wow
so we've been through some really hard times this spring. printmaking took all of our time even our sleep. we were pulling like 3-4 all nighters a week by the end and sleeping only a couple hours the remaining days. everywhere i looked somebody seemed to be saying something cynical, pessimistic, or offensive toward me. people around me seemed to have given up on their dreams, shrugging at their own unhappiness apathetically. everything seemed to be crashing down.
then i felt this really strong magical connection to this apartment upstairs and had a sort of vision of it. it became clear to me that we needed to let go of some things that were no longer working for us. amber wasn't so sure, but we did a reading and it was pretty clear there too, and we visited it again and she opened up to it. then just as i called to rent it out, someone else had put in an application on it, so it was reserved for them. we waited all weekend to see if the application would be denied or something. it was approved, so the people were going in to sign the lease that week... and we believe them to be frat boy types, throwing obnoxious football parties, shouting things like "yeah bro!", and drinking cheap domestic beer all over the lawn. bah! i was so confused as to why i would have such a feeling / vision. why would our reading even say specific things about it? why would we be presented with an opprotunity and then have the universe retract it??
in the midst of all this, i think we both felt pushed to a breaking point with the working and sleep deprivation. instead of a message of empowerment, i drew on my lithography plate a question of
'who is winning / losing' in a battle between me and the cynics (giant jagged rocks with mean faces, falling on my head). i tried to make it so that it was unclear whether i had some hidden internal superpower that would break the rocks or if they would simply crush me. i used sharpie. during the longh chemical process, something went awry and my image washed out considerably. the way it washed out, though was of particular interest. the image of me was almost completely gone, and the jagged edges of the rocks were no longer visible as dangerous things, but the faces in the rocks remained pretty clear. it was like a metaphor for my entire life at that point: the amswer to my question, i was losing. i was dissapearing. i printed it anyways, deciding that this was what was meant to show up, and deciding that the true expression had manifested itself onto the prints instead of my intended image.
as printmaking took more of our money, and it seemed almost impossible for the quarter to end, our financial state began to overshadow our bonnaroo plans. we wasted a few dollars on some lottery cards, hoping for a small sum. we had an impossible amount of work to do in a short time, no money, and we were both exhausted to the point of almost becoming ill. the sleep deprivation began producing hallucinations. the final critique for printmaking could also, we learned, not be moved as we had hoped and was scheduled for thursday morning from 10-6. we normally try to leave for bonnaroo wednesday night. we couldn't move it up even if everyone would have agreed on it, because there was so much work to be done, that moving it up even to wednesday would make all of this work completely impossible. we had to cancel our trip to west virginia, which we had been looking forward to. then, the week before finals week when we began trying to focus on the prize of bonnaroo, the transmission on our car went out. we were broke and barely had enough for the rent. we wouldn't have had much spending money as it was! we tried playing the scratch off lottery a few more times, hoping for just $500, to no avail.
we just kept our noses to the ground and worked on our final pieces and reflected, as suddenl;y, we felt really good about the artwork that we had made. amber and i really attained some new level of enlightenment about our own art through this whole experience! it feels so different!! suddenly it was like the sky opened up. the quarter ended, we somehow got all of our work done, and the mgmt for the apartment called us and said that those guys never came in and signed the lease- they strung them along for like 3 weeks, and then blew it off. we made arrangements to move there! :) everything seemed to be turning into this really positive thing! then, finally, money for bonnaroo did also fall out of the sky! i got a $1000 check in the mail from the accounting dept at the school because i had overpaid like a long time ago! we immediately rented a car and packed our things!
