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About Art Diary Music Painting Photography

Some changes for the new year(?)

Hecksher Park, Huntington – NY 01 Apr 2017

I’m once again interested in this blog after at least a year or two of near indifference. I work on so many different things and within each are also some very different variations, ranging from very experimental works of my own creation to more accessible creativity as well as works of criticism and social commentary;
– Music
– Writing
– Photography
– Painting/drawing
– Video projects
– Technical IT
– Music gear
– Career
– Life management
– Politics
– Social debate and commentary in the form of critiques of actions vs critiques of people themselves
– Cooking
– Weight loss and health

Conservatory Gardens, Central Park, NYC – 10 May 2019

Each thing has its own audience and needs its own attention. On top of that, some of my social media – like this WordPress blog – is not truly dedicated to a narrow area and instead has become mostly feeds from whatever and wherever I can send to it without much thought. Sadly, I think many new people may come here first because I parked this blisterpop.com domain here.

What might happen would be a variation on this;
– Some of the bullet points above could occupy a blog here or mirror another site dedicated to that thing. This page may, for instance, go back to being dedicated to photography and pull from my Flickr again or perhaps my https://www.facebook.com/JimmyLemVisual/ page or some new content to https://www.behance.net/blisterpop.
– A new neutral personal site with blisterpop.com pointing there might be built on AWS with https://linktr.ee/blisterpop becoming my link aggregation site.

Marjorie R. Post Community Park, Massapequa, NY – 03 Jan 2016

I’d also like to dig deep into someone else’s work within each area and maybe establish some more personal and distanced relationships via these types of avenues. It seems like many groups on Facebook and reddit are decent places to discover new people and work and at the same time share my own stuff with people who’d be interested.

Overall, I would like to reckon with the sloppy almost lazy way I do not follow up with social media with the world at large enough and instead bother my friends and family a bit too much about things that they probably aren’t too interested in. In the past, this has led to some strained friendships, leaving Facebook about 3 times and some other shifts and bumps in my continued larger journey as a human being temporarily on this plant, just trying to communicate and make things for whatever reason that would be.

Building next to Forum Diner, Bay Shore, NY – 04 Sep 2016
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About Diary Painting Writing

Andrew Wyeth, Archetypical Art and how “knowing everything” might keep you from creating as much as you should…my story…

Andrew Wyeth, Christina’s World, a painting so famous that it was on the show That Girl…

I consider this stuff archetypical – this, and Arles, Water Lilies, Pollack, Dali, fauvism, Matisse, LeGere, the cutouts…these were all this my 11th grade art teacher had on the walls.  I imitated lots of that stuff, especially expressionism, along with more cultural things (like The Saint and tie dye) on t-shirts.  I enjoyed that class so much – she made me work in the unoccupied part of the class because I was throwing paint around, getting it on other people…

In 12th grade, I had an older man who graded strictly on technique and I didn’t do too well.  I was doing things like cutting the boards in odd shapes and pasting cardboard figure cutouts onto watercolors.  I would spend my free period with my old teacher, help her and participate and like that better.  Also, a friend was in that class.  In my regular class though, I sat with like a Breakfast Club of assorted characters; the kid who was in some of the same nerd circles as I was and could draw perfectly Chuck Close photos almost; a twitchy 10th grader whose brother blew up a desk with an M80 when we were in 6th grade; a rough but kind of hot spitfire girl in a 70s blue eyeshadow porn star kind of way; a kind of precious red head who drew lots of flowers and ponies but ever though we were in classes together forever turned out to be interesting and intelligent and last by not least: an almost mutual crush friend.  I think my other friend was in that class, too.  Anyway, they all liked my stuff way more than the teacher and I think even appreciated the experimental nature of what I was doing.  Not experimental to be weird but going to an uncomfortable place and trying to “solve the problem” and make something out of it.  That’s my connection to what I do now.

At community college, I took a design class and did well, discovered all the great stuff for sale in art stores, but I’d say by the mid-80s, I thought I had it all figured out and that people like Dali were the products of some kind of class war, based on what the Dadaists said.  This just made me freeze – thinking I knew everything – and I stopped painting.  Also, I never saw any of those art class people again, except throwing a counter 30 year reunion with one of them and another guy on the same day as the real reunion.

I think a combination of opening up and appreciating photography as art (while also doing it) as well as a friend of mine who paints figuratively – mostly female comic-like figures – about thirty years later inspired me to find things to paint.  I had realized I knew very little about the mechanics of painting – how to hold a brush, how to mix paints, how to draw a straight line.  I started drawing basic shapes and hands and figures and even kind of painted one but quickly found more interest in composition and trying different materials and to get there quicker and purer, I began using some of my old expressionist techniques like dripping, throwing and blowing.  Lots of the paintings I do now are derived from the shapes and relationships in some of my ordinary photos of trees and ponds.  Then I started to go to museums more – partially to learn more about materials but also to kind of meditate near art.  I absolutely hate going to museums with other people and I like painting in relative peace.

I think the thing I hate the most in the arts is the kind of in crowd mentality that has lots of rules – digital is bad, have to have a real drummer, no photos of the Grand Canyon, can’t use autotune – I think being around that and participating in these rules to help us think we know everything really robbed me from making much much more art and music.  I think.

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Summer Changes – Goodbye Facebook!

I’ve decided to limit my Facebook usage to the point where I will be disabling my personal account with the intent of deletion while keeping certain other pages (for my art and my music) alive under other accounts.  These other accounts will not accept friends.

Facebook announced that it would no longer allow third party apps like Buffer to post on personal accounts.  I’ve been using this to limit my real-time interactive usage for at least a year or two.

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Friday night I went to the Whitney Museum in lower Manhattan and was struck by a few things –

  • The amount of people who were lined up just to get into the museum and do something “in real life.”
  • The amount of people looking at their smart phones who were missing out on a fuller experience of art.
  • Instead, people were more interested in the art as something to post online.  This is cool because well…maybe they are artists of one type or another or big fans but it did seem initially somewhat distracting to me – a negative thing.  Not to mention that two people walked into me because they were too busy looking down at their devices.
  • Distraction is distracting!  No other way to say it…

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I believe in alternate process.  Believe me, this is no reaction to the “digital world.”  This is no “analog rules” post.  That stuff makes me sick.  I’ve always been an advocate of two things…

#1, There is more than one way to skin a cat, meaning digital art is just as valid, remixing is just as valid and…

#2, Be mindful.  Realize that flipping through a bunch of pages on the MoMA site is not the same as sitting in a museum and getting lost in a painting for more than a half hour.   Both are valid but they should be conscious decisions and appreciated as such.

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While I have so much more to say and write and I’m still working on notifying people on Facebook and exchanging contact info, if you care about me just know these three words – it feels right.

Thanks for reading!

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About Status Message Writing

Unlimited!

Why limit one’s intake & creation of art by putting rules in front of it?

An artist always edits their work. In camera, by framing or in a darkroom by dodging and burning, carefully selecting film grain or camera straps.

Purists may ultimately not be artists at all by succumbing to their fears and latching onto a set of rules rather than facing the scary truth that they are more unlimited than they give themselves credit for.

In other words, putting a set of limitations on how another presents art is eventually an environment to grow out of or die trying.

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One Step At A Time On The Lonely Path

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One Step At A Time On The Lonely Path (published today on Medium.com – https://medium.com/@JimLMusic/one-step-at-a-time-on-the-lonely-path-44a7adff25d1 and to my friends on Facebook)

My open heart…I cannot live with a closed heart. To laugh and to love either alone or beside one another….I don’t want to do anything else…and I cannot do that with a closed heart. To laugh like a child, to feel safe enough to keep it open. That’s what I want.

For how long have I kept my heart closed when I thought it was open? So many female friends that have shared that moment with me when I let it all come spilling out, that uncomfortable place. The affection and attraction not returned. Why was I ever surprised when I always stopped short of risk? Why was I surprised when I engineered relationships that took more than they gave? How long did it take me to realize that I had chosen this path because it was easier?…My emotional stupidity or just my emotional unavailability? It’s easier not to risk, easier to be right about my terrible self, easier to short circuit real happiness for the instant gratification of pretending.

Sometimes, even when it did become intimate — same story with a plot twist. Where did I draw the line? Where did the heart remain closed? How many compromises did I make where I ended up in that other uncomfortable place? Why am I here and how did I get here?

…and career…and creating…all variations on this same theme…

I have moved too fast…I had ignored my intuition far too many times and I have put the blinders on and full speed ahead and locked and loaded on the target — a rigid simulacrum as the goal…I knew that if I did not act fast and act now and cement and then tape together this illusion that it would disintegrate and be shown for what it was.

Now matter how hard I tried — friends or lovers — all I got was an illusion eventually broken…rendered real again and again. How “available” is that? To stand in a box and expect the box not to be a box. To live in a dream and expect not to be woken.

Awakening can be an amazing thing. For years I put it on other people and when I finally looked at myself in a hospital bathroom mirror, I looked around and there was just no one else to blame…then I knew, then I knew. I am the only one moving my feet. While others may have their responsibility, it’s MY responsibility to myself that is the key. I realized that for a while I had stopped walking the lonely path, in spite of everything my gut told me.

I began to move one step at a time…. I stood by my feelings. I stand alone if I need to….fiercely proud of that. I remain true to myself…when I am ready and when available. Not exactly waiting for when the time is right because the right time is always now. My heart just knows when to open. If I give myself silence I can hear it beating, loud and clear.

I can’t say that I always give myself silence. I can’t say that I already haven’t made mistakes. It’s something to learn and earn slowly…walking down the lonely path, we dust ourselves off, laugh — rest, heal and remove yourself from the situation — and keep walking. You keep walking even though you feel numb. Even if you say to yourself that you can’t possibly get out of bed. Inside each of us is a candle that we alone can tend to and that we keep burning. We are responsible for our own happiness and own own sadness and as much as we would like to put blame and heroism onto others, we are still only left with ourselves for both. One step at a time.

What I find is that beyond all this navel-gazing and pondering is a good time, a fun time, actual laughter…not the sort of laughter that avoids the issues and says “lighten up.” I didn’t want to *have to* think of all of this…but you see, you really must do the work sometimes to allow your heart to shine through like the sun. My work continues but I have found something in myself like a hidden animal in a drawing in Highlights magazine — once you see it, you never forget it.

The lonely path is the path to the pleasure of being alone — not to escape but to know that you are doing this alone, that you can do this alone if you have to. Each time you feel lonely, you get the chance to experience the brighter side of being alone and then from there you can experience the rest of the world fully. You have no one to impress but yourself…but also not to use aloneness as another way to hide either. A balance that I am still working on.

For myself and for anyone who has sat in a room with another and either wondered “why am I here?” or “what if?”…to anyone who has ever been lonely or just wanted to be alone….this writing is for you and I.

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End Of The Summer

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End Of The Summer (published today on Medium.com –https://medium.com/@JimLMusic/4183b611c474 and to my friends on Facebook)

September has always been a bit of an evaluation time for me—being my birthday, the new season, the new school year…Today, at the onset of my “stay-cation,” I’m looking back at my failure to realize my plans for this week. Please keep in mind that my goal-making is an incremental thing…I know that the larger goal should be broken up into manageable parts….like a child learning to walk, I grab onto the first piece of mental furniture and then pick another and another…concentric circles of security and tests.  For the purpose of this essay’s brevity and clarity I will just define the one as symbolic of many.

Today I am focusing on the goal of getting out of the house, leaving work behind, grabbing a camera and heading out to the east end of Long Island. This was an imagined day-trip that I started to formulate in the spring and have continued to work on…something I was supposed to do for this long Labor Day weekend. Sounds easy? All the same, I must outline the challenges and what is shaping to be the focal points of this essay and apparently my life at this time.

Although I have shed almost 125 pounds since December 2012, I need to lose possibly another 80–100 to be somewhere close to what I remember being a comfortable place. I’m on certain meds which limit my time out. I’m chained inside either at work or on days off for about six hours each day. I’m on other meds too. My legs, my knees and my ankles are not what they used to be and I also have some difficulties in my hands and arms as well. And I need to sleep with a few machines that are not easy to carry around. All of these are weight-related conditions and the working theory is to lose weight and stop needing to take the meds…to pick up the undamaged parts of me and continue on…to feel better…to be free.

My work limits my free time. You’ll need to give me a certain amount of relative latitude here based on your own circumstances and how much I can actually divulge in a public space. For me, it’s become a great deal tighter in the past few months. Indeed, this coming Sunday, I need to be available for a call that could last about four hours. I vacillate between feeling like a victim to a corporate culture that rewards ego, self-promotion, bullying, over-simplification and fear and then feeling like I have made a colossal “at will employment” mistake. I came to realize perhaps that I voluntarily did some of this to myself as I gained the weight to the point where it became a self-perpetuating cycle of hiding ever-deeper and deeper in myself. I’m still not sure which came first – the weight or the hiding. I’m working on that.

I like to create and make things, especially music. My belief system is that my hands in art and music are no more genius than anyone else’s. Art is a natural human quality that can transcend all limitations—sensory or otherwise—if we just have that faith in ourselves and stop trying too much to take the easy way out – gods, myths and heroes. These past two years, I have looked towards re-investing in other creative undertakings—drawing, painting, electronics, writing and photography to name but a few—something, anything that wouldn’t take so long to assemble. I’ve since found that each artistic en-deav-or has it’s own learning curve and could—like work—have no limits. So BINGO—maybe I need to look at my limits? Let’s get back to that concept later.

Many of these artistic pursuits are indoor activities that I have traditionally done indoors and by myself. With music especially I have insisted for years on working almost entirely by myself. All of this in all probability to avoid personal conflict, to simplify, to get things done more efficiently and keep up with my ever-moving mind…but at what cost? Now I’m looking beyond these things and am trying to find my way into art with other people as a social activity.

One such idea is the Facebook photo-oriented group I am currently running. Photography has appealed to be greatly because there’s relatively little to do as far as production. In theory, you just point and shoot and post. So I decided that perhaps I could use my group to organize some social photography outings—“photo trips”.

Unfortunately I ended up hurting my knee more than it already was hurting so I needed to step back from many physical activities. Inevitably, I ran into my limitations as far as meds go – as I have lost weight but still not enough. Then my new limitations at work are in the mix too, so I have not been able to do as much as I have wanted to do with other people and with myself.

Friends try to be friends but do they really understand? … Does my chronic unavailability leave a subconscious negative in their brain? …and to only imagine falling in love….do writings like this check off the “drama” or “maintenance” or “baggage” items on the relationship checklist? …by all appearances perhaps bristling at another invitation or another piece of advice…”difficult” or worst of all…. “Jim doesn’t like me.” Stay with me people, I will get there. I keep saying I can’t do it because I really can’t do it.

So the little “people pleaser” in me is doing the St. Vitus Dance and here I am swinging between “no limits” in my mind and limitations I can no longer ignore in my body and my circumstances. And that’s about as exactly where I am as I can spew out this afternoon.

So I count myself a success for knowing where I stand. My hope is that anyone who is reading this and going through a struggle either great or small—weight, death, work, whatever—can get something out of this. That there is indeed a positive. That things may not be the same anymore but you are still standing somehow and you need to put on your shoes and get moving.

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Facebook Fasting – experiment zero

I’m once again abstaining from Facebook.  I think I can sum it up in a sentence: Other parts of my life need improvement and I’m not going to distract myself on Facebook when I should be fixing my life.

So this is not a drill, this is not an experiment, this is the real thing…this is the beginning of the real thing.

I figure that I need to work on –

Education
Job
Transportation
Living Space
Companionship

These are all basically related to money….I did so well with my weight, and all of these things are holding me back…there’s a core…a core that I think I hit when I started working on my weight.  Something that makes me stop trying…a fear.  Something that makes me not pay attention.  And I have been so fearless in the past but not so long ago…well I got trapped.  I got out of it but not far enough….Some of my friends on Facebook are truly deep – even some that I have never met, so I will go back – I just need to think this out.  I am generally a smiling happy person and being so serious is tough for me but I think I need to do it – figure out if I’ve ever truly been entirely serious, just for a little while.  I will miss my Facebook friends.

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Facebook Fasting – experiment five

Interact physically…I have a series of meetings scheduled for the coming week to see four separate groups/people.  All of these were set up via Facebook prior the fasting and three are supposed to happen on Saturday, the day after I break the fast.

And there is the reality – Facebook is primarily limited to being a means to arranging a physically meeting.  It’s not real interaction – it’s a “social substitute”…”attention methadone”…not too much different than smoking or overeating and with some dangerous and not so obvious connections.

Also, interact physically with myself – always being on Facebook means never truly being alone.  I don’t know how it works for other people but I have lots of evidence that leads me to believe that I need to recharge, to get grounded, to take all the confusing pieces that rush by during a normal day and piece them all back together in my own language.  Constantly trying to always be active in this false world does not allow me to do this but only serves to further confuse.

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Facebook Fasting – experiment four

Since checking in at a hospital in Dec 2012 and until roughly this same time last year, I lost about 120 pounds…but since then I have stayed at roughly the same weight. Make no mistake that I am very happy about that. It’s very possible that I would not be alive to write this.

However, to be healthier and happier and probably live even longer, I should probably lose another 70-100 more pounds. Very hard to do. I’m not getting into all the mechanics but please know I am under medical care and have changed so much and have researched very meticulously – and I have decided that it starts in my head. Whatever happens in there translates into retaining.

Since I left the hospital I have posted my daily weight on Facebook and simultaneously kept a spreadsheet. It obviously helped – feedback was good and major milestones were – in my eyes – to be celebrated with my friends. People reached out to me to find out how and bonds were formed and strengthened. But eventually I stopped the spreadsheet. I think my focus shifted towards what everyone else was thinking – this type of behavior I believe contributed to my weight gain to begin with.

Today for the first time since I left the hospital I did not post my weight. And I may never do it the same way again. I also picked back up on my spreadsheet again and will reconstructed the missing time based on my FB history when I go back online. I will still share my weight upon request but I found that I need to see what happens if I focus on me first. That’s the experiment and I commit to the next year just like I committed to this past year of posting even if I wasn’t losing.

So I move from merely being alive to being happy…

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Facebook Fasting – experiment three

Experiment three is to listen to music.    Without distraction, looking out the train window…I will allow myself to blog though…I’m not however posting on FB what I am listening to…I’m not googling for who plays what…not looking to be the expert…and especially not looking for valudating “likes” – this is about listening…thoughts come in of work, of being the expert and how little that has actually got me…how the whole thing, revealed as the mirage that it is, crumbles away.  When I get home I’m going to try to play one of these songs, but I might be too tired.