Home of #silastries #oneaday
I’ve often felt stifled in my life, how I’ve had to act, how I’ve had to be, who I had to be for someone else, and I realized that the reason sports have become so important to me is the same reason that art became an outlet for my expression. In the mountains, I found myself. On the slopes, on the rock, on the river, I found who I am and who I want to be. I can’t wait to get back out there and breathe in that sweet winter frost.
That’s the thing of it though, right? For years I’ve felt like somehow everything I shared on the internet, it’s likes, the attention and comments it recieves, would feed me. If I shared enough things to convince enough people that I was interesting then maybe I’d feel some kind of self satisfaction in my life too.
Scrolling through Instagram this morning I cant help but think of this talk I had with one my studio professors about how people are far too concerned about external satisfaction and gratification when the answers to our desired edification don’t lie there, it’s all inside.
As I write this it’s hard not to admit that the whole “Post one thing you made everyday” could be read into as a similar, self gratifying kind of thing. It’s intent is, I think, to motivate myself to actually be thinking critically and creatively not only about myself and my creative process but about the entire spectrum of humanity, our history, and the confusion of our future. It my hope that a push toward thought and creativity isn’t coming into some kind of self fulfilling, ego boosting normative thing.
This blog is not an essay and so pardon the jumps in thought.
Maybe my issue with relating with others is something akin to other people’s. At some point most people my age suffer with some sense of social anxiety which prevents us from moving forward in our lives and relationships. If there was a potential for us to ignore our phones, if we could just sit with each other for a while in the quiet and hear each other and speak with each other perhaps we could learn how to have conversations rather than live in fear of them.
Slowly I’ve been drifting from the sphere of the internet mostly only delving in for sake of education and small modules of entertainment. But right now I think I need quiet, and to be removed from this broken social structure.
Another jump.
Tonight I’m basically moving into studio and I’m going to set up camp there. My sleeping bag and pad are coming in as well as a blanket and a pillow. Canned food and coffee grounds. The next two weeks will challenge me beyond all comprehension but I’m almost done. I’m almost to the next thing.
With… something,
Silas
10/25
Screenprinting today.
If you didn’t know this, I definitely don’t know what I’m doing
10/24
An analogous finger scape
10/23
A poem that’s two days behind.
Within the context
fallen, felled
another trip
on hallow meld.
Shortcomings
a brothers guild
sisters strength
in house and field.
Who are you?
A bloodied bone
short of sight
overthrown.
Never short
always tall
the softest blanket
of them all.
10/22
I’m dating this in the past because I forgot to post it yesterday. I was just way too ding dang excited.
Rey costume!
10/21
I made really good progress on my costume today but I want to wait until it’s ready to show it to you.
Here’s an oil sick
10/20
Today I spent several hours embroidering this giant ass piece of fabric. I’m torn as to whether I should add anything to the darker fabric (its military twill intended to reference Navy uniforms). I may just add red stitching in a pattern or just add extra stitching to the sides like a uniform.
Hand stitching is great, and so very time consuming. My plans to go out of town ended up crumbling last second and as sad as I am I’m a little relived I’ll have the time to spend in studio.
With epic tiredness and the thought of future things,
Silas
Oct 19th
Teeny tiny Rey bracelet!
It took longer than I intended to actually get to work on my Halloween costume mostly because I’ve been working like crazy to get things figured out for my upcoming show.
To be honest most of what I’ll be posting for the next couple of weeks is going to be related to making stuff and things for the costume, and making stuff for the show.
Today (and part of last night) I spent a great deal of time making this itty bitty tiny little bracelet as a mockup for the larger one. Turns out Vinyl is wicked expensive so I wanted to trouble shoot any issues I’ll have when making the larger piece. I think, because the inside of the vinyl is a grey color, that I’ll need to sew on some kind of backing like a thin suede or something.
When I get around to actually making the full sized one, which I very much hope is soon I’d like to post the pattern and a tutorial for folks online who would like to make one! The design is fairly simple and doesn’t actually require any sewing.
With exhaustion and gumption,
Silas
October 18th
Today I’m working on.. this.
It doesn’t look like much and to be fair it feels very much like it isn’t.
The amount of work I’ve been doing in studio has been fairly well unparalleled other than my Painting class days. Today I’m attempting to complete this piece you see here, make it about 6 to 8 feet tall, finish the sides, and hopefully quilt it into something fairly respectable as a piece of art. It’ll be in the gallery in 3 weeks so, it better be good!
With love and dedication,
Silas
It was a wise professor that once said to a class that I wasn’t actually a student of, that making one thing a day is a great practice for designers and artists.
Though it’s unclear what title should be assigned to the large and diverse body of work that’s been shared with y’all over the last…. however long.. suffice it to say that I agree with the sentiment and it is now a goal of mine to create something, no matter how small, every single day.
Today we’ll start small.
A poem for no other reason aside from it being 2 am and feeling a bit under the weather:
She spoke too softly for a word to be heard
and interest was waning, lets be rest assured.
He’d seen her walking, a waltz to a tune
but never he’d heard her voice in a croon.
Finally she spoke at a volume unbridled
She found his gaze all but entitled.
With brash and daring she finally yelled
Her voice was strong, her cadence rebelled.
A breeze to full gail and soft cotton twill
One once was a whisper, now was a yell.
Soft beaten leather, a dash on the cuff
Get out of my face and shut the fuck up
I was going to edit the last line for… appropriateness but its 2 am so #yolo
Friends, strangers, whoever, I did something fantastically strange that I never in a million years thought I would do: I joined Tinder. While it’s possible that I could rant for several minutes about my motivations for joining the ranks of the notorious dating app, suffice it to say what happened was a bit unintentional.
At first I started out as genuine as is possible on such a platform, seeking out people that I thought I might have something in common with. I made a few matches, had some strange conversations and even met up with 3 veritable strangers to talk and see if we thought the other interesting. One of these was actually fairly promising and I felt as though I’d really known them forever.
As time passed and I received more strange messages that left me feeling uncomfortable I decided to just lambast the application by right swiping on every person in a wicked attempt to understand the mechanics behind this service that claims to be impartial in who it shows you.
Let me bore you with some facts.
Looking back through the conversations I had before this horrid experiment began, I created a metric of data which I could compare to my later findings. In the twoish weeks that I used Tinder in the most honest way I could imagine, this is what happened:
Matches Made: 14
Male Matches: 12
Female Matches: 2
Messages Received: 13
Messages Initiated: 1
People I met IRL: 3
Questionable Feelings: Uncountable
Gained: ?
Maybe it’s that 13 is an unlucky number of messages to get or something, but by message 13 I was feeling like a raw piece of meat, most people at some point breaking their calm façade and making a fairly graphic pass at me. In one instance a user dared to write “I have two moods: Indifference and horny”.
Great. Thanks for that.
Thus I was triggered to perform perhaps one of the stupidest acts I could have ever done. It started simply enough. I looked away and swiped right, clicking out of the screen that asked if I wanted to send a message to my new match. Tinder limits you, though, and only allows you to like so many people within a certain time period.
In the first array I had made over 40 matches and within a few hours I had received a plentiful array of messages from “hi” to more insidious messages like “Shit, you look like one angry feminist” from some brilliant soul that called himself “Rumpus”.
One of the most important parts of this experiment was not writing back (though I did indulge in writing back to the angry feminist one just to have a little humor) to a single message regardless of its content.
For 3 days, every 12 hours I swiped right on everyone. If I knew them, swipe right, if I didn’t know them, swipe right, if they looked like an axe murderer, swipe right.
Again, here are some boring facts.
Time Elapsed: 3 days.
Matches Made: 148
Male Matches: 135
Female Matches: 13
Messages Received: 24
Messages Initiated: 0
Messages Reciprocated: 1
Opening Message “Hi”: 18
Jokes: 4
Compliment: 2
Dates: 0
Questionable Feelings: Infinitely uncountable
Gain: More confusion than ever
Lost: Potential friends, and several hours of my life
Slowly I started to realize that I wasn’t just playing some weird online game, there were real people attached to the simple flick of a thumb. Some of these people messaged me multiple times although I hadn’t written to them. In one case I received a message, religiously, at 8:03 am everyday. One guy finally lost it and called me an asshole for not responding. Yeesh, sorry bro.
I doubt it’s more important, but I realized I was playing with my own feelings too. In the process I lost sight of why I was doing this experiment in the first place and instead focused only on the weird messages I received. And I’m sad to say that in the process I acted like a bit of a tool to people in my life sacrificing some budding relationships I wish I hadn’t.
When all was said and done 3 days was all I could muster of my strength. I felt terrible. Some people were out looking for hookups, sure, but others were out looking for love, relationships, a genuine part of their life, something serious. How did Tinder become a place for everything from booty calls to people looking for a life-long partner? More than that, I finally had to ask myself why I was there in the first place.
The truth is a year and a half ago I got out of the most lengthy and time consuming relationship of my life. We were together 4 years, had picked out engagement rings for each other and had started putting together the details of our wedding. I had come into adulthood in relationships never knowing what it was like to be comfortable alone. When our relationship broke I felt like my life wouldn’t ever be the same again and I started one of the hardest journeys of my life.
Over the last year I had to face the intense silence of an empty apartment, learn to flourish in places where there used to be two humans, learn to find my own confidence when I felt there was no way I could muster it. I spent a year becoming a full person, and I think I realized that I’m ready again, finally, to share that with someone else.
Tinder painted a promise to its viewers that it would find them something and failed to make direct mention of what it was they were selling. Tinder never called itself a ‘hook up’ app, it never promised to be E-Harmony, either. Tinder did, however, offer a charismatic gamelike, empty platform and all it was missing was users to fill in the blank spaces. What is it we expected to get out of this application? That’s the answer we had to fill in for ourselves.
I don’t know still if I was looking for love or looking a friend, but the opportunity I had to blossom those took an inelegant turn and crashed horrendously into a cloud of smoke. I fear, even, that I may have hurt some feelings along the way. If that is the case, I am endlessly sorry. To one person in particular, I really actually genuinely had feelings for you, and I’m sorry if I hurt yours. It was not with hurtful intentions that this project began, but intentions are like assholes, as they say.
It’s my hope that everybody out there finds whatever it is that you’re looking for, and when you feel alone, or lonely, just remember that everything you needed was inside of you the whole time. You alone, are complete.