(Phaysis)

It’s been a while since I wrote something here. Let’s see…I went to see Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction at the Erwin Center a few weeks ago. I had bad seats, but the show was good regardless. The extreme strobelights on stage during the NIN set were unbelievable, and sorta gave me a headache. I’m just glad I’m not an epileptic with a floor seat. The venue site said cameras were allowed, so I took mine. Tons of people took theirs. I shot a ton of pictures; a handful are even what some would consider “good”. Amazing.

My problem with cameras — and I’ve discovered this the past few shows I’ve taken my camera to — is that my attention ends up getting split between my camera (and the technical and aesthetic aspects thereof) and the actual show itself. I don’t remember some of the show because I was too focused on my camera, and some of the joy of being there is diminished. As a further injury, almost everyone has cameras, and almost everyone is taking pictures of the exact same thing I am…so my pictures are close to worthless to anyone but me. Do a search on Flickr for Austin NIN|JA and you’ll find at least 100 photostreams with shots 100 times better than mine.

I had a great time, but the camera thing gets to be too much. Does that make any sense?

So, what else? It’s Memorial Day weekend, which means I have three days off. Three unpaid days off. Life as a permanent contractor has its downside. I don’t get paid sick leave. I haven’t had a vacation in three years (and I wouldn’t even call that a vacation…I went to Texarkana for that trip). If I don’t work, I don’t get paid. It’s that simple. After the paycut I got a few months ago, I’m living just below my means, so I can’t really afford to not go to work.

That being said, this Wednesday the 27th is my 24-month anniversary as a contractor at AMD. This is important to me, and scary for certain reasons. AMD’s human resources rules state that contractors cannot work beyond 24 months, unless certain conditions apply. At such a time, the contractor should’ve already been converted to a permanent employee, or they’re walked out the door. Luckily, I have a certain condition, but it is my hope that HR will continue to let it apply: back in February, I got a six-month extension on my contract, which puts me three months beyond my anniversary. Which means I’m done after August 27 if I’m not converted already.

My hope, my prayer if you will, is that I am not unceremoniously walked out the door this Wednesday. I’m kinda in-between projects, and it would make sense if they did, but my managers keep talking about future projects. The contract I’m working under isn’t between me and AMD…it’s between AMD and Volt Technical Services, the company I actually work for. Whenever HR deems, they can end Volt’s contract for my services, and that is perhaps the shittiest part of contracting. I am not an employee – I am a capital expense.

Two weeks ago, I got the itch to build a new desktop wallpaper for my laptop to replace the current one which has been there for a few months. I saw something that day that evoked a voice I’ve let sit silent, and I wanted to wake up that voice and weave it into something good. That voice spoke of an image I drew in November ’97 when I was in the throes of hungry creativity during my two-month stint of hardscrabble unemployment in North Carolina. During those two months, I wrote poetry, I drew art, I listened to music, I met people, I had a new relationship with an awesome girl. Even without a job, I was producing. I was in the springtime of my life.

The vision was to use this drawing, a box with circular vines weaving in and out of the box, in a layered tableau of drawing, ripped paper, a cherry branch, a few vines curling around, stick pins, all softly front-lit and backed up by a textured background. I could do everything in Pov-ray, but I needed a scan of that drawing. I remember scanning it some time back in ’99, so I searched my hard drive and all my backups for the image. It was nowhere. Disappeared to the ether. So my only option was to scour my room for the drawing and attempt to rescan it.

In my search, I managed to unearth a treasure. I found my birth certificate. Found some more poetry from North Carolina. Found a stack of love letters. Finally, I found it: the drawing, and all of the drawings I had created and compiled between late 1997 and 2000. Bingo.

I was really, really into vines, banners, fineals, things draping from suspended bars, very fine lines, crosshatching. Still kinda am. I had several mechanical drawing pens, and I used them with much attention on making the most miniscule drawings. I would fixate on an image for hours, touching here, shading there until I was satisfied. It was like sex. After all the work, something beautiful would be created.

In the span of a few hours, I had dug out and set up the scanner on a very obsolete computer and I rifled through my stack of drawings to find the best ones to scan and commit to pixels. Spent some time the next day cleaning up the vine box drawing while listening to Nine Inch Nails and Rush concert dvds. I was happy. For the first time in a while, I was happy again. Not just the memories that returned while I meditated on my art, but there was the happiness from meditating on art itself. Having a mind quiet enough to draw. And it was there that the Eros returned.

If life is not lived to create, then it is a lie. I can’t get any more truthful than that. The reason we are here is to create things that will outlive us. And I’m feeling that drive again, like it is the springtime of my life. I am insane for having kept the voice of the muse silent for so long.

Kind of shameful, really, that I kept quiet, but I kept quiet because of the shame; an endless cycle. I had created so much that the amount of crap scaled upwards with the output and I started seeing it; instead of loving all my babies, I hid them away and stopped producing. I heard the voices, the wrong voices, in the coffeeshops, on the message forums, in the channels, rambling about talentless hacks who take themselves too seriously, and that had a very chilling effect on me. I stopped producing and it became winter. The Very Long Pause.

I’m not finished with this image yet, but I will be soon. I worked on it all day yesterday and spent today taking care of necessary things instead. I don’t want to be done with the voice when I’m done with the image. I want to keep drawing, keep writing poetry, get back into music, keep speaking with that voice, the muse. To emote. To love again. To take my failures and abortions in stride as I keep up the creativity. To be a producer.

I’ve been living a lie. It’s time to speak the truth.

Update (Feb 3, 2008) The image is finished. I put the final touches on it a few days ago, and now comes the time to share. Enjoy!

To get you all caught up to speed, now that I’ve had enough time to recover, the Nine Inch Nails show last wednesday was incredible. It was hot, it was sweaty, it was dusty, it was crowded, it was steamy, the pit was angry, the band was loud, and it was everything I had hoped it would be. Since my date fell through, I sold my “date ticket” to a friend of mine for dirt cheap (the friendship discount); I sold the other two tickets for relatively cheap (I’m not greedy) to some dude from San Antonio who made a request on craigslist. Once I got all three tickets out of my hands in exchange for money, I was finally happy and able to look forward to the show. All-in-all, I spent $144 on tickets and made $210, which means I got paid to go to see NIN. I like that.

The week before the NIN show, I got free passes to see the sneak preview of Star Wars Episode 3 before the rest of the world did. I kinda have a smug attitude about it, but it’s not every week I get to do something few others have the opportunity to do. Y’know? I’m planning to see Ep3 again this weekend. On my own dime.

My boss has taken to bringing his large dog to the shop. It sits in his office all day under the a/c instead of at home where it’s just too hot to leave the little doggie outside where it can walk itself. Last week I received a delivered package and proceeded to take it to the boss’s office. As I crossed the threshhold from the hallway to the office the dog lept up, took an offensive posture, and proceeded to bark at me in a deep tone. I backed up, put the package on the shelf next to the door, gave the boss a pissed and freaked-out look, and just left. He later apologized and decided that placing a handmade sign next to the door would prevent future disaster.

My Memorial Day weekend wasn’t as grand nor as fun as I had wanted. One of my plans was to ride my bicycle as often as possible; thanks to the crappy weather (rain and storms almost every day/night) riding my bike and being out on it wasn’t such a smart idea. So I drove. Also, the allergens seem to be getting bad; every morning I woke up with headaches that don’t clear until some time after getting up. I still have the headaches. Stupid allergies. Add to that the migraine I had on sunday night and then trying to recover from it on monday.

There weren’t too many problems with the weekend itself, tho. It’s just that overall things were just bland, unexciting. Icky, if you will. Just…blah. No overarching excitement; no bonus, no rewards. Just moodiness and sticky May weather.

It appears my car has taken up the habit of smoking. I don’t know why, but it’s been getting worse over the past 4 months. It’s kinda embarrassing, y’know? I mean, I know my car has 158,000 miles on it (original engine), so some smoke should be normal, but not this much. It’s turning into one of those cars you call the DPS about to complain about the pollution. I don’t know if I’m burning oil – well, I know it’s been burning slight amounts of oil for years – but that much? I also know there’s a crack in my exhaust manifold; would that affect my emissions controls that much to make me burn a rich mixture? The smoke really isn’t so apparent until I’ve been sitting at an idle for a little bit, like at a traffic light or a drive-thru lane, and then when I step on the gas to move the smoke just billows out. It’s blue-grey and white.

I love my car; I’m used to it. It has become a part of me and my life. It is the only expensive thing I own. I don’t want to trade it in for another 3 years of car payments. Yet rebuilding or replacing the engine, though it seems like a cheaper option, might actually be the wrong thing to do considering the 12-year age of the car. I just don’t know yet. I’m planning on getting some professional advice on the matter first thing this weekend. So we’ll see.

In the meanwhile, now that the weather’s permitting, I’ve taken to riding my bike more often. Maybe outside of the car thing I can make a weekend of riding my bike. Yesterday I felt like I was having heart/chest problems — it must’ve been heartburn because I had no problem hopping on the bike after work.

My friends Ed and Melanie are expecting and tomorrow is the day. The baby (a girl) was expected last weekend but she was taking her time. Mel’s O.B. decided to induce labor this friday, so congratulations to them. I’ll see them this weekend when I visit the delivery ward at their hospital.

For what it’s worth, the Republic of Texas Biker Rally (remember me talking about that 2 years ago?) is back in town. Apparently it’s every year on the weekend after Memorial Day weekend; I had gotten confused. Maybe I’ll go downtown and look at the bikes for something to do. Or maybe I’ll go downtown and fake unconsciousness to see how many doctors leave their bikes to come resuscitate me. Who’s to know?

Ok, hope this passes for a journal update.