Illustration Friday: Poem

I write a good deal of poetry and short stories (check my website if your interested). This is what a first draft looks like (brainspill). My handwriting isn't always this frantic I was on a bus after 4 cups of coffee.

Illustration Friday: (re) Discovery

Often the nature of discovery is actually re-discovery.

New England

I traveled on the New London ferry back to Orient Point last night on my trip back from Boston . It was a beautiful trip across the Long Island Sound at sunset. It brought out the nostalgia in me. I love New England: the places, the smells, the food, the people. Living on Long Island can be all suburbs sometimes but some of that New England spirit still resides here and I love it.

Dirty Water

I just returned from a week long trip to Boston. The city has changed a bit from what I remember when I went to school there in the nineties but it was fun to be back. I was working with Adobe on their Youth Voices program and I met a bunch of terrific artists and educators. There were a few visitors from London in the group and one of them actually went swimming in the Charles river. She survived and lives to tell about it.

Illustration Friday: Geek

I always think it's funny when I see people's out of focus photographs.

(P.S. - Sorry to drag you into this Stan, I love your work)

Spalding Grey

Spalding was such a terrific story-teller. I always admire artists such as Spalding who can't be easily defined or labeled. He was a great influence on me as an artist, especially when I began writing.

When I finished my first collection of stories and poems I sent them out to a few friends (and I included Spalding whose name I found in the Yellow Book). I received a 3 page critique from a professor who was a colleague of mine going into specifics of how terrible and immature it was.

I was set to retire as a writer forever. A few weeks later I came home to a voicemail Spalding left on my answering machine letting me know that I should keep it up because the writing was a lot of fun. It was a shot in the dark so I was astonished he made the effort to call me. I'm left forever wondering what it would've been like if I had been home for the call but it really helped me learn how to keep things in perspective.

I was truly saddened by his loss when I heard out about his suicide. I happened to be in a workshop a few months later with Amy Arbus (a photographer who photographed Spalding for the book Monster in a Box) her mother, the photographer Diane Arbus, also committed suicide. She really changed my perspective on suicide a great deal because she expressed the torment that depressed people live with and the struggle their friends and families deal with. There seems to almost be a sense of relief that the pain for these very depressed people is over.

I've always told my students that I don't believe in suicide, I believe in going to Hawaii. I'd always though that the beaches in Hawaii are a better alternative to the severity of death. I mean, the weather is always great so I'd rather just drop out of society and live on the beach all day. I still believe that in some sense, but I now also understand that it's not the same for everyone.

I went to see Stories Left to Tell (the Off-Broadway play based on his last works) a week ago and I found it really moving. I still have the old answering machine with the message on it.

747

Well the 4th of July was pretty wet in New York. I went food shopping and got some coffee.

Atlanta and I...a magical week in the heat.

I'm back from Atlanta and I posted a photo story of my trip on my website here: ATL travel story

Let me know what you think!