookie. I just…I didn’t want to…”

“To bother me?” He completed. “Y/N, you’re allowed to depend on people, you know? I care about you. I want you to bother me.”

I didn’t answer for a long time. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You’re okay now. I’m going to take care of you.” He pulled back and handed me the grocery bag. “Hold this.” I stared down at the bag he just handed me.

“What? Okay- whoa!” I yelped as he turned around, threw my arms around his neck and hoisted me up, his arms locked under my thighs. I scrabbled for stability, caught off guard by the sudden piggyback ride. “Kookie!”

He laughed, the sound unnaturally loud in the dead silence. He began walking again toward home, his strong arms supporting me. I lowered my head until my lips were near his ear. “Thank you, Jungkook.”

He squeezed my thighs and I swatted at him. “You better be thankful,” he remarked. “I paid for your cheese.”

“No, you didn’t,” I retorted. “My cheese is auto-generated.” I leant in closer again. “I love you so much, Jeon Jungkook. You are the only light in my dark, dark life.”

He scoffed. “You don’t even mean that.”

“But I do!” I exclaimed, feeling so much better. “Put me down and I’ll kiss you.”

He paused. “Really?”

“Yep.” He quickly set me down and faced me, eyes shining. “Close your eyes,” I demanded. He obeyed, wetting his lips. I suppressed a giggle. He looked so cute. I stood on tiptoe, pecked his cheek and darted away, towards the apartment building.

“Hey!” I heard him shout and I started to laugh. His footsteps thudded after me. I should have known that he was too quick. An arm grabbed mine and pulled me to his chest.

“You played me real dirty, Y/N,” he pouted. “I’m hurt.”

“Aww, poor Kookie,” I cooed, obviously teasing him.

His eyes darkened. “You don’t want to play that game, Y/N.”

“But what if I do?” I asked automatically. Where was this coming from?

He smirked and my heart melted. “Let’s just say, when I’m done with you, you won’t be needing those pills anymore.”

Hope you liked it.

(also why is Tumblr red underlined in Tumblr? I don’t get it)

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mint-sm · 8 years ago

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LOS CAMPESINOS! REVIEW/ANALYSIS: Sick Scenes

Note: I haven’t found a full album post video and some of the songs aren’t available on Youtube for me to cite like with my other reviews, sadly. Listen to it on Spotify or something lol

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So... that was a long time, wasn’t it? Not just the gap between my last review, but between albums. There was a four-year gap between “Sick Scenes” and the band’s last album, “No Blues,” a product that I could see some appeal in but was personally unsatisfied with, but I was still eager to hear another record from them. Unfortunately, we had to wait this long gap, since things have changed, and simply put: the band has grown up.

Not necessarily in just a literal or maturity-level sense, but the fact that the world we’ve been living in has kind of grown unkind to everyone in the last few years. Not only has the music scene the band was affiliated with been changing to something else that’s -- for the lack of better words -- kinda boring, and not only has it also become less profitable, with the band resigning to day jobs for a while (thank God for commemorative football jersey sales!), but this has been a long stretch of time where everyone’s gone much more weary, especially as the world starts bombarding you with crappiness.

Worrying about a quarter-life crisis, fighting physical and mental illnesses, watching all the things from your youth slowly crumble away while past generations trivialize and demean your current problems, watching all your current interests go to shit, and also becoming increasingly uneasy with how crappy and seemingly suicidal the world at large has become, especially with the US presidential election, the Brexit vote, and most importantly, Euro 2016 being largely terrible.

I bring this up because it finally seems to provide the backing for something I desperately missed from “No Blues”: Context. I’ve went over the musical issues I had with “No Blues” a bit more in-depth in my review of it, but lyrically and thematically, there was just a sort of vagueness and a lack of a definite focus that also really turned me off from liking it very much. “Sick Scenes,” however, feels like it’s much more of a return to form in that finally, we do have a more concrete approach to the album, in that we actually know what went behind its philosophy, and now there’s actually more to latch onto and relate to other than vaguely pretty, overly-precise and clean production.

ALL THESE / SICK SCENES PLAYED OUT IN MY MEMORY / WAKE UP / I'LL TELL YOU EVERYTHING HONESTLY /

The album has actually toned down a lot of that overly pristine mixing and production of “No Blues,” and there’s actually a lot more grit, texture as well as tightness to it. It’s not “Romance Is Boring”-levels noisy, but there is a certain rawness and thump to a lot of the instrumentation again; one standout thing is the snares and kicks like from the song “Sad Suppers,” which feel a bit more crackly, but also god-loads tighter, and in a way that actually has a sort of “dirty” quality to it that I’m a huge fan of for this type of music.

“Sick Scenes” has also been a step-up compositionally as well. The melodies feel a lot catchier, with many of the bangers feeling a lot faster and more driving than those in “No Blues,” and they tend to have a consistent or growing momentum to them that actually feel powerful. “Renato Dall’Ara (2008)” is an awesome opening track because of this, starting off with like these awesome “spiralling-down” backup vocals, a really catchy chorus and more definitive sonic evolution as it goes on, it’s just great (as of this writing, there’s now word this song’s getting a music video next week! Can’t wait!)

THEY WOULD PLAY MY REQUESTS AT THE GUESTLIST’S BEHEST / ANY DISCO ALL ACROSS TOWN / BUT THINGS CHANGE, NOW STELLA’S A LAGER / AND BOY SHE IS ALWAYS DOWNED /

Los Camp have even much improved most of their slower ballads, or at least their sort of “breather” tracks, which now actually have a lot more going for them musically and lyrically. “5 Flucloxacillin” and “The Fall of Home” are especially surprising since basically, praise heaven almighty, GARETH CAN ACTUALLY SING! Like I don’t know what the hell happened in these last 4 years, but holy god Gareth can actually pull of being gentle and melodic, and in a way that actually conveys a lot of emotion and isn’t boring, especially with the subject matter.

Like I said, “Sick Scenes” feels like much more of a step up from “No Blues” and even “Hello Sadness” in that it definitely feels more about actual definite things, but a lot of the mentalities that I did think could’ve made both of those two albums much more interesting than they ended up being are still present here. It took me a while to figure out what made it so different, but I think the early days of “Hold on Now, Youngster…” fell more along the lines of being more actively emotional and visceral, trying to thump these feelings of weirdly upbeat melancholia into your head, whereas things like “No Blues” and this album seem to want to treat it more playfully, look at it with contemplation and humility, trying to find a dryer sense of subtle wittiness to it.

In that sense, “Sick Scenes” feels like it’s sort of blending the best of both worlds by approaching the focused definition, viscerality and sound of the “Youngster” days, but mixing it with a much more self-reflective and mature philosophical method. It’s a reasonable approach for the album considering its subject matter and consistent sense of fond nostalgia, and while it does tread a bit more of older ground as a result, it feels a lot more comprehensive and less overly stuffed or boring, while giving a bit of a wink back to the days of old. Hell, “Renato Dall’Ara (2008)” seems to directly reference “Youngster,” not just with the general feel and attitude (and it’s snarky as hell and I love it), but also that title (hint hint, the “2008” in the title is NOT referencing the Renato Dall'Ara).

PICTURED READING KARL MARX BESIDE HIS PARENTS’ POOL / FACING RIDICULE HE BLEATED / “THAT DOESN’T MAKE ME RICH, NO WAY, / IT’S ONLY OUTDOOR AND IT ISN’T HEATED” /

Unfortunately, a bit of a strike against this more grown-up-approach is that it means some parts of the album fall into the same trap as with “No Blues,” in that sometimes the lyrics can get a little too witty for their own good, and can get a little too obsessed with esoteric referential wordplay rather than actual content or coherence. “For Whom the Belly Tolls” (couldn’t find a video for this) to me feels like one of the weaker links on the album, in that the music isn’t particularly dynamic nor all that catchy for me, and would be ultimately rather unremarkable if not for that spontaneous choral bridge at the halfway point... which to be honest, transitions AWESOMELY.

Also, there are just some occasionally “No Blues”-esque deadpan moments on this album, which again, I can totally find appreciation for, but for me tend to end up kind of samey-sounding and a little boring, especially later on the album with “A Litany/Heart Swells,” or “Got Stendhal’s.” I dunno what to really say about these tbh, not only do they just kinda get repetitive after a bit, but they also feel like retreads to stuff Los Camp’s already done before, like with the “Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time” from “Doomed” or “What Death Leaves Behind” from “No Blues.”

However, with all that said, just about every other song on the album has something to offer as I’d expect from Los Camp’s standards, in that the music and subject matters feel diverse and intricate, eliciting conflicting yet consistent feels, and I do mean “feels,” since while this album is mostly much more vibrant than these last few albums, it’s actually still very gloomy and impending at times. Honestly, while that cover art above is still that popular pastel-y pink color that I kinda hate, it actually does feel rather indicative of the album in a good way: This kind of vacant, slacking and tired, nearly zombie-like person that��s so utterly fed up with how life and the world is playing out that they just want to lay there in the middle of a supermarket like an idiot who’s been up all night thinking about how shitty the world is. It’s indicative, interesting, kinda bleak, but also really funny.

(IT SEEMS UNFAIR) TO BE A ROTTEN HORN OF PLENTY! / (IT SEEMS UNFAIR) TO BE CADAVER FOR A CURSE! / (IT SEEMS UNFAIR) TO BE AN OVERFLOW FOR EMPTY! / (IT SEEMS UNFAIR) TO TRY YOUR BEST BUT FEEL THE WORST! /

Tracks like “I Broke Up in Amarante” and “A Slow, Slow Death” manage to encapsulate a lot of complete and utter frustration in an incredibly bombastic and grand veneer. Even though they do feel like they’re about completely different EXACT subjects (which I’m pretty sure are the aforementioned Euro 2016 and Brexit, respectively), they manage to feel oddly cathartic, but in a weird, kind of restrained but still natural-feeling way. There are also a lot of references in the songs like with “No Blues,” but overall it doesn’t feel as overbearing with these tracks, since the lyrics feel like perfectly comprehensible metaphors as is, and I find them pretty charming and relatable, as well as accessible.

“Here’s to the Fourth Time” (couldn’t find a link for this one) is also pretty humorous but also kind of awesome, and it honestly feels like the closest the album gets to “Romance is Boring”’s sound. The melodies are pretty poppy and catchy and have like this sort of just “grooving” and textured flow and feel to them that I love, and the last third of this song goes onto like this really noisy but badass-sounding breakdown with looped drums, distorted guitars and vocals, but in addition to that, the lyrics manage to be probably the most charming on the record, in that obviously the situation is cringey as hell (it’s about sex, and sex in a Los Camp song can never end well) but also kind of awkwardly hilarious and sympathetic, especially given the context the bandmates, now being 30-something-year-olds contemplating their quarter-life crises.

“5 Flucloxacillin” and “The Fall of Home,” once again, do feel the most indicative of that mentality of “I’m so fucking done with this place”-ness, but they approach it in such unique ways to what you’d expect from typical Los Camp fare. “5 Flucloxacillin” is kind of like this livelier indie rock ballad, with again, Gareth’s great vocals, but it’s surprisingly more “mellow” than “gentle”: the vocals are smooth and lively, but there does sound like a bit of deep-seated resentment hidden as the lyrics go into the frustration and bitterness that one would have with taking a lot of medications for things like acne or depression, and growing up in a world of utter chaos while being shittalked to by the people who made it that way whilst undermining your problems, and how even though years have passed and you probably should’ve grown out of them… you still haven’t.

(Hint hint! This song is about baby-boomers being assholes! Do you like this song yet?)

AM I A PIGGY BANK OF OBSOLETE CURRENCY? / AN ORDER OF MERIT FROM COUNTRY KNOWN FOR TYRANNY? / ANOTHER BLISTER PACK POPS, BUT I STILL FEEL MUCH THE SAME / THIRTY-ONE AND DEPRESSION IS A YOUNG MAN'S GAME /

“The Fall of Home” takes a much more intimate approach to these subjects in a way that feels rather basic, but gut-wrenching. It’s a guitar ballad, and while this could’ve easily been boring, it just sounds so nice, with like these great piano and violin accompaniments, and Gareth’s gentle, almost kind of fragile-sounding but beautiful singing, basically listing all the miserable losses of everything you once loved, locally and nationally, going down to shit by simple virtue of time having passed by and the present not being kind to them. It manages to be the simplest, but most poignant track on the entire album, and is honestly probably one of Los Camp’s newest classics.

BATTERY DIES ON YOUR MONTHLY CALL / BUDGET CUT AT YOUR PRIMARY SCHOOL / ANOTHER FAMILY FRIEND FELL SICK / GAVE THE FASCISTS A THOUSAND TICKS /

The ending track, “Hung Empty,” is alright. It’s got some great flow to it and a very catchy chorus hook, and it ends in a way only Los Camp can really get away with, valiantly shouting “Feels like I've been waiting on it, nearly all my life, but what, if this is it now, what if this is how we die!?” in a way that almost feels defiant or daring. It’s a creditable finisher, but at the same time it kind of feels… expected, you know? It feels like a typical Los Camp finisher, but it’s also just kinda basic. It’s actually kind of a microcosm of the entire album for me: it’s good! But some parts of it feel like they’ve been done before.

Like I’ve said, this album does feel like a much more pleasing return to form for the band’s earlier works but approached with a more grown-up, more exposed-to-the-world and vaguely “doomed” mindset, and for the most part, it’s very compelling! It’s got some great songs, and its feel feels a lot more definite and impactful than their last albums, it’s just that there’s a bit of crows feet here and there, and it kinda feels like even with the new perspectives it explores, some of it feels a little by-the-numbers at this point.

Not in a ruinous way, but I hope that for next album they do go even more adventurous than they did here. Again, I do think they already made a good effort; I was going to give this more of a 3.5/5, but after being given more time to appreciate the little intricacies of this album and realizing where a lot of it is coming from, it’s grown on me pretty well, it’s just I kinda wanna see more in the future, y’know? Who knows? Maybe they actually will, and I’m kind of excited by that prospect. We’re just going to have to wait and see.

Maybe if they manage to sell another thousand more of those “Doomed” football jerseys. I don’t care much about football, but goddamn I kinda want one anyway.

LC!4LYF (4/5)

FAVES: “Renato Dall’Ara (2008)”, “Sad Suppers”, “I Broke Up in Amarante”, “The Fall of Home”, “5 Flucloxacillin”, “Here’s to the Fourth Time!”, “Hung Empty”

aaaaand there you have it! Reviews of all the major Los Camp albums! Ahh… fuck

I might do more reviews of different albums in the future, but maybe not. Iunno, maybe I’ll do a few one-shots of albums I wanna talk about, like Gorillaz or something, but I don’t really know what I can really offer for that lol. We’ll see.

#music review #los campesinos #sick scenes

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joecontrolshimself · 6 years ago

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Feed the birds, tuppence a bag

Okay this is gonna be a really long post I think. It’s just a story about something kinda cool that happened to me last year. Not a typical “lead up to a punch line” one, but you can still skip down and read the end if you don’t believe me. The “too long did, not read” version is that birds communicated with me in a very strange way that made me feel spiritually connected to the Earth (and I won’t comment much on it, but kind of also lead a bit to my craziness on here almost exactly a year ago now, which I half want to flesh out and half don’t).

Here’s the setup, and I don’t know if it even pertains to or correlates with what happens, but it’s worth mentioning:

After that already long introduction, I’ll preface this by saying that I have developed over the years a fascination with birds in general. Always have found them to be almost mystical, in that they live around humans, in such masses, in a way that no other wild animal does. So one day I’ll say a couple of years ago, I was living in a studio apartment in a business section of a suburban town, and I had food that was going bad. In a fit of “save the Earth” passion, I thought I would make it available to the birds. And I started making it a regular routine. I would take extra food that I made and had no use for, and I’d spread it around the ground in the back of my apartment’s property, thinking that the birds could take it or leave it. On an occasion or two, I lived next door to a bakery, and I’d see the birds trying to get to the tossed goods in the dumpster, and I’d get the top layer out for them and throw it in the back of the property, abandoned railroad tracks. It escalated to a point where I was like that’s a bit ridiculous, so in the supermarket I just picked up a bag of bird seed and started feeding them a few handfuls every day or so. This went on for a few months, I guess.

Then I decided to go on my “road trip” or whatever you want to call it, because I only made it to a couple states before I made some bad decisions and went off the rails. But before all that, it was lovely. And this is where the real story starts, in Bennington, Vermont.

To start, part of my road trip was taking time for the first time in my life to learn a musical instrument. I bought this awesome mandolin before I left, learned a song or two and was having the time of my life playing around with it. I was in Bennington cruising around for a good spot to practice. I happened upon the grounds of a high school, empty because it was summer, and far away from mostly everything. There was also a covered pavilion there with benches.

I parked and walked up to the pavilion, and there was also a greenhouse right next to it. Turns out, there was someone working inside of it. His name was Frank, and he was really cool. He told me the greenhouse was the only one of its kind in the state I think (connected to a school) and it was mostly for at-risk students to help them get some hands-on learning, yadda yadda. He saw my mandolin, and turns out he used to play it! He taught me some very quick, very basic stuff about chords and just about learning music in general, and then took me inside the greenhouse and taught me things about the plants he was growing. We hung out for maybe an hour or two, and he mentioned he was going on vacation with his family for a week, so I was like cool, I can practice at this spot with no one really around. Didn’t think that he would have someone check in on the plants, I never ran into them so that’s a moot point, but that’s how little I was thinking ahead at the time just for context.

Now the next day I show up to the pavilion, and about 15 minutes into practicing, torrential, sideways rain comes out of nowhere, and I’m not protected, even under the pavilion’s roof. I make a mad dash for the greenhouse and take shelter. I take a look at the plants when a thought pops into my head “Hey, they always say talking to plants is good for growth, what if I sing to them while I wait for the rain to stop?” I decided to put on a concert of Frank Sinatra and Michael Buble songs, since I knew those the best and were the most upbeat. I had a good time belting out those standards, man. The rain stopped and I had other places to be, so I took off.

That greenhouse became my go-to spot because I had so much fun in there the first time. I think I went back one more day and sang, and then the next day is when the birds become relevant. Now keep in mind, that while in Bennington and the surrounding area, I had a bag of bird seed and had been leaving little piles of it everywhere I went whenever I saw a cluster of birds. So I don’t know if this all came about because I had a reputation with them, but again, think it’s worth mentioning.

Okay so finally, here’s the meat of the story. I’m in the greenhouse with my mandolin, a notebook, and my phone. I make a promise to myself “You are not leaving this greenhouse until you have fully learned a new song.” This detail is a bit irrelevant, but I’ll throw it in here why not. I was on a bit of an anti-Trump kick. I decided to try to learn “Something Wicked This Way Comes” from Harry Potter because Trump was gaining political steam as his regime was settling in and I thought I’d soon make this, like, share-able, hopefully viral, (ridiculous!) video of me performing it and somehow linking it to Trump. Stupid, I know! Whatever. I shouldn’t have said that, I shouldn’t have said that. Anyway.

No lie, about 5 minutes into getting ready to do this thing, the worst thing happens. I have to take a shit. Badly. And I mean, I’m nowhere near a public bathroom, and my calculations were slim that I was gonna make it to one. So I started looking for other options. I think I saw a shovel and I was like okay I’ll take a shit in the woods close by, cover it up, all I need is TP I guess, but I’m running out of time and kinda freaking out.

That’s when “it” happened. No, I didn’t shit myself. Disclaimer, I am 95% sure I didn’t hallucinate this. There’s just no way. But I mean, it could be possible. But this is where the birds came to save the day. As I’m pacing and stuck with my dilemma, two birds crash landed into the greenhouse from I think holes in the sides of the greenhouse where the wall met the roof, I don’t remember. I was thrown off, until my attention was brought to this thumping noise that I couldn’t see. I went to inspect further, and I kid you not, one of the birds is kinda slapping himself into this silver, like, kind of a tub, thing. It had handles, looked like it was used for carrying water or soil or something. I still remember seeing the bird’s wing print on the dust of the tub, it was propped against a table in the corner of the greenhouse.

Then the other bird starts making a noise. I follow that. The bird is on the very edge of the greenhouse wall, and once it has my attention, it hops along the edge of the wall to the other corner of the greenhouse and stops right in front of what turns out to be a hose. It took me a while I think to put 2 and 2 together, but I realized to handle my DIRE poop problem, I could fill the tub with water, poop in it, and then dump it in the woods, like a makeshift, portable toilet. Then wash it out and everything. I know, I’m a savage, but desperate times. As soon as I realized this, the birds exited the greenhouse. I’m not pulling your leg on any of this. This is impossible to make up for a person like me.

And the best part, I think, is that I shit you not, no pun intended, but as soon as I had a solution to the shits, I didn’t have to go anymore. The need to go was gone, just like that. So immediately this gratitude sunk in and then this flood of thoughts started filling my brain to try to teach myself a lesson from it all. Because in a sense, when I really needed to go, and had no place to go, I needed to go that much more. But when I had a place to go, I didn’t need to go anymore. Wild.

I’ll be honest, this is out of left field, but the first thing I thought of was that it was a perfect metaphor for why a person is usually more confident in a healthy relationship, and even why men end up having affairs. Because when they don’t have anybody, there are those that are more…not desperate…but have more of an urge, to make things work. And when they’re in a relationship, they don’t sweat much because they have something to fall back on. And other women are attracted to that I don’t give a shit mentality. I don’t know if that makes sense, if you’ve made it this far congratulations you get to learn the little-known fact that I was diagnosed as bipolar after my mess last year and one of the symptoms was going on strange tangents.

Getting as back on topic as I can…after the birds left, and I didn’t need to take a shit anymore, I practiced the song for a few hours and left. Then life got in the way and I moved on to other things without completing my project (another symptom of bipolar), but I did keep up with the mandolin for a while (until someone STOLE IT! Still mad, it was a beautiful friend to me.)

I could go on about how all of a sudden I felt more connected to the world and over the next few months with all my experiences, I started thinking I was this naturopath wizard or spiritual guru who was going to be the next Prince Ea or something, and how I started becoming “pronoid”, which means “paranoid, but positive” and interpreting every little thing as “signs” which ultimately lead to me posting cryptic shit and being diagnosed, but I think I just summed it up quite nicely just there now.

So there you have it. I had the weirdest interaction with birds, these creatures that I thought barely gave a fuck about humans, and that, hey, I could have totally misinterpreted and they were just two dumb assholes that had nothing to do with me except pure coincidence, or I could have hallucinated it all. But as I said, there you have it. Just wanted to get that story off my chest, I felt like I had to put it out there, even a year later, because I’ve been so nervous to talk about things that went down last year and I’m just downright lazy to type this all out. But even if one person reads this and is like “Hmm…interesting”, then I’ll be happy. If you made it this far, I think I’ve said it before on long posts, but thank you very much for your time, I hope you didn’t feel it was a waste. And as several famous Instagram models put it “I’ll prob delete this later”, but for now, thank you again.

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isabellkennedy-blog · 7 years ago

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naked amateurs pictures - Six Ways Twitter Destroyed My Karups Xxx Without Me Noticing

So, one of my FWB (We’ll call him Tom) and I were going out one weekend night. ) About a year, or so, after Shawn I still hadn’t gotten another boyfriend. (I never realized that this experience and the other one from college that I posted were similar until I wrote this out. I never had trouble finding someone to hook up with and if the session was good enough, I’d keep them around as someone to fuck when I felt like it. He had fucked me everywhere from the bedroom to the roof of a supermarket that neither of us worked at. On this particular night I met him at his dorm room. I hope that doesn’t disappoint. I went out with him whenever I was in a particularly risky mood. I decided that I didn’t want another relationship and just wanted to be by myself for a while. "So what are you going to do tonight? Being college kids, we weren’t loaded and usually started by drinking before we went out and bought just enough drinks in the bars to maintain. His hands would roam all over my body right in the middle of wherever he got the notion. "I don’t know, I guess I’ll just hop around and see if I can find a girl to get into trouble with," he replied. Tom was a little more unpredictable than most of my other guys. He and I had done some serious flirting when Tom and I first started hanging around, but Tom asked me to stop. He was cute but not handsome. His general attitude was fun and likable. "That shouldn’t be too hard, this town is full of sluts. It’s been almost two months since the last girl. Jerry was aware and backed off. " "Not as many as I’d like. I feel like my balls are going to explode," he quipped. Jerry was a decent enough guy. " Laketown was an easy going bar. His roommate was there (we’ll amateurs nude photos call him Jerry) and we all sat around and started to get a few drinks in us. It usually had a sizable crowd of college kids on the weekends with equal shares of dancers, drinkers, and guys with too much testosterone. When we got there it was still a little early, so the crowd hadn’t gotten to it’s weekend level but was still decent. "Let’s go down to Laketown and see what’s happening, hon. I had friends with some lovely benefits, but nothing serious. We started to make our way towards the bar. Walking by random people and having my breasts and ass rub against them is exhilarating. There’s something about walking through a crowd that usually gets me going. He said it would be weird knowing he was fucking the same girl as his roommate. "I don’t see anyone I know. "Of course," I replied. It was a bit of marjoriezelman91.myblog.de a dive, but the drinks were cheap and the owner was cool. "Well, that’s all I need to know about your balls," Tom joked. I have never been into whatever dance music was popular at the time. " We stood there next to the bar and talked over the music until we had finished our drinks. After a few minutes I had a scotch on the rocks in my hand and was scanning the crowd to see if any of my friends were there. However, when I’m in the mood to dance, I don’t really care. As soon as I set my empty glass hit the bar, Tom grabbed my hand and pulled me out to the dance floor. My body started to move along with the rhythm as I began to lose myself in it. The beat pulsed through the crowd as the music played rather loudly. I could feel it in my chest. I usually gravitate towards edgier rock or punk. I had worn a bra that didnt have any padding that night, so my nipples could feel it all (happy accident). I had that perfect amount of alcohol in me so I was able to cut loose but not be totally out of control. I could feel his cock go from soft to hard as I worked it’s bulge with my asscheeks. Tom had moved around behind me and started pressing up against my ass. His excitement became evident in his hands as they started to roam around my body. I could feel it spread my cheeks open and ride deep in the crease of my ass. I continued to press into him and ride my ass up and down the shaft of his now rock hard dick. By the time we got to the bar my nipples were rock hard and I’m sure my pussy was a little more damp than when we walked in. His hands then moved up my sides and reached around in front to cup my breasts. " Tom looked around and said, "Nah, but that’s alright. The feeling of being dry ass humped on the dance floor was further intoxicating. We continued dancing like this, with his hands alternating between my hips as he thrusted hard against my ass and up to my breasts to tease my aching nipples. I began to push back into him and slowly ride my ass up and down his crotch. This only emboldened my lover more as he soon moved his hands past my hips to the edge of the skirt I was wearing. He reached forward with both hands down to just above my knees and started to slide his hands up the insides of my thighs. After a while of this the dance floor had become more crowded. He placed a finger from each hand at the top of my slit and slid them down along the length of my lips, slowly spreading me open. "Dirty Girl," he said over the pounding of the music. His fingers continued to slide up and down my slit, staying a little longer at the top by my clit. He leaned further forward to be able to slide his fingers into me as he traced them down the length of my pussy. He grabbed my hips and pulled me even harder against his cock. He was raising my skirt up as he went, but I no longer cared. When his hands finally reached my pussy, he found out that I wasn’t wearing any panties. I was yearning to be touched and wasn’t too concerned who might see. The dance floor was wall to wall people at this point. Being bent like that had another benefit. He was dancing along to the beat of the song and my nipples (which were again rock hard) were sliding up and down his back. I could feel the cool air on my wet pussy as he exposed me. He had me bent forward at about a 45 degree angle as he finger fucked me on the dance floor. I turned around to Tom and told him he was going to have to either fuck me right there on the dance floor or take me back to his room. My ass was pressed firmly against his cock and the motion generated by my bouncing and his finger fucking me made it feel like he was literally trying to fuck me through his jeans. He had to know what was pressed against him, because he never tried to pull away. I didn’t last long like this until I couldn’t take it anymore. Had he turned around, he would have gotten quite a show. We made a stop at the bar and I ordered us each a couple shots for the road, not wanting to lose my wonderful buzz. When he bent me forward, it pressed my tits right into the back of some guy. He said "OK" and began to undo his pants. I honestly believe he would have tried to do it right there had I not stopped him. He quickly located my super sensitive nipples and gently squeezed and twisted them erect. I reached down and slowly stroked his cock. "What should I do with this? I grabbed his hand and told him he was fucking crazy as I led him off the dance floor. I could taste his precum mixed with a little sweat as I started sucking his cock. I’m not talking about hasn’t-been-washed-in-three-days cock. We quickly stripped and I had him lay down in bed. I love the taste of a "dirty" cock, whether it’s from being in my pussy, or sweaty, or whatever. Like I said, he was the unpredictable one. By the time we got to his room it was still early by bar hopping standards and we found that Jerry had not yet returned from quest to get laid. I continued going up and down his shaft with my mouth pausing slightly at the top to work his head with my tongue. "I want you on top," he moaned. "You want me to climb aboard? I slid my mouth down the length of his cock to the base to get every bit of his taste in my mouth. I mean dirty for a good reason. I got on my knees (he just had a boxspring and mattress on the floor) and leaned over to take him in my mouth. The feeling of going from empty to full instantly like that was too much. He had some of the best aim with that thing. It rushed over me and made me moan like a whore. "Put it in your mouth," was his reply. Tonight’s activities thus far were a good reason. The salty taste of sweat and the sweet taste of his precum were perfect. I was raising my hips and slamming back down on him hard. Between all the foreplay and this sudden feeling of having his cock in me, I came. I could feel another orgasm just at the beginning stages and that’s about where it stopped. He just reached over and grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me on top of him. This drew out my orgasm and made it last twice as long. I loved the feeling of being in control and doing the fucking. His bed was only a twin size, which meant that we basically slept on top of each other, but at that point neither of us cared. After my orgasm had finished, I started riding him like a cowgirl on a bull. We drifted off to sleep, forgetting to pull the covers over us. As soon as I got my legs spread and over his hips, he thrust forward and buried his cock deep inside me. I slowly opened my eyes just a touch to see a dark shape standing over me. I heard him grunt twice and then I could feel his cock pulse as he let loose a large load deep in my pussy. I love the feeling of a man cumming inside me, but with Tom, it meant the session was over. I woke with this feeling that something wasn’t right. He would spend a little extra time at the head and do this little swirl motion, something I had never seen before but a tactic I was going to use in the future. Jerry was standing over my naked body with his dick in his hand. He was slowly stroking it. I gyrated my hips as I let his orgasm finish and then slid off of him onto the side of the bed. He understood what was happening and just pressed in deeper and pulled back with very short but determined strokes. He looked as if he were going to shit his pants (if he had had any on, that is). It looked like he was about to step away. A couple seconds later his stroking stopped. The light from the street lamp was the only light in the room, so it took me a second to figure out what was going on. It couldn’t have been too much later because I was still feeling buzzed. I guess I was horny from that orgasm that never was. Tom was on his back hogging most of the bed. I didn’t want that to happen, so I gently reached out my arm (trying not to move much since I was laying sort of sideways on Tom and didn’t want to wake him) and placed my hand on his thigh. I really don’t know why I was going along with it. His position left me with about a foot of the mattress to lay on, which meant I was on my left side slightly leaned back against his arm. I didn’t move, since I wasn’t sure what the feeling was about. He got the hint and resumed his stroking. That, and the lovely buzz I still had going. I enjoyed the touch of his rough hand on my breast. He then pinched it and slowly twisted back and forth. I have to say, even though we had flirted in the past, this was way more than I would have ever expected from him. However, I made no move to stop him. I was getting right back to being very horny. I ever so gently raised my knee, so as not to wake Sleeping Beauty, and cocked my leg out. When I realized I wasn’t in any danger I opened my eyes fully. He immediately knew what I wanted. Not only was he standing above me staring at my nakedness while I slept and jerking off, but now he reached down and started playing with my right breast. His touch was electric. Like I’ve said, I love my nipples to be played with. His fingers began to explore the outside of my pussy. Jerry was not a dumb guy. For that moment, he owned my pussy. It was his to do with what he wanted. The roughness and force he used to finger fuck me was amazing. His hand traced down my stomach and reached for my mound. I could hear the wet sounds of his fingers running up and down my slit (probably a mix of my juice and Tom’s cum). I wrapped my hand around Jerry’s knee and pulled downward. He again read me like a book and did exactly what I was trying to convey. I assume Jerry had a few drinks in him as well because he was abnormally bold. My orgasm was beginning to build and my pussy took over my thought processes. I wasn’t able to bob my head like I normally would because of Tom. I opened up and he slowly fed me his cock. He never once missed a beat with his fingers. He knelt down and placed the head of his cock on the lips of my mouth. It didn’t matter to Jerry. He slowly slid his cock in and out of my mouth. He continued to slide them in and out of me as well, sometimes matching the pace of his member sliding in my mouth. My pussy clamped down on his fingers in an outstanding orgasm as my mouth clamped onto his cock so I wouldn’t lose any of his seed. He quickly pressed two fingers into me, not exactly gently. The feeling of being a dirty slut was amazing. He continued to pump his cock into my mouth as spirt after spirt of cum let loose into my throat. I was very close to losing it again when I felt Jerry’s cock explode in my mouth. He slid his palm all around making my nipple harden. I gave it one final suck as it retreated. He continued to play with my pussy for a few moments before he finally went over to his bed and laid down. I never told Tom anything about what Jerry had done to me and assume he never did either. The sense of being used was thrilling. Here I was laying half on a guy I had just fucked not too long ago being finger fucked and fed cock by another man. I continued to fuck Tom once in a while and whenever I slept over at his place, I would make sure the covers were never placed quite right. I woke up before both of them and got dressed and went home. I wonder if Jerry ever stood over me again. Jerry and I never said a word to each other about it nor did we ever have sex again. As both of our orgasms began to finish, Jerry started pulling back on his cock. I had to swallow more than once to keep from choking on his gallons of sperm. If you loved this write-up and you would such as to obtain more info regarding a girl in a bikini (mouse click the next webpage) kindly see our own site.

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nofomoartworld · 7 years ago

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Art F City: L.A. Art Diary: The Final Entry

Doug Crocco

This is my last entry from L.A. I’ll explain why later, but basically I realized it was not the city for me, despite the past month+ of adventures I’ve had: Week One, Week Two: Part One, Week Two: Part Two, Week Three, Week Four.

Monday 7/17

#spiritual #technology #LA

A post shared by Michael Anthony Farley (@ellende666enerate) on Jul 17, 2017 at 6:04pm PDT

I realize I really miss walking, and that I have spent very little of the last month outside of a car/bus/train actually experiencing the city. I decide to take a semi-urban hike to the Hollywood Hills from Echo Park, roughly nine miles and an elevation climb of about 1,200 feet (an Empire State Building!). It takes a little over 3 hours, and along the way I fancy myself on a Situationist dérive.

A post shared by Michael Anthony Farley (@ellende666enerate) on Jul 17, 2017 at 6:32pm PDT

I pass Scientology compounds, mansions, slums, mini malls, beautiful old art deco buildings, most of Sunset Boulevard’s eastern leg, Little Armenia, Thai Town, and plenty of weird sights. It occurs to me that L.A. seems so surreal and familiar at the same time because it’s an unlikely pastiche of different urbanisms. The scattered pockets of dense eclectic pre-war architecture (themselves mostly referent to other places’ vernaculars) don’t quite coherently connect to one another so much as they float in a sea of postwar sprawl and car-centric infrastructure. But bits of big-city reality end up accumulating in all the wasted space of the suburban dream—the dead sidewalk space fronting big blank side walls of supermarkets become tent cities, highway medians host street preachers shouting at passing cars futily, and those odd islands between boulevards and parking lots get occupied by food trucks and other vendors. People sleep and conduct a shadow economy in the grassy areas between the street and gated parks.1950s motels have been converted into studio apartments with businesses below. L.A. feels like the not-so-distant future of so much of America.

At one point my sidewalk ends and I’m forced onto a steep hillside between a freeway onramp and a walled-off neighborhood of mansions patrolled by private security. I stumble upon an entire impermanent shanty town, hidden from the highway by scrub and the wealthy residents above by an impossibly high concrete wall topped with barbed wire. Los Angeles might have one of the worst housing shortages and income disparities I’ve ever seen in an industrialized nation. It’s a thought that sticks with me on my ascent past single-family mansions the size of office parks.

Tuesday 7/18

I temporarily move onto the futon of artists Meghan Gordon and Manny Prieres in Koreatown. (Coincidentally, I’d written about Meghan’s work and Manny’s work, respectively, before I became friends with either or knew they were roommates). Staying with them is awesome. Their apartment is huge, full of windows, one adorable cat, and is walking distance to roughly 2,000 businesses and two subway lines. Their rent is maybe half of what a comparable spot in a convenient New York neighborhood would be. If they had a third bedroom, I would be seriously tempted to sign on as a permanent roommate.

Wednesday 7/19

A friend from Baltimore lives close-ish to Meghan and Manny, and we meet up to check out The Faultline, a gay bar that hosts a crazy drag competition on Wednesdays. Someone is dressed as Ursula the sea witch lipsynching to Divine and it’s a show-stopper. It feels appropriate that it’s hump-day and we find this very NSFW GIF-able neon sign. It’s a good night so far.

We leave the club to grab a drink at a quieter spot to catch up, but after 30 minutes of wandering, can’t find another bar. Although it’s before midnight, the streets are almost entirely empty. On our walk, we pass exactly three other people, all of whom are men who catcall her. She says that’s not uncommon. Street harassment is obviously a problem in every city, but it’s usually tempered by having positive or neutral experiences with the vast majority of the thousands of people one encounters in public space in other cities. The lack of pedestrian culture in 90% of L.A.’s surface area (excepting commercial strips in a handful of older neighborhoods) makes public space intimidating. It also emboldens creeps. Basically, in vast swaths of the city, the only people you see on sidewalks are either batshit crazy or scurrying from a car to an indoor space. We both admit we’re slowly becoming more misanthropic the longer we’re here. That thought really bothers me.

We both take Ubers home. I decide it might be time to book a flight out of L.A.

Thursday 7/20

Marcel Alcalá is having an informal showing of his recent drawings at Club Pro, an art space in a loft downtown. The pastel works on paper are really nice—they’re humorous, direct sketches that play with body image and sexuality in the age of dystopic-fake-cheery late capitalism. My favorite depicts an ambiguously-gendered person running gleefully with an erection—wearing only a tube top and go-go boots, one of which bears the acronyms: “DNA YSL NBA STD TSA”—between a house labelled “WELLS FARGO” and another “THE MALL”. In others, the imperfect figures seem to be posing for “sexy” selfies, but end up endearingly goofy.

After the opening, my former roommate from Baltimore invites me to her friend’s loft for a drink. It’s several stories above the eerily-dead-at-night Fashion District with sweeping views of the skyline. We can’t tell if it’s an apartment, coworking space, or event space. We’re both too embarrassed to ask, but joke that it looks remarkably like our old illegal warehouse apartment in Baltimore with several hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of renovations.

I end the night at General Lee’s, a Chinatown cocktail lounge that’s become my favorite L.A. art people hang out. Aria Dean, assistant curator of net art at Rhizome, is DJing. Again, I run into multiple people I’ve known in different cities at different time who all ended up here. Between that and the movie-set-like vibe of Chinatown’s pedestrian passages, L.A. starts to feel more and more like a dream.

Friday 7/21

The post punk proto goth neo noir sci fi half robot half man anti hero Los Angeles has been waiting for. Pickle dog is VERY impressed.

A post shared by ManyDistantCities (@nolizzie) on Jul 21, 2017 at 5:58pm PDT

I’ve spent the night on Liz’s couch to avoid Uber surge pricing, and we take her dogs for a walk along the L.A. River. The L.A. River is basically a concrete drainage ditch full of abandoned objects that the dogs love playing with. We discover that the concrete “river banks” are actually the perfect angle to lay upon in the sun while hungover. She describes the river as “either a triumph of urban planning or a really big urban planning mistake?” We decide L.A. needs a museum dedicated to the history of its divisive built environment. Liz’s bulldog Pickle gifts us with a tire full of potentially-toxic river slime in our laps and our art-viewing plans take a backseat to laundry and showering as a priority for the day.

By the time I get back to Koreatown, Manny and several of his artist friends are heading out to the Bigfoot Lodge. It’s a kitschy bar that looks like a Wes Anderson set where a DJ is spinning the best set of obscure-ish old vinyl I’ve ever heard. The music is so good we don’t even realize we’ve stayed until last call. We all end up chatting at a nearby diner (that looks equally like a Wes Anderson location) until sunrise, when we notice Coyotes have encircled the parking lot looking for easy drunk prey.

Only in Los Angeles.

Saturday 7/22

Manny and I are having some much-needed coffee with one of our mutual friends, artist/curator Jacqueline Falcone. To varying degrees, we all think of Miami as “home” despite the fact that none of us were born there nor live there presently. Jacqueline moved here from Miami about a year ago, and the three of us start talking about the similarities and differences between the two cities. Both have beaches, palm trees, tourists, endless traffic jams, glamour, and the bad urban planning that seems endemic to places with perfect weather in this country.

We all concur that the biggest adjustment is the isolation one can feel in Los Angeles. South Florida is spread out, but nothing like the scale of L.A. But mostly the art scene in Caribbean Miami feels like one big loud family you’re immediately welcomed into with cheek-besitos and all-night parties. There, our friends would ride a bike across a causeway in a tropical storm or sit in gridlock for hours to not miss your opening. Everyone shows up absurdly late for everything, but there’s a sense of ironclad dependability. Meanwhile in L.A., people will sometimes cancel lunch plans if it’s overcast (really) or they just don’t feel like dealing with the logistics (constantly feeling pressured to look your best in public, moving a car or paying for Uber, the vast distances, expensive valet parking everywhere) of leaving the house that day.

I admit that L.A. is starting to feel oppressively lonely when I’m not with friends. In most East Coast or Latin American cities, for example, it’s not considered creepy to strike up a conversation with a stranger at a coffee shop or bar if you’re alone. It’s a lot harder to meet people in L.A.

Manny thinks that’s not such a bad thing—the isolation of L.A. forces you to be more independent. You drink less here, care more about your health, and have less distractions from studio time. Knowing his labor-intensive process (he precisely recreates things such as book and album covers in delicate graphite on black enamel) that makes sense. I, on the other hand, might be too much of an extrovert to deal with the creepiness of all the times I’ve walked for 15+ blocks without passing another human (and in the rare cases I have, been regarded suspiciously for being a pedestrian without the excuse of a dog to walk).

I’m struggling to remember a quote I think I read somewhere (or maybe made up?) as an angsty, wander-lusty teenager. It goes something like “The world’s great megacities always attract lonely people, where they can hide in a teeming crowd, like crying in the rain.” It doesn’t matter, though, because Los Angeles seldom has “teeming crowds” per se. And it certainly doesn’t have rain.

One thing I love about both Los Angeles and Miami is that art openings, to quote Whitney Kimball, have “replaced stuff to do” in a dearth of opportunities for chance encounters. She was writing about New York, but I always think her description is much more appropriate to the sprawly Sunbelt cities: “Non-art friends sometimes ask if I can take them to openings to meet people, which I thought was weird, until I stopped going to art events for a year and realized there aren’t a lot of scenarios in this city where you’re allowed to just stand in a room and mingle for free.”

I can’t think of a better example of this phenomenon than BBQLA, a tiny gallery in the back of a studio building that celebrates openings by roasting an entire pig in the parking lot outside. We arrive and all concur it feels very Miami—down to the side dishes of platanos and arroz y habichuelas served in the lot of a one-story warehouse covered in street art. After about two hours chatting with friends outside, I feel guilty I have spent less than ten minutes actually looking at the small show, Cabin Pressure, curated by Quinn Harrelson.

Janeva Ellis, “Bloodlust Hero”

That’s not to say it’s uninteresting. I revisit the exhibition text and realize it’s eerily in synch with what I’d been thinking about the past few days:

“The year is 2017 and over the vast urban sprawl of Los Angeles, the world has just ended, like a cracked egg. Many are taking post-apocalyptic selfies with the remaining minutes of their batteries.

But here, the crust of the peopled desert springs open, and something else crawls out from the earth’s core. It is possibly just a sentient silence, and yet an oasis germinates. Here lives a swamp, a jungle, a digestive system flipped inside out, a white cube of humidity transported from Southern Florida to Southern California.

To what extent does a group of works construct an environment? an ecosystem?

To what extent are they truncated into mechanisms of the jungle? into a single human body?

Like crocodile tears are artificial tears, this is an artificial rainforest, a simulacrum of the swamp. Constructed to push mutability to limits. Here alchemy transmutes mud to matter and nothingness to mud.”

Purvis Young

The most-discussed piece in the show is undoubtedly a small Don Quixote on a found metal panel by the late self-taught artist Purvis Young. Young has somewhat of a cult following, and there’s something nice about the un-precious (but also revered) quality of some of the objects he left behind. I’m mostly drawn to Janiva Ellis’s portrait of a melancholy demon, “Bloodlust Halo”. It’s a weird painting, one that elicits unlikely empathy. Most people don’t want to linger with me in the tiny exhibition space, though, because there’s an installation of handmade dirt-and-paper bricks that smells overwhelmingly like pee. For a show with only six or seven artworks, it sure packs a sensory punch.

Sunday 2/23

Organizer Phil Davis makes shirts for the participating MINIBAR artists. I love these.

File this under the “stuff to do” category of art happenings: I’m on my way to a miniature golf course in South Pasadena. I think this was a “Suggested Event” for me on Facebook, but I can’t remember the name or find the information about it anywhere and I suspect the friends I’ve dragged along are beginning to think I made it up as our Uber winds through a suburban park.

We arrive, though, and lo and behold there’s a small group of art-looking people hanging out in the snack bar of the golf course. We ask them if we’re in the right place, and they explain that Phil Davis has been curating a series of monthly group shows, called MINIBAR, in the club. The work is all small and kind of easy to miss, which is actually a nice layer to enjoying the overall unlikeliness of the idiosyncratic setting. Los Angeles has become known for art shows in small, strange places, but this one might take the cake. There are 2D works scattered around the walls above booths, and a video by Tyler Finnie loops on the TV behind the bar.

Tyler Finnie

I’m a big fan of Finnie’s “Liza Six Pack,” which comprises simply a plastic six-pack holder superimposed over a Polaroid of Liza Minnelli in a brass frame. Other highlights include Jessica Williams’ “Keep on Dancing Til The World Ends,” a washy watercolor of a girl looking over her shoulders while walking her bike. She’s wearing booty shorts that say “BABY” on the ass and, like Liza, is a little funny/sad/creepy.

I bum a cigarette from someone I’m convinced I’ve met somewhere before—another art opening perhaps? A friend-of-a-friend’s dinner party? But they don’t remember me. This has happened to me three times in L.A. Later, someone will whisper in my ear that I recognize these people because they had supporting roles on the type of T.V. shows you lovingly binge-watch on Netflix when you’re sick. My urge to facepalm never wears off.

We end the night by walking through (but not playing) the miniature golf course, and fantasize about which structures would make the best tiny house squats.

Monday 2/24

I’m leaving a gym on Wilshire Boulevard at dusk and realize I’m across the street from LACMA. The sun is setting, and Chris Burden’s epic public sculpture “Urban Light” has just been illuminated. It’s really, really beautiful. From this distance, the gaggle of selfie-takers doesn’t even seem annoying. I’m struck with a sense of regret that I probably don’t have time to make it to all the museums I wanted to see. I debate pushing back my flight when I get back to my computer.

On the walk home, though, I pass through the dark dead space between Miracle Mile and Koreatown. There, two inhabitants of a tent village that’s sprung up in the yard of an abandoned brutalist office building follow me for several blocks, shouting alternately homophobic and (incorrectly-assigned) racial slurs until I cross into the bright neon and peopled-sidewalks of Koreatown. I’m beginning to feel like Los Angeles is hell-bent on reminding me that it hates me every time I start to love it.

Wednesday 7/26

I’m at a taco cookout at Big Pictures Los Angeles, an art space run by artist Doug Crocco about a 10 minute drive south of Koreatown. The space has several rooms, one of which is functioning like an open studio of Doug’s own recent work, and another showing excerpts of Steve Gladstone: The End of Pictures alongside works from the group show Polaroid Black. BPLA also has the coolest toilet seat I’ve ever seen in a gallery, made from colored pencils in resin. It’s a really nice space that strikes one of the best balances I’ve seen here between professional and casual.

Excerpts from “Polaroid Black” (R) and “Steve Gladstone: The End of Pictures” (L)

Manny Prieres has a piece in Polaroid Black, a detail from the cover of the Joy Division album Closer, enlarged and rendered in hand-drawn graphite. Until you’re right on top of it, you’d swear it was a silkscreen. It occurs to me that Manny feels like an old friend because his work would’ve appealed as much to my younger, more punk-rock self as it does to me today.

Manny Prieres

Doug Crocco’s colored pencil drawings are just as meticulous and lovingly crafted. At first, I mistake them for oil paintings or collage. The appeal of the distraction-free studio life is starting to reveal itself to me.

Doug Crocco

Thursday 7/27

It’s my last night in the United States for the foreseeable future, and I want to gorge myself on Ethiopian before heading to Mexico City (it’s oddly my one comfort food you can’t find in the world’s second biggest city). Liz, ever the obliging tour guide, takes me to Little Ethiopia to meet up with a friend at a vegan spot and it’s amazing. We end the night miles away at Hop Louie, a Chinatown dive bar known as a go-to spot for drinks after openings and a fantastic juke box. Tonight though, it’s kinda dead.

I step outside with a friend and realize the things I’m really going to miss about L.A. Chiefly, all my friends who keep trickling out here for the promises of big-ish houses, careers, and endless sunshine. Sometimes those dreams are actually fulfilled! Sometimes though, people end up endlessly stressed over car payments and the dead-end jobs they necessitate. L.A. seems singularly magnetic to the best (and sadly, many of the worst) people of the 25-45 demographic. Maybe I’m either too immature or prematurely crotchety for the appeal?

At any rate, I could see myself living in Chinatown. Ironically, its faux-pagoda-lined pedestrian malls are likely one of the earliest examples of “Disneyland Urbanism” I can think of—a genre of made-for-tourists architecture that usually makes my cold, modernist eyes roll. But this kitschy simulacrum of a neighborhood has somehow accrued a lived-in vibe of a real place that L.A.’s far older fake chateaus haven’t quite. There are people on the “street” here, and even if they’re just outside for a smoke, that’s a world of comfort.

L.A., this isn’t goodbye forever, just a “see you later”. To quote your former governor, I’ll be back. But definitely as just another tourist.

Postscript 7/31

I am publishing this from Mexico City. I really wanted to fall in love with Los Angeles, but despite my best efforts, I couldn’t. I really wanted to. The art scene is great. The weather is usually amazing. Mostly, I wanted to love L.A. because so many of my favorite people in the world have made the city home for various reasons. Their hospitality (and that of their friends) has been so humbling.

But that warmth stands in contrast to a city whose culture, in general, is at times pretty unfriendly. I realized L.A. can be a very lonely place when you’re by yourself with unstructured time. Being a human body moving through space outside of a car can be downright depressing, if not dangerous. It’s not really the kind of city for wandering around and people watching or spur-of-the-moment unplanned encounters. I know that those things aren’t important to everyone, but since being back in a more conventional “city” city, I have to admit that they are to me.

It dawned on me that I was neurotically starting to feel like a second-class citizen on account of not having a car, a buttload of disposable income, nor a face/body/wardrobe worthy of 100k+ Instagram followers (there were literally times people cropped me out of photos, because I suppose I was “off brand”). I found myself becoming a little vain, self-conscious, suspicious, and resentful—qualities I don’t like to see. A lot of that has to do with money. The myth that L.A. is “affordable” only holds water when housing is compared to San Francisco, London, New York or a handful of other global financial centers. Indeed, it seems like a substantial chunk of the “affection” a lot of transplant artists have for L.A. is rooted in resentment toward New York—as if those were the only two cities on the planet. When one accounts for transportation costs and the obsessive commodification of “health culture” (example: eating vegetarian in Los Angeles is more expensive than any other city I’ve ever lived in) L.A. ends up being pretty damn pricey.

I’ll definitely be back in Los Angeles at some point—as I mentioned, it’s home to so many of my best friends. And I never made it to the beach! But I don’t think I can live there. My first night back in Mexico City, I actually teared-up a few times because I realized I wasn’t crazy for feeling isolated in L.A. I missed walking in crowded streets, and strangers being nice to me, cheap food, and dancing not just for the sake of an Instagram story (it’s noticeable how much less time people spend on their phones outside of the Los Angeles bubble).

Honestly, I am probably just personally incompatible with the L.A. lifestyle. I’m sharing this because I suspect a lot of other people tempted to relocate there might be too. I have plenty of friends who are super happy living there, but also met plenty of people who weren’t. I guess I just fall into the latter category.

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cristinacori · 7 years ago

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For my endless journey westwards I have the seat number 6 in the wagon number 0 of the worst-platzkart ever. Just one working plug, which is located on the bed under mine, so that anyone who wants to load some electronic devices has to do it on the head of the poor man who sleeps there. Empty drinking water tap: we must drink the boiling samovar water, which would not be so annoying if it were not that air conditioning is faulty and the wagon is terribly warm.

The provodnitsa of the night shift is a brusque, short and chubby woman, of those who, as they say in Rome “it’s easier to jump than to go around”. The other one is a gentle skinny lady flame haired. Together they seem Stan and Oliver, but at least the fellow travellers are interesting. Below my bed there are a old couple. He, Vova, has black moustache, grey eyes made heavier by the age, huge round fingers and he is covered in tattoos. She, Valya, has short cut hair and her face streaked with slight wrinkles, she is a cheerful woman and she has nervous chatter. They are directed to Moscow, they speak only Russian and they virtually adopt me. The train leaves and the lady pulls out tablecloth, metal cups and plastic containers filled with everything imaginable food. They offer a bit of their dinner Valya tucks in my soup freeze-dried pieces of smoked ham and without asking me anything, she peels boiled eggs and hands me the bread. I think I must have awakened her maternal instincts, she wants to feed me at all costs. Maybe I stink with my skinny vegetarian sandwiches and Korean soups from the discount supermarket.

They tell me many things (who knows what) and call me “Kristin”. I ask them, in my weird Russian, where they are from. They come from a place that is not a city, but a tongue twister, though I pretend to have understood; anyway I have no choice because they will continue to talk to me as if I really could understand what they say, asking me questions they expect me to answer.

The following day the heat does not let up, and the people in the wagon fan themselves, dripping with sweat, with everything that falls into their hands. To survive the heat, the Uzbek of the seat number 12 begins to open all the windows of the wagon, including the one on my bed. He supports it with a plastic bottle filled with kvas (a Russian drink made from fermented black bread) to make sure that it does not close and he has decided it must stay there. So I have to sleep with the bottle at the side of the pillow. The idea of the open windows is good for the day, but not for the night. At sunset, the cold air of the Siberian nights enters through the window like a sharp blade and lash my face mercilessly. I curl up as much as possible in the cotton blanket, but I can’t get to sleep so I get up at dawn when the whole car is still sleeping. I prepare my tea and I drink watching the landscape in motion. It is raining outside. The dense wiry birch forest is covered with a rosy morning mist through which the sun shines in a dance in which chases the train, appearing and disappearing among the white tree trunks.

We skirt for a long time a large muddy river on which a graceful mist hangs like a long nebulous snake concealing its banks. After few hours the landscape changes and the train makes its way through dark valleys still shrouded in mist and meadows covered with tall flowers of a bright pink. The rain continues to tap on the glass only disturbed by the passage in the corridor of a fat provodnitsa whose flesh barely stays inside the shirt. The upbeat music coming out of the basket of snacks she is pushing announces her presence. “Pirojki, kartochki…” she loudly proposes passing through the wagon. The Uzbek of the seat number 12 makes a joke, she plays along and gives him a playful slap. Everyone laughs, he must have said something funny.

Not speaking Russian is one of the things I regret, I think watching them laugh. If I had been able I would chatted with my fellow travellers, with the provodnitsa. Who knows how many stories I missed, how many anecdotes and opinions on this or that topic. Why so much they, the Russians, always have something to say, they are a people of great talkers. I find it hard to imagine them the way Kapuscinsky describes them the USSR times. The Polish reporter (who also travelled in the Trans-Siberian) writes of them that they remained silent, distrustful, they avoided to speak and hoped that no one performed questions.

It was another era, shaped by suspicion towards each other, by the fear of uttering too many words, to sound curious. All dangerous characteristics at the time.

“The foundations of the Soviet empire have always been the regime of terror and fear. Only perestroika and glasnost’ constitute a significant departure. People are starting to publicly express his opinions to have their own ideas, to criticize and to ask. This becomes an exaltation, a general drunkenness […] everywhere do nothing but talk, talk and talk. […] This verbal superabundance, that talkative oratory is favoured by the Russian language, phrasing from that large, lying, boundless like the Russian land”.

The third day of travel some young Russian soldiers get on the train. They are teens guys who are doing the canonical year of conscription. Among them myself, the bizarre italianka, am a note from the pack and within five minutes they all are making me questions. Where am I from? Do I speak Russian? What am I doing in Siberia? Am I really travelling alone? And they start making pictures of me. Everyone wants souvenir selfies with this being that comes from the exotic faraway Rome. This “young Russian army” does not travel alone: it is accompanied by a non commissioned officer who looks like the same age of the boys he is responsible for. Talking to them I discover that the conscription in Russia is mandatory. Every boy at the age of eighteen must pay a year in the army. They were lucky, Sergej tells me, the only one who speaks few words of English, up to 2008 the years of conscription were two. He smiles at me and he offers me an apple.

The following day the Russian army gets off in Krasnoyarsk and new travelling mates get on the train. Among the newcomers there are six girls, contemporary dance dancers. One of them is specialized in hip hop. They make me look some videos on their phones and even if I do not understand anything about dance, they seem to be really good. I was told that they travel to Ekaterinburg where they have an appointment at the US consulate to pick up a visa to go to California where they will participate in a popular dance competition. They are a bit worried, Ekaterina, one of them says. The US visa is not mere bureaucracy for Russian citizens: the girls will first have to undergo an interview with the console. Those among them who are not married are more anxious because the US government does not look kindly on the Russian unmarried women; the cliché has it that the Eastern European girls use to lure American men to get married in order to to obtain the US citizenship.

A few hundred kilometres after Novosibirsk, the capital of Western Siberia, we arrive at the station of Barabinsk. The passengers before leaving the car, consult the table affixed to the provodnitsas’compartment door, which shows the time spent at each station. In this way those who want to get off to buy something to eat, or just to stretch their legs or to smoke, know for how long time the train will be stopped before leaving again. Ekaterina invites me to come down with her friends, she wants to show me the itinerant fishmongers of smoked dry fish waiting passengers on the platform. Apparently this fish is a speciality in high demand as everyone rushes to buy this delicacy with enthusiasm. We walk up and down the platform to look at our travel companions carefully choose their dinner, and a merchant of fur hats furry tries in vain to convince me to do a deal by buying one. It’s time to climb aboard and all people happy with their food purchases, get on train. In the wagon now an air unbreathable hovers: a mixture of smoked fish and musty smell united to that of about twenty people who haven’t had a shower for days. You get used and, in the end, the fish is tasty. The blonde lady of the seat number 22 makes me taste it. She is going to Moscow to visit her grandchildren. The woman on her fifties is from Norilsk, a Siberian town far to the north, where summers last a month and winters, endless, record a temperature that is about -35°C. Ekaterina translates the lady tales for me, while she makes the fish into small pieces. She is amused to see my face in disbelief. At her eyes me, the italianka tourist, am a strange being that comes from the tropics.

Six-day journey by train: my journey from Vladivostok to Yekaterinburg For my endless journey westwards I have the seat number 6 in the wagon number 0 of the worst-platzkart ever.

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