Skip to main content

New Birth.

Hey. C'est moi.
 It has been a few years. Since I last discussed into the void here I attended grad school for architecture at the University of Washington, finished the Master's program by the skin of my teeth, graduated into a global pandemic (I would not recommend this), gave away most of my worldly possessions, and am now flâneur-ing around Europe on the slim budget of my life savings.

Allow me to reintroduce myself : I am the artist, Gaston.

My interests include ; architecture, sustainability, art, vintage fashions, antiques, and flâneries. All while consuming massive quantities of tea.

“I know where I'm from, but I don't know where I'm going.” I recently heard this line at a video playing at the Tate Museum in Liverpool, and it rang strong in me.

In the film Casablanca, when Rick is questioned on his nationality he responds that his is a “drunkard,” insinuating that he has renounced his American nationality for that of someone who owns and runs a bar. From my early childhood of living in Hawai'i and moving to Montana, I have struggled with not fitting in and not feeling as though I am “American.” I never lived in the town where I was born, and I've never lived near extended family, so there has never been this idea that I am “of” someplace. I wish that Rick's response of drunkard didn't have the connection with alcoholism because I love this idea of not being “from” someplace but creating the place that fits you. For years, I thought this place for me was Seattle, but from my grad school experiences and a constant stream of friends moving away, Seattle stopped being the place for me to grow. I'm excited to find where this current wandering adventure takes me.

Commuters returning home at sunset on the Parisian Metro.

I'm looking forward to trying this longer form of journaling into the void again.

Comments

  1. Anonymous24 January, 2023 15:19

    Your life has been so interesting! I’m so glad you’re sharing it with us! (You’re writing is so authentic). 🤗

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Windy Coffee. [part 1]

Fulya was looking at my sketchbook the other day and remarked that she liked the random sketch that I had made of some girl that I saw walking along with a little plastic cup of coffee during the wind storm a few weeks past. As I still have some small pieces of very good watercolor paper [that I had sized to be used for some small frames I had collected but did not have anything to put in them yet], I thought that perhaps I could transfer a little sketch to a little piece of paper to play with techniques. Namely the layering of water colors. Something that I know I have been working on a lot, but practice makes perfect. I also wanted to see how using my new mechanical pencil filled with blue graphite would work in hiding my lines as I initially worked. I forgot to take a picture of the transition between not having the girl inked at all to inking her and starting the background. I was having a hell of a time trying to figure out a setting in which to put her. At first I was th
Post a Comment
Read more
French underworld tattoos at the turn of the century. The man sports a tattooed mustache intended to foil the prohibition of facial hair in the Foreign Legion. The World of Tattoo by Maarten Hesselt van Dinter. I can only dream of being anywhere near that combination of badass and crazy. Though at that point the Foreign Legion was probably still the best place for criminals to get their record cleaned so perhaps he is as well quite legitimately scary upon all of that. I find myself flipping back to this page time and time again to romanticize the French underground from around 1900. Give him an accordion, a beret, and some braces. Prostitutes who could easily kill you if you ever come up short and tattoo the names of their ‘actual’ lovers between their breasts, close to their heart. Tattoo ‘Je mother fucking t’aime’ in a tattoo cursive along my collar bones.
Post a Comment
Read more

The adventure continues.

So, I haven't written much lately.. but from the doldrums of the end of semester I then entered a time period of a flânerie across France. A last hurrah. Jessye came to visit again and the tiny room was packed up all into a few suitcases, the largest being named Bertha, and Rennes was left behind, although not before having a picnic in Thabor for the last Saturday market... We got the essentials. Madeleines (where as I reached the front of the line the vendor greeted me with a question of, '6 madelines?') with a few more of that vendor's delicious delights, like those bite size rolls with jams and caramel and chocolate.. Then of course the impossible cow cheese that acted like goat cheese and was rolled in Provencal  herbs. And of course a baguette from the amazing bakery covered in tiles. A trip to Thabor with Jessye was never complete without a stop at the aviary. And some people watching. A mohawked punk rocker walks a little girl hand in hand through the park.
Post a Comment
Read more