hello again.

i thought i'd just update so this blog doesn't just die, like i let it die before.

sometimes i don't even really feel like i have anything interesting to say that other people would want to read!
it's weird for my to write so publically; it makes me want to be careful about what i say.
but i'll try not to be. haha. i guess i shouldn't have anyone else in mind while writing here, since it's my blog. part of the purpose is to share my "work" too though...
what work?

well lately i have been sketching. just for practice. nothing has turned out good enough for me to share with you.
i haven't been jamming a lot this week either, but the little time that i did, i had some ideas that i was kind of excited about. so maybe that will go somewhere.

basically, i just have a TON of ideas lately! for everything.
photos, videos, artwork, songs, displays and fixtures for the store, website and graphic designs, space designs and arrangements, clothing, jewelry, hair, and WORLDS. i find myself just daydreaming and thinking of ideas all the time. almost too much.
by "worlds" i mean, everything in my head. if i could somehow take all these ideas and make them real, i could create my own world. i believe you can create your own world in any way.
i do it a lot in my dreams. i go to these amazing little towns and old shops, or just beautiful and strange places, atmospheres, old buildings. it's not just about the physical part of it (which in the case of dreams, there really isn't one). it's about the feeling it evokes.
for instance, you might see a photograph that just inspires you in such a way that you get a rush of ideas and can create a whole little world in your head out of these ideas.
i daydream A LOT. i find inspiration in soo many things in the world around me, i want to take them and make them my own. vines growing on the side of the freeway can be inspiring. i still remember these strokes of color i saw painted on a tree that i want to recreate in some kind of way.
i think you can also create your own world in the space around you. maybe this is why i'm constantly changing my room, trying to find that place.
so basically, it's hard for me to share these kinds of things with you, because right now, most of it is in my head. but that's a good start. everything starts as an idea. and all my thoughts are creating energy, which will hopefully, in some way or another, become energy in the physical world.
sometimes i can be frustrating; i feel like i have so much inside me i want to share and i just don't know how to get it out! i know i always come to the conclusion that my lack of equipment and skills (on the computer for example) has something to do with it, which it does, but i think i'll eventually figure it out. it's important to experiment with different things. which i should do more of. and i'd like to travel more! traveling and experiencing new places is definitely inspiring.

i definitely do feel like i live in my own world. this isn't always a good thing.
i don't keep up with things like new movies, music, or fashion, very well, although it does have some influence on me. i think it's good to keep up with these things, because it's a great way to seek inspiration and learn from others. i'm also horrible at keeping up with the news. this is not something i'm proud of. i don't know much about politics either. i'd like to keep up with the news and politics, but it's so hard for me. my brain just wants to shut off every time i hear a reporter's voice. sometimes i feel like i isolate myself too much. i spend a lot of time in my room, listening to my dad's old records, collecting and creating things from paper. it's pretty hard to find a balance between everything. does anyone ever find that balance?

i want pie/i want beef jerky!

I got this idea of a bobcat with little star ears and drew/painted/colored this a while ago.
Just now i felt the urge to put glitter on it. I haven't put glitter on anything in a loooong time.
Maybe I'll expand this idea later on, but I've never been too good with developing characters although sometimes I try.

dreams

so i have a new song for you to hear.
hopefully it'll make up for the last one, because this one is better.
it's called "crying in my sleep."


this song is about dreams. i think it came out that way because it sounds a little dreamy and dreams have had quite an influence on me lately, not to mention navil just posted something about dreams.

dreams can have a huge effect on your mood and the way you feel when you wake up. a lot of people say that they don't remember their dreams, when in fact, most people just forget them. about a year ago or so i started getting into lucid dreams--dreams where you realize that you are dreaming and you can control them. i started reading this book with excersizes to help you to have lucid dreams. this included keeping a dream journal; when you write all your dreams down right when you wake up, you actually remember them really well. i never quite had one, and don't keep a dream journal anymore, but because of that, i still remember my dreams really well when i wake up. sometimes its a little freaky how well i remember them and all the details, even though dreams can often seem foggy. maybe tomorrow morning when you wake up, before you think about anything else, remember your dream...then you'll see that you may start to remember the rest of your dreams. i also like when im going about my day and i see something that strikes the memory of the dream i had the previous night, and suddenly remember it.

anyway, my friend, marvin, has recently gotten into lucid dreaming also. i let him borrow the book that arin let me borrow (sorry arin). and i think because i've been talking to him about it, i actually had 2 lucid dreams recently! in the first one, when i realized i was dreaming, i didn't realize how much control i had. i didn't think that all of my surroundings were all just in my head-i only knew that i could change little things around me (i was taking a shower in an outdoor courtyard and instead of running and hiding-i was naked-i made a priest that was walking by not see-i was invisible). in my second lucid dream, once i knew i was dream, i decided to fly off of a cliff. i was flying over this city and kept closing my eyes and reopening them to change the city below me into paris, into balloons and rollercoasters. the dream ended pretty quickly, but i'm very excited and hope that i have another one so i can really do some cool stuff.

okay so back to the song...crying in my sleep. sometimes i actually do cry in my sleep. if i have a really sad dreams, i wake up and im literally crying with tears all over my face and pillow. it's kind of weird. i like to imagine what i would look like from another person's perspective crying in my sleep. i think it would look kind of funny.
the song is about other ways dreams can make you feel and how sometimes i just toss and turn and have weird dreams that leave me feeling uncomfortable when i wake up. it's also about trying to reach peaceful sleep, or maybe to have the perfect lucid dream.

again, this is just another rough recording. listening to it on here, i've found that the volume is very low and i really can't get it very loud-not loud enough to hear any of the details. so sorry if it's really quiet!
double click "crying in my sleep"





here are the lyrics, if you can't understand them

crying in my sleep
bad dreams
leave me

wake up
feeling
guilty
for nothing

imagine a place where you
feel right at night

flying in my dreams
it seems
im free

wake up
feeling
hungry
for something

imagine a place where you
feel right at night

the site i used to upload my song, did end up working so here it is.

im almost too embarassed to post it because the more i hear it, the more i hate my voice. hah. but i will try to keep in mind, as i hope you will too, that this is a very rough recording, just to get the idea down-which i probably won't end up using for anything, but sometimes i just like to write these little songs. the guitar parts kind of have a 50's vibe, but a little more upbeat. you can also hear the crickets in my basement in the beginning haha.

i decided to try to add drums after i had recorded the guitar with no metronome or click track, so they're pretty much all over the place. it doesn't help that i CAN'T play drums.
ok well now that i've told you how bad it is, here it is!






by the way, we're playing on tues. night!



my friend, justin, made the flier from a print i made.
hope to see you there!

-----edit------

so right after i posted this entry, i look to my right and see one of my dad's records-peggy lee's "is that all there is?" haha! so weird!! i never even knew about this song or album so i looked it up.

i tried to post the mp3 of this song, but it didn't work.
if you want to hear it, here's the link:

http://www.imeem.com/tendermelody/music/SNKJF7f5/peggy-lee-is-that-all-there-is/

definitely not the best peggy lee song, but interesting

photos

i wanted to upload a rough recording of a new song i wrote last week, but can't find a good mp3 uploader. so i'll continue looking; if you know of a good one, please let me know!


today justine and i did a summer twins photoshoot with photographer joy newell, and her sister promise. i was (and AM) soooo excited because her photos are amazing! justine and i spent all morning picking out our outfits and joy and promise took us to these amazing locations. i can't wait to see the photos! until then, i'll share a couple of photos off of her website, http://www.joysbreathoflife.com/ check it out-there are lots more to see.

LOVE this cat one. of course.

cupcakes & old times

every year my grandma gives each member of my family a box of see's candy. when most of my chocolates were gone, i realized that i really liked the cute little brown wrapper they sit in and knew that i could make something out of them, so i kept them.
later on i realized what to make so i went out and got some felt.
i took the beads from a broken bracelet i had.

tadaa!
cupackes! they're about the size they appear on the screen-maybe a little smaller. i sewed the beads on and sewed the wrapper to the felt as well. they're perfect for scrapbooking or for cards. i made a really cute card out of one that i wish i would've taken a picture of, but i couldn't find my camera. i made it for jenny lewis. and i still can't get over the fact that she actually got it!

anyway i decided to use them for summer twins art and decided to make some more artwork for our myspace or maybe some future album artwork.

here's a little kitty collage i made:







the pages are actually from a really old copy of to kill a mockingbird. i never would've destroyed it, but it was already falling apart and was missing pages. (i kept the cover for another project). it's really nice to have all old book around to use for different things. i colored them with water colors. the cats are colored with crayons and the border is made of crumpled strips of tissue paper. lately, well i guess for a while now, i've been really into sewing things on paper, or just sewing paper, so i incorporated that.


we had band practice last night, when i was making all these, and while we were waiting for danny to get here i just started messing around since all my stuff was spread out on my floor and ended up making this:





"the good things" is one of our songs. it's funny-later that night after practice ivan hung out and painted while i was cleaning up and going through some of my old stuff. sometimes when i feel the need to write thoughts down, i just write on anything and always end up keeping them, because i keep everything. i have this diary that i keep adding paper pockets to, where i keep these little notes. i found a really old one last night that i forgot i had, in a pocket titled "before italy." it was a few weeks before i left for italy for 3 months. i was feeling bummed and wrote this down on guest checks (i used to work in a restaurant) at my ex's apartment while he was asleep.




i normally wouldn't share these little papers, because i find it kind of personal, and also a little embarassing, but this was weird because this was the roots of the lyrics to the good things, and i didn't even realize it until now. as you can see, i was feeling pretty negative at the time and i guess it's normal to feel uncomfortable about being mortal. but i've always had this attachment to old things; i want to understand the past. and i feel like things just aren't the same. everything
is disposable and made cheaply these days. i feel that things were maybe more genuine back in
"the old days." people actually needed skills and talent to do things; now you just need a computer. so i hold on to these remnants of a past i never even experienced and seeing that these things fade away-vintage clothes all tattered, my dad's records sleeves crumbling into dust-just makes me sad.

well, i just found it funny that i discovered this little piece of paper, because it's so close to the lyrics of the song:

if i could take the world and put it in a book
then every time someone looked at it they'd see
everything they ever loved
one can never have enough of the past
when the good things, they never last

and this old house
will burn to the ground
all the old records
will all melt down
all of the music
will be forgotten
that is my world
will i have lost it


we actually just recorded it and it's freshly uploaded on our
myspace, if you'd like to hear it.
the new artwork is also up and justine made a background
out of the cupcakes.
check it out!


www.myspace.com/summertwins
<3

a new start

so i started this blog 2 years ago and never kept it up,
but i decided i'm going to start posting again.

i'll be sharing some of my songs, artwork, or whatever
else i come up with, so...i hope you like it!