The kind of human wreckage that you love.

"The doctors and the nurses they adore me so and it's really quite alarming cause I'm such an awful fuuuuck!~"

Hello everybody, sorry for my absence in the blogging world I hope to get back up and running very shortly stress and school has been tougher than I thought it would be this year. Sometimes I wish I could catch "senioritis" but even after choosing to go to SUNY New Paltz and finishing my PiG paper I still care a whole lot about my work. Sometimes I care too much, but I like learning and I really like understanding. 

    Since the last time I blogged I have completed a zine as an art director! Although projects like these usually get me wound up and my mind is scattered all over the place I stayed relatively calm throughout it (except for the times where I told Austin to shut the hell up). Was I truly calm or just stoic? Not sure, but this time I let myself step back a bit even though I was still very involved in what was going on. I contributed art to both zines but mostly The Light Edition of the zine.

I think this and the Polar Bear are my favorite contributions, really.

 Note to Future Sarah: if you think that doing two zines at once is a simple and easy idea-- stop. don't. If you try to do more than two zines at once then I will come from the past and hit you with a brick. 

your fiend, Past Sarah

After that I help a little bit with the new STAC website, figuring out things that are important/vital information to things that should be shown subtle. When writing down questions I remembered when I first auditioned for STAC back in the eighth grade (my how time has gone by). I remember reading and learning anything I could on the website because until a day or two before auditions I didn't know anything about STAC. I am the oldest child in my family and none of my older family friends mentioned it so I had no clue. I also thought of all the things my parents wanted to know about the program. I went into auditions thinking I wouldn't even get in and just went for it and here I am four years later!

I have not worked much on the website since but it looks awesome! I used to know very very basic HTML coding but I forgot a lot of it over time.

I also gave Julian Ashley and briefly Danielle a lesson on painting with oil colors. I never really saw myself as much of a teacher but I tried my best. For me, I feel like teaching fine arts is quite a challenge. I'm so used to just doing it that I find it difficult to explain it well enough that you can understand how to paint. I'm thinking "oh well you just paint it, duh" but that wouldn't really teach them anything. Although I was given a bag of colored oil paints I decided that colors are kind of hard on it's own and I wanted them to get the idea of painting with oils before worrying too much about that so I went with the handy dandy Payne's Grey. It is what I started with when I began to oil paint my freshman year. They did very well with it and seemed to like it. I hope my 'teaching' helped them!

'This painting of mine was all done in Payne's Grey

Dancing Plague of 1518

 

July 1518, in a part of the Holy Roman Empire called Stasbourg, France the Dancing Plague outbroke when a woman, Frau Troffea started fervently dancing in the streets. If one person fervently dancing wasn't odd enough within the week the number grew to fourteen people, in a months time... 400 people dancing. Some of these dancer died from a heart attack, from a stroke, or exhaustion. The local physicians ruled out supernatural or astrological causes but thought the dancing disease was caused by "hot blood" and that is was natural. Rather than the usual prescription of bleeding they encouraged more dancing.  They encouraged my dancing by guiding them to a grain market, open two guidehalls, construct a stage, and even hire musicians to keep them dancing. This dancing mania was recorded in historical documents such as physician notes, cathedral sermons, local and regional chronicles, and the Stasbourg city council.

A possible reason for such an odd plague is stress induced psychosis. Some think the stresses around them, famine, disease, etc. was so intolerable that it could cause mass psychological illness. This dancing plague, or choreomania occurred on multiple occasions, the earliest known incident in 1020 and most recently in the 1840s.    

 

What.

Bo Burnham's new comedy special came out today! I may have mentioned it before but I saw his show last may and I must say I was laughing so hard that there was a point where my laughter would not suffice for what I was feeling and I started flat out yelling.

For this special he decided not to sell it or make any money off so he put the whole thing for free on his youtube channel and on Netflix. He jokes about it in the preview:

I find this a cool gesture but it is no surprise to me, Bo has always made connotations to disagreeing with how a lot of art is just for the buck, or to make some profit. The only thing he is really selling at the moment is his poetry book Egghead: Or You Can't Survive on Ideas Alone.

 

 One really great song he did about this very thing is called "Art is Dead" from his last show and I hope you listen to it:

 

I love Bo Burnham. He is my favorite 6 foot 5 child (not a child, 23 actually). He got started on Youtube and got picked up by Comedy Central when he was only 18. He can seem absurd on the surface but underneath there is so much knowledge to his work. I feel like Bo Burnham is really smart but sometimes it goes over people's heads or they believe too much in his stage persona. I had the pleasure of meeting him last May and I noticed he was a lot more introverted offstage. I personally liked that about him because I feel like I am the same way to some point. I am fairly introverted, but I feel that when presented with an audience that introversion goes away a bit or becomes less apparent. 

I look like a toe but take note that I am standing and he is sitting in this picture.

Compared to his past work I think What. is a lot more visual focused and more philosophical. Maybe if you like what you saw or heard here I would check out his earlier work too. You know, if you have the time. I understand hot commodity time is these days, believe me I do. If you don't have an hour to watch his whole special here is a clip from it. A song from the perspective of god.

 If you have an hour here is What. in its entirety:

Your Life Is A Lie

So yesterday I submitted a drawing for MGMT's poster drawing contest. They are having a concert tomorrow at the Barclays Center (that I am super excited to go to) and they have been hyping this particular concert up because it is the last date on the tour and they have not been to NYC in over 3 years. I don't remember what made me go with this idea but I went with a Metropolis theme (maybe NYC and Metropolis both cities).

 

I doubt I will win I am not so confident with my design but MGMT posted it on their facebook page which is pretty cool with. They are one of my favorite bands so I had to do a double take seeing something I did under their name. You had to submit it through tumblr or instagram and I did both but the sizing on the instagram one was off and looks worse. Of course that is the one they choose to put up! I commented the link the better version. Oh well!

My drawing on their page

Can't wait for tomorrow!

"To a new world of gods and monsters"

- Dr. Pretorius in The Bride of Frankenstein

     

    Wow I don't think I was emotionally prepared for this movie. All the acting in it was so fantastic, every slight movement, facial expression, even the smallest glance put me in awe. Sir Ian McKellen is amazing on screen I can't even imagine how it will be to see him next week in Waiting for Godot. Starstruck already? The film starts off as this funny, kind of perverted old man but as time goes on it gets so much deeper you begin to feel his every ache and pain (which again can be attributed to the acting). Even Clayton Boone's (who is fictitious) character development, starting off as a dopey gardener to seeing him crying on Whale's floor was really good. I kept finding the smallest details that can connect to something said or done or even just a visual image popping up on the screen momentarily. The way The Bride of Frankenstein was weaved into the plot was done really well and it makes you look at the the 1935 film in a whole new way. I feel like the film would be a lot different for somebody who has never seen any of James Whale's films... maybe the interest in Whale wouldn't be as strong? Even though the film was necessarily about Frankenstein it was really tied to it like  using the sketch of Frankenstein with the message "Friend?" to clarify to Clayton what Whale's real intentions were. 

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I feel like I still can't talk about this film properly. There was so much about that film that I still can't grasp into words. Maybe it is a poor memory or maybe it is what Joseph Cambell meant about the things we just can't talk about. Maybe I'll have it sit on the brain for some more time and come back to this.
 

The Dreamboys

I was looking around the interwebs at things related to Peter Capaldi (who some of you may as the next Doctor on Doctor Who) and although I had heard about it before I finally came across some audio from his old punk band in the 80s called The Dreamboys. Capaldi did lead vocals and Craig Ferguson was on drums. Peter Capaldi shows embarrassment when talking about it in interviews but I think it is kind of cool the new Doctor was in a punk band! Here are some of their songs:

 

 

All Was Golden in the Sky

All was golden when the day met the night

I was thinking about dualities and this song came to mind. It is about the personifications of the Sun and the Moon meeting and the moon falling in love with the sun. It is from Panic! at the Disco's second album Pretty. Odd. which is my personal favorite from them even though most prefer the cabaret feel of A Fever You Can't Sweat Out (which is also amazing). I feel like a lot of the dualities we are making conflict with each other but with this even though it is day and night I love how they join together. So lovely.

Ryan Ross is definitely my favorite lyricist, this song isn't the best example to show Ryan's amazing writing (I wanted to let you know I wrote ryting at first). Some of his lyrics has had a deep influence on me which is I think what makes great music. One of my favorites from Northern Downpour being "I know the world's a broken bone, but melt your headaches call it home". A lot of my digital drawings of lyrics (not 365 failure) come from Ryan Ross' brain. If I was anxiously counting the hours of sleep I can get before school I would go deeper into this but I will save that for another time.

To See With Love

It is getting late and I want to go into the myth chapter in more detail so I will blog about that in the near future.

The other video we saw today was

I have not seen this particular commercial but I have heard of this being done before (but I am not sure if it was done by Dove). I really like this. I really like this because a part of me wants to believe that I am not seen by others the same way I see myself. I think a lot of us think that way. Part of this is really sad because it shows how so many of us look at ourselves in such a more negative and more critical light. But on that same note it is somewhat hopeful because those people were viewed far more beautiful than they thought.

This reminds me of the quote.

“Closed his mouth. Then pressed a kiss on Oskar's lips. For a few seconds Oskar saw through Eli's eyes. And what he saw was... himself. Only much better, more handsome, stronger than what he thought of himself. Seen with love.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In

 This is from the book Let the Right One In, some of you may have seen the movie (hopefully the original version). I read the book I think... in my sophomore year? Maybe? And I remember this quote specifically. Probably the only quote I distinctly remember from the book. Definitely my favorite quote. Oskar was bullied a lot and did not think of himself as well as Eli did and because Eli's powers Oskar got to see himself for once in that view. If you haven't seen the movie I recommend you do and if you have any interest in reading it (it is a bit different) I do have the book if you want to read it.


I hope you too can see yourself with love one day.

Witchcraft I tell you!

I came across this story on PBS' website about the Salem Witch Trials. Eight young girls on trial were delirious, convulsing, had odd skin sensations and were in a trance. The only way to explain such symptoms would be... witchcraft! They are under a spell! Who in the community could have done this?! This is were all the finger pointing came about. Around 150 "witches" were taken custody,and by September 1692  20 men and women were killed with out even confessing and five more died while in jail. After the trials the townsfolk did not know how to explain what they have done. Why had they gotten into such a witch frenzy? One theory is that none other than a fungus caused this madness. Behavioral Psychologist Linnda Caporael saw the link between the symptoms and the effects of hallucinogenic drugs like LSD. LSD is derived from the fungus Ergot. Ergotism (meaning Erogt poisoning) caused by Calviceps purpurea affects rye, wheat and other cereal grasses The grains will then turn to sclerotia which is mistaken for discolored rye and contains chemicals found in LSD like Lysergic acid and ergotamine. If the sclerotia was eaten toxicologists say it will cause convulsive disorder characterized by violent muscle spasms, vomiting, delusions, hallucinations, crawling sensations on the skin, and a host of other symptoms, just like the ones stated in the Salem Witch Trials! After all Salem was in a swampy breeding ground for fungus and rye was the staple crop so this theory does make a lot of sense. The article also says " The rye crop consumed in the winter of 1691-1692 -- when the first unusual symptoms began to be reported -- could easily have been contaminated by large quantities of ergot. The summer of 1692, however, was dry, which could explain the abrupt end of the 'bewitchments'". Spooky and also very cool to hear an explanation like that for something we have heard about for years!

Here is a picture I found of Ergot on rye.

Where all of these fun facts are coming from.

Under Pressure

*hums tune to Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie*
I feel like I have neglected this blog even when I had things I thought "I'll blog about that" I never did. Which bums me out, but I'll try to move past that.
      Lately all of this pressure seems to have slammed onto me at once. For a solid month I had little to no homework and now I am up til midnight working (and then another hour or so playing Pokemon X). I don't even have the time to make any art that I want which is really depresses me. Having an idea linger in your mind but not being able to express it with the effort you want to put into because of other responsibilities is frustrating in some ways. My first college deadline is soon so once I get that in I'm hoping the rest will come easier. I haven't even procrastinated any college work or school work (to a degree). I am hoping for this to settle down in the next week or two so I can take a small sigh oh relief and start anxiously awaiting for the letters.

      On the bright side my favorite holiday is this week! Halloween. The time of year I can indulge in all my spooky interests without it being weird. You may or may have not noticed that I wear Halloween socks all year round (that or socks with puppies, moose, or from Ireland). I was thinking about it and I kind of wish the older  you are the more effort you put into Halloween. I know everybody is busy and putting a costume together can be difficult (trust me I cosplay, I know) but seeing people put little effort into something that can be so creative is deflating. I mean imagine growing up with all these older people who had super cool costumes for Halloween rather than 'oh cool they put on a fun hat' how awesome that would be?! I definitely prefer the dressing up aspect much more than the candy.