t.w.o.d.

joshsternberg: futurejournalismproject: Banksy on...

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:25:21 -0500

joshsternberg:

futurejournalismproject:

Banksy on Advertising

Via Upworthy. Select to embiggen.

Happiness is…

Lou Reed - Perfect Day “Be not deceived; God is not...

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:32:21 -0500

Lou Reed - Perfect Day

“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7)

natashakline: For all the artists out there. xoxo

Sat, 04 May 2013 23:54:18 -0500

natashakline:

For all the artists out there. xoxo

If you close your eyes and listen close, You can hear the chapter close

Sat, 04 May 2013 05:03:00 -0500

Tonight I sat down with my housemate Nick to eat some sandwiches, and I launched into a story about a story. I told him about a piece on KUT that I listened to recently, and how it changed me.

Now, Nick is awesome. I say this because you probably don’t know him, and that’s too bad, because you would probably get along with him, like him a lot, want to hang out with him on the porch and eat sandwiches on a Friday night. He reads a lot, writes a lot, studies a lot, plays a lot of guitar, and makes beautiful music that makes me smile whenever I hear it. He’s also kind, wonderful to talk with, insightful and enthusiastic. The world would benefit from more people as good as Nick.

While we sat and ate, we talked about a lot of other things too. We spoke of the virtue of re-reading favorite books, the radical changes that The Nest (our home on Romeria) has been through in the last year, the dangers of defending your beliefs (or at least why I don’t argue with someone just because I believe something they don’t), incredible narratives, and benefits of couches versus tables.

Nick had questions about my story about a story. He wanted to know who told it, and. While I didn’t know his name, I also realized it doesn’t matter. Not that much, anyways. What mattered was the epiphany that came with the explanation. I was listening to a man explain how important laotsu was to him, and while he did so I felt everything I had ever read about the Tao click into place. The feeling made me less concerned with where I was driving, so I took a wrong turn to keep listening and blindly searched for the location of Dave and Busters, which was somewhere near where I was, but I didn’t know quite where, so I just let myself find it eventually.

While I drove my beat up station wagon, the guest spoke of contradictions, and their role in the mystical. He talked about balance, he talked about not living in a cycle of endless bliss, but living with and embracing the chaotic ride of life. He talked about yin and yang, light and dark, coexisting in everything, and I felt something click. I felt the forgiveness I’ve been searching for inside myself come along with my own story of my life. I looked at my own experiences, my joys and sorrows, and was able to experience peace within them both.

Later that night I came home and tried to write about it. I tried to explain the epiphany in logical terms, but it was worthless, because I was trying to logically explain doing without doing (Wei wu wei) with my simple western ideals, and it was a big jumbled mess, but I realized tonight that its not my place to do so. The real point of the story here is a frequently occurring one in absolutely everything I’ve ever said, and it’s about perspective.

I don’t expect to convince anyone to give up their lives to learn to be closer to the Tao because I wrote this, but I would ask one thing. Look at what’s bothering you sideways. Inspect your problems the way you would look at a 3d poster from one of those poster stores in 1999. Wonder in awe about how the heck MC Escher ever put all the perspective together to make a room full of stairs in every direction, and then try a fresh dose of contradiction, confusion, or mysticism. Pick up a book that didn’t make sense before. Watch a movie you didn’t enjoy again. Call up someone that you used to fight with and see if you can still be friends. You might just find something you didn’t even know you were looking for.

Adventure Time!I bought this (this: Finn the Human hat if you...

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:48:18 -0500

Adventure Time!

I bought this (this: Finn the Human hat if you didn’t know) on Think Geek finally (it had been backordered for a while) and I will probably wear it everywhere I go until it’s sad and gray and dead.

rstevens: Tonight’s comic has a sound business plan.

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:38:28 -0500

rstevens:

Tonight’s comic has a sound business plan.

kittenvixen: Just a reminder to have an adventure! Capture...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 10:53:21 -0500

kittenvixen:

Just a reminder to have an adventure! Capture those moments and remember the small things that happen. You don’t know what tomorrow brings.

Amanda speaks the truth.

Angles of Light - Praise Your Name I pray for you anyway your...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 00:23:06 -0500

Angles of Light - Praise Your Name

I pray for you anyway your violent nature needs you to be.

Ilovetoloveyourlovemylove

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:45:04 -0500

Last week, in frustration with everything that had happened in the world, and horrified to see the ways that my “friends” react to tragedy*, that I decided to take a Facebook vacation. It was kind of funny, because Klout told me the “goodbye for a while Facebook” post that I made had a large impact, or a lot of people that liked/commented on it‡.

Since that happened a week ago, I feel like I’ve been doing better things with my time that leave me with a sense of self satisfaction or happiness that posting or lurking on Facebook didn’t. A “like” doesn’t really mean anything at all, and I wasn’t really engaging with the people I followed online much, past pressing a thumbs up button.

Here is a short list of things I did while not using Facebook that I probably wouldn’t have done otherwise.

Finished reading a book, and started reading another one
Sent messages to women on OK Cupid µ
Polished up my resume ¹
Sent text messages and emails to people I wouldn’t have otherwise interacted with
Re-evaluated my financial goals and health goals, and decided to proactively change the way I spend money and time
Played Minecraft for the first time with my buddy Zolloc
Folded some laundry
Cleaned around the house
Wrote more than status updates

I was pretty sure that at the end of this week long break I would be running back to log in and reinstall Facebook on all of my mobile devices, but that’s seemingly not the case. I know eventually I’ll log back in. I’ve got friends I don’t get to see half way across the world, people who’s lives I won’t know about if I’m not subscribed to their feed, and other people I like that are just plain FUN to interact with, but for now it feels good to get away from the heard and do some stuff that fells nice instead of just annoying.

*quick to make things political or turn in hate for the wrongdoers and everything about them (including skin color or religion) instead of love and hope for the survivors

‡ Yes, I left Facebook, but I didn’t leave every other social networking site. I hate Klout too, but not enough to delete my footprint from there or not sign in every once in a while.

µ Okay, so none of them responded, but I’m pretty sure that trying and failing is better than not trying at all.

¹ I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, it’s been “on the list”, but working on my resume gives me a deep down uncomfortable feeling. Last night I decided to face it and do it anyways!

This method acting, well, I call that living.

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 03:58:00 -0500

This week I was speaking with someone who’s job it is to make me better at communicating effectively*. He and I were talking about some issues I have had at work, and he said to me “You’re so zen that …” and then his voice trailed off while he tried to think of an example to tell me why he thinks I’m so zen. Just that fragmented sentence, by itself, makes me ecstatic. Even if he is the only person to see it, I’m really happy to be recognized as a person that embraces their inner zen, because I’m all about that…

I haven’t written here for a long time. There are a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is based on thumper’s mothers advice, which is pretty solid, and I try to keep in mind most of the time;

And … whenever I had sat down to write (because I used to write habitually), it wasn’t nice. Mostly, it wasn’t nice to me, and I didn’t know what to do with that, but I didn’t want to put it on my website, and this account is embedded onto danielliepold.com, so I just left it alone most of the time, and put up pictures every once and a while.

I was worried about the garbage that was streaming out of my consciousness. I kept at it, wrote a lot of drafts, and eventually just gave into updating the notes application that I keep on iCloud, to write as needed, but it’s been an odd journey to get back to being able to publish content publicly.

You see … back around late 2009, when I created this account, it was a conscious effort of rebranding myself. I had been posting and blogging semi-publicly under the name synapse collapse on live journal since I was 20 years old (or 2002), and I wasn’t always a solid guy there. I didn’t like the brutal honesty that being young and naive and overconfident for all the wrong reasons had going for it, and I wanted to start from scratch with all of my experience but without the baggage of my shortcomings. TWOD (or danielliepold.tumblr.com) seemed like a good place to do this, and for a while it went pretty well. And then, reality struck. After the job I quit my day job to pursue dried up and my good luck streak went in the alternate direction, I opted to shut my mouth when things got tough, because I had a reputation to keep up. I was convinced that branding myself as a positive writer & artist was more important than talking about what was going on.

Seriously, that first undocumented chapter was pretty freaking dark. I was still hopelessly in love with my best friend who had already moved on and on and on. I was making the same mistakes over and over and not learning. I was destructive. I was chaotic. I was unhappy. I kept silent. It was pretty bad … in addition to not talking about it on the internet, I didn’t really talk about it in person either. I just turned off, and expressed what I could to the people that really wanted to know, but I didn’t have the words, and was really disappointed in myself, but didn’t want anyone else to know how bad it was. I just shut down. I’ve challenged myself to write about it, and get lost in thought just thinking about it. I’m pretty happy to be here to talk about it though. Happy, and blessed.

Eventually, that chapter passed (the best thing about being alive? the bad chapters always pass with time), and not too long afterwards I decided to leave Arizona. Did that magically make everything better? Nope. I left behind all of my closest friends who loved me without end, and walked into a land of (almost only) friendly strangers.

The thing about moving is … while you can move your body, while you can move your things. You can surround yourself with new things and new people in every direction, you still carry your own baggage everywhere you allow yourself to take it until you learn to let go. Sometime last year (in 2012), I figured out how to let go of that girl I used to love. We don’t really talk much any more, so I haven’t told her, but I really don’t need to either. I’ve also learned some far more important lessons. I’ve forced myself to study and research forgiveness. I’ve kept closer track of my vices and not let them control me. I’ve tried harder to let the people that are in my life know how much I value them, because I’m worthless alone, even if I do spend a lot of time in my own head.

This year, I’ve decided that I can’t continue living my life without caring about the things that the rest of the world thinks is important that fell short of my metric of excitement; I’ve been making lists, keeping my promises, making plans, and sometimes even following though. For the longest time, I felt that creative expression was the paramount of my existence. When I lacked the drive to make that expression a reality, my existence seemed to be a failure. I’ve been re-reading through my favorite books on thought, quality, and creativity through a lull in my creative expression, and while I don’t know what it is, I’m coming to grasp with the idea that there is more to my existence than mere expression. It’s like a lifted weight off of my shoulders, thinking that I’m not worthless when I can’t finish a painting that I like, or make an album I would want to play on repeat, or write a book I could call re-readable, that there might be more to being alive than just making those things happen. That doesn’t mean I’m giving up. It just means I can stop judging myself for all of the times that I’m not proactively aspiring to my next masterpiece, because other things are important too.

So, I’m over being concerned about the “public perception” of Daniel Liepold. I’ve stopped worrying that what I write on the internet is going to stop me from getting a job. I can’t sell a painting to save my life right now, so I don’t care if my writing effects the way people feel about my art. It’s time to start living, breathing, doing, unabashedly like its 2002, but maybe without being quite so much of a little kid.

*Can I just mention for a moment how incredibly happy I am to say I have someone like that in my life? For real. And on top, he’s a quality dude that I respect a lot. A LOT, a lot. Anyways … it’s not so bad.

cheaper-than-therapy: Complicated love.

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 01:03:14 -0500

cheaper-than-therapy:

Complicated love.

Put some art work up for display / sale at the Our Home The...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:15:49 -0500

Put some art work up for display / sale at the Our Home The Sun house / studio this week!

There are about 6 pieces up there in total, but I thought this looked pretty darn wonderful.

ilovecharts: Self awareness assessment in four squares: The...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:08:41 -0500

ilovecharts:

Self awareness assessment in four squares: The Johari Window

via Tom

Synapse Collapse - Moderate Expanse

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 01:51:30 -0500

I’ve been working on some new music for the fist time in a long time, but in the process of digging through my sample collections I also found some dark electronic music (in the vein of Coll) that I didn’t do a darn thing with when I made it back in 2008 because the sky, most certainly, WAS falling.

Anyways, here is a collection of songs I’m making available for free streaming / download on soundcloud, I hope you enjoy.

Rip Current 16 x 20 inch Acrylic on canvas January 2013

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 04:44:32 -0600

Rip Current

16 x 20 inch

Acrylic on canvas

January 2013

Photo

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 04:38:36 -0600

This is what art in progress looks like.

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 19:55:50 -0600

This is what art in progress looks like.

cowboy-killr: Frilly toothpicks? I’M FOR ‘EM!

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 15:07:20 -0600

cowboy-killr:

Frilly toothpicks?

I’M FOR ‘EM!

austinkleon: David Byrne, How Music Works Loved this. Cory...

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 23:12:43 -0500

austinkleon:

David Byrne, How Music Works

Loved this. Cory Doctorow probably said it best in his review: “I could made good case for calling this How Art Works or even How Everything Works.” Much of the book reminded me of Byrne’s frequent collaborator, Brian Eno, as you can see in my bits of marginalia above.

Some thoughts:

All art is a result of context.

Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and “Genius—the emergence of a truly remarkable and memorable work—seems to appear when a thing is perfectly suited to its context.”

How music works, or doesn’t work, is determined not just by what it is in isolation (if such a condition can ever be said to exist) but in large part by what surrounds it, where you hear it and when you hear it. How it’s performed, how it’s sold and distributed, how it’s recorded, who performs it, whom you hear it with, and, of course, finally, what it sounds like: these are the things that determine not only if a piece of music works—if it successfully achieves what it sets out to accomplish—but what it is…

Context largely determines what it written, painted, sculpted, sung, or performed. That doesn’t sound like much of an insight, but it’s actually the opposite of conventional wisdom, which maintains that creation emerges out of some interior emotion, from an upwelling of passion or feeling, and that the creative urge will brook no accommodation, that it simply must find an outlet to be heard, read, or seen… This is the romantic notion of how creative work comes to be, but I think the path of creation is almost 180 [degrees] from this model. I believe that we unconsciously and instinctively make work to fit preexisting formats.

And:

The implication is that great work should, if it is truly great, not be of its time or place. We should not be aware of how, why or when it was conceived, received, marketed, or sold. It floats free of this mundane world, transcendent and ethereal.

This is absolute nonsense. Few of the works we now think of as “timeless” were originally thought of that way…

All art is a collaboration.

Even in solitude, we collaborate with our influences and with our selves:

When we write, we access different aspects of ourselves, different characters, different parts of our brains and hearts. And then, when they’ve each had their say, we mentally switch hats, step back from accessing our myriad selves, and take a more distanced and critical view of what we’ve done. Don’t we always work by editing and structuring the outpouring of our many selves? Isn’t the end product the result of two or more sides of ourselves working with one another?

And ultimately, music is a collaboration between player and listener:

I’m beginning to think of the artist as someone who is adept at making devices that tap into our shared psychological make-up and that trigger the deeply moving parts we have in common.

Technology shapes art.

The microphones that recorded singers changed the way they sang and the way their instruments were played. Singers no longer had to have great lungs to be successful. Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby were pioneers when it came to singing “to the microphone.” They adjusted their vocal dynamics in ways that would have been unheard of earlier. It might not seem that radical now, but crooning was a new kind of singing back then. It wouldn’t have worked without a microphone.

Revealing how art works doesn’t diminish its value or magic.

Byrne speaks of one of his stage shows that he wanted to “show how everything was done and how it had been put together.” He wanted to acknowledge his influences: “I wanted to show my sources, not claim I invented everything.”

The magician would show how the trick was done and then do the trick, and my belief was that this transparency wouldn’t lessen the magic.

Amateurism is a good thing.

Genius is a kind of marketing device — modern Capitalism “tends toward the creation of passive consumers,” and that the idea that only professionals can make real music keeps amateurs from enjoying the act of making. “The act of making music, clothes, art, or even food has a very different and possibly more beneficial effect on us than simply consuming those things.”

There is really no hierarchy in music—good musicians of any given style are no better or worse than good musicians of another. Players should be viewed as existing across a spectrum of styles and approaches, rather than being ranked. If you follow this reasoning to the end, then every musician is great, a virtuoso, a maestro, if only they could find the music that’s right for them, their personal slot on the spectrum.

Arts funding should be routed towards teaching students to make art, not just appreciate it.

Funding future creativity is a worthy investment. The dead guys won’t write more symphonies… Creativity is a renewable resource…

It’s more important that someone learn to make music, draw, photograph, write, or create in any form, regardless of the quality, than it is for them to understand and appreciate Picasso, Warhol, or Bill Shakespeare.

Definitely will go in my top ten of 2012.

(Cover photo via Brain Pickings)

Photo

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 14:27:01 -0500