Beau

, originally uploaded by The Arm.

I don't want to go down some memory lane and write down every single moment in which me and Beau met and interacted. Those casual moments, a random conversation in a random coffee shop or a car doesn't become suddenly meaningful just because that person is no longer alive.

I don't want to write about Beau's art, which I new a little bit or his music, of which I barely knew anything or about his friends and where he lived.

I don't want to start looking for signs in his art, or about a hidden meanings in lyrics or about how it's always the good people who die young and the unfairness of the world.

I was just wondering around flickr, and looking at a bunch of photos Dan, our downstairs neighbors just put up of his Friend Beau Velasco, an artist and a musicians that sometimes lived in the building and sometimes just hand out here. The photos looked sad to me, even though they were of fun moment, so I googled Beau's and learned that he just died.

I feel so sad and empty.

I haven't been especially close to Beau, but he was someone I was always happy to see, I liked how gentle he always seemed, and how cool it was to think of this quite awkward person on stage, or see both his very delicate airy painting and his old school style harsh tattoos as a part of one person's art work and personality.

I'll really miss seeing him around.

Pattern

Every night the soul shutter to a million pieces
In the morning we weave back the pattern
over and over again.

I will never be as cool as you

She's standing there, at the entry to the grocery store. One of those Williamsburg hipsters, with hair so blond in could be white and long bangs that hide her eyes. Wearing silver Doc Martin's and sheer pantyhose with holes in them, and a big dark gray hoodie that may, or may not have a skirt underneath.

I can't see her face, which makes me put the most beautiful face on her in my imagination. Or maybe, non at all, maybe just an idea of beauty, a promise of anonymous coolness that I can never hope to replicate.

It's not my skin, darker, more wrinkled, blemished, it's not my glasses, it's not those few extra pounds, or more then a few. It's not that I'm older, it's not the glasses, or maybe it's all of the above. Maybe it's that never in my life I felt like a cool person and that on me, pantyhose with holes in them would look like carelessness, while on her it looks stylish and cool.

I'm standing there, for a split second, looking at her. With my bag of tampons and yogurt and low fat icecream for Ned. In an H&M sweater that last year felt like a cood fashion choice and at that moment, feels like an old lady's cardigan. In my old sneakers, a pair of jeans that all of a sudden feels both too buggy and too revealing. Feeling that role of fat around my belly. my thighs.

It's strange to move from "I'm too old for THIS Shit" to "I AM too old for this shit".

blogging

Ned accidentally erased his blog yesterday. He's trying to get more organized and in his attempt to get used to google calendar and Gmail, he somehow deleted his old account and lost his blog.

We were talking about it this morning, about how the purpose of online interaction has changed for us lately, the way the work and life mix and the things we choose to share with the world as well as how we choose to spend our time.

A few weeks ago, in a blog entry by YanivG, I came to realize something I was feeling for a while but ignoring. Flickr isn't fun anymore. what's more I don't feel incline to share too much in it. A lot of times before, when I went to do something exciting or just wonder around I would take a photo and the purpose of it was to put it in flickr so that my friends will see it. Now, I don't feel like that anymore, which is a shame, both cause I miss the community, and because it makes me take a lot less photos.

I haven't been blogging for a while, I mean, not really, I put up photos and some short texts, but I haven't been writing or sharing anything meaningful in this format for a while. I read a lot more blogs then before and I read al ot more on other type of websites and social networks, but I produce a lot less content in those formats, I make art, I put it on Etsy to sell, I'm promoting the shop as much as I can and updating our websites, but somehow I feel like the sense of community is mostly gone. Some of it moved into facebook, some replaced by human interaction. Mostly I feel more content to spend time with myself and feel the need ot share diminish.

The thought of Ned not blogging really scared me, I'm not sure why, maybe because I like blogging and I like being a part of the online world when I was more into it, and his choice to maybe not blog anymore made me admit defeat as well. Maybe it's because our public display of affection, him writing about me, taking my photos and spending time on expressing his love in a public way was very affirming to me. It made me feel protected, as if by making it public, he's making it real. Maybe it's the fear of loosing this almost objectifying-kinky-wild part of our relationship.

Today at blackbird, a guy tapped Ned's shoulder and asked him a random question, it turned out he wrote us an e-mail a couple of days before. He knows us from flickr and were impressed with our lives and art and photography. We set and talked with him and his partner for a couple of hours, it was a really wonderful experience. getting to know someone new in a random and cool way, based on a pretty deep knowledge of us from online. It really reminded me of the importance of public sharing and public expression of feelings, thoughts and images.

I'm not sure what's going to happened next. If I can get myself motivated to express myself in this way again, if photos and words can become as important to me as they used to be, and if that's even something I should aspire to, and if "should" is a word that should be used in matter of aspirations.

Things I found today

Very odd day. A weird conversation, both honest and difficult with Ned this morning while waiting for food in Egg. Then hanging out drawing in Blackbird while Ned went home to make some work related phone calls. Then hanging out in Persiana and Ned at blackbird sharing geed news and passing time. Now at home.

I found a lot of cool things today in the vintage furniture store, on the street and in the hallway.



A very boring book without any photos or illustrations about birds. The paper however is beautiful. I think I'm going to use this in the next batch of prints.



A really sweet child portrait I found in the furniture store, it was 2$ but too cute and strange to leave in the store.



A set of 10 tiny photos meant as a tourist momentum from Frankfurt. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with them, maybe use as a surface for small paintings. It was 3$, again at the furniture store.



A gift set including a book, a chart and a deck of what's called "The Universal Waite" tarot deck. The cards are basically a bad copy of the Rider-Waite Deck, that's render the colors in crayons and the figures with what's supposed to be a softer face, but actually just appear badly drawn to me. The back side, however is beautiful dark blue with gold stars. I really like that and might use it for small paintings as well.

My favorite photo from the past week

Haven't written anything in a while, either blog entries or e-mails. Even my twitter and facebook update feel hollow and boring. It's not as if nothing happened, if anything so much stuff happened that I didn't feel I have enough time or space to put it in words.

Ned's dad was sick and had to be in the hospital, and Ned had a big fight with his sister, We booked tickets to go to Israel in November, and Ned and I celebrated Rosh Ha'Shana with his mom and dad. Ned had a bad time, I had a nice time. We were both pissy in the past couple of days. And I'm feeling sort of lonely.

Last Weekend we shot twice, one day after the other. This is my favorite photo from both shoots.

good mail day

Got Heidi's sketchbook in the mail today! it came safe, whole and in a great shape. The drawings looks so much cooler in person then online! Heidi, you did a beautiful job. I have a couple of orders on my etsy store and some other projects I have to finish, though all I want to do is dump everything else and start working on this (yes, it might happened...)

And the winner is...

A couple of weeks ago I announced a special blog giveaway, the winner would get a set of 4 of my Tarot aces prints. So today was the last day to participate and the winner was:

Heather!

Congratulation Heather! i hope you'll enjoy the prints!

I had 24 participants on this raffle which is the most I've had so far - how cool is that?!

Illustration Friday - Strong

This drawing was made yesterday for illustration Friday. The word of the week was "Strong".

In the past week I've been dealing with some medical issues that were somewhat painful but mostly really frightening. I felt like both my body and my mind was feeding of each other making me feel worse and worse about how I'm feeling.

I really hope this will get solved in a couple of days, I do try to remind myself to stay strong through it and not let my mind or my body take over.

Eye Update

So it's 4 days later and I'm still not OK. I'm putting 2 ointments on, 3 times a day. In the past couple of days I'm also taking Benadryl which made then extremely foggy. My dreams are super vivid and colorful while my waking hours are sort of dull and strange. I don't think I like this pill much.

The most frustrating thing is not knowing what's going on.

The eye is not really swollen anymore, just in the morning, but instead I have this strange hard almond size lump on my cheek , right under the eye, it feels like I'm constantly frowning and squinting on the left side on my face.

Ned called today to make an appointment for me at the DR. I was too chicken to do it myself. he got into an argument with the woman on the phone who wanted to know why I wasn't the one making the call, what is my social security number and why didn't I come to see the DR. when I wasn't sick. He was really upset after he talked to her, I felt so bad about not being able to do it myself.

So I'm going to see the DR. on Thursday then. I really hope that somehow, by magic, this will get well by tomorrow and I don't have to go.

Free art for all (well for 10 people)

I've been wanting to do a PIF (pay it forward) just about since i started selling at Etsy. My new studio clean up project finally gave me the prefect opportunity!

And so I'm giving away 10 random pieces of art - there are originals, art prints, stencil art, book marks, ACOs and a whole bunch of thing. I'm going to list 5 of those in the louchelab store and 5 in our other store, louchelust.

If you don't know what PIF is, then here is a short explanation:

PIF, Pay It Forward, is a nice opportunity to do something nice for another human being, and so, basically, this is a gift - a piece of art, free of charge! do not complete payment for it, don't pay anything, just buy this item and I'll send you a cool piece of art, it's as easy as that!

starlight

starlight, originally uploaded by Aya Rosen.

check out the new louchelust movie
It's probably the happiest piece of Art Ned and I ever made...
www.louchelust.com