Thanks For the Giving.

At every Thanksgiving, we stand up and state what it is we're thankful for. Everyone says "I'm thankful for my family, my friends, my life..." or some seriously dry and slightly revamped head-rehearsed version of the prayer.  0'This year it came to me and I said "I'm thankful for art, and experience." Everyone was silent and I blurted out "And fashion!!! Lets not forget that, dear God lets not forget fashion!" and everyone laughed.

God forbid we forget fashion! Please no!!! They might laugh, but to me, fashion is how I sense the world.  You'd never know it, but how people style themselves says everything about them.  The brands they buy, the way they wear their clothes and how they walk says more than they ever will and before they ever will (in most cases, there's always that one weirdo, the someone dressed as nothing.) Fashion has taught me of the past and where we are in it's repeating. It tells of where we have yet to go.  

So thank God for fashion, because there are so many other silly things I could be thankful for, but fashion has a lot of beautiful places left to go.  It still has a revolution ahead. Fashion for the people! Not just the fashion people, all the people.

Maybe I'm delusional, I've been told as such plenty of times.  Delusions by their nature are so very near dreams.  The veil between them is paper thin and ripping at the seams.  And this delusion is so very real.  The people in them are beautiful.  If this is a delusion, please leave me here.  Once I read a story about a girl from Kansas who traveled to another world, she made friends and went on a glorious adventure. No one says she was delusional or dreaming of grandeur.  She was just a girl on an adventure.

The Prayer

I never thought this day would come.  The day when the reckless choices I made haunt me.  I think the difference is that now I know they were reckless.  The stupid things I did just to feel good or for the money haunt my dreams, and I see them everywhere.  I'm always looking for someone to make them go away, but that person is me.  I wish to God that somehow I could help build a world where no one ever has to make that decision or feel like that's all they're worth.

Dear Universal Mind, God of Gods, hearts of hearts.  Everything that is, was and ever shall be.  I'm putting these words out there, not knowing who might see them.  Please just give me a chance to spend the rest of my life doing good for humanity.  I've lived for myself and I've only grown older as a result.  I'm no more wiser or farther in life than when I started, the world scares me.  It needs help and love so much.  I'm only one life, but I'd give it if it made this world better.  I have nothing, I am nothing, except one dream, one vision and one goal.  Please let me use that goal to spread love and kindness.  I don't want money or fame, I just want to understand this world we live in, and to make it better.  Help me find a way.

Inspiredly Uninspired

Funny, I feel inspired on the big things in life, but the little details befuddle me.  Like I need to take things backwards "Here's the big picture, and here's where you fit, this space in the big picture is yours to fill, it's your safe place."  Trouble is I don't think I ever really felt safe enough to just let go.  No ones ever really given me that space, and now I don't know how to take it or make it mine.  If I let go who's going catch me? Where will I be after the fall? Does it matter? What's wrong with falling, tumbling gliding through the nothing between somethings? They say something's got to give, does nothing do all the taking? So I'm nothing and you're something. I'll give you my hand, you can take my heart and my whole life too. Love I've fallen up and the ground is fading quickly. I've taken my plans and all my demands, I surrender just take over. Mind melts over keys and subtle things but the truth is still the same.  Its taken me years to feel this sane. I'd play the blame game but that's all over, its all dead, playing victim is like a broken four leaf clover. Now I'm inspired yet uninspired.  Ensnared by a thought multiplied by the times I thunk it in the dark, fueled by what was then a broken heart, is now an artists' heart.

ART IS T. T is anything you need it to be. Therapy, thighs muscular with work. Toes to stand on. Time that heals all wounds.

Artist. 

Moving off/on-Flip the Switch

Awhile ago I thought I'd brag to my family when I "made it."  Now that I've done the things I set out to do this year, I feel less like bragging and more like doing the rest of the things I want to get done.  What's the point in bragging when there's always something better to just do?

This Christmas they'll be here, and all I know is its time to just move on.  Live and let live. The space in my head that they're occupying is needed for other things.  Funny, that summer all I did was think of them.  

Today I think what I want from life is bigger than they thought and think of me, and that's fine.  It's bigger than I think of myself, but I'll grow into it.

Back to writing this play.  I wonder what Andrew Lloyd Webber does for inspiration...

Strange Dreams/Delusions Run Amok

On Thursday I decided that I would write a play.  I didn't know that the decision would come with increasingly strange dreams, like every strange thing in my head decided to try and find a space to be seen.

Cellphones with heart beats... How weird.  The thumpity-thump thump in something that's dead.  Your heartbeat in your hand.

Clothes that repair themselves and you.

I wonder what she'd call this delusion...

Dior Brown

My right foot hurts.  Not a hurt like its been used and abused, but a hurt like things are working differently now.  My toes used to overlap but not so much anymore.

My body hurts like that too.  Like its become used to being used in so many different ways.  Muscles that lay dormant now find a reason for an ache or a pain.  I can bend myself and look like some strange doll pulled naked from a toy box, contorted by the pressure of too many bodies.

Complex is this feeling we call hurt.  It comes in different forms.  A tinge, a stab, a dull achy pulse.  But then there's more.  There's regret.  I used to feel that, for mistakes made, times past.  But regret is just another kind of hurt.  I wish I could say I regret the way her eyes made me feel.  Her cute giggle, the rouge on her lips.  I'd regret the way her accent curved around my name, but it made me feel good.  The way she said she'd draw me better, and the numbers she gave.  I'd regret them, but she's too beautiful for regret.  The milky Dior brown of her skin, I'd regret it, but she's too beautiful for such an ugly feeling.  Dior brown, what a colour for fashion.

Complex

"Rich and over active imagination." she says. Tap, tap, tap.  Pen tapping as usual.

You'd think it was a curse the way the words crept out of her mouth. Tap, tap, tap. Pen tapping almost like a metronome, tapping out the diagnoses that litter my ingrate mind.  I'd be more thankful for the diagnoses but they're useless to me.  Tap, tap, tap.  Pen tapping like a pick, clearing the earth away from an idea buried deep in the soil of my over-diagnosed brain.

"Messiah complex." Tap, tap, tap.  That's gotta be a joke.  Unbalanced I'd agree to, we're all a little weird.  There's nothing messiah like about me. "You'd wonder if people read their Bibles carefully."  What's the point? As carefully as they're read they're just as easily re-written.  He'd said those words and they struck me rather odd. The heaviness in them for such a seemingly light subject.  I wonder if he's always so prolific.  Staring at him I thought the world had gone topsy-turvy, maybe its always been and I'd never noticed.

Tap, tap, tap. "Here's a prescription for something to even your moods, you'll feel better." Tap, tap, tap. Session over, grandeur deluded.

My TRIBë

I went onto Facebook tonight to post something when I read this.  I cried.  I went to high school with him.  He's a great guy.  It hurts knowing that in 2013 this is still something that happens.  That's what the 80s and early 90s were for right? You'd think with PRIDE parades in every major city in America this is something so far behind us.

It's not.  This isn't even an hour outside of San Francisco. The fight isn't over.  The fight isn't about white or black anymore.  People are hating on LOVE.  The feeling you're supposed to relish in.  Don't we remember? It's the one you bask in, the feeling that changes your life.  

My generation has a fight too.  My favourite artist and designer once said that its easier now for young men to be gay.  This isn't easy.  Nothing about this is easy.  

I wish things were easy.  But they get hard first.  When things get hard you know who you are for when they get easy.  No one who went through an easy life had anything worth saying right?

But how do explain the crushing duality? The highs of discovering the inner you, followed without breath by the lowest low of that inner you being damned by the person you thought loved you most?  It's something that sits heavy, like the weight of the world you used to know.  For some of us, we carry that weight hand stretched out, sullen and dutiful, (you'd like to pretend your one hand won't get sleepy after awhile, at least that's the cheekbones say).  I guess for others, that weight is a lot like a bag slung over your shoulder.  Casually at first, (you'd only just get away with looking like the straps don't bother when they dig into your shoulder), hand placed just so to keep from bumping your chest too hard (any harder you'd fall backwards, the bag is bigger than you)

This isn't right.  This isn't who we are as a world.  It can't be.  Isn't love in any form best? I believe it is.  It has to be.  There has to be a way to bring people toget past details.  We're so much more than such a detail.  You'd think with all the grandeur-like delusions love being just love wouldn't be so grand as to be too grand for some.  They'd call you delusional.  Better to be delusional and let love be love than to be sane and spend your day nitpicking about it.  

Never understood it.  Sometimes men aren't always men and women aren't always women.  People are people though.  You'd let a manly man be a man, but then he's suddenly complex for knowing how women work.  Never understand it at all.  Somehow it seems best for society to let the man be both.  On the other hand you'd let a girly girl have a tough moment and then its all crazy, never mind that both men and women have to be tough.  No wonder society lacks balance. 

Body Language/Christopher Wheeldon

It's late, and the hustle and bustle of the day is far, far behind.  The last minute copyediting, re-titling, re-checking, nip-picking and picture editing is long gone.  You'd think those were my favourite moments, the ones that I'll look back on and be inspired by.  

I think it's moments like these, when the room is silent and the remnats of the day sweep over me.  I could be at home with my vape, sitting in my moody room watching TV on my phone, feeling inspired by mostly nothing.  I could be but my room smells of last year's ganja and last minute munchies from there too, but instead I'm here.  Somewhere that should be loud and bustling, but isn't.  Sitting at the familiar computer that I always sit on.  The keyboard is the newest one I could find, gives me the feeling that no one's been here yet, or almost no one because I'm sure the only one that dares is Jasmine.

Its funny how I stumbled into this room out of the blue on the first day of school just looking for somewhere or something to do.  Now I draw for the school paper.  This semester has been something unexpected, as I thought it was one step away from where I wanted to be.  I guess I was wrong, this room taught me that.

I think in this room I learned a lot.  I learned a lot about the world and how to ask it questions.  I learned that its not so much where you've been or where you are now that matters, its where you're going next that's the focus.  I lesson I learned in being a part of the LMC Experience is that you really only get to sit still for a moment before the next thing to do is in front of you.  I think all semester I've been the one with the last minute inspiration, the veil lifts just at the right moment and then I see.  I think I've been looking into things that probably should be far enough in the future, but instead I'm seeing them like they're right in front of my face.  

One of those things is  Christopher Wheeland.  He's a British choreographer that I've been watching videos of in my spare time.  I love how he makes the strangest blind spaces where you don't expect them.  The twists of the ankles in the most unexpected places, a flick of a wrist right after a turn that catches you by surprise.  

I have to admit, something about the hustle and bustle of the day:  After I get my cartoon drawn (on time) I'm usually so happy that I'll dance.  It occurs to me every week that maybe I should just draw the damn thing early, but there's so much else that I'd rather be doing. (like working)  So today, right after I finished my cartoon, I danced outside (well I kinda really just walked around on my toes...I'm not so much for the dancing yet.  You try teaching yourself to use a pair of these, its not easy.)

I guess one day I should figure out how to afford lessons and costumes and the like.  I'm sure somewhere there's a lifestyle that's not a delusion of grandeur

Where Have All The Flower Children Gone?/Lost Flower Child

I met a hippie named Plunker a few weeks back, and he gave me this book.  "Somehow I feel like I was waiting for you." He said as he signed it.  I felt like the book was calling me, and that's a connection with books I often have.  The last book that called my name like that was a copy of Hermann Hesse's "Narcissus and Goldmund."  When I came across this rainbow coloured confection, I grabbed for it, hoping that it would erase the inspiration that Goldmund and his brooding had left behind, or at least dull it a little.  The book left me yearning for more in a way that seemed to almost spell a negative demise, it's heavy handed spirituality a bit too much for my flower-child tastes, but still something about the wandering transience called me.  I love transience, mostly in people, not so much in things.  I often wonder how people can stay in the same place at the same job for longer than 3 years. (I'd never managed that, and I'm sure the only reason I made it through high school was sheer necessity.)

These days though, I feel a deep longing for something a little more...lasting.  I want to create something lasting, something beautiful like a little piece of me floating around in the minds of people I don't know and I might never meet.  The notion seems somewhat...enticing.  Just think, something that sat in your head for however long is out there, known and recognised by people you don't know.  They'll know of you, but you may never know them, or how much your work has affected them.  That's a beautiful thought.  My favourite artist and designer once said: "I have made beautiful things, let them go and know they remain in other peoples lives...I create and send out into life."  At the time, I read this quote and thought "How weird, don't you want to keep something beautiful for yourself?" but now I understand: The more you let go, the more space you have to create something bigger and better based on what you've just created.  I guess a lot has changed in me in a year to understand that notion.  He always seems so sure of what to do next, I hope one day to get to that place in life where maybe there's not so much inner-turmoil.  Everything about life overwhelms and confuses me (My therapist says this is sensory-overload.  I'm still waiting for this to come in handy in places other than raves and concerts.)  I feel like the world is too big and too complicated for me, like I'm a lost flower child that missed the calling.

I just want to do something different.  I want to leave the world with something of me, something that I can just let go and watch take shape in the world.  I just want to change perception, change what people think is possible from everyday life.  I wish there was a way to leave people breathless for just a little while, but I guess that's just my grandeur-like delusions.

Delusions of Grandeur/Grandeur Deluded

Silly America

Our consciousness is framed by "me me me."

By what's on TV.

By big houses and little dreams.

We diagnose creativity away with alphabet soup sicknesses.  Being young and restless becomes 'ADHD.' Big dreams become 'Delusions of Grandeur.'

"Delusions of Grandeur," she said, as her pen went tapping against the notepad.  "You think bigger than you are," she said.  All I've ever been is a kid that loves music and concerts.  All I've ever been is a hippie at heart.  The pen keeps tap, tap, tapping. "Try thinking small, like instead of a festival, maybe just a party with friends."  Because a dream that big can be summed up in a party.  EDC reduced to 20 drunk kids in a room with an iPod for sound, the stoners out back.  Mediocrity on rampage, I've had parties like that already.  My 16th birthday was bigger than most weddings.  

Funny, I started out one of those gifted and talented kids.  Every year you were told to expect big things from kids like us.  Geography bee, spelling bee, I was in them all.  No one thought I had delusions then.  

But then again its not about me is it?  It's about the idea, because an idea can change your life. Pull you back from the brink of death and remind you that you only live once.  

I think maybe as she tap tap taps her pen against her notepad, she might have had some delusion long ago.  Tap tap tap.  It's a delusion because it doesn't fit in your box of who I am.  Tap tap tap.  I'm crazy because I'm not "Plain Jane."  

Tap, tap, tap.  Close my eyes to world around me. Tap, tap, tap.  Open my eyes to the world within me.  Hedonistic opulence meets deep and Earthy forests.  A world beyond time.  Electricity is different here, so are the people.  Tap, tap, tap.  The tapping keeps me from growing roots here. Tap, tap, tap.

Session's up. Grandeur deluded.

Where?

Once in awhile in a while that usually happens more than just once, I feel like this. Like maybe people don't read their Bibles at all like they should.  The description of Jesus sounds like if he were around today he'd have some serious issues getting people to believe he was legit. Burnished bronze looks kinda dark.  

I don't think if Jesus were coming back, he'd be coming back as a Jewish man.  Jesus is the child of God, a fair challenge is necessary.  If I were Jesus, I'd come back as an African-American woman. 

Why?

Because, it's already a miracle if Jesus came back at all.  It's a miracle if Jesus comes back as a black woman.  On top of that a black woman that changes humanity.

As a black woman, you already know the world is hard.  You're fed that subliminally.  You'd have to hunt for the one black Barbie doll in the store as a kid.  Until recently you didn't have a Disney princess to idolise. If you made it out of childhood somehow you hardly ever saw anyone in the media doing anything remotely good.  

This by the way is my motto at heart I guess: be the woman Jesus would be if he were a 27 year old black girl in today's society.

Guess she'd do some sort of miracle.  Really those things are tough these days, and miracles start small. Miracles are like blinking: everyone does it but at the moment you're busy paying attention somewhere else. Like you being you is a miracle, even if you'd thought the you you are isn't worth much of a damn.  Maybe at this moment someone wishes for you to exist, to be everything you are and nothing more.  What if you find that person?

I guess today's rains brought some heaviness.  I never understood why people got all depressed when it rains.  There's a moody somber mood that comes with rain and fog.  Its a dreary romantic lull that settles in (if you find the drizzle romantic, I think I do). Achy joints become en Vogue, and oh so quick the "I love you's" of neon summer have faded into earthy jewel tones.  

Every so often, I feel a powerful sense of déjà vu. Like suddenly I feel the world shift, and I remember being here before.  Here from where?  

Plastic

Sometimes I feel like I'm squeezing myself into a world that doesn't want me there.

Like the plastic and fake just can't relate to what's living, breathing in my head.

The world's run on plastic.

Plastic is as plastic does.

Chanel, Prada, Fendi.

Apple, Google Chrome.

Boxes, for the unboxed.

Your thoughts are now a diagnosis

Dreaming becomes a disease.

Thought becomes a disorder.

School or jail cell, jail cell or war.

The things you'll do just for a few dollars.

Plastic buys for plastic eyes.

Nothing's real just

Plastic.

Ambition-"A Man's Story"

It's early Sunday morning.  I've got my tea and the vape is warming up.  I'm ready to go to bed.  Watching A Man's Story, which is a documentary about Oswald Boateng.  Watching this documentary is been an adventure for me, as I started it on Tuesday at work at the behest of another model named Brandon.  He's 6'9" suave and a sweetheart, the kind of guy who melts your heart and makes you swoon.  He loves designer clothes and wears them well.  We bonded over the fact that our modeling career was started by the same woman and that we have similar cultures, as well as being equally ambitious.

That's it.  AMBITION. A Man's Story makes me feel like my ambition is returning.  Seeing Oswald Boateng living the life puts fire in my soul.  Watching him makes me want to put myself in his shoes, to walk in his footsteps and to take the fashion and art worlds by storm.  To become that talent no one saw coming.  In a few years I want people to say of me "She snuck up on us from nowhere! She came with all these bright new ideas and wondrous creations and we thought she was just the model-a simple clothes hanger."

That's what I see in my future through the eyes of my ambition.

Wondering

I'm sitting here wondering where my dreams will take me in the next year

Am I about to fade away? The only thing that will do that is fear.

I don't have much but what I do have is faith.

Faith to see me through, faith to back me,

Unrelenting faith.

I'm gonna make it to my dreams if it kills me,

Life is gonna do that anyways, so try me.

A Luta Continua!

Today I had a very thought provoking talk with this artist.  You may know her, you may not, but she's a name in the halls of fashion.  She told me "There will always be bigots out there."  I didn't say anything I can remember, but ironically my mother (who bears the same name as this artist,) used to play a song by Miriam Makeba "A Luta Continua." When I was young, there was no Internet, so I couldn't Google the meaning or the words, but when this song popped into my head earlier tonight, I realised this: There will always be bigots out there." A Luta Continua. (The Struggle Continues)

I played that song for my mom tonight, and her response was this "Oh, those were the days I I only played African music. I tried to instill a sense of culture in you." Silently she instilled something else, something I learned from the spirit in the music.  The spirit of a dignified fighter.  One that has lain dormant far too long.

A Luta Continua. The time is NOW.  

"Stranger in A Strange Land"/London Call Me

"Stranger In A Strange Land"-30 Seconds to Mars

Enemy of mine

I'll fuck you like the devil

Violent inside

Beautiful and evil

I'm a ghost, you're an angel

One and the same

Just remains of an age

Lost in a daydream

What do you see?

If you're looking for Jesus

Then get on your knees

Enemy of mine

I'm just a stranger in a strange land

Running out of time

Better go, go, go

Angel or demon

I gave up my soul

I'm guilty of treason

I've abandoned control

Tonight

The end is coming, everybody run

Now we're gonna live forever, gonna live forever

Tonight, Tonight, Tonight

The end is coming, everybody run

Now we're gonna live forever, gonna live forever

Tonight, Tonight, Tonight

The end is coming, everybody run

Now we're gonna live forever, gonna live forever

Tonight, Tonight, Tonight

The end is coming, everybody run

Now we're gonna live forever, gonna live forever

Tonight, Tonight, Tonight

The end is coming, everybody run

Now we're gonna live forever, gonna live forever

Tonight

Lost in a daydream

What do you see?

If you're looking for Jesus

Get on your knees

Angel or demon

I gave up my soul

I'm guilty of treason

A Vatican's son

Your soul

I've never felt like I truly belonged in America.  I'm prissy and "well spoken for a black girl" (as if race should affect my ability to use my native tongue properly, my mom always insisted that I speak properly, "We speak the Queen's English in this house."). Really, I've always enjoyed the appeal of England, and London holds a particular place in my heart.  It was the first foreign city that I wandered in alone.  I was 20 years old and I had just been kicked out of college (for the first, but not last time), and my mom and I were visiting some family.  I walked the streets, secretly wishing that I lived here.  I loved the tiny quaint houses, so unlike our huge sprawling American ones.  Sainsburrys, Asda, Boots.  Everything was just so homey to me.  I adored the London fog, the mood and vibe of the place.  At the time my favorite bands were MUSE and Kasabian, and being in the land they called home made me high on life. 

There's something so fitting about England to me.  I'd joke and say it was the accent, but I think it's more than that.  People would laugh if I said this but the voice in my head is an old British woman, something like Liz from Keeping Up Appearances.  The accent makes my thoughts feel serious.  I'd grown up on British comedy (maybe I just gained years, at 27 I don't feel grown up at all, just weird).  Keeping Up Appearances, Faulty Towers, As Time Goes By, One Foot In the Grave, Are You Being Served, the list goes on.  My wit is probably drier than the Sahara.

But like I was saying, I never felt like I belonged in the place and time I live in.  Most days I long for a time when things were simpler.  When men were dashing and women were dainty. Definitely from an era when men wore hats.

It's late, or early, whichever suits you.  The TV is on in someone's room.  No sound in my room though. I don't own a TV since I left the last one in Kansas.

Kansas.  That feels like a lifetime ago. How young I was then.  How young I am still.  I still have a hard time settling into life after that, but that's a story for another time. Tonight we talk about London.

I went on my first date in London.  I caught the train from Harlow.  He was Italian.  We met at Zeta Bar a few nights earlier.  My cousins were busy pouting and waiting to be noticed by the cute investment bankers across the dance floor.  I felt strange with all that makeup caked on my face and instead of joining the pouting I walked over introduced myself and told him to buy me a drink.  Turns out Italian men like strong women. By the end of the night his friends and I were screaming "Save the albatross!" In the empty London streets and my cousin was busy making out with some guy who finally noticed all her pouting.

London and me we go way back.  We're a lot alike too.  Prim and proper meets strange with a lot of good rock music mixed in.  There's no other city like it. 

I wonder whatever happened to the Save the Albatross guy...

Year Zero-The Prolouge

You could say the same for fashion.  It's all become a gross parody of itself.  Nothing is wholy original anymore, just "New and Improved."  How can you be both "new" and "improved?" If you're something new, what was there to improve on? And if you're improved, aren't you still old but better?

Its an illusion. The Matrix, and we're all gobbling down the blue pill.  Viagra, Adderrall, Xanax.  Gucci, Fendi, Prada, Channel. . Pop, pop, pop, pop.   Fashion is no different, it runs on the same cycle.  Twice a year you get your prescription readjusted and filled (Spring and Fall seasons and fashion week) then all year long you pop pills.  I say you, but in my own way I'm just another you. There's a reason I use fashion I guess.

But the red pill is something new, it's Year Zero.  Normally, I'd probably take the blue pill (or covet it anyhow) but now I'm eyeing the red pill, reaching for it even, because I know the blue pill isn't for me anymore.  It's Cinderella and princesses, and I'm not a princess, I'm just a girl with a dream.  There's no Prince Charming here, he's off being "new" and "improved."  While I wait, the dream sets in, hovering above my soul like a hummingbird, just close enough to be seen, far enough to be out of focus.  It's silhouette leaves an impression on my being.

So I'm left here, reaching for the red pill, for the choice to be different but just as potent.  The ability to flood my brain with something new. As for Prince Charming, why settle for a prince when men are meant to be kings?