Milking it...

  


 It's been great fun to say to people" I've had brain surgury" and watch their response. Or to casually throw it into coversation, like "I was out that week, getting Brain Surgurey" So yes I've been really milking it....I've found some people have been kind of freaked out and maybe even have discriminated against me because of it though so I've got to watch that.

   The bottom line is It didn't seem to have much affect on me one way or another...it's not like I was in excruciating pain and that's now been relieved. Actually this whole episode that begin with the NY eve fall has not had much of a physical impact on me. I've had a minor throbbing headache since the fall and that has been somewhat relieved by the surgery and I expect it will all just go away with time. The eye doctors I've seen have found no damage and I feel very lucky for that. My sense of smell has dissapated and somewhat and I'm sorry about that but in the long run, I feel very happy to be where I'm at.

   I wasnt feeling any pain but I know from the cat scan that I had developed a subdural hemnatoma that was pushing against my brain and had to be removed. Otherwise it would just keep getting bigger and eventually kill me. So now it's gone and all is well on the cat scans. I have a cool scar too

   I have learned a lot from this whole episode though and maybe I've grown, at least I hope I have

   I'll still keep using the "Brain Surgury" excuse for laughs....I'll keep milking it till I no longer get a response because, really, how many people can say "Ive had brain surgery"

   One funny thing is that when I was in the hospital the first time on NY eve. I told the doctors that I had to get out on Wednesday so that I could get to work on Thursday, that I couln't just "Not show Up" Funny that I cared so much about this gig. It was a sweet little gig though ..... I earned just enough to have some pocket money for the week  and it turned out to be something I was good at.

   I am aware that I may have lost my job as a result of it or maybe it was just time to move on anyway,  I'm sure I'll find something new.

Post Brain Sugery

A friend asked me if I was ok, if my brain was back to normal and I'm not sure if my brain was ever really normal....(JK) but Im ok, actually I never really had a problem, just a mild headache since the fall.  Ive been fine throughout all of this, going to work every day and being very productive...there have been limitations on going to the gym and Ive totally lost my taste for alcohol. So I've stopped going to bars and I do kind of  miss the socializing and the hanging with DJ friends, the discussions about music, the flirting and making out that's so easy to do when drinking. I have some people I considered really good friends that I just don't see anymore but I'll just have to figure out ways to transition, it's just another stage of life I guess and it's ok, it's interesting really.

I havn't had any alcohol in 3 months and I have to say, I'm feeling a lot more feelings and that's pretty cool. I don't think I realized it at the time but in the past I'd get a little sad or depressed and then I'd look at the clock and think "Happy Hour". I had some friends that I loved seeing and they could always get my mind off whatever negative thoughts I might be thinking.

So now those thoughts come and I deal with them. It's not that big a deal, just part of life really. These kinds of thoughts used to seem really scary to me....thoughts like "....Does anyone else really know me?, can we ever really know another human being? Can I truly empathize with her pain?......" thoughts like that used to really scare me and kind of throw me into a nihilistic tailspin, now I find it easier to accept that that's just part of life, it makes it worth living really

My Brain Surgery

I can't believe it but, I've had brain surgury. I keep repeating it to myself because it's so hard to believe. It all came about in a rather routine kind of way....It was New Years eve  and upon entering my building I ran into a neighbor, we compared notes and talked about our evenings as we walked up the stairs I stopped on my floor then leaned over the railing to continue the conversation and thats the last thing I remember of that night, 6 hours later I woke up in the hospital with no idea how I got there. I was fine, I had had a concussion but was feeling ok, they did numerous tests, cat scans and such and wouldnt let me eat in case I needed to be operated on, nothing developed and after 2 days I was released.

   A month later I went to the Nuero surgeon for a follow up visit, he told that often when people do what I did there is no follow up visit. If I had landed a millimeter this way or that I might not have made it, it's pure luck that I survived, that made me think " how easy it really is to die" It's all a gift really, living, and it can dissappear at the drop of a hat, just like the ending of the Sopranos, at a certain point the switch has to get flicked.

I used to worry so much about dying, then, I almost died. It was pretty effortless, not much to worry about really, what a relief.

In preparation for my second follow up visit to the nuero surgean, he, Dr Hirschfeld, asked me to get another cat scan, so I was finally given an appointment for last friday March 9 and after I got it the cat scan operators called my doctor and his office called me, could I come out to Lutheran hospital in Brooklyn that afternoon to see Dr Hirschfeld? Sure, so I trekked out to sunset park and entered the emergency room, they got me a bed and I met with the Dr. and he said he needed to operate, a sub dural hematoma had developed and it needed to be removed. It was a collection of blood between my brain and my skull and it was causing pressure and would be fatal if it was not removed.

   So last friday morning, the 15th, I went back to Lutheran hospital, they strapped me down like Jesus and drilled a little hole through my skull and inserted a drain, this was my brain surgury, fairly routine but still, brain surgury, performed by Dr Alan Hershfeld…well done!

A week later the stichess and staples came out and its all back to normal….quite surprising that this would be a part of my life….I wonder what's next

The Thrill of it All

   I love that I get to be an  an artist, I don't make much money at it but my bills are always paid. I'm invited to all kinds of cool events and am meeting all kinds of people from all walks of life and my job is constantly challenging me to try new ways of doing things.


   I made the painting above "New Gold Dream" this past November, it's part of a series I started in April of 2012. I had never before made anything remotely like this. I'm going to try and describe how it came about.

  

   The drawing above, from 2007 is probably the closest thing I had made to these current "wooden room" paintings. The way the current paintings came about is that My friend Mark Krayenhoff was describing these drawings as being very kooky and having all kinds of crazy patterns clashing against each other so I went and looked at them and this is what I found, I couldnt find anything like what Mark was describing so I decided to try making some.

   Here's what I came up with, a drawing "Other Voices" that I gave to Mark for his birthday last March.

   I wanted to see what this would look like as a painting so I tried and came up with this....

   ...pretty good, but not great. It was very exciting to make though as I'd never really made anything like it before.

   I tried again and came up with this......

 

   I felt the thrill of having made something unlike anything I had ever made before. I took risks and challenged myself and I ran with it, I spent the next 9 months exploring all the dark cobweb filled alleyways I could find.
  
    We know when we are going through the motions and we know when we are really going out on a limb and challenging ourselves. I look at it as one of the great perks of our job, that we get to challenge ourselves, when its just getting repetitive and we know what the end product is going to look like we do it a different way, try something new and that thrill when we've created the thing we never even envisioned and that no one has ever seen before, thats what makes life worth living, and that's what makes me supremely grateful that I get to be an artist.

Obama

I love this, and I'd like to tell you why. Before this there was a kind of institutionalized homophobia, if it was ok to discriminate against gays in the military and not allow them to marry it was also ok to blackmail and to threaten them. So it was pretty typical to meet gay guys online who tiptoed around and were terrified of sending you a face picture. It was also common to meet guys who wouldn't tell their family.

Now I have to say the whole tiptoing around thing seems very  Boris and Natasha. very outdated. I met someone online yesterday who wouldnt send me his face pic because he was "very very discrete" and "too much was at stake". I told him I wasn't going to invite a complete stranger over to my apartment if he's unwilling to share his face with me. That just feels wrong but somehow he thought that was acceptable, like because I'm gay I can't expect people to be above board with me, Im supposed to live a risky, seedy life because I love men?

Thank you president Obama for calling homosexuality what it is, Love....and that's nothing to be ashamed of and its not ok to treat me like a low life or a 2nd class citizen anymore.

Now if I could just meet another man who feels the same way......

The Number One Song In Siberia

Valentine's day 2013

I gotta say Ive never really had a problem with valentine's day.....does that sound like faint praise? I suppose it is, its just that so many of my friends loathe VD but Ive never had a problem with it. Ive had boyfriends who've hated it and wouldnt celabrate it, no biggie !!!..and Ive had guys go out of their way to make me a memorable meal, some have which have truly been memorable and then there's always the single me who goes out of my way to get me something I'll really like.

   This year it was a Margiela T shirt with some crazy numbers on it that I wore to my friend Bubi's opening last night.

   I guess in some sense VD is about expectations about unicorns and perfection etc but its also about treating someone special very nicely and hey, there's nothing wrong with that...