gold vortex, diamond heart

just finished installing a thready, vortex filled world on feist's wall.
nailed it all in.
cut out her shadow out of black paper- which was awesome . feeling someone's paper hands.
so special

chanterelle omelettes again
because they are 5$ for a pound.
yikes!

photo is from the venue in stockholm we played. i had so much fun with terri. i miss her.

paris, coffee, and egyptian playing cards

been thinking of cool album titles for hours. i like invisible echo but i think i found the one i really like. keeping it in my brain until it feels like skin. definitely on chapter 2 now in paris. hanging with leslie and her roommate mary has been really fun. had craft day and art supply store day yesterday. there are some old playing cards involved. egyptian playing cards with strange imagery. some had knives on them. there is a dog here named rocco. he's kinda midge style. mary is from the natti. we spoke of skyline chili and that it is brown and that all the food from skyline looks brown. sick.

met the biggest art dealer of paris yesterday. emmanuel perrotin. he took us all out to an incredible meal and i sat next to vanessa bruno, the fashion designer. we talked for an hour about twins. she's pretty damn special. her clothes are really beautiful. leslie gets them for free.

so i am getting ideas for artwork for her. i am excited to be thinking on this scale. it's bringing me back into conceptual thinking and deliberate meaning in design. all analog. We went to the art supplies store yesterday and bought a ton of stuff
And a toy shop
And an office shop
And a junk shop

Finding little things to use
An old fan with moroccon lattice on it to project through with the overhead projector.
tracing paper and hi-lighters. old books and neon paper. lots of gold things.

I am using my old polaroid slr 680 and will be taking all the photos

My idea is that it will all be analog
All the writing and titles will be in the photograph
So nothing is digitally put over the images

We will see....

been walking around the streets remembering to be here, to be in the moment. it is getting harder and harder to do that. because there is so much non linear activity and travel and my mind gets increasingly stuck in the thing i am doing at that moment without the sense of reflection. oh and that 'no more second hand god' business that nat was going on about had been so much a part of my thinking. no more second hand. i am feeling this sentiment.

got lost a park that really was a square and it was pretty small but i still got lost. that was the "i'm in paris" moment. a statue of a woman coming out of a field of peach colored roses. a couple sitting on the stone bench kissing. yeah yeah yeah.

best falafel of my life too. the eggplant - i don't know how they do it. i was on a corner near muji and had a flash to around this time last year when i was here with d and e - and e gave me a slap down for not sitting down at a table with some dude that he thought was cute. the 'cold' approach. no way.

recording so far has been really really really good. lars, the drummer is very much the swedish jordan. marcus, the guitar player, is very much the swedish dan. and then having terri there was so great. she really helped move things along, arrange, listen, and do the 'nod' to what was working and what wasn't. the tracks are sounding even better then i thought they would. karl jonas has taken this project on like it was his band which means so much to me. he has gone above and beyond his call of duty. duty. wierd. i've fallen in love with everyone.

santa stockholm

i have been here for a couple days...stockholm. it's sunny. fair to say around 80 degrees so it feels kinda home-ish. been wandering around a lot and it's starting to feel like a true european vacation. the work starts soon though and i'm so excited about it. i haven't talked about music in a way that i love in a long time. last night i hung out with some new friends and talked about music in such a new way. saw some cool bands on the top of a building while the sun was setting. everything going on here happens outdoors which is cool. beers outside. chilling outside. shows outside. i think they have to take advantage of the great weather because in the winter it gets depressingly cold. apparently, sweden has the highest rate of suicides next to japan which i find really odd considering all the people i've met are so warm and positive. guess they snap under the deep long winters. i couldn't do it....but then again i haven't tried. starting to undertand the strange vowel pronunciation but i feel handicapped when i try to pronounce the street names. a little embarrassing but a good challenge to try and hear the sounds and replicate. i guess that's all it is about learning to speak languages- getting the courage to correctly mirror the words back to the locals the way they say it. had this crazy corned beef hash type meal at 1 in the morning last night and they gave us a side bowl with raw egg yolks and chives to poor on top of the fried potatoes.whoa. they certainly wouldn't allow that in the states- and it was so good! heard this girl sing really interesting stuff last night. she sings back up with the girl from the knife and i could hear that a lot. strange voices. i thought it was a cd and then i walked into the next room and this band was totally ripping it up dancefloor style eurythmics style with crazy singing and drum machines. i was down. how could i deny the power of song in a foreign land? i met this really self depricating kid that was making me laugh because he kept putting down his music and saying how bad his songs are but there seemed to be a lot of people there enjoying it. it was refreshing and nerdy. i was given this tshirt to sleep in. so i'm kinda sleeping at home.