http://www.imaginingmozambique.com/
starting next week on the 27th of august in amsterdam at maxalot gallery.
some funny, some beautiful but all inspiring work.(of course with a print by yours truly:-)
profits of the prints sold will go to ASEM, a non-profit organization that helps the children of Mozambique.
so simply put: go check it out and put your money where your mouth is.

One of our goldfish is dying, the little dude. we call them “de gasten” which means “the dudes” in dutch.the day before yesterday he started sinking to the bottom, non active with big open eyes.
i actually love my fish, strange as it may sound to many people. And it pains me to see that the last 2 days he’s been laying there, breathing heavily and trying to maintain, while i’m looking for cures and answers that seem to be (as so often when concerning animals) non existent or at least very non uniform. i just hope he’s not scared. Im in the jury for cinekid, rating websites and video games and what not,one of the last ones being “i am a vet”. how ironic. On monday i put on my amsterdam T shirt. It was a gift from Stefano’s parents. after he died, a few years ago. he was young and healthy. there was no rhyme or reason to his death.
i thought about it for a good hour that day and reflecting on death thru an amsterdam shirt, my thoughts go as wild as anyone’s. weirdly enough i recalled that i saw someone drown in front of me when his boat was run over and that made me think of how i wanted to launch radio controlled shark fins in the river . I wondered if Guy Champney would be into doing that with me since we never got around to dressing up the standing stone art piece on the Overtoom as a big human heart. Then, the day after that, two people died. Jan, a colleague of kelli, i didnt know him that well, besides the few beers i had with him and that he remembered my name way before i did his and Guy Champney, also a colleague of kelli, but whom i considered a friend as well. alltho our plans of getting closer never made it far enough, life was too short, if we would have only known how short.We exchanged emails on animations and which parts we liked the best and for what reason. Named birds and their sounds and on every occasion we saw each other kissed, hugged and planned to , after finishing the conversation we were in to go hang out. we’d also always just miss each other and would send a message ; dude, where are you. why did you leave so early?There is no profoundness in any of my words, many people have expressed all of our feelings way better than i possibly could. I usually insist that life is lovely, but i find it difficult to find that right now. What i’ m certain of tho, is that tonight i am sleeping with a Dude and a Guy.

I leave ad folders at the front door so i can make drunk notes when i come home at night. when a student, i used to be able to say “when i come home drunk” regardless of day or night. Since then the world has changed. The Croatian taxi driver we rang from the festival we were at tells us all about it. how most people need to have two jobs now to get by since the Yugoslavia debacle. I hope that the two girls we picked up at the hotel made him some unexpected extra cash. I figured he was somewhat of a freak at first. Skids his wheels just a little too often, takes turns quite fast and unexpectedly. His phone rings and he asks me to pick it up for him, while telling me bout his wife and 3 children and how he needs to do all this for his one kid in college.It reminds me of the ride i took with the two smack junkies who took me to my studio for 10 euro cause i had to get there for a meeting at 2 in the morning. They totally got lost , but it made the ride that much more fun. wtf, why do i plan meetings at 2 in the morning?
ah well, late nights. a few weeks ago on my way home (you see i do always make it home in the end), while fighting the faces of other people and late night munchies over my last drink, passing 3 motorcycle cops having it out for one dude on a vespa, (granted he looked like a dick) i saw this posse of guys n dolls on a bridge. i figured something’s happening, cause i always like to think something’s happening, they looked ridiculous to me. all dressed up but not quite being the part. was it a fight? a riot? nah, just a party trying to get a taxi. But my thoughts are all geared up now, i bike on. A sheet of gold leaf paper on the sidewalk; i expect something to happen, like a bomb explosion. not quite. But the moment i pass it, the lights in the house right next to me switch off. that’s something i figured and alltho it’s really not that interesting to others, it is to me. And alltho it’s not that much happening really, it makes me excited enough to realize that sleep should become obsolete. And alltho sleep might be considered the cherry on the cake for many people after a hard days work, who gives a fuck about the cherry if there’s no cake to start with.

Paul needs to lay of the coca cola a little bit. That’s what i have to say about it.
woke up to the alarm clock on my phone that was strangely enough set to 9:11 am.
a healthy dose of rum and beer and the awkward 911 with the word alarm underneath makes for a rude awakening.
fortunately there’s sun and the strawberries on the terrace get bigger and redder everyday.
and a minute ago i searched for poison dart on my hard drive only to stumble upon this beautiful random conversation between me and mathieu:
someday
son
soon
i mean
ahah
ok dad
think so too
do some serious drinking besides the coffee
3:42 PMwater
is what i do
best
with a splash of bourbon
very good!
3:43 PMhas your grilfriend forgiven us for takin you hostage
for a week
bourbon and rum are my poison
yep, she was most weirded out by the beard
still smokin ur pipe?
that malcom grew?
malcolm
yep it s here
3:44 PMgood to get the stress out
keep m smoking!
ssssshhht: top secret

3:45 PMDirect Instant Message session started

filled under a for awesome
what s it for?
the debitel ad?
hahah, i cant tell you
or the new lost season
but its pretty bad dont you think?
3:46 PMwell
i don t judge too quickly
prison break season 4,
is it moving?
lost
alone on alcatraz
my interest
never watched it
its moving yes

Today’s missed photo opp; an old dude in a wheelchair, him sporting a pair of mega headphones and the chair sporting a wheelie bar.to use the word awesome agin would not do it justice but i cant come up with something better; awesome. So i plunged into return to the blue lagoon, very un awesome. motherfuck, that was bad. alltho mila jovovich is adorable to watch, the whole film stinks of rating censorship, no budget semi suspense and a tale so loosely based on the original book that my tropical dreams were shattered for at least a good day or 3. i tried captain morgan’s elixer, but it was difficult. shame on them. Occipital Lobe. Last night went to a drink, my friends weren’t around so i go home early, not a bad thing, just very unexpected. I noticed that i struggle with normal conversation sometimes, it’s just weird to me. More weird than trying to explain wat’s so cool about some things. More weird than pointing at stuff and then at some other stuff and say: see? that makes sense, right? To a lot of them it doesnt tho and that makes life so extremely difficult sometimes, not warzone, refugee camp, famine, earthquake difficult, but the simpler kind of difficult. when i typed the word fuck, the system gave me two proposals for words: duck and rich. Now that’s riching sad.

So after 25 years and immediately feeling like an absolute pervert for watching the blue lagoon and loving it, i cant help but preparing to dive straight into : return to the blue lagoon.
and already knowing that this version will be more appropriate for our times, i cant help to wonder how that all went down. if im correct they started covering up cleavage in comics in the 40’s, as some kick start for the suffocating practice they called the postwar 50’s. then in the 60’s shit broke in half and the world was confused, dividing us into clothed and naked. the 70’s allowed us to finally all give in to the curious beast we had been pretending non existent for about 100 years and then from there on in we have gradually gotten to the point where networks spend 50k a week to post out too obvious nipples in (for a reason) tight blouses of power women and blurring out butt cracks showing out of low hanging jeans.
That said, i’m very happy that the younger generation does not seem to be bothered by it, that generation that seemed to have so far massively chosen to (if they could) vote for the PVV.
another one of those great parties that prove the incompetence of adults anyway, so maybe it’s all for the better.
Let’s all hide everything, vote retard and not give a fuck. That should put a damper on terrorism. be warned tho, that while writing i’m listening to the cramps and simon and garfunkel. A musical toy with dying batteries next to me. So in many ways, life doesnt get much better than this.

I walk malcolm around the block, but the other way around the block this time. Dump two trash bags full of soil and dead plants in the underground bins, find a bundle of painted bamboo, all though it was awfully light for being bamboo, maybe more a kind of reed i’d say, but it looked like bamboo. See a light up in a room above the church making me wonder if someone was living there, it looks pretty cozy. Not entirely as i would expect life to look on a spring night. If i had to place it, it would probably be late 70’s, when the smell of cabbage and student marriage started to wear off. not quite eighties yet, because there was nothing grey about it. around the corner i see a girl jogging towards me, with pink shorts, a little out of character for that time and place. She is gone a second later, i don’t see her pass. but now there is a man in a dark suit. not a business suit, but also not just jeans and a sweater. The door I’m about to pass slams close and i realize that’s where the girl has gone. It’s a ghetto style door, the only entrance like that we have on our block. It always reminds most of Dublin and France. As i move on the man in the suit is passing me and malcolm barks at him. He is scared and tries to shush malcolm away. I pretend to go at malcolm with the sticks i found, half joking but so it makes the man feel better. I go inside.

I dream in professional deformation, it’s weird and great at the same time. My character is chosen at the beginning of my dream, like a video game. I set the rules for things to happen and during the evolution of the story i adjust the rules. not as a cheat code but as a developer of character and game play. I don’t dream simple shooters or logic puzzles, i develop complex simple experiences. They have nuance, emotion and a lot of tender moments. There’s also a great deal of awe, of mind boggling little miracles that i know anyone else will be able to recreate and experience in the some pure form later. When a task is about skill, the perfect button combo or quick trigger skill does not cause a storm of absolute mayhem or hyper shape moving all over. Instead it becomes a field of color, a feeling of awe, of beauty. When the combo is not that perfectly executed, the experience still is there, but maybe the layers that create the beauty are lined up a millimeter or two off from each other. Creating exactly the same experience but in a very different way. When a texture presented does not fit or simply is not to my liking, I pause and replace. not often do i recreate, cause they seem to be all right there to choose from. Two objects move side by side, loose each other and find each other again, ‘cause it is one of the main objectives in this game. They fight a battle not good or bad. Thru these experiences they make new rules, new realities for them selves and when they place their truth represented by simple graphical cliches that were never before designed in such a perfect way, on a weird looking round shaped leaf, and set it off to blow away in he wind, hoping it to go higher, some antagonist returns, at first confused by what the world it helped creating is, cause the antagonist itself has never seen it in such strange light, then moving forward thinking of not thinking, or maybe simply moving in a direction ‘cause that seems to be what antagonists do, and how the idea of refueling, be it a freshly applied patch of code or a representation of orange juice, will help redirecting the game to it’s former level. the leaf stops climbing when a sun comes up and seems to make the world heavier. It lands where the two can see it still, too far away, in the liquid. and they understand that their life is right in front of them and it will never be better. That’s when i wake up and try to write it down. I never get it right tho, last night’s for example had actual money involved, and there was family too at some point and a few very specific buildings. But they make less sense than the part i logically connected, so i’ll stick to writing what i get my head around. maybe tomorrow life will be different.

my father was a killer, his blood runs thru my vains.
that’s actually not true, it’s my blood. not anyone else’s. It would be more true to say i’m breathing his air. ‘cause i’m breathing everyone’s air. That’s one thing we do share.
another thing that’s not true; my father isn’t a killer. He’s not even dead himself.

i love it.
basically i love it all. knowing that’s quite a wide variety of loving. i’ll break it down into:
the me that doesn’t know how to let go after a situation
the obvious mistyping of words that seem to form sentences i could have never come up with sober.
the text messaging mercedes ‘cause i suddenly realize how much i appreciate her and wish she would stay instead of leaving because she ’s my girl’s girl, and all of a sudden i seem to understand and i wish we would be or could have been closer. Fortunately it’s never really too,late for that,and i hope she agrees.
the loving of hating the situation where i get a phone pushed in my hand because the owner of the phone and i agree on something but is too fucking ball-missing to make the call himself so i get shit even tho i dont really know what im doing cause im ripped.(it bothers me tho , hence the not being able to let go of a situation.)
the leaving the excelent company we were with too early (even tho,it’s probably good to leave at a highlight) to go to some self indulged award show that offers me nothing, in both career (never thought i’d be the one to write down that word) nor personally.
the arguing because of the arguing and making a point. the people knowing that and actually encouraging you to go debate with so and so cause that’s what you do.
the hungry feeling cause u were too fuckin lame (again) to make an effort to actually feed urself, while in the meanwhile with an ever so slight feeling of pride you state out loud that you only ate breakfast, knowing you’ve been there a million times before but this time you actually had a sandwich at 3 and so ur full of crap but you know that years ago while in artschool this was true, so you believe it too.
but most of all, and without all the sarcasm above, i love my my lovely lovely girlfriend, who does not necessarily agree with what i say, write or do, but will (even with a disapproving look in her posture) still secretly approve of what i do. just because its a part of me.