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Yeah; this shit can work.

Looks like I'm staying in NYC another week.

Only thing is my friend JD is back in San Francisco on leave from the Air Force. I don't want to miss him. I may dip into my savings to fly back and spend a day or two there w/him. Luke is also getting his Masters, but he's in it for the long-haul, and we'll have time a-plenty to hang out in June.

Volunteer for the 2004 Republican National Convention NYC.

It'll do twice as much good as building a giant puppet. I promise. Pass it on.

I don't know if people have been picking up what I've been laying down over the past year and a half, of if I'm just along for the ride. It gives me a funny feeling when I hear people using the language I've been pushing. Freaks me the fuck out truth be told. I'm not quite sure whether it's really working or if we're all just repeating the same things, but it feels to me like something might actually be going on.

My friends in Brooklyn are organizing off-beat sports; kickball and cricket. Local pols are getting up and talking about social networks and the importance of meshing progressive ideals with political realities, about praxis. I'm thinking about how the next few years might look if I can manage to dial it all in, to focus and articulate again. The problem with being a Political Artist -- that's what I think I am, by the way; as opposed to practicing political science -- is that I'm subject to the whims and whiles of the muse. Since I'm also a professional now, this creates some tension.

I want to be able to deliver. I want to be able to come through in the clutch, but I'm too new to this game to have enough of a process to be reliable. I have a degree. I have performed reliably. But here I'm without any assurance that I can make it happen. I don't have any real training to fall back on. It's touchy. I don't know what to do to make the spirit emerge. Impotence of a much more devistating sort. I need some new shaman mojo, and quick. Maybe some dicipline too.

And since I'm watching Pump Up The Volume on cable, I'm thinking about how damn hot Samantha Mathis is. Oh man.

I can't write well lately. I don't know what to tell you. I'm too generally taxed and bound by professional obligation to cut loose. Gotta figure something out or else all that is vital and bouncing around will stagnate and die, and then I'll have terrible psychic gas.

So I came home late tonight after rambling around to various scenes and seeing what's up. Swingers is on Jeremy's cable, and seeing Jon Favreau skulking about in a wife-beater gives me some cause for reflection. I'm thinking a lot lately about how culture reverberates. It's something of a professional obsession, being that we're attempting to manufacture enough of a shudder in New York and California that we can tap and modulate the rattle, transmit it through music and websites into the heartland.

So knowing everything, coming back here now and seeing this film on the flicker box, it makes me think about how the whole picture gets formed, how in independent film poking fun at a scene that was mostly over in Los Angeles could be so impactful on my mind as a kid about to graduate high school in Oregon; enough to put me over top to creating fake IDs and started throwing cocktail parties. And though that's no longer who I am, it is an important element of where I come from, and now I'm in the mix trying to shove the whole mother-humping Leviathan in my own way. Freaky.

Shudder shudder pingback. Every little thing counts when you're trying to start an epidemic. Throughlines are important though; quality will still have it's fucking day...

It's Friday; I'm having a party tonight at Julia's pad. I'm blowing deadlines trying ot get MfA's new site online. Too many moving parts and it's making me angry and frustrated in addition to stressed out and tired. Hopefully I can blow off some steam tonight. I haven't been sleeping well. Couch+Cable TV is a bad combo for me.

This city feels like home to me. It's different from home home -- which is still home in a peaceful shelter sort of way -- but here I feel most in my element. The buzz, the thrum, the vibe, the very Public nature of everything; I love New York. I wish the world were peacuful again and I could come here free of obligations, to rage around and be drunk and make love and art for years and years. I wish the world were like New York; diverse, energetic, optimistic, full of wealth and promise and baubles from the future.

There's no racial tension here. Well, compared to elsewhere, not much. I don't know if it's something that changes in my demeanor when I come here or if the air really is that different, but from the second I stepped off the plane, I've been surrounded by people who are different from me and I haven't felt singled out or self-conscious once. It's the density; it doesn't allow for segregation. That's what's so tragic about the mass-gentrification of Manhattan; while you'll still see all sorts all over -- witness the explosion of young homosexuals of color in the West village -- it takes a certain kind to live on that island now. That changes things once you step off the street.

Still, there's a massive difference in the degrees of separation between the various hoods of Manhattan and Brooklyn compared to the segmentation (racial, social and class-based) you get elsewhere. There's so much human energy directed at New York, it's just not possible for things to be very separated for very long before they're pushed together and mixed up again.

And good god the people are beautiful. Part of it is cosmetic, yeah; but a big part of it is confidence, purpose, drive. The whole deal, you know. This place is changing (or continuing to change, rather), but it still seems to be the place, you know? The place attracts the people, and the people make the place.

I still want to travel. I want to see more of the world, more of America even, but I'm ready to consider the notion that this is the spot to make my play.

Crazy ol' pa sends in some photos from the past. Good ones, I think:

For anyone who wondered what I looked like back in the days of my long lion-like locks:

A bit later on in my punk rocker days with buddies:

I'm 25 today, a full adult by numerical reconing, and I'm alive and in Brooklyn. The 7am train from JFK into the city is like a schoolbus. The colors -- brick walls, yellow traffic signal boxes, leafy green trees -- make me feel at home. New York City looks beautiful this morning.

I'm heading to NYC tonight for 10 days. Back in the Bay on the 19th. I'm having a birthday party while I'm there, so if you wanna come on out and live it up on Friday, drop me a line. Otherwise I'll be working outta the Brooklyn office and trying to have lunch with important people and people who are important to me.