Wordsmith Foundry

I'm happy to announce that I am now a guest contributing writer to Wordsmith Foundry, a new blog about creative writing! My first article is in the link below:

http://wordsmithsfoundry.blogspot.com/2014/10/4-outline-writing-versus-dynamic.html?m=1

HalfAChicken.com - 10/7/14 - “Invisible Artwork” Hoax Successfully Trolls the Art World...But Not in the Way You Expect

Originally published on 10/7/14 at HalfAChicken.com
https://halfachicken.com/justinavalon/article/106

Oh man...the headline for this juicy bit of art news hooked me right from the beginning, but actually reading through it only made it juicier.

The above image is a doctored photo of an exhibit in Milan with the actual exhibit removed, courtesy of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). This was released as part of a hoax by New York-based “artist” Lana Newstrom and radio parodists Pat Kelly and Peter Oldring of This is That, the Canadian counterpart to America’s own satirical news network The Onion. The article that first launched this hoax went live a week ago, and can be viewed here:

http://www.cbc.ca/thisisthat/blog/2014/09/23/new-york-artist-creates-art-that-is-invisible/

Now, Kelly and Oldring have an infamous penchant for passing off parody and trickery as news, but for some reason, this latest ploy, which fabricated a story of an artist’s “invisible artwork” being bought up for millions of dollars, was actually believed to be real by other news publications. That’s right, online news networks such as Wealthy Debates and Barstool Sports immediately saw through the scheme of blank walls and canvases being passed off as art, yet legitimately believed people were actually buying them up! And who can blame them? It’s such an eccentric and stupidly ridiculous move that only a pretentious self-serving art snob with an account in Aspen would actually consider doing it. How could it not be true?

What’s interesting and endlessly amusing is that while Wealthy Debates and Barstool are talking shit about these alleged rich art collectors for spending money on literally nothing, I’m over here laughing at how seriously they’re taking this hoax story within a hoax story. I mean, how the fuck can you be half-gullible that you would see through the bullshit of one part of the story but not the whole thing?

The theory held by The Guardian in their response article to this latest hilarious development is that we as a culture just hate rich fuckers who are able to throw their money at anything. This hoax story was the perfect opportunity to take jabs at the wealthy art snobs, and these sites did so with gusto and in that respect have earned my applause. (Insert golf clap here).

In the end, however, I feel that the real winners here are the brilliant blokes at This is That for not only successfully trolling the art world with their Inception-style hoax-within-a-hoax, but for educating us on a very essential aspect of human existence, and that is the endless cycle of assholes talking shit about other assholes that pervades our communal existence. For as long as we band together, we will hate on each other together, for just about any little thing.

God bless you, Pat Kelly and Peter Oldring. May your wit be always sharp, and your audiences forever oblivious.

SOURCES

Canadian Broadcasting Corp. – http://www.cbc.ca/thisisthat/blog/2014/09/23/new-york-artist-creates-art-that-is-invisible/

The Guardian – http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/sep/30/invisible-art-hoax-lana-newstrom-cbc

HalfAChicken.com - 10/3/14 - Adventure Time show creator quits

Originally published on 10/3/14 at HalfAChicken.com
https://halfachicken.com/justinavalon/article/103

If you’ve never heard of Adventure Time before, just know that it’s the closest thing to an acid trip that the FCC will allow on a child-focused television network. It is generally described as a “surreal post-apocalyptic animated saga” as well as “the trippiest show on TV” (Strauss 2014), but really, words don’t do it justice. The bright color palettes, quirky and memorable characters, and juvenile-level antics and adventures can make you almost overlook the copious amounts of erratic and nonsensical shit that takes place. Almost.

Think of Adventure Time as a G-rated version of Ren & Stimpy…I use the term “G-rated” loosely here.

There’s really no way to properly describe Adventure Time to someone who has never seen the show. Everything from dimensional travel, parallel realities, convoluted plotlines, and the cast of characters’ deep-seated origin stories are explored the series’ 176 episodes, each of which is only 11 minutes long. It is the sort of sensory ass-kicking that needs to be experienced in order to be understood. It’s not like there’s any drugs or sex in the program, mind you. This is a show focused towards kids, after all. But with that in mind, the content can get pretty outlandish and downright disturbing at times.

…seriously, what the fuck is wrong with that bird?

In fact, the show delivers such a strong, well-written subliminal mindfuck that you would think its creator Pendleton Ward, who recently left the show, would have been forcibly checked into the nearest mental hospital due to a severe schizophrenic breakdown before he would leave (calm and collected) of his own accord.

But alas, none of that actually happened. The story is much simpler (and far less exciting) than that. Ward, who is mellow and introverted and just about the farthest thing from a psychopath as you can get, cited stress and exhaustion from trying to keep up with the growing magnitude of the show’s popularity as his cause for departure.

And who can blame him? Adventure Time is HUGE right now. “It’s a beast of a show,” Ward told Rolling Stone. “And the more popular it gets, the more the ancillary things – like the merchandise and games and everything – keeps getting bigger.” (Strauss 2014).

Sometimes merchandising can be a good thing though…=3

Tom Kenny, who voices the bubbly titular character on Nickelodeon’s Spongebob Squarepants and the misguided and narcissistic Ice King in Adventure Time, noted Ward’s weariness, which is particularly reflected in the character of the Ice King. “The way the Ice King feels [is] like he’s going mad and things are spinning out of his control,” Kenny tells Rolling Stone. “I’m sure Pen [Ward] has felt like he’s losing his grip on reality because he’s the arbiter of everything.” (Strauss 2014).

Ward himself seems to echo these sentiments. “[Like the Ice King, I have] a craving to be social and hang out with nice people and have them think I’m nice, which doesn’t make any sense to me.” (Strauss 2014).

A chest kick from Finn still doesn’t hurt as much as a chest kick from life.

However, fans of Ward’s work need not fret, for the ambitious animator still has plenty of projects up his sleeve, including writing an Adventure Time movie and creating an original video game, as well as dabbling in some cooperative projects with his friends in the form of a short called Animation Pals. Above all, though, Ward looks to do something that he will enjoy and get excited about without exceeding “the confines of what [his] brain can handle.” (Strauss 2014).

After overseeing the birth of nearly 200 episodes of kid-friendly, over-the-top mindfuckery, his brain has definitely earned a break.

This is your brain on Adventure Time. Literally.

SOURCES

Strauss, Neil. “’Adventure Time’: The Trippiest Show on Television.” 2 Oct. 2014. Rolling Stone. Web. 2 Oct. 2014.

Adventure Time cast of characters image – http://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/177f08ad24bd8552db7c49d0cb15da44/200549717/2468603-38304-adventure-time-adventure-time-characters.png

Ren & Stimpy GIF – http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-E2uMuAXi4yo/UaIKSmVkrJI/AAAAAAAAAgk/4qNADG1e9n4/s1600/mansbestfriendgif.gif

Adventure Time bird image – http://i.ytimg.com/vi/NljxtaJv-68/hqdefault.jpg

Adventure Time girls image – http://cdn.trendhunterstatic.com/thumbs/adventure-time-styles.jpeg

Finn and Ice King image – http://www.gamrreview.com/media/images/adventuretime05-02049458617268569528109134959050.jpg

Brain Beast image – http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110727224727/adventuretimewithfinnandjake/images/c/c1/S1e4_Brain_Beast.png

HalfAChicken.com - 10/2/14 - Has Cirque du Soleil lost its touch?

Originally published on 10/2/14 at HalfAChicken.com
https://halfachicken.com/justinavalon/article/102

The Spell is Broken: Has Cirque du Soleil lost its touch?

With its penchant for death-defying acrobatic routines, grandiose visual flair, and overall vibe of whimsy and mystery, the famed fantastical French-Canadian feature of the Vegas stage known as Cirque du Soleil is truly a unique offering. I’ve watched quite a few Cirque shows now, and each show brings its own flavor to the table, from the oriental fire-themed Ka to the sensual and sexy Zumanity. Just about every major hotel on The Strip houses its own Cirque soiree, and you can literally spend all week watching all of them and never run out of things to see.

Or you can just watch Zumanity over and over again. Your call.

HOWEVER! It is inevitable that all good things must come to an end. Sure, you probably won’t feel it at first. You’ll hit the sublime Cirque show trifecta of KA, O, and Mystere and still be giddy as a schoolgirl. Zumanity will probably continue to titillate you for a few cold nights after you see it. Heck, maybe you’ll dust off the shiny glove and black jacket and get reacquainted with Michael Jackson at ONE…in a platonic, respectable way, of course. *AHEM*

C’mon Cirque, the trial was almost 10 years ago. LET IT GO.

But like every TV show you loved and watched, eventually it starts to get stale. Sooner or later, you’ll sit down to a more recently-released Cirque show and walk out thinking to yourself, Huh, that was just…okay. It will lack the “pop” and polish of the earlier shows you’ve seen. Or worse, it will leave you with a feeling of disappointed repulsion, kind of like the sequels to The Matrix (which many people, including myself, still deny the existence of).

Yeah, watching the sequels to The Matrix kinda feels like that. Only in your balls.

Let’s take a look at the last Cirque show I saw: Michael Jackson ONE. I’ve been a fan of MJ’s career since my dad showed his music to me back in the 90’s, and I’ll admit to trying to learn how to moonwalk because it looked so cool in the videos. However, I felt that ONE was a complete miss on Cirque’s part. It’s not that the show didn’t have its moments; the neon-lit suits dancing to “Billy Jean” in the shadows and the people moonwalking up and down the walls of the theater were actually pretty cool. But overall, there was nothing really making it more defined or memorable compared to other shows, unless you count the fact that they turned the lights down every time an acrobatic or dance routine started and attempted to use strobes and special effect lighting as their sole source of illumination.

Oh hey, the lights came back–…uh, I’d like them back off please.

ONE is an example of a disappointing plague of “not trying hard enough anymore” that seems to have spread rampantly among the showrunners of Cirque. While it is true that each show still has its own theme and sense of aesthetics, there are some that are clearly more creative and thought-out than others.

When you look at shows like O or Ka, they have this “big” feeling about them. The scenes fully encompass their themes of water and fire, respectively, and everything is done on a grand scale, from the giant complex acrobatics to the clever incorporation of their elements into the outfits and settings. You can tell that the people who made those shows knew exactly what they wanted and executed it beautifully.

In contrast, the newer shows don’t feel as polished. ONE felt like a hodgepodge of MJ music video clips that attempted to cover and sum up the King of Pop’s illustrious career, but instead came off as an elementary school art collage cobbled together by people who were never in the same room at the same time as each other. Zarkana’s aesthetic of “trippy magical circus” seemed a little redundant, since just about every other Cirque show is already inherently representative of a magical carnival-esque occasion while still having their own unique themes on top of that. (Although maybe Zarkana’s lack of a real theme is a theme itself, in which case bravo to the writers for actually being clever). And when watching the classical cinema-themed Iris, one can’t help but think that they took the entirety of their special effects and acrobatic equipment budget and put it towards making costumes via cobbling vintage outfits and spare camera parts together, the results of which should never have even left the concept art stage of production.

Plus, the stage design for Iris was H.P. Lovecraft-level horrifying.

I can’t tell if I should be laughing or frightened.

I know I sound like an old fart for saying all this, but the Cirque that I grew up loving had enchanted and awed me with its creativity and brilliance. Whoever is running the show nowadays has clearly tried to make things too hip, too current, too contemporary, and as a result, the Circus Under the Sun has trapped itself within a perpetual eclipse of mediocrity. Luckily for them, the solution is simple. Cirque can reclaim the magic it once had by going back to what it does best: embracing the story they’re trying to tell, doing it big, doing it epic, and never forgetting the whimsy and mystery that drew people to the show in the first place. I still hold on to the hope that my beloved Cirque will find its way once again, but until then, I’ll enjoy re-watching the 3 or 4 shows I actually do like.

Next article: the top 5 ways to keep those annoying brats off your lawn.

Sources

Zumanity image – http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/6I_rxW7iVUM/hqdefault.jpg

Matrix Revolutions image – http://cdn3.whatculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/001.jpg

Michael Jackson ONE images -
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/07/29/business/29jackson2/29jackson2-popup.jpg
http://lasvegas.showtickets.com/cdn/site/582x270-3.jpg

Iris image - http://www.seeing-stars.com/Images/Places/Iris-Stage.jpg

Clint Eastwood image – http://www.quickmeme.com/img/e4/e4e28c2873829c59f3d5f554ca7f7e3ec07018daf7fdb433d11d9a7585836590.jpg

HalfAChicken.com - 10/1/14 - Kimbra at The Bootleg Theater, Silver Lake, CA

Originally published on 10/1/14 at HalfAChicken.com
https://halfachicken.com/justinavalon/article/100

Hearing the name “Kimbra” probably won’t register anything of note in your head, unless you actually paid attention to the colorful and trip-tastic video for Gotye’s (one) hit song “Somebody that I Used to Know.” She was the decidedly less-freaky-looking one in this disconcerting still art come to life.

Remember when this song was actually a thing? Yeah, neither do I.

But regardless of whether or not Kimbra makes any blips on your musical radar, one thing we can all agree on is that there’s nothing better than a free show, and having even one sort-of-familiar-sounding artist on the bill is a very welcomed bonus. I got the opportunity to see Kimbra for free at the humble and hipstery hole-in-the-wall known as The Bootleg Theater this past weekend. This show marked the end of her residency at The Bootleg, and would feature songs from her latest album, The Golden Echo, which was released back in August.

To be honest, I walked into this show completely blind. I had no prior knowledge of what Kimbra’s music sounded like, and other than my rather presumptuous hypothesis that all her stuff would emulate that one Gotye song in some way, I had no real expectations for what I would hear. Still, this is why I go to local shows. LA is a rich cornucopia of art and culture; there’s always something to discover, good or bad. Chance favors the bold, and serendipity had thus far been a very rewarding mistress to me when it came to hitting up random venues to see bands I barely knew.

Well, as it turned out, my Gotye hypothesis was partially right, in the sense that just like watching Gotye’s freaky video, watching Kimbra perform was a sensory mindfuck from beginning to end.

If your idea of décor involves Technicolor skulls and bad TV reception…you just might be an indie artist.

Kimbra’s music is generally described as “jazz-inspired electropop” with influence drawn from Imogen Heap, Prince, Rufus Wainwright, and Mike Patton, among others. A very good playlist indeed, and seemingly nothing out of the ordinary about it. One of my concert compatriots even mentioned hearing her previous album Vows and saying that it sounded like “normal music,” whatever that means.

What we heard at this show, however, was a total “fuck-it-all” to any notions of radio-friendly commercial normalcy, delving into a realm of aural oddities and ambient white noise that threw us for a complete loop. For those looking for a crash course into the musical direction Kimbra took in The Golden Echo, the best way I can describe it is to imagine a vinyl player churning out psychedelic(er) remixes of Bjork songs down an empty sewer tunnel, with a cat providing accompaniment by blindly pawing at the keys of a broken grand piano. That’s sort of what it sounded like while Kimbra was playing. I don’t know if that was intentional or if the sound guy was mixing it badly or what. All I know is that whether it was out of mesmerized curiosity or flabbergasted confusion, Kimbra held my attention, which was probably the point anyways.

Actually, seeing this at the show would have been a huge improvement.

That’s not to say that it was completely unbearable to listen to. Actually, I found it to be quite the opposite; the layering of all the different sounds made for an interesting and developed “sound world” that really filled up the meager space of The Bootleg’s “Space Jam” theater, and Kimbra’s scatty and yipping vocalizations matched the playful energy she radiated as she skipped and danced around the stage. The crazy visual projections you see in the pictures above really helped to pull the performance together as well, turning the stage into a “living music video” of sorts, where the audience was not only witness to the experience, but a central part of the experience as well. All in all, it was surprisingly entertaining for what it was.

Looking back at it, the real crux of the concert’s shortcomings fell mainly upon our musical palettes. Most of the people in the audience were used to these sort of off-beat noise experiments, indicative of an underground scene that was known and enjoyed by only a select few. For them, this music was pure magic, filling them up with a strange primal energy that, combined with a little alcohol- and cannabis-induced inspiration, moved them to sway and dance and clap and get lost in Kimbra’s freeform, unstructured ambience.

These folks should start a club.

However, to us, the decidedly “mainstream-adjusted” listeners, this music was a little too “out there.” The lack of typical song elements such as structure and refrain made it hard to really attach ourselves to any particular moment in the set, and everything blended together into a continuous cacophony of unintelligible sound. The seemingly random noisemaking coming from Kimbra and her backing instrumentals hovered somewhere between sonically interesting and utterly pointless at times, and were it not for her physicality on stage, it would have been a very monotonous affair to sit through after your eyes adjusted to the LSD-like effect of the stage’s aesthetics.

Hey, illusory dragons have feelings too…

Overall, I would say that Kimbra’s performance was a triumph in regards to being original and making something that expressed nothing less than her own creativity, passion, and joy. After all, that is the essence of what makes an artist successful, and Kimbra succeeds flawlessly at this. I will caution anyone who is stepping into Kimbra’s world for the first time that she definitely not for everyone, and that her brief appearance in Gotye’s song does not do justice to the unique sound and experience that is her art. Neophytes would do well to enter this with a very open mind and forget everything they thought they knew about music. If you can get over the quirky and unconventional nuances of her sound and dig into the “experience” that is a Kimbra show, you’ll no doubt be tuned into one of the most promising and remarkable artists present in today’s underground music scene, a true diamond in the rough.

For the rest of us, we’ll content ourselves with that overplayed Gotye song. At least there’s a chorus we can sing along with.

Pop culture overload? Definitely. Funny? Debatable.

SOURCES

Gotye video pic – http://www.lucillezimmerman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Gotye-Somebody-That-I-Used-to-Know-660x469_png_630x469_q85.jpg

Kimbra live show photos courtesy of Justin La Torre

Piano cat meme – https://catmacros.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/piano_cat.jpg

iTunes pic – http://cdn.someecards.com/someecards/filestorage/feel-profound-connection-workplace-ecard-someecards.jpg LSD cat meme – http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/no-i-havent-seen-your-lsd.jpg

Gotye Kanye meme – http://cdn1.smosh.com/sites/default/files/bloguploads/gotye-funny-kanye-cut-off.jpg

HalfAChicken.com - 9/17/14 - Everything is Ending

Originally published on 9/16/14 at HalfAChicken.com
https://halfachicken.com/justinavalon/article/93

VIDEO: Everything is Ending

Photo by sdbab at lol-smile.com

All I can say is WOW. Described as “an outdoor graphic intervention,” Everything is Ending is the collaborative art effort of Barcelona-based group 3D Neighbors and artists Javier Jabalera, Pol Trias, and Julia Rosich. Not only was this a clever and intensive project involving ludicrous amounts of meticulous planning and hole-poking, if the implications of the picture above are any indication, it made for a very bold and striking statement on the concepts of mortality, materialism, and the age-old belief that 2012 would be the year of our end.

The real clincher of this piece is how simple the mediums are, and how they come together in such a way that the end product seems to transcend the sum of its parts. A humble perforated canvas and matchsticks suddenly emerges from a phoenix-like eruption into a vivid and tangible reminder that everything we know and hold dear eventually returns to the blank nothing that it started from. It is tragically beautiful and tinged with a harrowing yet sobering reality.

You can watch the full video at the link below. The ending is imminent from the start, but it is spectacular and poignant nonetheless.

Everything is ending – http://vimeo.com/61164822

Sources

http://www.lol-smile.com/everything-is-ending-video/

http://javierjabalera.com/?p=1461

HalfAChicken.com - 9/16/14 - Robert Mapplethorpe

Originally published on 9/16/14 at HalfAChicken.com
https://halfachicken.com/justinavalon/article/87

Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio: Obscene? Yes. Kinky? Just a little bit. But is it art?

If you’ve never heard of American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe before, here’s a quick primer: 1) he’s dead, and 2) his work made waves during the pretentiously-titled “Culture Wars” of the 1980’s (LACMA 2013). Mapplethorpe represented the perfect bad boy blend of student, transgressor, and pioneer of the art world in the 20th Century. Never one to let the critics breathe easy, the X Portfolio was his attempt to document hardcore homosexual sadomasochism as art (Bunyan 2013). At the time, it was considered a highly subversive commentary on American culture, as well as a test of human gag reflexes. The shock value of the collection could resuscitate an elderly woman with a pacemaker. And possibly rattle her back to death again.

We’ve come a long way from frilly bloomers and exposed ankles, Grandma.

In fact, the series was so raw and uninhibited that even today the Mapplethorpe Foundation omits much of that collection from its website, choosing only a few tame pieces for inclusion.

Don’t believe me? Take a look: http://www.mapplethorpe.org/exhibitions/2012-10-21_los-angeles-county-museum-of-art/.

Suggestive, yet tasteful, right? No signs of anal fisting or dildos being inserted into places that never see the light of day. However, any in-depth research of Mapplethorpe’s work will reveal far more graphic instances of cringe-worthy imagery that make up the true X Portfolio. The controversial power of his work is apparent from the first image you see. Here is but a small sampling:

(WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK. DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU.)

http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/robert-mapplethorpe-x-portfolio-4576015-details.aspx?intObjectID=4576015

Frankly, even that selection is tame compared to other pieces from the portfolio. The point is, this collection of family-friendly photographs was a real tour de force for its ability to disgust and intrigue, evoke and provoke. As if that weren’t enough, Mapplethorpe also had the appearance of a younger, more angst-ridden version of James Dean, making him a visual double-threat both behind and in front of the camera.

Not pictured: his Jussi Award for his role in the movie East of Eden.

However, his reputation and legacy aside, can Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio be considered art? On one hand, his photography has been compared to paintings by Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and Soutine, and some claim that they seem to pull back the metaphorical foreskin (meta-foreskin?) of his abstractist predecessors, revealing a naked and throbbing “documentary truth” hued in sepia and grayscale.

Ironically, despite his best efforts to break away from “photographic purity” (Knight 2012), Mapplethorpe’s contemporary work actually harkens back to a historical tradition of tantalizing pictorials dating all the way back to the 5th Century B.C. This was a time when Greek vases were often painted with images so sensuous that Alexander the Great surely whacked off to them between conquests to relieve tension.

In this sense, Mapplethorpe wasn’t doing anything entirely new; he just did it bolder and with more rubber dildos.

Remember, it’s only awkward if you make eye contact.

On the other hand, how many pictures of testicles bound and stretched in a vice can you go through before you start questioning where the line is and at what point was it crossed? (I wish I was being rhetorical in this case). Nowadays, people are critical of movies like Saw and Hostel, which are infamous for being so gory that even their own actors can’t bear to watch it.

Case in point: http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/horror-film-saw-so-gory-even-star-costas-mandylor-cant-watch/story-e6frfmvr-1225783609471.

“I want to play a game…it’s called ‘Ventriloquist’…and you get to be the dummy…”

By comparison, the X Portfolio is way more graphic than either of these films. There is no doubt that the issue of content versus intent and how these forces interact and even oppose each other is especially present Mapplethorpe’s work. Sure, the message is there, buried somewhere underneath all the sex toys and human hand-puppetry, but does the raw carnality actually hurt the medium? Are we so transfixed on the disturbing imagery that we fail to see the point behind it all? Is there even a point, or is it just shocking for shock’s sake? Or is the offensiveness itself “the point”?

I’m of the belief that extreme acts of expression such as Mapplethorpe’s operate on the “Just Fucking Crazy Enough to Work” principle, and in this case there’s enough ingenuity and balls for it to actually work. How else could you display pictures of explicit sounding (and we’re talking the Urban Dictionary definition here) in a public gallery and somehow violently straddle that wave of controversy to become one of the most popular posthumously talked-about photographers of back then and today?

That certain je ne sais quoi about Mapplethorpe’s work that landed him stints in LACMA and Perth in the past few years must still be shining through somehow since it’s been about 30-something years and we’re not yet done talking about him. It’s like he knew his brazenness was all he needed to keep us looking at his favorite dick pics for decades to come. I won’t go so far as to call Mapplethorpe the original SnapChat dick pic guy, but I do applaud him for unapologetically doing what most other artists are too scared to do, and actually succeeding at it. Arguably, because of work like Mapplethorpe’s, we are beginning to embrace the counterculture and find acceptance and even beauty in what we previously thought to be vile and unspeakable.

It’s either that, or we as a culture have loosened our morals enough to entertain the idea of butt plugs and bondage gear as just another way to kill an afternoon.

You know, maybe Quentin Tarantino was onto something in Pulp Fiction…

Sources

Bunyan, Dr. Marcus. “Exhibition: ‘Robert Mapplethorpe: XYZ.’” http://artblart.com/2013/03/17/exhibition-robert-mapplethorpe-xyz-at-the-los-angeles-county-museum-of-art-lacma/

LACMA. “Robert Mapplethorpe: XYZ.” http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/robert-mapplethorpe-xyz

Knight, Christopher. “Review: LACMA’s ‘XYZ’ on Robert Mapplethorpe: Gay artist vs. straight tradition.” http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/04/entertainment/la-et-cm-mapplethorpe-review-20121104

Mapplethorpe Foundation – http://www.mapplethorpe.org/exhibitions/2012-10-21_los-angeles-county-museum-of-art/

Greek vase painting – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_erotic_depictions#mediaviewer/File:Erotic_scenes_Louvre_G13_n4.jpg

Pulp Fiction scene still – http://toscanoirriverente.tumblr.com/post/1610451140/iwdrm-bring-out-the-gimp-pulp-fiction

Robert Mapplethorpe portrait – http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/AR/AR00225_10.jpg

Robert Mapplethorpe X Portfolio sample – http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/LargeImage.aspx?image=http://www.christies.com/lotfinderimages/d45760/d4576015x.jpg

Saw Jigsaw scene still – http://cdn.tss.uproxx.com/TSS/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/saw-movie-600x450.jpg

HalfAChicken.com - 9/16/14 - Carmichael Gallery

Originally published on 9/16/14 at HalfAChicken.com https://halfachicken.com/justinavalon/article/86

Art-loving couple gives gallery spotlight to street artists

It takes a special set of eyes and hearts to recognize the beauty hidden in your own home. Such is the case with husband and wife team Seth and Elisa Carmichael, the proud progenitors of the eponymous Carmichael Gallery. Founded in 2007, the Carmichael’s lovechild of passion and commitment to art is one of LA and NYC’s best-kept local secrets, focusing on street artists who are breaking ground in painting, sculpture, photography, and mixed media.

In its short seven years of life thus far, the gallery has already garnered a reputation for being intimate yet spacious, with its quaint two-room setup providing the ideal platform for receptions, exhibits, mingling, and past events have even featured DJ’s such as Sean Reveron and Ro Blvd. + RDNP.

At the Carmichael, it’s all about the unknown folks and flavors, both local and international. The gallery has played host to a wide range of diamonds in the rough, including abstract expressionist painter Maya Lujan and Latino contemporary photographers Eriberto and Estevan Oriol. Other events have showcased multiple talents from across the world, such as their September 2012 exhibit “Disambiguation,” which featured the works of New York graffiti artist Carlos Mare, Milan-born graffiti artist Rae Martini, UK graffiti artist Remi Morgan (a.k.a. “Remi/Rough”), and Barcelona-born painter and fashion designer Sergio Hidalgo (a.k.a. “Sixeart”).

Aside from the traditional form of displaying works within their humble space, on occasion the exhibits can even go beyond the gallery’s walls. For example, one of the gallery’s resident LA artists, the whimsically-named Bumblebee Loves You, has been known to display murals and pop-up exhibits on the walls of buildings in Venice Beach.

The Carmichael Gallery has locations in Los Angeles and New York. If you’re in the either area, you owe it to yourself to check out the local talent on display at the gallery’s next exhibition. Because just like Seth and Elisa, you never know what you’ll find if you take a look around.

Sources:

http://www.carmichaelgallery.com/

http://carmichaelgallery.com/shows/july182009.html

http://www.artltdmag.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1378852689&archive&start_from&ucat=32

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2012/09/06/carmichael-gallery-presents-dismbiguation-a-group-exhibition-culver-city-ca/#.U7rmXtJDvp8

https://www.facebook.com/carmichaelgallery/

https://www.facebook.com/events/351492261611382/?ref=22

I am now published on Half A Chicken!

I'm very happy to announce that my articles are starting to get published on Half a Chicken.com, a newly-launched artist union website! You can check it out here: https://halfachicken.com/justinavalon/articles

Westwind at UCLA Winter 2014 online issue

Just a quick announcement that my short story "Pilgrim" was included in UCLA's online literary magazine, Westwind, for their Winter 2014 issue!

http://www.westwind.ucla.edu/journals/winter-2014-2/pilgrim/

Unrequited Canyons

This is my first published poem. I had submitted it to Sigma Tau Delta's first ever poetry contest in April 2014, where it was judged and hand-picked by award-winning poet Patty Seyburn. Aside from the prestige and recognition, I will get an opportunity to read at the next Sigma Tau Delta event with Patty Seyburn, as well as "acknowledgement" in the next 2014 issue of The Northridge Review.

http://sigmataudeltacsun.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/the-envelope-please/

Unrequited Canyons

Arizona, I give you offerings
Of dusty footprints and stray hairs
Shed across the carpets and gray chairs
Of an empty Flagstaff airport.
Scatter these across the Grand stretch
Of your conjoined, communal womb,
Tracing out the cracked and craggy lips
Of your North and South Rim.

Perhaps one of them will catch on
To the coattails of a meandering breeze
And carry itself to the birds’ nest
Outside the window of that Sedona house,
The one I saw reflected back at me
In the aperture of a bad camera,
Blurred between the rays of a waning sun
Where a pale face hovered, smiling.

Arizona, I send you my love, wrapped
In a sheath cut from my left ventricle.
Lay it beside its brothers -
I’ve sent three others ahead of him -
And plant them deep and narrow
Into the wintery breast of Oak Creek,
Where familiar Tempe fingertips
Will tend to it - a mother, a matron.

A piece of me for every piece of you,
Delicately plucked from the scarlet stems
Of the pale sprite’s young plumage -
I promise to pay it all back,
Every mouth noise and skin scent
That I kept clutched in my pants pockets
And tucked away in the cubbyholes
Underneath my chewed-up fingernails.

Arizona, I’ve dug a grave for myself
Among your snow-laced shrubberies
For the day I lay upon your coarse dirtbeds
And become the blanket you wear year-round.
I won’t be there for a long time, I think -
I’ve got too many sets of good shoes
With me, still waiting to be worn out -
But a new pair means I’m only getting closer.

Maybe you’ll remember the tips of my toes
When I sink them into your navel,
Or recall the shape my shadow makes
As it swept over clay adobes and mammoth bones,
Or maybe, when I touch down on the graying runway,
It won’t be you, but your sprite child instead,
Waiting for me to spill out of the terminal’s mouth
Like a word longing to be heard.

Pilgrim

This is my first story to ever get published. I made my publishing debut in April 2014 in my school's literary magazine, The Northridge Review. I had submitted this story to several places back in Fall 2013, so in addition to being selected for publication in the Review, this same story also earned an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train Press's November 2013 Short Story Competition for New Writers and Finalist placement in Cargoes' fiction competition at Hollins University. Recently, this piece was selected for inclusion in the upcoming 2014 issue of Westwind magazine at UCLA.

Pilgrim

This is Billy on paper.

Billy is just like you. He has hair and skin just like you. He wears clothes just like you. He has a home and a car and he went to school, just like you. He walks on the same sidewalks you walk on. He shops at the same stores, and stops at the same traffic lights. He even watches movies and likes his coffee made a certain way, with a particular amount of sugar and creamer. From just about every angle, Billy doesn’t seem much different from you.

But Billy is not quite like you. That’s what they say, anyways. Billy can’t be like you. Billy is different.

Not that Billy really looks any different than most other people, nor does he act any differently than other people. But he’s different, no doubt about it. Why is he different? Well, that’s just what they say, right? They say he’s different, so he must be. Maybe you’re just not seeing it quite right. But you will soon enough.

This is Billy on duty.

The crack of dawn sees Billy and his comrades getting ready for the big day. They wearily tug on their clothing: heavy, cumbersome garments blotched with ugly shades of brown and beige, wrinkled from months of walking long stretches without rest and crouching down into holes for hours at a time. They wear the same kind of boots: rounded kettle bells wrapped in leather and lace. Their choice of headgear, cast-iron mixing bowls colored the same filthy hue as their clothing, makes their weary heads weigh ten pounds heavier. Aside from the chatter of shuffling bed sheets and footlockers, not a single word is spoken.

As the first of the morning’s radiant fingers start to poke in through the crevice between the drab gray curtains, Billy stops what he’s doing and kneels down, facing the direction of the sun. He bows his head down to the floor, arms stretched out ahead of him, unaware that at this very moment the entire barracks has become unstuck in time, and the eyes of every single person in the room are now transfixed on him, like onlookers to a circus sideshow.

Everyone is thinking the same thing. Everyone but Billy, that is.

A single suspended second stretches and stretches until it finally snaps forward to catch up with the flow of time, and all is normal again. Billy is back on his feet, and everyone is dressed and headed to the armory. They load themselves up with shell magazines, explosives, and hand radios. The faithful ones tuck miniature bibles and wooden crosses into their vest pockets. The brave ones slip combat knives into their belts and boots. The scared ones pray and grab bigger guns. They are all thinking the same thing: I hope I don’t need to use any of these.

Billy tucks a scrap of paper into the bottom of his left boot before slipping his foot in. He figures if the old wives tale worked for loose change, it could work for a good book, which was much more valuable. He was never one for superstition, but a little luck never hurt anyone.

Faithful men pray. Brave men brag about their dick size. Scared men brag about their dick size loudly. Billy reads books.

Only Billy has seen the paper’s contents: it is a page torn from a copy of A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. It had been sitting in his footlocker since deployment, and after a week of no one asking about it, he took it for his own. Most of the words on the page have been scratched out by pen, with the exception of a single passage that reads:

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

Billy finishes the last loop on his laces and stands up to make his way towards the door. As he begins to walk forward, a squad mate roughly shoves past him, causing him to bump into the frame of his bunk.

“Watch where you’re going, towel-head,” he mutters under his breath to Billy.

This is Billy at home.

Billy remembers 9/11 the same way you remember 9/11. He remembers what he was doing when it happened. He had just come home from his morning run and turned on the news. As he poured himself some coffee, a breaking story showed footage of New York just moments after the planes crashed. “An attack,” they called it. He remembers how he felt when it happened. Shocked. Awed. Confused. A little sore from the run. He remembers tuning in to the news every morning on his drive to work, and then again on TV when he came home. Every statement from the President, every last second of footage, even the zealous rants of conspiracy theorists, it all became like a daily mantra for him, a constant reminder of the inhuman “Why?” that he couldn’t hope to answer.

He remembers what the President wore when they outed Al-Qaeda as the culprits behind the incident and announced that they were preparing to mobilize. Azure suit. Cerulean tie. A weary scowl. A miniature crumb on his upper lip from the blueberry pancake breakfast he had that morning. He remembers thinking how improperly sloppy the President looked with that crumb hovering just above his grim words.

He remembers how strange it was to see his friends and co-workers down at the office not long after that. As he walked by, the lively conversations concerning sports and weekend flings by the water cooler ceased. Documents were wordlessly dropped into his In-box without so much as a “Hello.” People were suddenly too busy to have lunch with him. One day, after he finished eating, he came back to his desk to find a typed note that read “GO BACK TO IRAQ YOU FUCKING TOWELHEAD.” His boss sent him home early and told him to get some rest.

Billy stopped watching the news and listening to the radio that day. He shaved his beard and tucked his turban to the back of his dresser drawer. A sense of moral duty and spiritual guilt kept him bowing to the sun each morning, however.

This is Billy in bed.

It is springtime, but Billy can’t tell the difference after being out in the desert for so long. Every day feels like summer. The sun beats down on him from the ass-crack of dawn to the shit-fall of night. Days blur and congeal together like the contents of a discarded MRE, left opened and unfinished. He hasn’t bathed in days. He hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks. He lies doe-eyed in his bunk, the harmonious din of snores and grunts billowing around the room like clandestine buzzing clouds.

He quietly masturbates to the picture of his girlfriend taped to the underside of the top bunk, recalling the sweet perfume of her skin from the last time they made love. On the night before his deployment, after they both came, she shed tears of ecstasy and anguish, curling up in his arms and begging him not to go.

“Don’t throw your life away for a country that hates you!” she said. And yet, here he is, millions of miles from home, and he is just as hated now as he was back then.

His hand is dry and chafes him with each stroke, but he keeps going, pushing himself through the pain like he was taught to in boot camp. He climaxes silently, turning onto his side and wiping himself off on the white shirt he wore yesterday. He is rendered numb by the mixture of endorphins and norepinephrine coursing through his veins. It is a fleeting high, but it is enough to ease him into sleep just for tonight.

As his eyelids begin to droop, he glimpses the calendar hanging on the wall across from his bunk. It is March 20. Today is his birthday. And it is fucking springtime.

This is Billy on foot.

One day, Billy finds himself chased by a group of angry men wearing matching “God Bless America” t-shirts. Feet slap the concrete like hits on a snare drum. The guttural boom of Billy’s beating heart pounds rhythmically with each step he takes. Crazed yelling echoes through the air like hunting horns heralding the bloodhounds’ approach. Even as he ran for his life, Billy couldn’t help but feel like he was an action movie star, and some fucked-up composer was secretly scoring the entire chase sequence.

He rounds a corner and dashes into the nearest building, pressing himself against the wall and out of sight. He waits for the yells and trampling advances of his assailants to pass before he dares to peek out the glass display windows. A sudden “Can I help you?” piping up behind him causes him to yelp and turn around.

A bulky, clean-faced man dressed in brown fatigues sits behind a wooden desk, his face slightly flushed from the warmth radiating from outside. His head is neatly shaven into a buzz cut, and as he stands up from his seat, he reveals a tall and muscular build framed by large arms and thick legs sheathed in heavy leather boots. A brass-plated name-tag reads, “Hartman.” His eyes survey Billy curiously. “Are you okay?” he asks.

Billy looks around. Posters of a ferocious-looking Uncle Sam and soldiers in mid-salute line the walls. Large signs reading “There is strong. And then there is ARMY strong!” hang from the ceiling. There is an American flag perched in the corner by the door. He blinks in confusion.

“Where am I?” Billy asks.

“The recruiting office,” Hartman replies.

A pause. A breath. “…sorry for barging in.”

“It’s no problem, son. Those guys giving you trouble?”

“We had a…disagreement.”

“’Bout what?”

“Well, they wanted me to leave the country. I didn’t.”

Hartman’s brow furrows. “Why’s that?”

“Apparently, I killed all those people.”

“People?”

“The ones in the Twin Towers.”

The hollowness of Hartman’s thousand-yard stare seems to deepen as he continues to look upon Billy. He places his hands in his pockets and strides over, stopping within a few feet of him, his stare never breaking. He begins to walk slow circles around the room, his head turning to maintain his gaze upon Billy. All the while, Billy stands perfectly still, as if one wrong move would send him back into the cruel world outside, where the hounds were waiting to eat him alive. He finally comes to a halt in front of Billy. “Well, son, how ‘bout you let ol’ Uncle Sam help you with your problems?”

Billy is confused, but willing to listen. Unbeknownst to Hartman, Billy sees him as a sign from above that he can be changed, he can be redeemed, he can belong. Unbeknownst to Billy, Hartman sees his coffee-colored skin, wavy mop of dark hair, and lanky physique, and doesn’t see a terrorist at all. He sees another set of dog tags.

This is Billy after work.

The ASV ride back to base was alive with jubilant laughter and raucous shouting. The operation was a success. A village was shelled. Buildings were raided. Terrorists were blown to hell. Another zone secured thanks to the boys in brown.

Billy sat wordlessly against the back door, ignoring the nudging of shoulders and exclamations of how many towelheads got iced by whom. He stared out the window across from him, watching the vermillion glimmer of a burning village flicker away in the distance like a fading star, framed against his squad mates’ faces reflected in the glass. He is the only one in his squad to return with no spare shell casings left. No explosives left either. Even his hand radio was lost in the chaos of the sortie. His torn page from Hemingway is still tucked inside his boot, though it provided no relief in this moment.

Tom, seated to his left, clapped him on the shoulder and said, “And this guy here, this guy is a BEAST!”

“Yeah, how many of them camel jockey fuckers did you git?” Dick chimed in from his right. “Musta been at least 15 or 20!”

Harry, who listened on from the opposite end of the crew compartment, shook his head, muttering “Naïve little fucks” under his breath. Tom and Dick didn’t seem to hear him.

“Hell, he got one for every shot!” Tom bellowed, reaching over and playfully shaking Billy by his vest. “Look! Empty! Not a single bullet left!”

Billy remained silent.

“Aw c’mon Bill!” Tom clapped his shoulder again. “Say something! What’s the matter? Cold-blooded killer’s too cool to talk?”

“Watch out, Tom! If you piss ‘im off, he’ll blast the shit outta you too!” Dick held his right index finger up to his head, cocked his thumb back, and mimed blasting his own brains out. “BLAM!”

“Hey! Tom, Dick. Let him be.” Harry’s voice pierced the air like lightning, and boomed like a cannon blast. All eyes turned to him, then towards the front where Billy sat.

Tom chuckled, leaning back in his seat. “Hey, lighten up, Harry. Just jabbing his ribs a bit. Really though, how do you go in guns blazing and not have anything to say about it?”

“Clearly, he doesn’t wanna talk about it,” Harry remarked gruffly. “Otherwise he’d say something.”

“Hey, he did kill a lot of goons,” Dick piped up. “That’s why we’re here, right?”

Harry sighed in exasperation. “Billy, don’t let these little shits get to you. You don’t have to say anything.”

“Well, surely he’s got something to say!” Tom clapped his shoulder again. “C’mon, Billy, give us a nice little speech, in honor of our victory tonight!”

At this, Billy pushed Tom’s hand away, his charcoal gaze blinking back into reality and slowly sweeping between the three of them.

“Victory?” he murmured. “What victory?”

This is Billy on break.

Although it has been two years since he had been discharged, Billy still can’t sleep at night. His mind cannot escape the thought of little Leyla, standing scared yet defiant in the scope of his rifle, screaming in a strange tongue at him. Leyla, who had charged at him, brandishing a stick in her hand. Leyla, who arched gracefully across the air as the shell passed in between her eyes and out through the back of her head. Leyla, whose eyes retained that same defiant look she had in life, even as a corpse. Leyla, whose wild screams echoed through the hollows of his head every time he closed his eyes.

Her name wasn’t really Leyla. That was just a name Billy gave her. Leyla’s story would never be told; Billy had erased it from the world. He would need to fill the gaps in himself. Leyla, who was a bright young student with a knack for mathematics. Leyla, who woke up early before mommy and daddy to bow her head to the rising sun. Leyla, who was the most beautiful girl in her village. Leyla, who was definitely not a terrorist.

Perhaps the gaps were better left as gaps.

This is Billy back on paper.

It is the first day of training. In an unusual twist of directive, the military superiors have decided to begin with an introductory training segment entitled KNOW YOUR ENEMY, reasoning that the urgency of the imminent threat at hand required a reevaluation of how to properly condition their troops for maximum performance. In order to defeat their enemy, they must be aware of who exactly is their enemy.

Billy is seated alongside his future squad mates in the mess hall at Fort Benning, which has been cleared of tables and filled with rows of folding chairs. A large projector screen has been set up before them, and once the last few seats are filled, the doors are shut and the film reels are sent spinning. An image flickers onto the screen, showing a still frame of a teenage Iraqi boy dressed in khaki shorts and a powder blue t-shirt. He is staring straight at Billy, eyes wide and defiant, as if he were peering through the screen right at him. He has Billy’s hair, and Billy’s nose, and Billy’s eyes. The picture bears a time stamp, partway cut off by the bottom edge of the projector screen. The date reads 03/20/1993.

An unseen narrator begins to speak:

“This is the enemy. He may look like just another little boy, but don’t be fooled, soldier. That’s how they get you. The enemy is just like you. They have hair and skin just like you. They wear clothes just like you. Some of them have homes and cars and have gone to school, just like you. They walk on the same sidewalks you walk on. They shop at the same stores, and stop at the same traffic lights. They even watch movies and drink their coffee made a certain way, with a particular amount of sugar and creamer. From just about every angle, they don’t seem much different from you.

But the enemy is not like you. The enemy is different.”

The Purpose of Writing

This rather snarky piece was what I submitted as my aesthetic statement for my final project in the English program at CSUN. It has been about 5 months since I turned this in, and although some of my opinions and feelings on certain subjects have shifted since then, the core sentiments have stayed the same. It's always important to ask yourself, "WHY do you do what you do?"

The Purpose of Writing

Imagine, if you will, that you’re sitting in a bar on a particularly slow Friday night, blowing off some steam after a long week of the old nine-to-five. You’re absentmindedly sipping your rum and Coke when some ballsy fellow casually saunters up to the stage, full of whiskey and confidence, itching to take a crack at the open mic. Before he cues the sound guy to start the karaoke track, he decides to tell a joke to lighten the mood and get the audience into it. All eyes are on him. He begins, “Hey folks, you’ll never guess what I saw today…” He goes on about something a lady did in a supermarket which he found amusing, and right when he finishes the last word of the punchline, he is met by silence. Dead silence. The crickets aren’t even chirping. The bartender has actually stopped wiping off glasses to stare at this guy blankly. The guy’s face droops solemnly, as if it were made of wax and the stage lights were slowly melting away his enthusiasm. He proceeds to deliver the worst rendition of “Don’t Stop Believing” you’ve ever heard, and after the first chorus you turn back around and ask for another round. The night goes on.

 That’s how I feel sometimes when someone asks me, “What do you plan to do with a writing degree?” As I fumble through my explanations, I suddenly feel like Bad Punch Line Guy.

I’ve been doing this writing thing for over two years now. If you were to ask me in freshman year of high school where I saw myself in the next five or six years, studying English would not be my first answer. As a kid, I had dreams of being a dentist so I could score all those free toys they give you after cleaning. When I got a bit older, I saw Jurassic Park on VHS and decided archaeology was the thing for me. Then I hit high school and shit got real. I studied animation and graphics design for the next four years, then seemingly threw away my chances at a real career by taking up music theory and composition in junior college only to fail entry auditions into CSUN’s music program twice. I bounced between a major in Communications or Creative Writing before settling on the latter, figuring that if I was going to get a degree in liberal arts I might as well make it for stuff I was already good at, which was creating art and thinking too much. Creative Writing seemed like a good fit for me.

It wasn’t until my first semester into the program that something zinged with me. Maybe it was the way that my mind was suddenly opened to new ideas and new way of thinking. Maybe it was the sheer amount of amazingly interesting books I was exposed to, from the Renaissance all the way up to Ben Loory. Or maybe it was the reality that what I discounted as merely “liberal arts” was in fact the very things that made life worth living. Art. Emotion. Wisdom. Fantasy. Liberation. After 6 months of steeping myself in books and theory, I was hungry for more. Over the next few semesters, I wrote stories and papers, participated in workshops and discussions, and read more books in two years than I ever did in the previous twenty-one years I had been alive. Nerdy was good. Smart was good. Clever and witty were good. And believe you me, I was very, very good.

I’m closing in on my final semester at CSUN. It’s been a pretty wicked and wild ride so far these past two years, and I’ve enjoyed every moment of it. But all throughout my academic sojourn, and even now, I’m incessantly hounded by those same goddamn questions, like a flies buzzing around my head. “Why do writing?” “What can you do with writing?” Or even worse, the short and emphatic response of “Oh, that’s nice.” You don’t even get a chance to explain yourself with that one; they’ve already made up their minds about you.

I’ve had to leaf through a few pages and really paw at my brain about this one. Why do we write?

I hang out with a group of guys that I’ve been friends with for years now. This eclectic ensemble is composed of people majoring or working in engineering, computer science, political science, and information technology. And then there’s me, the English major. As you can imagine, when it came to anything not involving video games or a movie we just saw together, it was rather difficult for everyone to stay on the same page, even more so for myself. “Hey guys, let’s all talk about this book I just read! Doesn’t that sound fun?” We love each other and are very respectful of each other, but when it comes to practical careers, their brutally honest opinions would probably rank my current path pretty low on that list. Bless their little hearts.

It was precisely that sort of social environment that really encouraged and motivated me to think about that haunting question. “Why do we write?” All our grade school English classes had nearly driven away our desire to even pick up a book of our own free will. We were burnt out on vocabulary exercises and spelling tests. And if there wasn’t a movie based on it, we sure as hell weren’t going to read it. So why bother writing?

I came upon the answer to that question years ago in high school, but I didn’t realize it until much, much later, during my final year at CSUN. One day, I was watching a TV show called Legend of Korra with the gang. It was one of those fantasy-type programs that was chock full of sorcery, exotic creatures, and epic adventures, just the sort of thing that gamer nerds like us would appreciate. There came a part where the villain attacked the heroes with a platoon of machines forged from platinum, and it was at this point that there was some dissent among our engineering friends. Apparently, platinum is so rare in our universe that there’s no feasible way one could mine up enough of it to make an entire army of combat machinery. Yes, despite all the magic and made-up monsters in the show, they drew the line at earth science. The show immediately lost all credibility as a work of entertainment because it violated an aspect of the real world that was ultimately irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

It was then that I recalled something I had read in junior year of high school, a book called The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien:

“The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.”

Not to sound like a total O’Brien groupie, but I carried that nugget of wisdom with me for a long time. It always seemed to echo itself during those moments where I sat down and asked myself, “What am I doing with my life? What good is writing? How is it any more important than math or science or business?”

I’ll admit, it is hard to justify it sometimes. There’s probably not much money to be made from it, unless you’re lucky. It’s tough to stand out and get noticed; writers are a dime a dozen, just like musicians. There’s more security and practicality in being a doctor or a scientist. Our society has been oriented towards technological progression and information accessibility. Where does the artist fit in to all that, and why do they matter? The simple answer is one that is not my own, but a quote: “Without art, the earth is just ‘eh.’” And it is true. What the writer may lack in practicality and wealth, he makes up for in enrichment and catharsis, in provoking and enlightening, in sharing and experiencing. Where would movies and TV shows and radio be without the artists? The very fabric of culture depends on us!

All materialistic thinking aside, the real answers required some honest-to-God soul searching. Why do I write? Why does Justin write? No matter how many times I asked myself that, it always came down to the same answer: I write because I’m a writer.

What does an artist do? An artist captures life and packages it in a way that is pleasing and memorable. The page is my canvas, the pen is my brush, and life is my muse. I write because it is something that is a part of us and all around us. Our lives are stories. Our experiences are stories. Our perceptions are stories. It breathes life into the stagnation and stillness of our existences. It causes us to look back, look around, and even turn away. It makes us feel. It makes us think. It makes us aware. I look back upon the times that have shaped me into who I am. Heartbreaks and break ups. Parties where I drank too much. Eavesdropping on the yelling and swearing that boomed outside my room. The wheels in my head turn. The hands start to move. The pen begins to scribble. All of sudden, those moments are transformed. Heart wisdom and growth. Laughter and jubilation. Lessons in love and family. The reader is right there with me. They can feel what I can feel. They see what I can see. And they can learn and grow, just like me.

O’Brien talks in length about how the story bears more truth, more brevity, than reality ever will. Stories outlive the moments that they draw from. Stories are recalled, recounted, remembered. Stories bring the dead back to life, and turn back the clocks. Stories keep alive the moments and memories and experiences that are otherwise lost to history. Often, story-truth is truer than happening-truth. If that is something that we can truly live by, then it important now more than ever that our stories continue to be scribed and told.

It is how we survive. It is how we thrive. It is how we live forever.