catch-up and kafka (again)
today, june 3, marks 100 years since kafka's death at age 40 from complications due to tuberculosis. his fascinating mind has left its indelible imprint upon our collective consciousness: how many other writers have been worthy of their own adjective?
like basically everyone else, i read metamorphosis in high school. but taking a deeper dive into kafka's life and other works, it's clear how much of an influence he has had on the creative minds of the last 100+ years.
yet i am most fascinated by what kafka has become in the 21st century: a romantic icon, much-adored by booktokkers and lonely internet girls. his letters to milena stand out the most here, of course, and perhaps even more so because her letters are destroyed: we see only his side of things, and in some way it is like the letters are written straight to the reader's heart. we become milena, living a brief and tumultuous love affair that in reality occurred far more within letters than outside of them. the kind of love that breeds the most creativity is the kind that lives in dreams.
updates: i have a live-generated collection coming out this month i'm really excited to share it with the world. more details coming soon. some other exciting little projects are ongoing as well!
latest work:
i started a new series called "autocomplete." i used to make these back at the beginning of my internet diary project, over two years ago... it’s interesting to explore yourself through your predictive text algorithm: what does my algorithm tell me about myself? are there hidden truths to be found in predictive text?
i'm thinking about ways to expand this and make it more interesting.
and another piece i made this week: "it wasn't your fault."
detail:
today i'll finish up my submission for claire silver's 7th ai contest; it's something a bit more funky and fun. ♡˚₊‧✩
internet diary, may 14 2024
yesterday you sent me a message: a polite nudge that you meant as a kindness, but simultaneously revealed everything about you i'd forgotten on purpose. that you pray to the shiny, golden-haired women of the west coast — goddesses you chose long ago — who are no wiser than you or me, but nevertheless sit glowing on their pedestals, smugly chewing their cud. (like mother birds who eat poison and spit it back into their babies' beaks.)
friendship shouldn't be so tricky, or that's what i tell myself. still, i decided to stop writing love letters for people who don't know how to read. i thought i saw a light in you once, and then i watched it slowly flicker out. sometimes the ambulance comes too late. (i realized i don't know who you are, and i never did.)
i'm thinking a lot about dreams these days. i wrote an incredible song while i was asleep; you'll have to trust me on this. i tried to wake myself up to write it down, but slumber felt too good. i enjoy my stays on the dark side of the moon. i wonder if i belong there instead, and daylight is the real interlude. there's this book i read once, about a girl who spent a year sleeping. she took a lot of pills and teetered somewhere between life and death until she came to her senses eventually. (that's one way to leave it all behind.)
sometimes i, too, want to run away from myself, but i don't know how. where would i go? i'd have to forge a new identity. pick up a new skill. stop asking for so much. otherwise i'd open my phone and the same internet would await me. the same old songs would run on loop in my brain after being jostled from some hidden corner by the right word or sign. wherever i'd go, i'd still remember that i was running. (is life just a race back to the beginning, then?)
just beyond sight
everything in life is about perspective. catch the light the right way, and you'll see rainbows.
for the last 6 months i've been working diligently to learn 3d modelling. i took a bit of a step back from the art styles i was working with before - i wanted to learn a hard skill. challenge myself.
i still have a long way to go to achieve what i want with that - which is to be able to create entire scenes in quasi-realism. six months is not a lot to learn how to build entire worlds.
putting my other work on the back burner has been necessary, but i've also missed it. i was putting myself under a lot of pressure to create, and create often, but with 3d this pace is much more difficult.
i'd also taken a bit of a break from using ai in my process - but to me, ai is a tool i can use as a backdrop for my thoughts. it allows me to create on a different level, not focused as much on the aesthetics, but rather on the imbued meaning.
i'm still figuring out where i'll go with everything, but i will start re-integrating the diary-style pieces alongside the other streams i have going. the tea kettle squeals when i put something, anything out there.
more room to breathe.
the architect
as i am the architect of my own misery,
so, too, am i the inventor of my own joy 🗡
created fully in blender. timelapse coming later in the week.
silly girl
i want to create, but i want to create with meaning, with intention.
not to contribute to the clutter of the mind, but to water its parched pastures
so entranced with the rapid-fire feed that it’s forgotten what a real nutrient tastes like.
it’s so easy to fall victim to the fear of being left behind.
it’s all a game, and, just like you, i’ve decided to play.
i’ll condense my content to suit your attention span,
for it is mine, too.
i’ll coax the algorithm into loving me
i’ll sacrifice what could be for what must.
silly girl
who’s going to like you if you’re always so serious?
view the poem: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6J7AKCttta/
say something real, and mean it.
you’ve got to say something. you’ve got to say something real, and you’ve got to mean it. there was a poet, once, who said, “make something beautiful before you are dead.” we don’t speak of him anymore. when do we separate the art from the artist? where does the scale tip, and how much does it weigh? the lines have become so blurry, the lines between everything. i am not just a performance, i am a metric. which of my limbs are good, and which are rotten, and who decides all of it?
it's not that deep
experimenting - i'm a huge fan of the glitch aesthetic.
this is a 3d model i sculpted & glitched digitally. may do more like this; feels good on the eyes (that's my extremely scientific metric for whether i like something aesthetically or not).
was doing some work like this previously with my ghosts collection :-)
if you like this, you can mint it for free on zora for one week. just pay gas.
you are my shiny thing
you are my shiny thing.
like silver gleaming as i flew by,
i spotted you with my sharp eye.
it isn't often that one's so blessed
to find such treasure in all this mess.
yes, you are my shiny thing.
oh how my heart sang as i'd glide
over mountains, rivers and valleys wide.
with you clutched inside my beak
across the golden skies i'd streak.
yes, you are my shiny thing.
but one day as the sun was sinking
something far below was twinkling.
i opened my beak in surprise
thinking i'd found a greater prize.
yes, you were my shiny thing.
from my grip you tumbled down
into the streets of some old town.
and the twinkle that i'd thought i'd seen
was nothing more than some strange dream.
yes, you were my shiny thing.
reverting course, back i flew
across the city i searched for you.
but night had come down all too quick
the darkness settled, deep and thick.
yes, you were my shiny thing.
and though i searched for days and weeks
across the earth's great dips and peaks
all my looking was quite in vain
for i never did find you again.
yes, you were my shiny thing.
i'll brood forever over my mistake
which haunts me with a steady ache.
in my yearning for something new
i lost what once was real and true.
yes, you were my shiny thing.
