Galaxy

5 years ago I was busy not paying attention in high school. The teacher was talking about something I couldn't care less about and standing in front of the projector so I couldn't see even if I wanted to. BUT it looked really cool projecting on her. Of course, while the idea was simple in theory, it was much harder to actually secure a projector. So I forgot about it for awhile...

galaxy girl 1

(^^ This was the main inspiration)

galaxy girl 2

galaxy girl 3

Fast forward to my Wednesday Electronic and Computer Music 1 Class. The room is too small for all 15 of us so we have to rearrange every few minutes, depending on whether we need to see the computer, white board, or projector. WAIT. PROJECTOR. We each get 2 hours in the studio every week to do that week's assignment. So I seized my chance. Unfortunately, sacrifices had to be made so the assignment didn't exactly get done, but- WORTH IT. I came prepared. I brought my camera and tripod and had picked out pictures to project. My friends came and we infiltrated room 117. And yeah we needed our backs to be bare... This is what we got:

You can find these in better quality on flickr here

Climbing Trees

Maybe you've felt like this before. Or, I don't know you, maybe you haven't. But I do now. It's the feeling 
of swallowing the lump.
of not enough oxygen when you breathe in.
of freefalling and grasping at air.
of the walls of this carefully constructed numbness caving in.
It's the feeling of being overwhelmed. 
When I get to this place, all I can think about is art. I can't sleep because I know I have things to do but I'll stay up and still not do them. Instead, I get incredibly creative.  It's a coping mechanism and it's a curse. There's that quote about "If you judge a fish on it's ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid"... and I don't know why but I haven't been able to get that out of my head since I heard it three years ago because it is just so relevant. I am judged everyday on my ability to do science when I know that's not what I am best at. So, right when I need to study the most, in the days before the test, I turn to art to prove to myself that I still have value even if I can't climb the tree. It's just kind of sad that the fish in this case was unlucky enough to be born into a world that pays its treeclimbers far better than its swimmers. And maybe it's good for me to learn to climb the tree but it's not exactly what I was designed for and sometimes it hurts when I fall off. But it's 5:21am and I'm hungry and I really need to study...