November 20th

It's been a while since I made out my last post.  And man, has a whole lot happened since November 2nd (Hence my absence, dear readers).

OK OK OK how does one begin?

SWEDEN:

Stockholm by night

I headed out to Stockholm, Sweden on the tenth with my friend Katie, it was a remarkable city, Sweden is incredibly cold and also incredibly clean. The city of Stockholm presents a unique balance of the raw unforgiving environment of Sweden with the sterile yet sheik technology of its modern architecture, it's like if I, Robot took place on Hoth. The old town of Stockholm is incredibly classic and beautiful however, and is what I assume looks like if Christmas was everyday).  Also, Sweden is the homeplace of H and M, and holy shit, do they love them, I saw 6 seperate H and Ms in the town center, and I'm sure there were more.

Also also, Swedish women are dank.

After we hit up and explored many of the sites.Stockholm we met up with our Swedish friend, Calle, who we met earlier in Florence.  We came to his town 40 minutes by train north of Stockholm, it was a small Hamlet called Bålsta.  Once there Katie and I had a strange encounter with the people of Sweden, as we waited for our friend in the shopping center (essentially the equivalent to a mall town center where everyone goes for everything) we, Katie being a dark skinned half asian with long thick black hair, and I a brown haired tan kid, watched as all of the pale blonde people walked by us and stared at us as though we were not of this earth.  It was like Children of the Corn meets Inception.   We finally met up with Calle and bought groceries and beer.  From there we proceeded to cook a classic Swedish dish: Meatballs and mashed potatoes with lingonberries.  It was glorious.

^Oh ja

Later we began to drink and all of Calle's friends came over, including another Swede we met earlier in Florence named Jonathan.  After we drank all night and went out, we went to bed and Katie and I headed out from Balsta to Stockholm, Stockholm to Nyköping (Stockholm Skavsta airport [p.s. Ryan Air is the devil, I'm almost positive]), Stockholm Skavsta to Ciampino, Ciampino to Roma, Roma to Florence all in all 14 hours of straight travel, fek.

AND THEN:

Once I got back I did some more work on my marble sculpture, It's starting to form up but at this point I don't ever care to see another hammer and chisel once I'm done with this class, I appreciate the art and the style and how heavy the process is, but in order to really accomplish anything you need to be working multiple hours daily, let alone one 5 hour studio session a week, It's turbo frustrating.

To emphasize the amount of detail work this requires.

The bare minimums, the ring and the legs, both need work.

I also began the process of carving my amulet out of wax, it was a bitch trying to figure out how to start, but I picked up a process and it has been working well.  I will probably finish the whole figure this week and then get the piece casted this weekend.  Here's what the figure looks like so far:





Unfortunately I've missed last weeks two classes so I am not as far on my pieces as I would have wished, but I'll get there soon. 










 This past week I also happened to get a part time job as a bartender/keep at a local bar called The Clubhouse, at first I'm just going to be doing small work and helping out with big events, but the manager who I befriended, a 25 year old named Matteo will help train me and situate me hopefully.  The situation is still a little up in the air because they're not sure if they can pay me, I offered to work for them if they can't pay me however, so we'll see.

NO SHAVE NOVEMBER IS GOING ITCHY. 

Exhibit A.

ROMA

I got to Rome last Thursday night, once their I caught an amazing concert.  Fleet Foxes was playing in Rome and a few friends and I caught it, it was a breathtaking performance, and all pangs of homesickness that I possessed washed away (The band is from the Seattle area, in close proximity to where my hometown is).  The performance was flawless, the song list was excellent, and for the encore performance, the rest of the band was still catching their breath and Robin Pecknold came on to stage alone with his guitar; after a second of waiting for them and ad-libbing with the crowd he said "OK, well you guys wanna hear a new song that I made?" the crowd responded with a blood curdling howl of approval.  Here's that song, unfortunately the quality is shit poor, and for that I apologize.

After the concert we all headed back to our hostel, and the whole natural world had turned upside down.  The half-moon was blood orange and covered in a deep aura, the sky was misty yet clear, and all around us, millions of bats were flying through the trees throughout the city and all of them were chirping, which when put together sounded like a rusty machine being dragged on the concrete.  It was unreal. We got back to our hostel and a pack of drunk Latina internationals were dancing, screaming, and clapping on one of the tables in the hostel bar.  We hit the sheets.


The next day we met up with our program and took tours through the city, I could describe everything I did and saw, but it would take to long so I will paraphrase:

The city itself has wrapped itself in an ancient blanket of ruins, relics, and religion, with a South Tuscan atmosphere and the makings of a busy bustling city.  Each monument lies upon another and competes with it's neighboring sights, begging for the most attention, in turn the rivalry between these breathtaking sights compliments the eternal city's glory.  Rome is the present living in the ancient past.
To compliment the beauty of the city, our group of friends who are constantly consumed in a net of drama and confusion, came to this city all in a mood of discontent and aggression, as the weekend progressed it got worse and worse, and somehow, unanimously on our final night, everyone seemed to have stepped back from all of the intermingling and said 'fuck-it I really don't care.'  I think that after that everyone could truly enjoy themselves and let go, much like how we were in our first few nights here together.  I think that since our final excursion is over, and there are only three weekends left in the semester, we have embraced each-other for our faults, and/or just stopped giving a damn about them and had a drink.

I will come back soon with some music, but at this point I just wanna sit down and watch some television and skype my padre.  I've got some music planned as well as writings and projects and more music.  I'll catch you tomorrow perhaps dear readers.


Here's something to hold you down for a few though, a funny music video.

Grum - Through the Night