Save Self Expression

So this weekend I was in Ann Arbor for my Dad and my Sister's birthdays, though in hindsight I feel guilty about spending barely a half day with them. A friend and I walked around downtown for a while and she showed me this alleyway that was just filled with graffiti. It was a brilliant surprise, walking amongst this street you've traveled a million times before, and discovering this little niche of beauty that you didn't even know existed. Somehow though, I seem to think I've been there before, when I was small, maybe 3 or 4. I don't know why, there was just something familiar about it.


Anyways, the space was great, sort of a brick lined hallway with out a roof. The amalgamation of several buildings being placed right to the allowable set back, leaving this space. Aside from the context which makes graffiti so poignant to begin with (self expression, passage of ideas, counter culture, etc...) the site was intriguing by it's hidden locale within the century old college town. What really got me though, was the condition on this given day. The walls and ground were covered in a sheet of ice. It had snowed the night before and the temperature was up around 30 allowing the snow to melt and refreeze. There is something compelling about this place, surely concidered dirty by the middle aged and elite, wrapped up in a clean sheet of ice. It's as if it had been covered in a sheet of cellophane, protected, encased, sterilized. Also, the fact that it was wrapped by Nature somehow adds a layer of complexity to this condition. It's like Earth was trying to preserve our self expression. If you wanted to remove the graffiti, or paint over it, you would have to chisel through this sheet of ice first. Its as if Nature was standing up for all the individuals that might be judged by the comments on this wall. Whether what they had to say was important, significant, or even thought provoking didn't matter. Every voice was guarded by this sheet of pure H2O. A place where the homeless sleep, filled with radiator fans, and broken windows somehow purified by the winter.

The Magic of Things...

There is something beautiful about not knowing how something works. Computers, TV's, cell phones, all these devices do amazing things that we really can't comprehend. We don't know what's inside the phone, or the TV that makes it work, we just know that it works. If it breaks we have no idea how to fix it, it's just a magical image, an unseen voice that we interact with. This naiveness is beautiful though, not sheer ignorance. When we interact with these things and really think about them, we are amazed and wondrous about how they work, how we got from a wheel a thousand years ago, to this magic box that can show you anything you've ever wanted to see. As a child, it wouldn't be ridiculous to imagine little men running around, holding up little colored squares to create an image, or maybe there is a man behind the screen that quickly animates images to respond to the channel of your choice. Maybe the internet is really just a network of hard working elves that are loaded with phone books and catalogs ready to answer your every question, ready to dig up your hearts desired image.

As a kid, I was always amazed by movies and tv shows. It was my dream to be on TV and be an actor, I had no idea what that really entailed, I just knew that I wanted to be on TV in these perfectly formated shows. When we watch Friends, we see a story, a sequence of event that occurs over 22 minutes that make us laugh, cry, and relate to the characters. So this perfect portrayal of a story is created, and for us it's a real event that occurred in this sequence. The rooms are real spaces, in real buildings, that look exactly as we think they should. This is what made me want to be an actor so much. I wanted to play different people and be in all these different spaces. After 4 years of acting school, 4 years of improv, making appearances on 2 national television shows, this majestic idea of acting has vanished, my desire to learn the subject has dissipated. Once I understood how the actual production worked and how shows were put together, the mystery, the grand image of the story was lost. Now, when I see tv shows and movies, I think about the set, and how the actors are really staring at a bunch of crew men holding microphones and camera equipment. How many takes it took for the actor to get a scene right, what order they even shot the scenes in. I can still be engulfed by a great movie, but the wonderment is gone.

Now I am studying architecture. When I would look at really amazing buildings, like Falling Water, or the Guggenheim in Bilbao, I was so mystified as to how it worked. How can a mammoth block of concrete hover over a river? It didn't even matter, it was so beautiful. Now that I'm a year away from being an architect, the experience, the mystery of how the building works is lost. When you know how it works, it's no longer an image, or a space, it becomes a device. The building, outside of the detailed context, becomes part of a setting, as though it has been there forever. When you understand how it works, it's just an object in space, and the experience, though it may still be interesting and amazing, has lost that connection and wonderment once experienced by the viewer.

Nobody understands this phenomena better than the magician, for once a trick is revealed the magic is lost. You see, we interpret magic as a mystifying event, that can't possibly be real, but because we know nothing of how it works, becomes fascinating. For a moment, we think maybe it is real, and this guy really has powers that nobody else may possess. But, once we know how the trick works, the wonderment is gone. You can't see this trick again with the same fascinating experience. It becomes an act, it is now simply a trick.

Magic is real. Magic is not the trick, it is the experience, the wonderment. Magic is thinking Santa flys around with reindeer dropping presents down chimneys once a year. Santa himself is not the magic, the sleigh and reindeer are not the magic. The experience and belief in Santa is the magic. Magic exists, and to tell your children that magic isn't real, would be a crime against their imaginations.


Love. Love is magic. The 2 arn't interchangeable, that's to say love is magic but magic is not love. When you first meet someone, and start dating, there is something magical. You don't understand how this person could be so perfect. As time goes by, you learn that they aren't perfect, and the set of traits you experienced at first was simply just the image, not the detail. Finding out all their quirks and all the things that will grow to drive you nuts is the detail. Often, once that initial curiosity begins to ware, so does the relationship, and soon things will come to a crashing halt. The trick, that makes this magic last forever, is the magic itself.

There is something beautiful about not knowing how something works. This naiveness is beautiful though, not sheer ignorance. Sometimes, you just don't have to understand.

day later- I don't even know what this means, I was just sitting in the Rivera room at the DIA just writing away. I had a thought, an experience that I wanted to capture, so I just wrote, and whether or not I even touched on the experience I set out to capture, this is simply the train of thought that was catalyzed by the experience.

21st Century Literature

It may be difficult for most to understand the scope of this song. It is the essence of hip hop, today's defining media, and Kanye is the truest artist of our time. "Stronger" achieves so many unthinkable goals simultaneously, that any skeptic of hip hop must accept this work as a significant piece of 21st century American art. My statements are bold, but so is the nature of this song, and so is your preconceived notions of hip hop, an art form plagued with copy cat artists that often give the industry a bad image.



HipHop is the literary style of our time, and music has replaced the book. As many novels have in the past, hip hop serves as a representation of todays alternative culture and the problems associated with society today. Not only can hip hop be considered structurally more complex than most music today, but it's cultural relevance cannot be rivaled. These are the characteristics that make it so defining to todays society. Kanye West defines true hip hop and it has never been clearer than in "Stronger."

The original track for this song comes from the French electronic music artist Daft Punk's track "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" which is an Ayn Rand like song focused on the industrialization and hardships placed on the people of our global economy. Now using this track as a beat isn't exactly revolutionary, or particularly significant if in it's translation, the true meaning and essence of the song is lost. This is what separates the true artist. Kanye not only maintains the integrity and meaning of the song, he adds to it his own perspective, and a reflection of America's situation today within the global economy. This in itself is a feat, to take such a strong piece and insert values that reflect upon todays society while maintaining the integrity of the original work. That isn't the last layer on the cake though. Kanye uses his popular hip hop style and context to cloak the meaning using the club scene and the female male relationship as an analogy for America's global relationships. This is significant as it ties his cultural identity into the song as well, therefore allowing it to relate to his fan base who might otherwise criticize the song. Through this, Kanye is also setting an example, saying that all music is fair game, and holds equal value. His continuous love for all different ranges of music allows the walls of devision to be broken down in a sense, much like one would aim to do within the social context of race.

Sure, you probably heard it as just another hip hop hit, but stop and listen once in a while. It's not all just bitches, 40s and blunts. It's the music of our time, and it's farther ahead than you know. Don't be so quick to judge because you don't understand, or relate.

And you don't give a f**k what they all say, right?
Awesome, the Christian in Christian Dior
Damn they don't make 'em like this anymore
I ask, cause I'm not sure
Do anybody make real shit anymore?

The Road to Sustainability

It's sick to think about the gross amount of asphalt and concrete that covers the United States, when you consider it's bare nature just 100 years ago. Then, on top of that you have the millions of miles of power lines and phone lines that lace our neighborhoods and cities. Now, with these new ideas of sustainability and pv tech, and harnessing the wind, we begin to see these huge farms of solar equipment and windmills pop up where mountains and farms once stood. This image is almost as disturbing as the millions of miles of roads and power lines. I much prefer amber waves of grain to ebony waves of silicon. The idea that we could use an infrastructure that is already in place to capture energy that is already being wasted is something exciting to me. It makes the highway infrastructure more of a lifeline for America. Right now, we call it a "lifeline", an artery that carries all our goods and all our citizens, but with the new carbon concerns and all around environmental concerns, the idea of the highway being an important part of America is becoming less and less appealing. Think urban farming and local grown food.

So, today I read an article about a Dutch company who is working on a system to siphon heat energy off the roads to heat houses and local businesses. This sounds like a brilliant idea for America if you ask me. Considering the American Life, and the suburbs as we know it, was founded on the creation of a highway network linking everyone to everything, it isn't hard to imagine the immense amount of power one could generate. In the case that the local ideas stated above are embraced, the roads are not a forgotten infrastructure but live on to power our towns and neighborhoods. And while we are at it, with thin film solar, why not embed solar into our roads? The highways are generally clear of tree shadows and building interruption, save car traffic...

We are moving away from the idea of the car and the suburb. Every year our cities grow larger and larger as suburbanites abandoned their commutes and make their way to city living. As we move away from the car, away from the suburbs, and into this new sustainable life style, the roads will not only be seen as a means to travel but also as a farm for harvesting the suns energy to power our homes and businesses. This allows the highway to live on as a life line for America, yet at the same time, revolutionize both.

AP: New Energy Use for Asphalt : via Treehugger

Someone elses

If you are afraid of used things, if you think it's gross to wear something someone else has worn or touched, then you better stop using public restrooms. What would you rather do, put your arm in a sleeve that another person has worn, or press your ass up to a place where someone else pressed their ass? Oh, and which one is somehow socially accepted?