another lost week

Sometimes doing nothing is doing the most.

And nothing is pretty much what I did this week... I mean, not quite nothing in a nihilistic way, but nothing. I slept (poorly), I ate, I showered, I ran the dishwasher, I did laundry, I put on clothes and went to work... but I didn't sketch anything or draw anything or write anything, so I guess I didn't really do anything. And that's fine.

I was taking some medication, and it was affecting my thinking, and well, I stopped taking it... and I feel like myself again, relative to how long it would take for that kind of thing to wear off. To be vague - it made me feel tired and sleepy, so I'd go to bed and then wake up long before the alarm was set to go off and become unable to fall back asleep, so then I was zombie-awake and lethargic... there were times when I was at work and having one of those 'trapped in my body moments' where I would be shuffling down a hallway and thinking, "shit, I should be able to walk faster!" But I couldn't. I didn't have the energy to do it. It was like I was made out of sand.

I would cry for no particularly good reason...

And eventually I finally picked up the paperwork that came with the prescription and read it. There was a moment of ruefully sarcastic laughter when I scanned over my exact "side effects."

So, uh, yeah, that little boondoggle is drawing to a close.

I, like millions of other people, sat in my living room on Thursday night (well, technically Friday morning in my case) and watched "Brand X" and "Anger Management." I' 33, so technically, I'm too young to be a 'brat pack aficionado,' and I'm not. Charlie Sheen and his coke fueled meltdown or whatever that was last year — that was something that while I was aware of it, it just didn't really affect my daily life. I never watched "2 1/2 Men" — so the fate of the show wasn't really something that was bound to affect my entertainment... and it isn't exactly like I've seen more than 3 movies starring Charlie Sheen... but I watched "Anger Management," and it was funny, so, there's to winning.

I liked Brand X too.

I'm looking forward to the return of "Episodes" and to the July return of "Leverage." Sorry, book readers, but I do enjoy the television.

I have, however, in bits and pieces, been reading Keith Richard's autobiography "Life" in my spare time. People my parents age have that age old dilemma of 'Stones or Beatles? Well, I guess I come down on the Stones side. For the record, I also pick Zeppelin over the Who... but anyway, really, my favorite band it Pink Floyd, so it's irrelevant. Except, Keith was always my favorite Stone. "Happy," btw, is my favorite Stones song. So, even though I'm no groupie or superfan (and no, I don't own all their records) — and I know nothing about playing guitar — it's a good and genuine autobiography — and even reading it in bits and pieces out of order (which is how I prefer to read biographies) — it's been very interesting. The last part I read was something about the open G tuning of a guitar, and even though I know nothing about reading music, it's described in such a way that I don't feel like I'm reading Greek.

Anyway, on the accomplishment front — I sent this painting off in the mail yesterday. Shhh, don't tell my other paintings, but it was one of my favorites. Particularly this part:

Technically, it's a gaff, really, that crinkly / crusty / lumpy paint right there. And how when it dried - chemically it was such that it repelled the pristine paint that it was sitting there on the surface with, which is why it looks all crackly like that. And yet, to me, it's perfectly catastrophic - this little gurgle of texture in the middle of the painting. As much as those paintings are about a play on color, and literally the shape that paint takes when it just pools and sits there even after it's been pushed in a direction — it's all the things that come together that make the picture.  That painting is just as much about the juxtaposition of color and the abstraction of shape as it is about that little gurgle of crackling paint... which reminds me of what I read about how notes reverberate as per how a guitar is tuned in Keith Richard's book...

So, I hope the new owner of sunkissed alchemy phantasmagoria likes the painting, for whatever reasons they may like it.

And now I guess I should try to get some work done ; )