My first Airbrush Hat gigs were over this summer. I did several of them around town for a marketing firm. Very fun and WAY more popular than I thought they would be. The people have spoken and they love them. 

All through my 20s I had a rule that I don't date certain guys. No cops, no artists,  no musicians. I think I'm pretty solid on the cop rule. I don't know, I just don't see that being something I could deal with, personally. I still have a very solid rule that you don't get involved with band members. (I like to refer to this as keeping your dick out of the music.) I never wanted to date another artist because I have known some egotistical competitive dudes and I think i just decided it was better to stay away from them all together. I still have a rule about band members and egos, But my blanket rule about musicians and artists was dumb. I guess it served me in some ways. But I ignored one pertinent part of my personality. I also am a musician and an artist. I also have a crazy schedule, and travel, and am a little unpredictable and some may even say unstable. My whole life has been you know working for crap money because I love it (although that is changing $$$$), working insane hours, many people wondering what the hell I am doing (me wondering what the hell I am doing) and why i don't just go get a real job. but I think in the end I have more in common with those dudes I tried to stay away from. I really pushed this idea that I needed someone stable because I was so unstable. I found that person, and as it turns out, we loved each other, we loved how different we were. We admired what the other had, because it was so different from who we were, but we weren't right for each other, and we didn't have as much to talk about at the end of the day as the people I really connect with. The artists and the musicians. So this time, I'm not going to rush anything, I'm not going to force anything, or try to be something i'm not, or fit myself to anyones ideals. I'm experiencing being lonely, being independent (again) and I'm looking for friends to play music with and artists to collaborate with. In this search, What I have found that is disappointing is that some of the most talented people I know have resorted, out of necessity, to being a part time artist or a part time musician. Something they do when they can. I have heard the same thing over and over again, (you just can't make a living at it, its just not really my thing anymore, etc etc etc)  and I just wish we were all in some self sustained artist community where the only thing we had to do was create artwork. but alas, back to reality. It does have something to do with my age. Most people at my age have "hung up those dreams". To those people, I get it. I really really do. But I am here to tell you, you CAN make a living as an artist. You CAN make a living doing what you love. It isn't all pretty, a lot of what I do is not the ideal situation. I work my ass off and hardly have a life. I have no schedule, my quality of life is seriously lacking at times. But I am doing something that I think IS IMPORTANT. The number of people who have told me how much I have inspired them proves that to me. I am still building, and I am not there yet, bu will get there. 

I just wish I could ask these artists and friends of mine who have "hung up those dreams" Are those excuses you're making the truth? I mean, i had a friend say to me just this weekend, "i just like to play. I'm not all in. I just like to play" and I had to kind of except that. But the thing that irks me about that comment that I have heard SO MANY TIMES is that, people need to hear him. people need to be inspired, and people need artists around them that are out there doing their thing because it uplifts the group. How many times have I said, the worst thing in the world is wasted talent? 

Now I am going to contradict myself. And to all the guys I play music or have collaborated with, calm the fuck down because I am not referring to any one of you!!! haha. But here it goes. I promise this might make sense at the end. 

My favorite band is Mates of State. I have a deep love and admiration for Johnny cash and June Carter. Both are/were married, and they made/make music together. I think that would be ideal for me. From my perspective, there is this constant creative flow for them. When there is nothing else, they would still have their art form, a very high level thing to share in common. Their struggles are real, but they are on the same page. They are experiencing life together, and bringing that to the same table to create from. I think a lot of couples create the relationship in the beginning, but it gets old, when it strictly revolves just around sex or family, those things tend to fade if they aren't constantly created on.  as children age, as people get older, and sex drives change and marital bliss turns into well, something else. But two creative people who do their craft together could potentially always have something to create. I think I also have seen this firsthand in my friends Erik​  and Jamie​. I don't know. I think this is mostly me thinking out loud but, on some level, I need the affirmation or agreement from friends, or maybe just putting it out there "into the universe" lol. I don't know. I think I started to drift there at the end. the point is, I am really enjoying my friends, band members and fellow artists whether people I am playing with or artists I know or just follow on instagram, I am really feeling the connection, and if I could have anything new and different in a relationship, i think it would be that artistic connection. I just returned from Abiquiu Lake, in New Mexico. It is THE most peaceful, beautiful and spiritually mysterious places I have ever been. It is also the home of famous painter, Georgia O'keefe. Georgia O'keefe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz are another example of this kind of relationship. Htier letters to each other are well documented. In one  O’Keeffe says, “I’m getting to like you so tremendously that it some times scares me . . . Having told you so much of me — more than anyone else I know — could anything else follow but that I should want you?” And Stieglitz writes back, “It’s queer how fond I am of you, not at all as man and woman but something so different it’s very wonderful and it hurts terribly.”

Once O’Keeffe was in New York, she became Stieglitz’s muse. Stieglitz had grown up with twin siblings and had always longed for a twin of his own, which he claimed to have finally found in O’Keeffe. I have included a few pictures from my trip, next time, maybe I will have my soul twin with me.  And of course, a picture of G.O. famous work from the same area.