my eldest son turned 21. this is…part of a much bigger story. maybe i’ll put a little here in a day or two.

on that angle—i’m moving some of my energy, some of my writing and drawing, back to the handmade. at least for a while. we all know everything changes. and then changes again.

blogging is good for a handful of things, and of course i’ll still do it. maybe i won’t even slow down on content. but it can’t be all i do anymore in the way of writing. i see a large, bound book with empty pages in my immediate future. creamy pages i can write on and draw in…fill with braindreams and mindmaps.

my writing and voice diaries have always been a way of keeping myself in touch with my own mind and heart. they are how i let myself know what i’m thinking and living. how i mark the time, the days; how i know to interpret them, how i learn from my life, how i keep history. it’s my GPS, how i connect things. it’s my own cavewall, it’s my confessional and memoir. my completely honest diaries are, in reality, how i stay sane.

writing online is always censored and shaped. it feels real, and it is real. and it also more a voice outward, and less of a meditative one meant only for my own heart and mind. it is a performance.

seeya at the next show.

i went to the art store yesterday and spent twenty dollars on pens. twenty dollars is no small expenditure and no casual choice when you need five thousand dollars or so for your mouth. but i won’t let poverty crush me, steal pens and color and joy from me. so i went and decided to bring home a good pad of paper and a pocketful of pens.

i bought all pink pens. pink, magenta, red. nice pens. different size nibs. i came home and tested them. ridiculously, none work as nicely as a cheap pink ballpoint i own—the one i began with—that came free with a cheesy keyring thing. pink is important, as i have a project planned.

people dont look at ballpoint as a serious fine art tool. but i’ve been using them for so many years. in so many notebooks. so many classes where i was making doodles. diaries. i love ballpoint. it’s fluid, it rolls, my wrist can get greasy. it is a preferred tool. i do seriously detailed work with them. yet, that i know of, there is no “professional” set of ballpoints. they are ignored. at least in colors. there are a number of sweet black ballpoints ive tested. anyway, this is very frustrating.

the paper is, of course, somewhat intimidating, being all creamy and costing money. yet, not sure it’s ideal either. the paper doesn’t quite yield as softly as the pad i was using. it is tougher. harder. i don’t like that so much, my paper defying me as i write. i can deal with a little attitude, but this paper seems a bit too opinionated. anyway, i think i can make it work.

however, the pens i’m not sure are useful at all. oddly. i wonder if i can make this tiny pink pen last the whole series of drawings? probably not and then i’ll be stuck. i’ll be biking around in search of a very particular shade of pink ballpoint. of course, this will become my quest. self reflexively, i’ll love the idea of it as a story in and of itself. and at that point, i’ll decide to turn my quest into a movie.

so i’ll break out my cameras and get various angles and types of shots, a mini documentary of me looking for this pen, biking around town, talking to merchants, i’ll have conversations on the way. and i’ll have to explain why i want a pink pen to people. this will allow me to address one of the themes of Pink and Pretty: the vibe of Pinkness. and first i’ll be all awkwardly or overcompensatingly explaining why i need a pink pen and distancing myself from it. self conscious. but by the end of the film, i’ll have a totally different vibe in talking about it. i will own the pink. and thus the theme is realized and a character’s narrative arc fulfilled.

but before i’m done editing this video, some indie company will have read this blog and will have stolen this idea and made a film based on an nearly identical plotline. it will be edgy and sweet and relevant and genderfantastical and social justicey and yet a simple human drama. they’ll throw in two love interests that develop on the way, one boy and one girl. and the movie will be a quick huge smash and win film festivals and the person who stole it from me will get rich and famous and i’ll still be trying to save up for a root canal and writing blogs.

so i’ll get mad and start obsessing over this dude who stole my film. i’ll cut out clippings of his success at every turn and tack them to a big pink corkboard. i’ll stay up late under pink lights, mapping out various dostoevskyesque methods of retribution. i’ll finally decide that the only way to wreak proper public revenge will be to do a series of portraits of a priapismatic version of him in millions of shades of pink. so i do it, throwing myself fully into the work and end up producing a crazy, vibrant, original, disturbingly evocative and mockative genre of painting stylie.

the series of paintings is wildly successful and dwarfs even the shady director’s success and with my massive noteriety i then tell the real story to the world and everyone believes me. i make a film out of that story. hire steve buscemi to play this erratic version of me—just for the pinkness of the whole thing.