Kismet Arts Tangent

Art Collective

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  • Playlist to Understand Me, My Anthems

    10 songs I love because I love myself I love them

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A59Wqrl-x6U “The bells. They Play Their Songs for You.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r_wtWpz2ow Folk Implosion – Merry Go Down (1999)- “Heaven’s daughter underwater conversations”

    Meet Virgina https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDIFD6for4A “She thinks I’m Beautiful” “she only Drinks Coffee at Midnight when the moment’s not right.” “Intuition Magic”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0S8cnzav_g
    I walked across a continent
    where children did not bat an eye
    when made to watch their mothers die
    they left the bodies by the sides of roads
    where only willows cried

    yes even my own eyes were dry
    when somehow there I lost my bride
    the ring slipped free and fell beneath the earth
    so like Orpheus I bowed and went far underneath the firmaments
    my harp strings broke
    my voice was spent

    I kissed my lady’s hand and sent
    my two weeks notice with my rent
    and she grew cold and softly said
    I am not your lover I’m the map you use to find her
    I am not your lover
    I’m just a map you use to find her


    I step outside my room once more
    and see what I have seen before
    another ship washed to my shore
    a figure walked toweards my door
    her face is tired her dress is torn
    I look into her eyes and feel her thirst


    she says I’ve come across these waters
    high pressed on by such auspicious signs
    I’ve watched the stars and read the tides
    the winds have brought me to your side
    I come to you
    I am your bride
    and I grew cold as I replied
    that I am not your lover,
    I’m the map you used to find him
    I am not your lover
    I’m just a map you use to find him.

     

     

     

  • Learning Moments: We Define Respect

    why

    (I use “I” and “You” interchangably, so please don’t get offended. I’m never talking about “you you” just the proverbial you, and the proverbial “we”.)

    Why we can’t have nice things… I am a democratic creature at the moment. I don’t care about expensive baubles. But, my elders still give them to me as gifts, and I accept them, because the only thing to do with gifts is to accept them. That’s the polite thing in any case.

    Being polite in this society will make you a zombie at best and a sick duckling at worst. It’s important to find your own sweet spot of rebellion. That’s where “essence” exists. The strong choices are sometimes the hard choices. I have to give up the concept of jewelry because I can’t treat things with the respect that they deserve.

    I have to give up some people because I wasn’t treating them with the respect that they deserve (and people have given me up and I have to accept that they couldn’t respect me in a way they thought I deserved). Respect became a nonsense word when Arethea Franklin sang it. I knew it as a silly song and not as a concept to be revered.

    Find out how to show respect in your own way and how to give it freely. Respect is like love. It means different things to different people. Most people want you to respect them before knowing anything about them. This is the hardest of them all. You have to respect even some pretty unrespectable people. People that haven’t treated you with respect for various reasons are you have to fight the instinct to retaliate.

    I identify as a nonagon. I am nine things. I switch through them so rapidly it seems that I am just brilliant, but I can be a dullard about normal things. And I can be a excitable pony about some things… I think there’s a plural resting inside of all of us “multi-taskers” and I want psychology to reflect the new generation of multiples…

    That’s why transgender is our greatest new zeitgeist. And what’s coming is the rise of mind/body rights. The disconnect between our minds and bodies is so strong we have an epidemic of obesity. There’s only a few treating obesity with mind exercises. It’s important to acknowledge this connection.

    My mom told me that people will judge me on how I look. I never took her seriously because I’ve always identified myself as a weirdo. So, I took pride in her confusion when I said, “do they have to?” I didn’t verbally say this, but I mean to challenge authority in my own way using less words and more actions.

    I am ready to face demons if I dress appropriately. It means I have to care about my clothes the right way, but also treat them as disposable if I want to be streamline for the move (I’m moving soon). I’m ready to be the mind/body oracle. Ask me about how we should treat the mentally ill and it’s more than pills, but pills too. It’s a mind/body regimen that I have to make and abide by. I will be taking the pills, but I will be fighting to get off of them one day when I am strong enough.

    I am not strong enough right now, but I am making real progress into the insights of my own black box mind.

  • Thank You Tweeters!

    Photo credit: Sol Villarreal
    Photo credit: Sol Villarreal

    Last night, I gave a five minute presentation on Kaleidescopy to an audience of over 500 people!

    Here are some tweets from the event, Ignite Seattle 26. Get the full story at #is26

    @KatCountiss I really enjoyed your talk on art/beauty and starting as an artist ! #is26

    Iterate! 1) find beauty in something you wouldn’t expect. 2) find symbols 3) Pareidolia finding faces in things @katcountiss #is26

    “Find beauty in something you wouldn’t expect. You may find even find symbols or see faces.” – @KatCountiss #ig26

    #is26 Accepting you’re going to be bad at something is GREAT, esp when you do it for the first time – @katcountiss

    Accepting you’re going to be bad at something is a great way to start something new – @KatCountiss @ignitesea I need to remember this! #is26

    You don’t have to do drugs to be into psychedelic art. This is Seattle though. –@katcountiss #is26

    “You don’t have to be an artist to make art; you just make a thing and it’s a thing.” – @KatCountiss #is26

    #is26 Accepting you’re going to be bad at something is GREAT, esp when you do it for the first time – @katcountiss

    @katcountiss is talking to us about becoming a kalidescopist. Whoa what is that????? @ignitesea #ig26

    @katcountiss is a kaleidescopist… who knew there was such a thing?! #is26

    @KatCountiss @berkun for intellectuals, there’s a Euro Dream, embodied by cities like Berlin. The promise of weird art + hours of cafe chat

  • I Can’t Review Your Poetry

    unsayable

    Preface: I am translating Letters to a Young Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, M.D. Herter Norton: 9780393310399: Amazon.com: Books. It’s a beautiful book, but very dense. I am translating it to a blog post series hoping to churn it into an easily consumed butter instead of the choppy dense planetoid that it is. The first four paragraphs of letter one. Originally written in Paris, Frebrary 17th, 1903. I ran it through Google translate on French mode to smooth the otherwise stop-start-y nature of translation.

    This is something that I needed to say. I wanted to thank you for sharing something beautiful with me. I’m not enough of a good reviewer to break down this poetry in a constructive statement to help you grow. If I tried, the results would be an unfortunate misunderstanding.

    Understanding is difficult. Most people think that art is speakable , but nobody has the same words . Language is a bridge between two cultures, weak and rickety it is. Most experiences occur in a solitary fashion dream.

    Art is a symptom of these extensive experiments to the outside. Many people approach a painting and say, “I do not understand. “ It is much easier for them to say, “I do not understand your art” than it is for me to hear, “I do not understand you.” Because I try so hard to be understood.

    Art is a paralell discussion trying to say the unsayable faster , faster, better, stronger. These conversations occur while you eat breakfast, go to practice improvisation, listening to albums while translating difficult text .

    So, about your poetry, it has not its own style, but it has hidden meanings that speak to me, that seem to say “potential” between the lines. It’s like a rough draft of a song of my heart.

    Needless to say, the poems do not stand out on their own , but I can not stress the faults that you so easily point out. Nobody can tell you about your art. They can not reject or accept what you offer . You must look within for words.

  • Ultra-Katarina

    olive-loach

    I’m full of joy and wordplay. Some objects resonate with  me because I think about a lot of things, but this Olive Loaf Package takes the cake. I’ve been discussing with my friends the differences between “authentic” and “artisanal” and this bread claims to have both. I couldn’t taste these things, but the packaging helped me believe it anyways.

    Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a great deal about definitions: myself, my art, my travels, my currency, my agency and my grace.

    I wanted to consolidate my learnings from the Psyche Ward into a neat little package, but I Still feel the signs of some kind of insanity. Food wrappers and commercials feel like they are talking directly to me. Probably why I have a hard time focusing when the world is full of advertisements.

    Here’s what happened and who I am: A waterfall precaution. I feel things so strongly that I can cry from happiness or despair when I relax a little. This kind of behavior is unbecoming for an adult, so I must learn how to channel my feelings before they get into waterfall territory. That’s where self-expression comes in. This is where I become the genuine Sad/Happy Clown that is allowed a wider spectrum of persona and animatedness than your average person.

    My diagnoses: Manic, Psychosis Hypomania, Bipolar, Triopolar (I came up with that), Plural, ADD vs ADHD: What’s the Difference?,

    My new favorite is hyperarousal– Insomnia With Daytime Hyperarousal Linked to Hypertension.

    After a trauma, the person with hyperarousal is “a state of increased psychological and physiological tensionmarked by such effects as reduced pain tolerance, anxiety, exaggeration of startle responses, insomnia, fatigue,and accentuation of personality traits.”

    I am a mental health cocktail because my parents gave me some interesting tools to explore my coping mechanisms, primarily art. No one bats an eye at a painter furiously painting, it’s the rest of the time when I am forced to be Clark Kent instead of Superman.

    My treatment means I need to slow my roll. I am moving to fast and I like it, but it’s a candle lit on both sides. If people can help relax me, if my friends can step up and teach me meditation, I will learn to soar and fall gracefully.

  • Valentine’s House

    valeintines

    Today is Valentines Day. I made this painting to remind myself there’s a room, there’s a house, there’s a world within.

    My heart for romantic and friendship love feels like mountain where ideas of people can live with a beautiful view of the multiple suns setting withthin their own event horizons, a multitude of anti-black house. These novas, cycling in their brightness, keeps this world happy and bright despite outside inputs.

    My mom asked me if I knew the difference between reality and “euphoria-inducing mania” and I told her that I love in a way that is hard for me express because I have to communicate that there’s a time and place where we could be together for ever and it’s cultivated by my mania. I feel it in my heart as it’s racing. It’s everyone I’ve ever cared about having a party and I’m not only invited, I’m the host. Would you ask me to give that up for a world that is run by the adage “time is money” and no one seems to have either. So, this is my little glass house on top of a pink-grassed hill. It’s empty and transparent. If I give into Reality, I give into the notion that I didn’t have enough of something. I’d rather live in a pink-hilled world where I could feel love around me, swirling brightly and dreamily.

    I am a waterfall precaution. It’s heartbreaking coming back to reality. To a world where people are busy with making money and not making time. It makes me feel like I have my priorities backwards. As an artist, I have been giving myself permission to waste time and start to feel things, how they ache but not in the worst way. I’ve seen the worst way and it’s more than just a party where no one shows up. I’m done crying about it, and I know a walk will do me some good.

    When you feel like you have no one, remember that there’s an empty glass house at the top of a pink hill that is waiting for you.

  • Manic Poetry

    Edge of Time (2003)

    I went to the edge of time one day.
    It’s a feeling I can’t describe or say.
    Never-stopping; a rapid motion
    constant lapping, like an ocean.
    As I sat, pondered this new feat
    Something was coming from down the street.
    A person I’ve never seen before.
    A strange shadowy figure,
    crazed in his ways
    some what of a lure
    In those eyes, I’m lost for days
    This thing that was no one other than other
    I at his every whim
    Under His Spell and At The Edge of Time…

  • Notes to Self

    Notes to Self from 2013:

    No fear.
    I am thy own master.
    Be brave, bold and beautiful.
    Carry breath mints if planning to kiss anyone. 8-8-03 <not necessary!>

    [Redacted: Some notes about chasing boys.]

    Try to elongate good moments.
    Boredom is for creative people.

    New Goals:
    Create a mural
    learn more about photography
    Do crazy things as much as possible
    Be true to yourself after you find out who you are
    Know who I am and what I want in life
    Start a club
    Be an Artist