Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Lookin' back I see a kid who was just afraid, hungry, and old before his time

When I was a younger man lookin' for my pot of gold
Everywhere I turned the doors were closin'
It took every ounce of faith I had to keep on keepin' on
And still I felt like I was only losin'

I refused then like I do now to let anybody tie me down
And I lost a few good friends along the way
I was raised up poor and I wanted more
And maybe I'm a little too proud
In lookin' back I see a kid who was just
Afraid, hungry and old before his time

Through the years I've known my share of broken hearted fools
And those who couldn't choose a path worth taking
There's nothin' in the world so sad as talking to a man
Who never knew his life was his for making

Ain't it about time you realize? It's not worth keepin' score
You win some, you lose some and you let it go
What's the use of stacking on every failure another stone
Till you find you've spent your whole damn life
Building walls, lonely and old before your time

It took so long to see
That truth was all around me

Now the wren has gone to roost and the sky is turnin' gold
And like the sky my soul is also turnin'
Turnin' from the past, at last and all I've left behind
Could it be that I am finally learnin'?

Learnin' I'm deserving of love and the peaceful heart
I won't tear myself apart no more for tryin'
I'm tired of lyin' to myself, tryin' to buy what can't be bought
It's not livin' that you're doin' if it feels like dyin
It's only cryin, growin' old before your time
It's only cryin, growin' old before your time

"Old Before Your Time"

- Ray Lamontagne, 'God Willing & The Creek Don't Rise'

Monday, October 11, 2010

Halloween Approaches!

This upcoming birthday, 28, has been significant for me since I was 15. It is like a rite of initiation is complete; as if my heart is much more free to beat, beat, beat. As with all people, many things intruded upon my person during my impressionable young years - sirens which seduced my family into inviting wolves inside; and though I have been blessed to choke many of these malicious and ignorant sirens to death or near - some of them, only Time is going to take away.

This upcoming birthday is a particularly significant sirens' death sentence. Though I tried choking her with great care and effort - she who sang revelrously whilst torturing a young mans heart till it screamed in his head - I never did kill her. Her siren voice would draw me close and then whisper a snakes threat, always shaking me till I became numb; but this Halloween my dear friends, I will watch Time draw near this particularly annoying sirens voice - and slit open her throat for me.

"There's a whole in the world like a great black pit and it's filled with people who are filled with shit, and the vermin of the world who inhabit it - they all deserve to die!"

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Turn in your books to page three-hundred and ninety-four...

Dang Potions Class (Year One)

I want to write a lot about it, however time will not allow this....which is kind of neat - almost being forced to go on the ride without being able to process it much; oh, and 'it' being school.

Between work and the overtime being required there, school and the homework mostly, I loved reading about the two feet of parchment Snape would require from his fifth years; I can't imagine what O.W.L.'s were like to take.

Further, as we all are, I'm fighting a Dark Lord as well. So put that in your Felix Felicis and drink it.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

"Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" - Matt 6:21


How, I don't know, but there is a world that is soon going to end. It has carried me for some time. It brought me out of the world I was having trouble accepting into a world where magic and love and danger and triumph walk with a gigantic gate - blowing away hearts and minds with the wind of their stride. The work grew into me as I grew with it. It's Western Literature at some of its finest. I can feel the characters and settings and conversations, throbbing on my eyes and in my chest like recalling an old memory. It's that vivid; that engrossing. As usual, ironically, I was told over and over to read them, "No." - something about me just doesn't lend myself easily to recommendations - though as I have matured, I find certain people's suggestions taken more comfortably.

As a new semester has me in new and full time classes, I am placed amongst an English class which has been a pretty good time - though I often feel the need for a time turner. The English is academic, but I finally understand wanting to be able to write. Until now this feeling eluded me, I had no idea how one could not write; when the emotions and ideas take hold of me and tear me apart, sometimes in joy, sometimes in agony - ink pours where blood should; and words and paragraphs and stories and allegory and aphorisms and poetry form like puddles of a wasted self, suddenly renewed, suddenly emboldened.

Recognizing the artistry in this lengthy body of work juxtaposed against my own, and with my general place in maturation, I wish to know how to form the ink I spill into art. To not just write because I'm dying or living, or to write as dying and living, but to die and live, and translate the experience so utterly staggeringly. I feel a daunting presence, lost for some time, of deep desire; I feel the will raising it's head, breathing more consciously that it previously has.

Ready to end this long road, knowing I'm coming to a place in the last book where soon I won't be able to stop till the tears have fallen and my spirituality renewed and, and what else I don't know...but I'm nervous - in any event, with this in mind, I find myself reminiscing over my time here, in the world Muggles aren't readily aware of- I think of a range of individuals; in no order they rise like members of an old life - from Professor Sprout to Dean Thomas, to Harry, to Fleur, to Bill, to Ginny when she couldn't speak around Harry, to Sirius, Dobby (sigh), Lupin, Filch, James & Lily, Albus...etc. etc. etc. I see them as a memory, so vivid I can remember their voices and how they grew in height and their hair and the questions I had/have about their personal lives - I can almost smell them walking by, or hear the fire in the Gryffindor common room, hear the crack of disapparition and then understand what follows that crack - the rubber tubing, the suffocation, the release during apparition. I hear parseltongue, I hear the song of the Pheonix beautifying my sadness, the cold wind to Hogsmead, the thick dust in the Shrieking Shack, etc. etc. etc. etc....all good books are like this. Certain memories even ignite the fear I felt at the time - like a literal PTSD.

"The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming."

Year's One through Four are very different than Year's Five through Seven. Year Seven almost stands by itself, else is part of Year Six. The ending of Year Four is when everything switches. Year seven is close to done, tears have been shed and nerves have been rattled. It's not melodramatic, it's good writing. This is the slightest bow to a series that I can't express enough about - beyond the writing - for what it did for me, for the time in my life it was with me; such a time of evolution. But God has a funny way of being a part of our lives, in all things, and giving things to us which He knows suit our tastes - teaching us as we go; like medicine in peanut butter to a dog - but obviously more refined. I really hope people are able to give themselves this gift. To allow themselves to sink into the series and let the world become part of their memory; I am glad I was supported to traverse it (eventually I began chasing it) - I'm glad for it awakens an incredible part of our spirits and so our overall beings - and it's an incredibly important part. It lights a fire I won't tell you about, but it's an ancient magic one can only learn about themselves before giving to others.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Pretty Wings

Just ran across this. Like it....as the day progresses I'm growing to really like - in time it could be love. We'll see. It's just wonderful though, I've had it on repeat most of the day. Very dig.




An Inside Account of the Shady Side of Modeling


An Inside Account of the Shady Side of ModelingA five-year project filming the lives of model Sara Ziff and her friends is now a documentary called Picture Me, which premieres after the close of New YorkFashion Week tomorrow. We spoke with one of the models, Sena Cech.

Ziff and the other models who appear in the film worked on some of the biggest campaigns in fashion: Marc Jacobs, Stella McCartney, Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger. Sena Cech started modeling at 17. A bed of roses it wasn't. On one shoot, a notoriously sleazy photographer had his assistant ask Cech for a painful sounding hand job: "Sena, can you grab his cock and twist it real hard? He likes it when you squeeze it real hard and twist it."

Cech spoke with us from her Oregon home where, besides going to school, producing fashion shows and her own clothing line, she's also raising a young daughter named Naia.

The film isn't short on awful stories from fashion models. What's one story from your time working in the industry that stands out?

An Inside Account of the Shady Side of ModelingI was invited to a Christian Dior party in Paris, and I got drugged there. It was a big party on Avenue Montaigne, and there were a lot of people. I thought, "Oh my gosh, John Galliano is going to see me." It was a small bar, really crowded and the line was like ten miles long. So some guy just handed me a bottle of champagne. I drank some and he disappeared. Soon after I felt really sick and had to run for the door. I ran out into Avenue Montaigne and cars were coming at me, but all I could see were flashing lights. I just knew I needed to get into a cab and out of there. Luckily someone who was working the door pulled me onto the sidewalk.

Did you share stories with your friends, and were they being put in similar situations?

Yeah. My roommate in Italy was date raped at a party and she would have to see this guy out all the time. Not everyone wants to come out with these stories. Maybe you don't ever want anyone to know that you got date raped. I mean, I can be getting roofied at the Dior party. It was all just denial.

What about on shoots? Can you recall some of the working conditions?

I was working for Air France Magazine, and my agency calls me and says, "One of our girls had an allergic reaction midway through a shoot and had to go." They told me she'd gotten hair in her eyes while they were cutting her bangs. They said "Get down there!" It was really weird when I got there. So they do my hair and makeup. Then the photographer was shooting and he's using a UV flash, and it burned the first six layers of the whites of my eyes. Six cell layers. It even burned the assistant's arm.

An Inside Account of the Shady Side of ModelingAfter the shoot is finished, I'm rushed to the hospital and the other model was already there being treated for burns. For three hours I worked on that shoot while the girl who went before me was being treated in the hospital. They knew what had happened to her and they still had me work. I get there they put ointment on and taped my face shut. They asked me, "Do you have anybody you can call? The agency is closed. No one's coming for you."

My friend brings me home, I'm blind, and he had to feed me for two days. After taking the bandages off I had to wear dark glasses and carry an umbrella. It took two months to heal, so I ask, "Where's my worker's comp?" They said, "We don't sue each other in France."

Good Lord. Where was your agency in all of this?

They would set these things up. I went to work in France once and this famous photographer who I'd been put in bad situations with before was there, too. He booked me for dinner through my agency. They told me, "Oh this is your chance to make up. Can't you go to dinner with him? Others girls from the agency will be there." I agree to go and he's trying to make out with me at the table in front of everyone at the restaurant. I still don't think he even knew my name. He just called me 'Blondie.'

Who at your agency was facilitating this stuff?

At my agency, the new faces booker. He took care of the teenage models and worked nights as a club promoter. He'd say, "After work you should come out to dinner with me, we'll invite like 20 girls from the agency…" And [the models would] all trust him. They'd get everything for free and they'd get really drunk. 15-year-old girls.

I mean, my booker would book me for dinner with somebody influential from the industry just because he wanted to have dinner with a hot chick. The modeling agency would double as a dating agency. They'd say "When you're out with him you can show him your stuff." On time this guy picks me up and I'm starving. He says "I just want to stop at this hotel and have some champagne." So we drink like a bottle of champagne. Then he says "I need to go back and change," and we end up in his hotel room. Pretty soon he comes out in just his bathrobe and I was like "oh, shit." Then I couldn't find my shoes, because he had hidden them so I couldn't leave. I see one of my shoes that he had kicked under the bed. He hid my shoes! I grabbed one of them and just ran. My agency put me in these situations.

They never protected you in the slightest.

No. They'd also sometimes say, "You need to get to this place [for a shoot]. We know this guy with a private jet who would like to take you." They'd be flying you out, booking hotel rooms, booking you out for events. It was just rich guys with jets trying to get laid. The agency didn't protect us at all.

What's the biggest lesson you learned during your time as a fashion model? And what sort of advice would you offer a girl who's interested in following the same path you did?

Only trust yourself. People who say they'll take care of you are the very ones who will hurt you the most. Only trust yourself. Whatever the situation is, think for yourself.

I would hope my daughter would learn to say no. I've finally learned to say no just in the last six months. I never knew how to say it. I'm happy here. I've done so much healing. It's been a big journey for me. I'm actually going to school now, too, for naturopathic medicine. I know that this is my calling.

Picture Me opens tomorrow at Angelika Film Center in Manhattan and in Los Angeles on September 24, before opening in Europe. Here's a trailer for the film: --

http://gawker.com/5639572/an-inside-account-of-the-shady-side-of-modeling?skyline=true&s=i

Thursday, September 16, 2010

It's time to Rock and Roll!!!!

The albums are here!
The albums are here!
The albums are here!

And it sounds fantastic - four years in the making, less than a year of concentrated effort. I hope, and think that you could fall in love with some of these songs. Major thanks to Waterworks Ent., Patrick Himes, Blair Smart, Marshall Norman, Wes Tirey, and Yes Master Studios, Nashville, TN.


Listen to a few online here! www.myspace.com/thefreshwater
Order a few online here! www.facebook.com/thefreshwater

Do not go gentle into that good night


Battle is a joyous thing. We love each other so much in battle. If we see that our cause is just and our kinsmen fight boldly, tears come to our eyes. A sweet joy rises in our hearts, in the feeling of our honest loyalty to each other; and seeing our friend so bravely exposing his body to danger in order to fulfill the commandment of our Creator, we resolve to go forward and die or live with him on account of love. This brings such delight that anyone who has not felt it cannot say how wonderful it is. Do you think someone who feels this is afraid of death? Not in the least! He is so strengthened, so delighted, that he does not know where he is. Truly, he fears nothing in the world!

-Jean de Brueil
French Knight, 1465