Collaboration I

I'm really enjoying this new collaboration with my dear friend Mike at michaelmake.com. I am using watercolor backgrounds with silhouettes on top that I am cutting from bicycle inner tubes. I only give each image a maximum of about 30 minutes, but often end up with a few in that amount of time.

This project was framed as a childrens book collaboration, but we will see what it ends up being! I really love some of these images and can't wait to see where the visual narrative goes from here.

Collaboration II

Ecoquirky Garbage!

Tracy and I have started a new little business on Etsy called www.ecoquirky.com selling upcycled jewelry made out of bicycle inner tubes. It has been so much fun to work with her again, and although we have taken it pretty slow these first few months for personal life stuff, it is awesome to have a project like this. I love making things with my hands! I am hoping to get a lens and start melting glass; I really think recycled glass drops will be a nice complement to the product line we already have.

Ecoquirky Photography

I've been having a really fun time doing product photography for Ecoquirky. I actually have zero photography skills, but with my phone and a couple of awesome apps I have taken what I think are some pretty cool pictures, using mostly just the people that are handy as my models (meaning the kids and Tracy and her family and other passersby:) They make great models! Turns out all of these people are actually really awesome and beautiful - and they make our jewelry look good! New hobby.

Piensa En Mi

This song was recommended to me by someone on Youtube, which makes me feel very interactive and also, it's a beautiful song. So, I put on one of Ama's headbands and recorded it after practicing a little but maybe not quite enough. At first, I listened to recordings of the song by those kind of Mexican singers who sound and look like they are dying/weeping/wailing while they sing (I believe it's called passionate), and had some trouble even picking out the melody, but then my dear friend (I wish) Natalie LaFourcade came around with her version, which is clean and cool as a cucumber and super awesome, and I went from there. I am not sure about the headband still, though.

Esa Noche

Another Cafe Tacuba song because with Cafe Tacuba, I either love or hate their songs, which makes it pretty hard to sit down and listen to a whole album, but the experience comes with bright spots. The ones I like are usually throwback songs, like with oldey-timey guitars and harmonies. The ones I don't like are the noisy, abrasive ones, except for Ingrata. I like that one. I remember listening to that song really loud one time when I was driving through Paradise Valley with Spencer (and who else? Danni?) with the windows down, and it was magical fun!

Moves like Jagger

Isn't this kind of a funny song choice for me?! Well, there's a whole bunch of music in this world that I will never admit that I like. And this song is DEFINITELY one of it.

Hit The Road Jack

I don't know why I enjoy playing this song so much, but it's stayed in my song book for many years. It's just easy to play and sing, and simple and fun. It's sometimes kind of hard for me to think of songs to work on and record, and sometimes the more difficult songs that I have to practice for a long time need to be tempered by ones that take less effort. That's just one theory.

Europe 1995 Introduction and Excuses

When I was 18 years old, I went on a trip. It was a Eurail Pass-centered journey with no real itinerary or timeline (but with a couple of planned specific destinations, including a flight into London and out of Dublin) that ended up covering parts of northern Europe, Scandinavia, and the British Isles. I believe that the original idea was celebratory, sort of a graduation present to myself, but the trip also ended up being a very well-timed lesson in self-reliance as I embarked on my life as a for-real grown-up.

This is what I looked like in 1995:

 

I kept a few things from the trip, like a map where I tracked everywhere I'd been and my original Eurail Pass voucher thingy where I kept track of all the times/places that I used the pass. I don't know where those things are now. But I do have a small, orange journal where I kept THE MOST random account of the trip and obsession-level accounts of my hunger, what and how long it had been since I'd eaten, and how many days it had been since I showered.

So now, in 2014 (almost 20 years after the trip), I am going to use the orange journal and my own memory (eek!) to document/recreate the trip here in 6 parts. I will include select parts of the journal (saving the reader and myself from the embarrassment of the worst of it) and photos that I scanned out of a photo album at my parents' house last month. This is going to be fun! Lowering expectations in...3...2...1...

Europe 1995 Part 1: Hungry/Stinky in England

 September 20, 1995: Danni and I flew into Heathrow Airport.

9-20 Journal Excerpt: "I have to go through my backpack to see if they took anything out. The customs people ripped open our padlocked bags instead of telling us first so we could open them. They ripped the whole zipper off Danni's so she threw it away at the airport. Traveling is not as easy as a person would think."

I think it's very finny that I came to this conclusion on THE FIRST DAY of this 6-week-long trip, especially with the knowledge of how many more things I would go through before the trip was over. Not wrong, just comically premature.

We spent four days wandering around sightseeing in London. That's where I got all these picture of me standing in front of old buildings. We stayed in a few different cheap hotels.

9-21 Journal Excerpt: "We called ahead to a super cheap motel but couldn't find it once we got here so we're in a different one. It's called Kensington Court and it is SKEE-ZEE. The toilet's on the 3rd floor and we're on the 1st."

9-21 Journal Excerpt: "Now I must go explore and find parliament so Danni will agree to leave this country."

I think Danni and I mostly ate and drank and walked around. I mean, what else is there to do, really? As I remember, we argued a lot and took out all the stresses and frustrations of traveling inexperience on each other.

9-22 Journal Excerpt: "We got back to our motel after Danni decided that we didn't need any beer only to find out that Danni wanted some beer.I personally was exhausted and famished. So we ate some very very bad food at KFC and bought some Beck's beer and went home to drink it."

I got a headache that night and couldn't drink the beer that we eventually bought.

What I wrote on the back of the above photo:
"Me and the English parliament in London - quite an impressive thing except it wasn't that great cause I was starving to death and Danni didn't care."

On 9-22-95, we took a train together to Liverpool, and stayed there for one night before we went our separate ways. Danni stayed in England and worked at a pub (she had a work visa) and I continued on my rambling journey. 

9-23 Journal Excerpt: "So then I wandered off and left Danni at the hostel and I wasn't sad at all because all we've done for the last week is bicker. We do not travel well together. I got a cab and went to the bus station - I got there at 12:45 and the only bus from Liverpool to Newcastle left at 1:00, so I think it was meant to be. I got into Newcastle at 7:30 and had a mini nervous breakdown anxiety attack thing." 

I have to forgive myself for being a bad traveler, because to be fair, this was a trip of many firsts. I had never traveled alone before, never been off the continent of North America, never handled foreign money (and remember this trip was before the Euro, so I had to change money EVERY SINGLE TIME I crossed a border, sometimes daily), and never even been on an airplane flight before the big pond jump. It's no small wonder that I had no idea what I was doing, and that I floundered a bit at times.

Also, I still get lost pretty much everywhere I go.

9-24 Journal Excerpt: "I was originally going to go from England to Denmark, but I found out I'd have to wait 3 days to go there. I found out there was a ship leaving today for Hamburg, Germany and decided to take it, so I called and they said there wasn't but one was going to Sweden at 8:00pm. So I changed my mind again.
I headed toward the dock and 3 hours later I got there (the metro wasn't working so I took some confusing buses, then walked the last 1/2 hour). I go to the dock and the chick told me there was no boat going to Sweden but there was to Germany and it was leaving at 2:00pm so I just made it."

I submit that entry as proof (in case you were skeptical) that I had no itinerary. I decided within a few hours to go to Denmark, then Germany, then Sweden, then Germany again. No sweat.

I took a ship called the King of Scandinavia, which was huge and had restaurants and casinos on it. There was no place to change money when I got off the boat, and I needed bus fare to get anywhere:

9-25 Journal Excerpt: "When I got off the boat, expecting to find a money changing place, there wasn't one. So some woman gave me two marks and told me she hoped it would be enough. The bus actually cost 2.40 and I was so unhappy and screwed that the bus driver lady let me on."

And so began my mainland adventure.