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3 Dreams last night:

1. I was at a church, saying something about having to keep church stuff in mind at your home. I was like preaching this, even though I wasn’t the priest. Everyone was like “yeah”. The we drove up Brookside Ave (back in LI) to a baseball diamond. There was one of Grif’s friends dads up in a tree there, in a white bear costume. But then I saw a real white bear on another tree branch. IT wasn’t a polar bear, it was smaller–weird. So it started creeping toward the dad. I yelled, he dropped out of the tree, and the real bear ddid too, and started chasing him. Then it was chasing me, into the baseball diamond (). It turned out it was another guy in a suit, but he was old and had been living in the woods around the baseball diamond. He was trying to bite me/eat me because he was some kind of rabid zombie. I think he got a bite in on my foot before I woke up.

2. I was in the backyard, and it was swampy. But under the water were like smooth stones, kind of like in the iphone app Koi Pond. The water was shallow, and I was walking around back there. It was very peaceful-winter, grey, but stragely warm. In parts of the yard, the water got deeper. Soon I was up to my knees. A goldfish swam up to me, and it wasn’t scared. Next thing I know, I’m swimming in it. It’s warm, but I wonder if it’s dirty. I go to get out, but there’s these kelp/weeds in the way of the concrete ledge. I heave myself out though, and I’m standing on the ledge. So I jump back in on the other side, and see a hand floating in the kelp. I go “Wow, a dead person!” and I grab the hand. It’s a little hand, my son Eli’s. I push him up out of the water; I’m in too and it’s hard to hold him up. His eyes are open, but his mouth is closed and I wonder how I can get him on the ledge to give him CPR; I’m panicking and grief-stricken, wake up.

3. I drive up to my house in Snyder. It’s a beautiful day, and the sun is out and warm, even though it’s winter. Maybe it’s spring. My dad comes running up to me. He’s much younger; his hair is dark and he has glasses on like me. I hug him and I’m super happy to see him. He’s come for a trip in his pickup truck. In the truck it’s really messy, with a unch of Bud cans lying around, and a sixpack of unopened bud. He wants to drink some with me and my brother Bri who has just shown up. I look around, and the garbage we put out hasn’t been picked up. Lying on the blue bin is an enormous party pizza that has not been touched. My dad wants to eat it, but my brother goes” it’s nasty, there’s little black bits all over it” and he pretends to take a huge bite by sticking his head right on it. There is scaffolding on the front of the house as the workers are residing. I wake up.

Worked on some c4d stuff today. I think it will be a major part of what I do for the project. Sketches first, then move into c4d, then photoshop.

I also have to keep this blog updated.

Best month of the year. Each day is wide open. Seems like this June stretches on forever.

I often think of Picasso’s famous quote, “Art is the sum of my destructions”. I’ve always gotten that. Whenever I make art, I feel like the second I’m close to that perfect line, shade, shape or texture, there’s all this pressure that I’m gonna fuck up.

When that happens, I imagine a little Picasso sitting on my shoulder, going “So why not fuck up royally?” And I give in. It’s easy, freeing, and I embrace the fuckup. I slash the pen, gouge the surface, rip it all up.

It never quite works, though. More often than not, I end up with a pile of mess. I chastise myself for wasting my time, paint, paper, canvas. I feel like a failure in little Picasso’s eyes. “You didn’t fuck up hard enough” I can hear him saying.

The little voice is easy to dismiss. Of course I can make something nice. Not destroy it. Nurture it, coax it along in its lousy, spineless, eager-to-please formulaic predictability. Eventually I’ll end up with something having at least a few people gazing, stoking my ego-fires.

But the best stuff I’ve always made happens when I give in. The only way to find that thing, the thing I want to leave behind, is to fuck up. Intentionally. Destroy that clean line, that perfect texture, that awesome font. Force myself to do it again, but better this time. And being aware of my doing it.

is falling outside my Lyons office window.

OK all you typography snobs out there, up in arms over Ikea’s recent switch to Verdana (google ikea verdana), ask yourselves: If you had one store to shop for all of your furniture, what would it be? Ikea, right.
If you had one font to use on everything you designed, what would it be? Well, you basically have to choose a web-safe, sans-serif font to maximize utility, so here are your choices:
Arial
Tahoma
Verdana
Trebuchet MS
Lucida

Personally, I’da gone with Lucida, but Verdana’s as good as any.