Notes to Self

I’m not fond of press releases in general. I find them to be full of PR hype and marketing babble, although they are good for getting numbers and addresses and contact information. Press releases about travel are not that usable for anything other than contact information.

What I do love are art exhibition press releases. Somehow this is one thing that most galleries get right. I learn a lot from art exhibition press releases. About artists I’ve never heard of. About their work. Where they went to school. I learn about the creative processes of other people. I learn about the kind of work a gallery likes to present in an exhibition. And, they always come with a usable attached image.

I can use art exhibition press releases. I rely on them. Travel ones, not so much. Although I don’t like to miss out on anything.

In the art world we learn that not everything in life is Top 10, or 5-Star. When we do our critiques at mid-term or finals, we would be laughed out of the studio if we said something was great – and we’d probably be flunked out of school if we told everyone their work was great. The purpose of a critique is to give constructive criticism, and everything in art, as well as in life, leaves some room for improvement.

I’ve carried this concept with me through life. Especially through my life as an artist and my work as a Quality Assurance Engineer.

With the coming online of twitter and facebook, with online rankings and reviews, there is more opportunity to spread the glory of being great around. The only thing is, that the word great now seems to have the same definition as the word mediocre. The word has landed in the same pile of useless words where adjectives like interesting have landed. In the art world, to tell someone their work is interesting is to tell them their work is meaningless.

So many times someone has sent me a great link and I click on it and read, something that may or may not be useful, but it certainly isn’t great.

If someone asks me what I think of something, I’m going to give them an honest answer. I feel it’s my job as a human being to be honest with my thoughts about something.

December 1st is that day every year that I go through my personal list of friends and remember the lives of all of my people that have died from AIDS. And while I’m at it, I also celebrate the few who are now living with it.

HIV/AIDS wiped out an entire group of my friends over a period of five years. Most of my friends who died from the disease were artists or creative people, from my famous art schoolmate Keith Haring to my unknown best friend Kevin Perry. He was a painter and a jeweler. This disease is the great equalizer among those who have it and they had AIDS during that time when it was commonly known as the plague and its diagnosis meant a death sentence.

Because so many in the first wave of death were artists, musicians, dancers, writers, and creatives, December 1st started out as A Day Without Art. When AIDS started claiming people under any job description, in any income bracket, December 1st became known as World AIDS Day.

Now, people don’t suffer from the disease but can live full lives after an HIV diagnosis. People can live with the disease if they have access to the drugs. Mothers can resist passing the disease on to the unborn children if they have access to the drugs.

Even though we know so much about the disease, it is still running rampant, like all over the continent of Africa. One of the first ways to stopping the spread of the disease is to get educated about the disease. Check out the link below to get information on HIV/AIDS.

World AIDS Day

On my first trip to France I was 29 years old. I had dreamt of going to France since the summer between the fifth and sixth grade, right after I had finished my first semester of grade school French. Even more so after I read A Tale of Two Citiesby Charles Dickens in my high school British Lit class. I wanted it to be my first trip out of the country, and it was.

It took a long time to get there, a long time to organize (ie: buy a one way ticket), and it wasn’t until my father had passed away and left me a little money that I could afford to go. And even then, it was still a few years before I got away. I had gone through art school and university and honed down my desire for visiting France to a desire of visiting the city of Paris – although that first trip was a long one and I visited many more places along the way.

I feel at home in Paris. I feel more at home in Paris than anywhere else I’ve ever lived in or traveled to. I have often wondered about this feeling, which happens to be a feeling in my heart. Like love. But more like home. I have often wondered if it was borne out of my French and Art History professors’ passion for the art, culture, and language of the place, that their passion had rubbed off onto me, or if it was, or is, something deeper within me.

Within Paris there are places that I visit often. Like the Basilica of Saint-Denis. The Winged Victory in the Louvre. And Rodin’s museum. Why? I do not really know, but I feel a connection to these places.

To this day, when I travel to Europe, I fly in and out of CDG, the international airport in Paris. If my destination is somewhere else, then I take the train from there, after spending a week or so (sometimes a month) acclimating to the time change.

Other places have called to me, either by my contemplating on where in the world to go next, or by sheer random invitation. If you believe in reincarnation, and I do, I have often thought that because of the ease of travel in this lifetime I am compelled to travel to places where I have lived and loved before. I also believe that invitations that appear to be random are not, not really, and it only takes a moment or two of contemplation to decide if they are right for me at the moment.

The next time you are thinking of making a trip or traveling to some far flung destination, sit with yourself for a moment and ask yourself where your next destination lies. You may be surprised at the answer that follows, but give it some serious consideration.

The soul always leads in the right direction.

It’s my fault. This nightmare of mine. Most of my dreams and nightmares are. I did it to myself – buying a plane ticket before I was really ready to travel. I knew I wasn’t quite ready. The bag didn’t feel right. It still had too much stuff in it. I hadn’t formed my mental picture of the trip. Not a definitive picture, just a wandering around kind of picture. I wasn’t sure if I had enough cash to see me from one end of the journey to the other. I hadn’t come up with Plan A, Plan B, or Plan C. My housemate was eager for me to leave for awhile and I was letting that influence my decisions. Normally I’m very good at standing my ground when something doesn’t feel right … but I gave in, bought a ticket, scrambled, and then missed the flight. It was meant to be. I wasn’t meant to be in my destination yet.

But now I have a canceled flight, and a few hundred dollars sitting at American Airlines that I can only use to purchase an American Air flight. No problem except that prices to my destination have risen and tack on a $150 change fee and with those prices I could have taken an extra person with me. I’m bummed. It brings an originally $298 fare to over $500. I think I’ve only paid over $450 for an airfare once in my life and that was for one of my trips from SFO to CDG. That also takes a big chunk out of the travel funds, which are already very limited.

I would have probably never flown on American – for any reason. But the day I bought the ticket, it was the cheapest flight. Now there are cheaper flights on other airlines, but my flight cash is tied up at American. I’ve been considering going one way. Just to use the money. And then figure out the flight back after I’ve been traveling awhile.

This is way more effort than I’ve ever put into a trip before. What a headache. It’s not the first trip I’ve screwed up. It probably won’t be the last. But the whole experience has made me realize just how not user friendly the airlines are. It’s like running a gauntlet to get to a destination. It’s not possible to be happily on my way somewhere until I get there, rather than as I’m leaving the house. The whole process should be a breeze. And I don’t really need to go from SFO to JFK to get to Mexico. Really. The whole airline industry needs to be overhauled – starting with the pricing format. Just pick a price and stick with it. This is how much it is. Every day. Every flight. No hidden fees. We could plan a budget and you’d have so many more customers, your business would boom, we’d all get to where we were going with a smile.

What I really need to do is scrap the whole thing and get a job. I just can’t make myself do that quite yet …