Oh Yoko!

Dear Yoko Ono,

Yesterday I was reading a copy of Grapefruit, and shortly before burning it (as the dustcover instructs), I thought you deserved a letter.  You are a genius and I will openly confess my love for you.  Out of all of the artists that inspire Mundane Mischief, you are the big kahuna.  I won't pretend for a minute to understand you, but that is part of the point.  To me, your art exists in acknowledging and breaking interpersonal borders and causing the viewer (observer? coconspiritor?) to see the beauty in this outrageous and boring world.

Many critics of modern art justify their conventional (tight ass) ways by claiming that it isn't art if anyone can do it.  And here I display my evidence to the contrary.

(New Math by Craig Damrauer, Via:FreemanTransport.com)

I consider Water Piece to be awe-inspiring.  The page says one word on it.  "Water."  It isn't every day that a person acknowledges the beauty and thought-provoking nature of this terrifying and miraculous substance.  You have made art out of ordinary life.

Something must be said about The Beatles.  I am an enormous fan.  And I must say that I do not believe that you are the reason they broke up.  Anyone who knows anything about them knows about the intense creative energy they had and how sometimes two many creative minds clash.  Then again, sometimes they work well together, like you and John.  I believe you brought him to new creative heights and together you acted as great humanitarians.

Love,

Day

A Little Christmas In November

Last night I was feeling up for a blog task, but I had a floor program in my dorm.  I could have skipped out, but this is the first house I've lived in on campus where the girls act as a cohesive group.  There's sharing, sweetness, and plenty of sassy-ness.  Just to give you an idea of what it's like here, the night I went to do graffiti, I was in the kitchen with my partners in crime discussing in very vague terms what was going to go down.  Two of the girls, who I barely knew at the time, walked in.  One of them cut in,"Green paint shows up best, just so you know," and I was flabbergasted.  I love these girls.

I'm going to be moving out soon into a box new apartment, which is kind of ironic considering how much I've grown to like it here.  So I took our holiday decorating party last night as a chance to show the girls a little love and bake them some Vegan Butter Balls, alias: Russian Tea Cakes, alias: Mexican Wedding Cookies, alias: Snowballs.  I baked about three dozen, thinking I would have enough left over for the next task I've been thinking about (you'll see).  The three dozen cookies were gone in about 45 minutes, and the decorating commenced.

Without realizing it, our decorating got a little mischievous. 

I remember going to my aunt's house Christmas Eve and going to the bathroom; there was a santa shower curtain, santa fuzzy toilet seat cover, santa rug, santa (santa-scented?) candle, santa soap dispenser, and santa hand towels.  So cheesy, but as every vegan will admit, cheese tastes so good.  This is in memory of that.  I call it, "Jingle Towels".

G, and M (he may as well be another girl in the house), made a mountain range out of tree trimming beads.  M delicately crafted some tiny mountain inhabitants, and he saw that it was good.  These hill-billies included Vishnu, Skiers, The Abominable Snowman, Jack Skellington.  Every world must have its good and its evil, so there were also sufferers of various climbing disasters, like avalanches, and abyss-falling.  I hate when that happens. 




Back to the bathroom,  I was thinking about the lyrics to "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", when, just like Martin Luther, the monk who founded the Protestant Reformation, I had a tower experience (read the third paragraph, there is poop involved).  Click to enlarge it, then zoom, and see what his hat says on the white trim.  

Things to Inspire Mischief on Mischief Night

Here's the Mundane Mischief way to make your Mischief Night awesome:

What's Mischief Night anyway, you ask?

So now that you know, maybe you aren't feeling like being arrested for graffiti or the other traditional nonsense.  Instead, try some of these ideas:

Speaking of witches, we hate her when it comes to The Beatles, but nobody helps us turn mundane mischief into a high art form quite like Yoko.  Obey her.

After making A Painting for Burial, you could also transform yourself into a, uh, a super intense monster-- in nine minutes and twenty- three seconds.

If you feel like cuddling, how about making a dollie... out of your dog's old teeth?

If you're home in the kitchen brewing something up tonight, here's some ingredients for that elixir.

Lastly, I know the holidays make some people feel a little lonely.  If you need a date for the Halloween Ball maybe these gentlemen could help (Coilhouse, Via: iCiNG).

Everyone's saying, "Be safe tonight."  I'll say, "Be a little dangerous."  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go make my jellyfish costume.

Wake Up! Swine Flu Is A Distraction

M called me up and said, “It is so nice out, I feel like doing something mischievous tonight.” Exactly the words I wanted to hear. I didn’t know what we were going to do, but it was the best feeling of potential I’d had in a while. I grabbed some supplies (note the lack of spray paint).

We gallivanted down the street, and found a bus stop.  We chalked.  I felt myself perk up, because I’d thought up a new idea. Politics were buzzing in my head.

We headed to Washington Park’s Soldiers and Sailors Monument. There were some anarchist bike punk types chilling beneath the statue, discussing obscure hardcore bands.  Potential witnesses? Helpers? Assholes?  M was a bit hesitant, a little concerned that I could get in trouble, but actually being in the park at night emboldened me, and I didn’t care. I took off my boots and my skirt (once again I find my outfit of choice for mundane mischief is spandex pants). I slipped the hospital mask (stolen from a trip to the hospital that M had earlier this year) into my bra. It was raining, and very slippery, so I climbed the statue with a little boost from M. M tossed up the duct tape.

It was much higher up there than I expected, but I was there. The punks ignored me the entire time, which made me feel much better. I hooked the mask around the statue’s ears (apparently, these masks are manufactured to accommodate gargantuan craniums!) and taped it, because you can never be too safe! I had planned to chalk the surrounding walls of the monument, but they were covered in relief work, so I slid down and chalked up the base. I didn’t get the spacing quite right, but I was in a hurry. I wasn’t about to get arrested for chalk art. The punks suddenly became curious about what I was doing. Had they not noticed me before?

“Graffin’,eh? What’s that? SWINE FLU IS A… D-I-S—disease?”

“Oh, we’re totally gonna get framed for this!”

I talked with them a little about the anti-vandalism truck (they called it the Defacer Eraser), and political stuff. They were pretty cool; I was worried that they would be cynical towards my sloppy beginner’s efforts—especially in topics they seemed so well-versed in, but I was wrong. I said my goodbyes to the lovely punk gentlemen and M and I dashed away.

Some joggers confronted us. “If you want to deface something, you shouldn’t do it to a soldier’s monument…”

I was too self-righteous to respond sweetly, because I put more thought into it than defacement requires.

“It’s hardly defacement if it washes away in the morning.”

I didn’t feel bad at all. Maybe I did something important, even if it only lasted for a few hours. I thought about what the statue represents, about the lives of soldiers. And I don’t think the public’s conscious is focused on what that statue symbolizes. And I don’t think their conscience is, either. If it was, people wouldn’t be in a berserker state over the swine flu right now. Action would be focused on what’s really happening, and how to stop that.

The next day, the mask remained, and the chalk was gone.

Graffitizing The Mundane

At this point, I have realized that this project will be fluid and I will constantly be redefining it. The other day I decided to make some public art as another way of reaching out. When I was five I was a very well-behaved child. One day though, I had this brand new, 24 color box of Mickey Mouse crayons. I took them outside with me and I made a colorful mural on the patio slates. I was really excited because the colors looked so rich on the blue- gray slate. I don’t remember exactly what I drew, but I remember being extremely proud of it. By the time my mom found my artwork, the wax was melting and swirling together from the summer heat. She was shouting the word “graffiti”.

I scrubbed the wax off, but the punishment didn’t work, and from then on I was fascinated by graffiti. I paid special attention when my family drove through NYC, careful to notice any tag or mural, it was like a game. I did some of my own too, and I was smart about it. At first it was modest and I did it small enough to stay hidden to the casual observer. I would color a few tiles on the kindergarten doll house or I would write a beautiful word in the corner of a room. It was never pointless or spiteful. They were happy images— I wanted to make treasures like the ones I saw sprayed on buildings in the city. When I see beautiful graffiti I think about its meaning before I think about it as vandalism— my goal was only to impart the same feeling. So I marked the floors and walls of places where I had bad experiences so they could become better, but I also marked places of positivity, so I could share it with others.

As a teen, I was excited by the political graffiti I saw around me and I wanted to be a part of that too. It was art that was alive, art that interacted with its environment; one person draws one thing and another draws over it or responds to the message. Graffiti is the collective unconscious. It announces where to get a good blow job; it lets a dishonest cardboard politician speak the truth. It vivifies ugly, generic public places. The ironic thing is that people call it vandalism when it defaces something, but what of it when it enhances beauty or it wakes observers to the truth?

So the graffiti bug never left me. I went to college, I got bolder, and it got worse. I decided I would do some work grander than anything I’d ever done. I bought spray paint. I went out at night, dressed extravagantly, to the worst parts of Albany and painted the town. I had uplifting, thought- provoking messages and images in mind, and I sprayed them.

And I felt bad. I was sloppy because I had never used spray paint before, and because I was scared. The words dripped together. I couldn’t undo it either. I’d created an eyesore instead of a point of interest. Mundane mischief became criminal mischief.

I’m not saying I’ve left my sharpies, stickers, or paint out to dry just yet. I will however think more carefully about planning my designs, because in the few hours before the anti-vandalism truck Defacer- Eraser (Albany's official Anti- vandalism site) comes to clean, I’d want people to think differently about the day because of what they saw.