Also, Emory's Michael C. Carlos Museum will be using a few of my photographs from their Tut exhibit for some grant requests and press releases. Which is cool, I guess.

I mean, I get photographer's credit, but no cash. Maybe I should ask them for monies? Or maybe I should ask them to let me take pictures + their money in the future?

Anyway. This is the first time my photography will be published in print. My first writing piece was published in April 2008.

I wonder what my next big landmark will be?

Because you look like John Maus
Intense
Intense like, won't brush the hair out of your eyes, even when that hair has been in your eyes for minutes.
Intense like, I want to fix your wayward hair
or possibly spot a mote of dust and remove it from your shoulder
and then you'll turn around
(we're waiting in some long line)
and smile
and 12 hairs will fall between your eyes and mine




A poem, based on a_renunciation 's most recent journal entry.

Because I am a master of procrastination.

Someone send me better brain drugs.

[I tried to post this last night at 2am, but my connection died and I was left with this partial draft]

Not normally something I'd care about this early in the evening, except:

1)  I am supposed to be at the set in three hours and fifteen minutes, and will be working for twelve hours.

2)  This is the first time in a few weeks that I've been unable to sleep because of my work. 

I met up with an artist named Squanto today to take some pictures for an article I'm writing about her solo exhibit this Saturday.  She was sewing an eight foot tall teepee with two friends, so I spent the evening asking her off-the-record questions (she says interviews make her nervous, but agreed to answer questions through email) and taking pictures of her gang at work.  It was a lot of fun - they all kept masks on for most of the shoot, and the lighting was really great without me having to move anything around (which I don't do for that kind of shoot).

I only took about 200 pictures, but I am meeting her at the gallery tomorrow to take some more shots as she paints everything and sets up the teepee.  Her work is a really intriguing mixture of installation and standard gallery hanging, with all sorts of detritus piled, nailed, and suspended around her framed art - the whole exhibit space becomes an integral part of each piece, so it's actually really hard to imagine the effect her for-sale pieces would have when hung in someone's house...

[this is where the draft cut off, but I wrote another two paragraphs about how awesome her stuff is and why I want to write an article that will drive people to see (and buy) it.  The shape of that article, and ideas for future photography of her setup, were the things keeping me awake.]

3)  I can't find a good position for my junk.

4)  Or my arm.

[So that's why I couldn't sleep last night.  I eventually got to sleep at three, woke up an hour and a half later, and went on to spend 12 hours as an extra on Road Trip 2: Beer Pong.  It was not at all like Entourage.]

From Self Portraits With Hood

Do any of you know anything about puppetry? Can I send you a review I'm trying to write, or bounce some ideas off of you via phone?

(Oh, and it turns out I didn't have tickets to the show... the band's press person just told me I did, and then didn't answer my calls or calls from the other people who showed up expecting to be on the list. So now I am home, where I have given up trying to finish write this review in favor of drinking wretched fucking vodka and taking pictures of myself under sharp lights - the bulb I'm using is one of those energy savers, and I really can't see any difference in light quality. Though I do like the light you get off those really old bulbs, the ones that use clear glass.)

I'm trying to write about this puppet show I saw the other night, but I know nothing about puppetry or theatre. Dang.

And, I guess I'm getting ready to go see AIDS Wolf in a bit? Or not. I dunno, my hearts not really into it. Or maybe it's all this caffeine. Either way, I have a feeling the show's gonna make me feel really ansy. And I will wish I had brought something to drink.

You know what I would like to see? Beer sold in the big 500ml flasks you can get at liquor stores.  Ideally, good beer (also, good beer tends to be higher proof, so more bang for your volume, which is an important consideration when practicing flask-fu).  I mean, some times I want to have something to sip on at a concert or something, but I am not in the mood to drink straight whiskey or sherry.  I should pitch this idea somewhere or other.  It is a concept whose time has come.

But the pictures should be good.

If you'd ever like to see some of what I've been snapping at concerts and around town, feel free to stop by my picasa album.  There is one album on there which is not mine - the one labeled Food Not Bombs.  (A photography student borrowed my camera for a project he was working on - he's used to film cameras).

Anyway, Tuesday night was fantastic.  I was calling everyone, and it felt like everyone was calling me.  I got a call from a friend in New York, and I asked if she was inside because all the music was so loud.  She said "No, I'm in HARLEM!"  For some reason, hearing that made me really happy.  I guess I was just thinking about how much New York's changed since I first visited before 9/11.  And then I was thinking about all these phone calls flying around, and I realized it was the exact opposite of the hours after 9/11, when entire phone networks shut down under the weight of a million "are you okay?" calls. 

But this time, the question was "can you believe this?"

Still listening to Matt and Kim + Deathset a lot.  What can I say?  I like piano.

I borrowed a fuzzy hat with wolf ears from a friend, and now I wear it while riding around the city.  It keeps me very warm, and drivers love it.  I have only been called a faggot once in the past week, which is like a 70ish% decrease from a normal week.  I also haven't had anything thrown at me, but that could be an outlier, as I've only had things thrown at me three times in the last 10 months.

The usual Wednesday fun stuff: finished some writing, cooked with FnB, wrote more, fixed bikes, watched scary movies at a friend's house (I was the only person in the room not in a band), and now I'm back home, exhausted and filled with candy.

I am a fuzzy pinata.

"Hey, good to meet you - I'm Ben."
"Oh... yeah!"

This response freaks me the fuck out. I don't want people knowing who I am before I know who they are. It makes me try and think of all the memorable things I may have done while drunk/drugged... was it spending five minutes figuring out how the patio gate worked? Trying to convince a certain pixie-esque* keyboardist I could only communicate with her through osmosis? Pushing bouncers out of the way so I could take a photo of something?

I'd like to think it's because lots of Atlanta people are reading my writing, but I have a feeling that's not it, as informal quizzes show me to be much more recognized as a photographer.

Maybe it's a sign.

* can anyone point me to that essay about annoying pixie-girls in movies?

A ruling this week could force online music sellers to pay publishers more money - as an Apple threat to close iTunes looms.

This is truly America's second Great Depression*.

I've been trying to write this 300 word article for the last week, and the only thing I have is:

"Nomen Novum and Thy Mighty Contract played unexpectedly packed sets on The Other Sound Festival's first night. Even though they were opening for more well known local bands, both Nomen Novum and Thy Mighty Contract easily drew at least three times more spectators than Chopper, the headlining band."

Eugh.  I feel enveloped in bland.


* GP 2: Even Greater!

Augh. Been running around to interviews today. Woke up, started putting on clothing combination, had to cut a notch in belt because apparently I CAN get skinnier. No biking yet, but soon (my pet).

My tie was amazing.

I'm going to interview the guys who run this mysterious boutique/art gallery on Monday. The interview is for a story, and I am being paid cash money for that story. It came about because I asked my editor, "what's up with that place that always has the secret Black Lips/Deerhunter/King Khan/Liverhearts/No Age shows?" and she said, "I don't know - want to write about them?" I like that sort of editorial decision making process.

The weather has been fantastic today: overcast, with shards of sunlight. Windy, with slips of still. Rainy, but the rain never falls.

It shouldn't have to be restated at this point, but sometimes I think my entire life is tied to the weather around me. I like heat and sunshine; mainly hate everything else. I went to Turkey during one of this decade's hottest summers because I had been in England for three months and I needed the opposite of that. I think Atlanta's weather is changing, and, maybe (hopefully) the silence I've been in all summer is changing as well.



I'm going to spend an hour or so trying to write about this tonight. It's the first time I've ever written about abstract sculpture. I'm pretty excited though. I got a chance to wonder* around Whitespace Gallery taking pictures yesterday. You can see all my best shots here. I don't really understand something unless I've taken pictures of it, which I think is similar to the way that some people don't understand or remember a concept until they've written about it.

Two bands to recommend:

The King Khan and BBQ Show (sort of two bands, but they almost always play together. Currently out of Berlin. They won't tour here until next year.)
Cohen and the Ghost (from New Orleans, Baton Rouge-ish. Lap steel, and violin.)

I'm way more excited about one of the jobs I interviewed for than the other.  They're both editing positions, but the one pays really well** and provides medical and dental insurance.  Also, is in a vaguely internet related office, which is cool.  Anyway, even if I don't get the job, you should probably check it out.  Send me an email or reply in the comments if you'd like info.

*  This is a typo, but I'm keeping it.

**  "Really well" is still less than $40,000 a year.  I worked out recently that $26,000 per year could keep me pretty happy (as long as I didn't get sick, have a car***, need to go to the hospital, or have kids).  So anything higher than 26k is good, and anything way higher than that is a A Fucking Miracle.

***  As others have pointed out, having a car is a really crazy stupid gamble, especially for young not-rich people living in the city.  I tell this to a lot of people.  Sometimes I tell it to complete strangers and then offer to build them bicycles.  Not sure if that is a Good Habit or a Bad Habit.

TTYL, gonna go watch Olympics.

I'm interviewing Ben Sollee for a story in a few hours. I normally hate singer/songwriters*, but I've been enjoying most of his songs.

His cover of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come".

"Dear Kanye" - the chorus is "you don't need a lightshow / just good flows."

I wish there were more cello and less sax in that first one, but whatcha gonna do?

I guess Eeeeeeelizabeth's sort of adorable too.  But not even close to as adorable as I am.  Do you see my frown of confusion and disdain?  That is pure gold.

Also, I took a few pictures in Charleston.  (but none of my face)

Maybe I've been depressed since getting back to Atlanta?  I guess the writing thing's been sort of a grind lately - I haven't heard any really awesome music in a bit, and haven't had a chance to do any of the things I really love to do in Atlanta, except bike lots and lots and lots.  I had a fun interview with Noot d'Noot, a big "music collective", just the other night.  We talked about D and D almost as much as we talked about music.  But transcribing the interview does horrible things for my brain.  I've spent the day (and evening) transcribing, applying for jobs, finishing up another review, and really not going outside at all.  It's probably for the best - I slept 10 hours yesterday, which I haven't done since whenever I got sick last.

Um... things in the future:

Watching movies with Heather on Friday, then going to see some art stuff, then probably climbing buildings.
A sort of training bike ride with a little group on Saturday or Sunday.
Maybe stopping by the studio to hear Hope For Agoldensummer play Saturday morning.

...that's all I can think of.  I don't think I've had a weekend this slow for months.  It's for the best - there's schoolwork and writing work to be done.

(oh, hey - copies of Bon Ivor and Shearwater's new records are here.  They are good.)

I'm at home transcribing interviews from this weekend and cooking up a big pot of nutri-mush (black beans, pinto beans, chicken, onions, red peppers, mushrooms, +some weird green things I borrowed from a friend). Transcribing sucks. I have about 2.5 hours of tape, so I have to sit here and write all that down, knowing that I'll probably only use the equivalent of 10 minutes of audio from each interview in my articles.

Tomorrow I'll try and finish up both of the stories, which, turned in, equal $75 together. That's $75 for 2.5 hours of interviews, another 2.5 of boring transcription, and then 1-3 hours of writing.

At some point I need to look for more work - the only thing I have coming up is a job "rewriting" this guy's website at 15 cents per word.

Oh, and this was a note left for me by my parents:
 

The handwriting at the top is my mom, the bottom is my dad.

The writing's going well - my most recent Shakespeare paper was a "tour de force," all my writings for False and Performer magazines' next issues were well received, and I'm about to send out a query letter for a job I'm pretty sure I'll get. The pay is 10 cents a word - not great, but not bad either.

I'm trying to get serious about this "career" thing, but every single flowering thing in Atlanta just bloomed, and I don't have a hint of pollen allergies.

Also, really enjoying a Birmingham punk band called P.S. Elliot.

I've eaten four bananas today. My previous record was three bananas in one day.

I spent two (long) hours interviewing this guy on Monday. Over the course of Monday evening, he called me five times to clarify his position, sometimes agreeing to be quoted and named as a source, sometimes asking me to remove him from the article entirely. These calls all came as I was working on my first draft of the article, which was due the next day. On Tuesday morning, he called my father at work, without mentioning having talked with me the day before, or why he was calling an architect whose specialty was residential when he should have been talking with an environmental engineer.  The call was bat-shit enough that my dad mentioned it to me that evening.

It's all very strange. I don't think the guy's stalking me - I'm just not sure he understands how creepy his enthusiasm seems to someone who's got a few million other things on his mind.

Also, I ran into my creative writing teacher this afternoon. We don't like each other*. We talked about our future plans, she implied I'd be living with my parents long past my thirtieth birthday, and then I listed the writing work I'd done over the past semester. Then I spent the most enjoyable three seconds of that day watching her face change expressions.

*  After reading a few of my pieces, the professor urged me to switch from writing prose to poetry.  I told her I didn't think poetry was a valid artform.  She is a poet.

Banana
Energy drink
Granola bar
Philips and Flat Head screwdriver
A few rubber bands and paper clips  (the most useful things you'll ever carry)
Pocket sized notebook
Pad of graph paper
Print outs of whatever writing I'm working on  (I edit and make notes on these in my spare time)
Bike lock
Condom  (Of course, it's been in the bag forever.  I hardly ever have sex during my morning commute.)
$3.50 in change  (for the train, payphones, panhandlers, etc)
Book  (currently Emile Zola's Germinal)
3 pens  (2 black ink, 1 blue)
Black sharpie
Flask of whiskey ( it's been in my bag since I bought it Thursday - I'm thinking of keeping it around as a "just in case" thing)
Tiny compass  (sometimes I get lost)
Cellphone
Lighter
Bike gloves
Bungi cord  (for the cargo rack over my rear tire)
8gb zip drive

For my next livejournal entry, I will list "Emotions Felt While Reading The Hanging Home Breast Cancer Test Card As I Used My Parents' Shower Last Weekend."

My Pine Magazine article's online here.  It looks like the editor made some weird cuts to the article's ending - the last 1.5 paragraphs have been cut entirely.  Any advice from writing types would be appreciated.

New userpic*! Last night was great! I got lost, then unlost, then sat by a fire, saw Carry Ann Hearst and the Gun Street Girls play a great set, and finished the night up with one of my favorite rides home since February 29.

I'm in a coffeeshop now, amazed at how unremarkable good music becomes when played in a faux-mountain lodge setting.

Also, apparently, I've got a new article deadline for April 1.  Can any of you Florida types can tell me about anti-homelessness laws or homeless rights advocacy organizations?

*from flyingover's Barackachu animation.

"I'm not saying that substances get mixed up with chemistry don't effect art output. I'm saying you could not tell. There is no consistent style, or technique, no way you could tell. No more than you could tell from reading a passage of text if the writer had been drinking.

Being an artist, doing art, involves operating at many levels. There's a cocktail of components such as learned skills, physical dexterity, life experience, personality, perceptual ability and more. Those are just off the top of my head. Someone who does a lot of their art, be it visual or musical, dance or theater or the written word, has a lot going on when they do it. Some processes are very much the active here and now, some are happening at a deeper intuitive level. The latter are where your history and training and experience come in to play.

Some folks, folks who either cannot or will not do art, see artists as savant, mystical or idiot. It isn't magic. It isn't one process happening. Art is not the same combination of processes for everyone."

-Quoted from this Boingboing comment.

-

I'm 1/5 of the way through this story I'm working on.  Not sure if it's any good or not.  I'm enjoying writing it (though that could be the weather, or the massive amounts of caffeine/caffeine-like chemicals boring new holes through my brain).  I figure, if I write 2 or 3 stories this week, I'll have all of next week to determine which is least bad, make the edits (with Jeremy's help), and win CASH MONEY.

The story is called A Shitload of Baseball Bats.

-

I biked at least twelve miles today - from midtown/my apartment, to Little Five Points, to GSU in downtown Atlanta, and then back up Peachtree to my apartment.  It was awesome.  I tried a few of the BIKE TRICKS that I've been working on - trackstands, grabbing onto cars for speed, bunnyhopping curbs, and riding up escalators (I can't ride down them without hurting myself yet).  Totally faster than a car.

I like bike.

This sobriety's horrible. I spent an hour last night calling friends and asking them to make me the godfather of their future children. It went pretty good. I'm now the official godfather of Zack and Britney's kid, possibly the godfather of Jeremy's, and definitely the godfather of Kyle's dog.

I also spent an hour or so reading Camus' The Plague. I'm not sure whether I can call it fantastic yet - Camus wrote the novel after spending a year working in an Algerian town, and I find his descriptions of the town at least as interesting as his oblique discussions of Fatalism.

I'm dipping back into writing fiction again, after a few months' vacation in journalism's reader-skewed mentality. Oglethorpe's got this (for CASH MONEY) writing contest, so I'm trying to write something better than the 15 or so other graduating English majors. I didn't think it would be too hard, but I had forgotten that my fiction generally makes no damn sense.

Personally, I blame that on my readers. I mean, most of the reality I know of doesn't make any damn sense: I was talking to a Swiss girl a few months ago, and she told me she had reached Olympos (Turkey's Southern coast) by hitchhiking. I figured she meant she had hitchhiked from Istanbul - as the conversation continued, it turned out she'd actually hitchhiked from Thailand. I asked why, and she explained that she had a fear of flying.

Also, I've got a few pictures of Momocon 2008 at Proclaim It Lost.

Finished. The last two paragraphs don't make any damn sense. I couldn't sleep last night because I kept realizing how many people would read this thing, and that someone was paying me for it and probably wanted their money's worth, and that it's the first real thing I've ever written, the framed check moment. It's funny how something's a hobby until you get cash for it. Money. Money. I feel like I'm in a Modernist novel.

I think everyone cares what they write, but I wish sometimes I cared less, like with this blog.

My apartment smells like stripper.  Did I mention I used to date a stripper?  It's something I like to bring up when I'm not sure how cool I am.  Anyway, she smelled horrible.  Smoke, c-section, and other people's perfume.  Every time she came over, her smell stayed the night even though she didn't.  She'd leave, and I'd run around opening windows.

Two of my friends-who-smoke were over Friday night.  I hate this goddamn smell.  I called them both up this morning and told them they should quit smoking.  One of them said okay, and the other said, "Ben, I'm going to keep smoking."  It was like a Wes Anderson script.