The Artwork of Garrett Durant

I've never known or felt like I understand much about art, but I like looking at it and definitely appreciate what I find to be good art, regardless of whether or not the art community agrees. Recently I was shown a facebook album of Garrett Durant's artwork. Garrett went to my high school and was always known to be one of the best artists there, but I was really impressed when I saw his current artwork. He is studying art at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and based on what I have seen he has improved a lot since high school. Here are some of the pictures that I saw, I am going to try to find and post a link to more.














I tried to post a good variety but there were still more I didn't post, hopefully I will get a link to more soon. If there are more that I haven't seen I will try to post those to.

Lordsburg, New Mexico

If you ever find yourself taking I-10 east from Tuscon, roughly one hour after you cross over into New Mexico you will find yourself in the town of Lordsburg.

Having never been to New Mexico before, I was shocked by how empty (and boring) it was. Granted, I only saw the what you can see from the left window of a Greyhound bus so I'm probably not giving it the credit it deserves, but based on what I have seen of every state that I have been to, New Mexico seems to be the most boring of the 50. But while in New Mexico, the bus stopped in the small town of Lordsburg so the passengers could get out and walk around and get something to eat at the local McDonald's, which was surprisingly reassuring to see. While the other greyhound people ate, my friend Beard and I decided to explore New Mexico a little bit. Here is a glimpse of what we found.

This is basically what Lordsburg looks like. Also try to imagine that its windy.

This is what I look like in Lordsburg. I don't always walk looking straight down (or at least I like to think that) but it was really windy which I think explains my awkward posture.

This is what Beard looks like in Lordsburg. Pay special attention to the hat. The wind also can be blamed for Beard's squinting eyes.

According to Wikipedia, Lordsburg has a population of 3,379 (bigger than I expected), is the county seat of Hidalgo county and was founded in 1880 on the Southern Pacific Railroad. The per capita income is $10,877, as opposed $42,166 in my hometown of Lake Oswego, Oregon. 28.6 % of families and 32.7 % of the population of Lordsburg is under the poverty line, including 47.5% of children.


I can never quite wrap my head around the fact that real people live here, not just statistics I read about on Wikipedia. They take their job just as seriously as I do, have families and pets and hobbies and everything else that I do, except that their lives happen to take place in a town in new Mexico of which a kid like me comes along and takes some pictures of their town and unsuccessfully tries to get high behind some random shed while on a twenty minute break from a daylong greyhound bus ride. And then I post the pictures online and feel a little bit better about myself for doing something a little bit intellectual.



I can't decide whether or not I recommend going to Lordsburg, you will either find it tremendously boring or tremendously fascinating but most likely probably somewhere in between these two extremes. Its been several months since I was there so I can't really remember how I felt about it at the time.

Bonus Picture

Beard with a border patrol agent in El Paso. You would never guess it by the smile on his face, but these guys actually don't like having their pictures taken. As far as I know, there is nothing more comforting than looking about like Beard and I when these dudes come onto your bus.

Excerpt from "The Joke"

"Sometimes (more in sport than from real concern) I defended myself against the charge of individualism. I demanded that my colleagues prove to me why I was an individualist. For want of concrete evidence they would say, 'Because you act like one.' 'How do I act?' 'You have a strange kind of smile.' 'And if I do? Thats how I express my joy.' 'No, you smile as though you were thinking to yourself.'"

-Milan Kundera

Shell smashed juices flowing, wings twitch legs are going

Tonight as we (me plus my friends Beard and Eric) were discussing various topics, we somehow got onto the subject of a moth that Beard had killed earlier in the night while he was working on his paper. Beard has a history of killing insects, having a profound incident last summer when he burned a grasshopper alive. This incident still comes up in conversation on occasion and I assume that Beard thinks about often when we don't even talk about it, so it is one of the more important events in Beard's life or at least of last summer and often finds its way into our conversation when we are discussing killing arabs, or the cure, or going to work, or girls (subjects that all kind of blend together). This whole event is probably the only reason that Beard found killing this specific moth to be important, so it helps to understand it. In a completely unrelated incident involving insects, we have had a recurring ant problem in our house this summer. Because of the ants, Beard bought a can of generic pesticide, which is engineered by very smart people to kill insects as quickly and efficiently as possible. Because Beard is only interested in killing the ants in his room (the ones in my room and the kitchen are of no concern) the can happened to be sitting on his desk. What combination of annoyance, boredom and proximity to pesticide--definitely the most important contributing factor--Beard sprayed the moth with the raid, with the intentions of killing it because he was trying to concentrate on his paper. I forgot to mention earlier that the moth was one of the really big ones that has some actual weight to it. Because it was so big, Beard wasn't sure if the pesticide would be strong enough. According to Beard, the moth flew around like nothing had happened for a few minutes, but then began to fly noticeably slower. Then it landed and began "just kind of walking around" (this isn't exactly what beard said but it might as well be). Then it stopped and was theoretically dead, although maybe it was in a coma? As far as anyone is concerned, the moth was dead (shout out to the pesticide engineers, good product). I saw the carcass when I went to the bathroom; Beard had put it next to the sink because he wanted to show it to me. But after talking about the moth (or maybe before and thats how we came across the subject of the moth? who knows) we started talking about war and how people are really just monkeys who have evolved a little higher, and therefore are basically just the same as insects (other subjects that are all basically the same thing once you think about it). But talking about the pesticide and killing the bug led us to talking about gas in war, and there is really no difference between some random moth getting gassed just dying and some random soldiers getting gassed and just dying in World War I. There really is no difference between spraying a line of ants marching along the cable up to your desk because that is where the empty orange soda can is and gassing a line of soldiers marching along some road going to wherever the queen ant has sent them. Or arresting four Iraqis for looting, then running over their car with your tank. Talking to the camera of your embedded reporter the whole time so that any liberal friends you have can see you on Frontline proudly showing that America doesn't tolerate looting. By the way, that guy was a taxi driver and that was his taxi. Oh well, I think there was enough left of his car that you could build a decent IED. Its a lot like getting sprayed with Raid while you just fly around Beard's computer monitor, accidentally putting yourself in between Beard and his paper while he just happens to have a can of pesticide on his desk. Sucks for the moth.

We Only Come Out At Night

We only come out at night
We only come out at night
The days are much to bright
We only come out at night

And once again
You'll pretend to know me well, my friends
And once again
I'll pretend to know the way
Through the empty space
Through the secret places of the heart

We only come out at night
We only come out at night
The days are much to bright
We only come out at night

I walk alone
I walk alone to find the way home
I'm on my own
I'm on my own to see the ways
That I can't help the days
You will make it home ok
I know you can
And you can

We only come out at night
We only come out at night
The days are much to bright
We only come out at night

And once again
You'll pretend to know that
That there's an end
There's an end to this begin
It will help you sleep at night
It will make it seem that right is always right
Alright?

We only come out at night
We only come out at night
The days are much too bright
We only come out at night

Blog Thoughts

So at first I think its going to be hard to find good things to write about. Basically I want my blog to just be my thoughts about whatever, hopefully with some social and or cultural commentary. I plan to write about:

1. Books, movies, music, and other things that I like
2. General thoughts about society
3. Political commentary and how I generally feel about the state of world affairs

There are some things that I generally want to avoid, such as:

1. Being cliche
2. Being pretentious
3. Generally being annoying or elitist

As far as I can tell, the challenge of blogging is not writing (anyone can do that) the challenge is writing something that someone other than you might find interesting. Ideally, I would just be able to type exactly what I think and have everyone find that enjoyable. But just having that thought in my head means that I won't be able to feel like I am writing completely honestly. But I don't want to avoid thinking in circles about writing honestly (can't write that sentence without thinking in circles) and I feel that right now I am bordering on being cliche, pretentious and most of all generally annoying, so I'm going to cut my losses and end right here.

By being as pretentious as can be. Oops.

So I created a blog...

and now I have to start writing it. Uggh. It sounds so unappealing, but I know its what I need to do. Hopefully I can start getting some enjoyment out of it.

Ok, I lied. It doesn't sound unappealing at all, I don't know why I said that. This is part of my effort to become more involved in the internet community. Its 2007 and I'm 21 now, its about time I spend a little less time on facebook and a little bit more on here. Its going to be a challenge to take this seriously (like anything else) but maybe I will? We'll see. I always think about writing and think that I would be good at it, and here is the test. If I can entertain a random person or two stumbeling (stumbeline?) through the internet than on some level I will feel like I have made a worthwile contribution to the internet communnty.