I decided today to purchase a Flip Video Mino. I thought for a while about the type of video that I was interested and invested in making, and I decided that “high-quality” video wasn’t really a priority for me to invest in with regards to the content that I wished to tackle and develop. I will most likely be posting videos or screen captures of video on here as a means of showing inspiration for writing and development of bigger projects. I hate to have to think about how a single tool will enable me to develop work and ideas, but I truly think that this might be a good start towards motivating some spirit of production within me.

I think I need to make a video about hands. That is, if I ever finish any of the other things that I need to get done, I will make a video about hands. The inspiration comes from this::

Hands are a magnificent thing. Besides, the obvious usefulness in the advancement of our species, they are remarkable cortex’s of our nervous system. They are essential in our most reliant and faithful sense: touch. And because of this, I find my hands often needing to be preoccupied. Whether in pockets, on tables, in hair, or at rest, I find them fumbling or fiddling; turning or tracing.

Hands need folding, stretching, cracking, flexing; lots of attention and constant exercise. They are our gateway to the subtleties of our materials, and usually are the first to notice temperature change, and reflect an extroverted change in our mood. Wonderful as faces are to look at, so are hand to touch. It’s a wonderful thing for me to consider their potential comfort and hostility. Hands have a language, a system of symbols and translations, a veritable Esperanto of gestures and movements. I remember a moment when I felt very connected to their voice, and while listening to their strummings and whispers, I started to map their lectures and secret stanzas. Hands have a business to them that are like insects, or birds hoping from orchids depositing nectar. I often wonder if some great mathematician could map their vectors in some formula, and from this equation make a diagram that translates their delicate dance. If there could be a graphical interpretation of their movements, I would think it would resemble a roller-coaster ballet, or a map of the irregular patterns of skipping stones over a serene lake.

Hands truly embody the tenderness of our reach. We – that is, men and women of all creeds – have an unspoken affinity and benevolence for each other. The gestures of our hand shakes, back rubs, and intimate interlocking fingers are reflections of our spirit. Hands are human. They’re humble and clumsy; natural and grotesque. They reassure our inability to believe our eyes. We trust our hands, we know that they wouldn’t lie to us. Unlike smell and sound, they don’t hold the memory of their previous encounters (or if they do, they have to be constantly reminded of them in order to make the memories last); but it is because of their relived sensations that we are able to embrace their honesty to us ever time we use them. That being said, they’re also functional with a mechanical brevity that other senses envy. They can be mastered and programmed, not with theory or ideology, but conditioned with technique and craft. They gain us access to the obtainable. We often can’t be sure of a tasks completion without evidence in hand.

Hands arouse the deepest of feelings. One of the most wonderful touches is a woman’s silk hand running through the stubble at the base of my skull, or outlining the angles of my chin. Another is the flattening of the palm against the small of a partners back, soaking in the warmth from their abdominal center, nesting into the natural sweep of their body. I often rearrange the coins in my pocket as a pass time while walking from the subway, scrapping the metallic embossed surfaces with my tips of my fingers, setting them in order from smallest to largest. The enjoyment of cracking circus peanuts, tearing grapes from their bushels, pulling grass from its roots, and scooping samples from the baking batter are the work of hands. But perhaps their own self-absorbed fascination, their consistent need for others, to touch themselves – rubbing thumbs in palms; picking fingernails; pruning calluses – are all signs of their inherent loneliness. One hand has an undeniable need for the other to function as a pair, never alone.

Don’t ask me why i went into the McDonalds on 18th and Blue Island.

I was working down @ yollocalli today setting up SLYM show that opens on the 6th (I think). And I went in there to get a soda. I was getting my drink at the self service soda fountain and I saw a triptych of framed posters/paintings on the west wall above some seats.

I wish I had a camera to take pictures of these three wonders. They were a combination of “hard-working” “mexican-american” types. Men with thick black mustaches, over-all jeans and button-up white shirts, holding their tanned sons and daughters, smiling and proud. These people were painted all in a shade of red, like communist propaganda Red. With proud field workers, a man with a large top-hat (a mexican abe lincoln I suppose), and the great monolithic spires of chicago’s cityscape.

It was down right laughable in its mash-cluster-fuck-upery. Simultaneously placating some kind of clearly misplaced “working-class” “people-powered” necessity that the neighborhood seems to demand from its residents (according to MickeyDs) iconic and post-modern propaganda, these three murals – or muralist posters – captured so much in their brazen surfaced summary of the American Hope that I couldn’t help but stand and stare, for many minuets. I wanted to take them very badly, but my soda was already accumulating a good amount of condensation.

After getting some stuff sorted out over @ doubleunderscore (essentially moving it over from 2TMG and starting newish project over there) I decided that a lot of the more sketchier ideas that I’ve been having needed a kind of drawing board/platform. So, I decided WP as a good a place as anywarez.

Things here will mostly be unfinished thoughts, snipits of ideas, or thoughts occurring during the day. I also plan on getting a digital camera and trying to document where ideas are coming from more rigorously. I also plan on using this blog as a mental note pad for ideas concerning things to work on in future instances, as well as a kind of delicious for interesting things and sites that I might come across and ideas/inspirations that they might have for me.

In any event. <3