Self Portrait by ~Chococat101 on deviantART

I feel like the colours may be *too* flat…but I don’t know what to do.

Self Portrait WIP by ~Chococat101 on deviantART

Here

I think I’ve found my motivation in the DIY/Punk class…I want to take back NY.  Every class, even if we aren’t talking about punk ideologies or what our art means I still try to think of how will my work be relevant to the punk movement.  On the one hand, yeah, I want to make some money–God knows I need it–but I want to have a purpose too.  I want to say something.

What I want to say has been so obvious this whole time, I can’t believe I didn’t realize it before.

My city has been profiteered.  New York doesn’t belong to New Yorkers anymore, it belongs to the Fat Cats that make fucking high rises and stupid TV shows that stereotype New Yorkers one way or the other.  It belongs to the people willing to pay their way to get in, the people who don’t care who got evicted from their homes so their freakin’ condo could be built.

Culture?  What culture?  New York doesn’t have any culture anymore.  It’s all Gossip Girl and Sex in the City, commercialized bullcrap that don’t mean nothing to nobody.  The only purpose this shit serves it to make people buy buy buy.

It’s literally been turned into Disneyland–don’t believe me?  Look at who owns most of Broadway.

Nothing of my hometown is as it was before.  Red Hook is now known only for the giant freakin’ IKEA they got on the waterfront.  And yeah…maybe Red Hook didn’t have the best rep…in fact, it used to have one of the worst, but at least it had an identity.  Now what does it have?  More poorly made garbage for people to buy and…that’s about it.

You know, we used to have community art museums out on the waterfront…my earliest inspiration came from going out there with my Grandma to look at it.  Now that space has been all bought up by Fairway and stupid yuppies looking for that “urban reclaimed feel” you can only get by buying a space that used to have a purpose and turning it into something only the sickeningly rich can afford to even look at.  It makes me sick.  I want to throw up thinking about it.

And forget Brooklyn, Manhattan of course is no better.  Spanish Harlem becomes less and less Spanish everyday.  Now I’m not trying to say that every area in NY should be segregated (as names often imply they are)–by all means bring diversity–but that’s not what’s happening.  What’s happening is some dicks up top are buying space cheap and pushing people out by making the space at least 4 times as expensive.  I don’t care if people move in, but don’t fucking push people out of their homes.  Don’t treat us like trash.  These are our neighborhoods full of our history that we only know cus 10 years ago nobody had the balls to step foot here but us.

It’s funny.  It seems a neighborhood is only “cleaned up” and “good” once all the colored and poor people are kicked out.  I’ve certainly never been to a “good” neighborhood that was a predominantly colored community, anyway.  And who gets to decide what neighborhoods are “good” and “bad” anyway?  Is that a freakin’ committee that waddles around New York with some sort of checklist or ranking system?  Wth.

But I digress.  What I need to focus on is my movement.  There’s not much I can do up here, but I can try.  After watching “Bomb It” I got really motivated.  The section on New York in particular affected me.  What they said is true.  NYC is nothing but a consumerist wonderland nowadays.  When I see graffiti or stickers, I typically feel proud.  I mean…I’m actually quite picky about what graffiti I approve and why, but in general, I feel proud.  People who do graffiti (I like) nowadays to me are sort of like scribes, they’re preserving our culture.  When I see it, I feel motivated to do better, to push harder.  I don’t know why or how it has this affect on me, but it does.  I guess, maybe it’s because it reminds me of who I am, where I’m from, and what I’ve been through.  The city is such a dreary and lonely place, sometimes it feels like you can’t survive living there…all you want to do is leave.  To see something so beautiful and colorful in a place so gray and stoic really brings me hope.  The city is so filled with spam, it’s so overwhelming.  Graffiti is like…I don’t know…it’s like being pulled out of the matrix or something.  It reminds me what is real and who I am and that everything these garbage ads and shit are saying…it’s not me.  I have an identity.  I don’t have to be a consumerist sheep without a face or name or individual identity.  I am worth so much more than that.

So this semester, as much as possible, I would like to dedicate my work to my city…the city that has given so much to me…and yet I so little.  I will fight for my city and speak for my city because I have a voice and it does not.  I don’t know how I will do this…I just know I have the passion TO do it–and that’s the best place to start, right?

Let me first say I cheated.

I sketched over my photo in photoshop and relied a lot on the live trace which I touched up in illustrator with the pencil tool.  I don’t know yet if I’m going to pay for this later or not.  I guess I’ll find out tomorrow when we see if this lineart works as it’s supposed to.

Ah…so…I have started my senior project and published it on youtube.  I haven’t gotten many hits yet…which is to be expected because I’m new, uninteresting, and not very funny.

I did, however, receive some uhm….”interesting” feedback from this one character “hivquestions” who writes:

“Samantha, hello. i just came across your vlog because their were hiv and AIDS tags for it as i was searching youtube. i didn’t hear you mention it specifically in your vlog that i watched, but i thought i heard you say something about a documentary. you did a great job with the vlog by the way. very natural with the camera and speaking. thats great. anyhow, there is a lot of information about hiv that we have not been told and you will find it here at my channel along with further links. this is going to possibly be overwhelming for you, so remember to breathe. i do the best i can to provide people with the truth in as many languages as i can. you are fortunate to have this information available to you at this time. just 15 years ago when i tested hiv positive i did not have a computer. i had to go to hospital libraries to do my research through medical journals and at that time i did not think to question the hiv test. about 6 years ago i finally got a computer and only 2 years ago did i get high speed internet and finally watch the videos with the information i needed to survive. now i understand that the hiv test is cross-reactive with many conditions including drug use and flu shots and only looks for 2 or 3 proteins for a positive result, 4 proteins are required in australia and canada. i stopped taking hiv drugs over 2 years ago when i found all this out and i have met many others who have done the same. i am very real and you can watch me in vlogs at my personal youtube channel ‘observationmode’ – link in friends section of this channel. let me know if there is anything i can do to help. Gregory – palm springs, california”

He also included a video link about this woman who filed a lawsuit for her false positive or something…which I didn’t watch, because I didn’t really care.  (I’m sorry, but it’s true)

I didn’t really understand at first what this guy was getting at and read through the message rather quickly (since I was reading it on my itouch and was doing about a million other things as I always do).  So, I just assumed that he thought that I was HIV+ and was offering me some guidance or something–which I don’t really want or need, especially not from random strangers on the internet.

So I answered with this message:

“Oh thank you very much, I really appreciate it. However, the documentary I’m working on is actually about what it’s like to be an HIV- daughter of an AIDS survivor. My parents and younger sister were diagnosed about 12 years ago. My father passed away due to AIDS complications, but my mother and sister are very well now. My mother founded the organization SMART (Sisterhood Mobilized for AIDS/HIV Research and Treatment:: http://www.smartuniversity.org) 11 years ago, so for more than half my life I’ve been an AIDS advocate.

I’m sorry if there was any misunderstanding. My documentary is actually my senior project at my university. I haven’t quite organized my youtube page yet or figured out the best way to tell my story without getting people confused. My vlog is meant to document my thoughts and progress on the project and in life, but as I have just started there isn’t much to say just yet. Interviews with my mom and family members will be soon to follow.

Thank you again for reaching out.

Samantha”

It wasn’t until he sent me his next message that I really understood where this guy was coming from:

“My heart goes out to you. I can see that you are a shining star of light and love in this world. There is information here that will help your mother and sister. When they were diagnosed it was with the Western Blot hiv test and that test can cross-react with other conditions, so they may not have a deadly virus after all. I know how painful this is to realize, but it is based on the facts and the evidence. I also tested positive in 1993 and I would never joke about such serious things, especially when my own life was at stake. Again, My Prayers go out to you and your family, prayers for hope and wisdom and compassion. Gregory 760-416-9493 california”

Uhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmm whaaaaat?  Excuse me crazy, but if my fam wasn’t positive then why the hell have they been taking meds for the past DECADE or so?  And no, I ain’t buying the whole “these drugs aren’t necessary” crap cus for the past two years we’ve been having a drug freak out with my sister.  Yes.  My family is positive and I really don’t appreciate people trying to play games and act like the problem isn’t there.  I was so confused and annoyed I asked my mom what the hell this guy could be trying to tell me and she called him…I think the term she used was “Denialist.”  Apparently out there, there’s a bunch of people who have tested positive and refuse to believe it.  Some even go so far as to believe that HIV doesn’t exist.
WTF.

I’m sorry…cus it does seem like this guy means well…but this fucking pisses me off.

I can’t even put into words right now how I feel about this.

I’ll be making a video in response to this as soon as I get over my flabbergasted shock.

But then again…I don’t want more of them to attack me, so I’m considering making a video response that I don’t post to add to the documentary later….I dunno…I’m so stunned right now.

I need a title for my Channel X.x I think I’ll wait until I’ve had a few more videos up before I stress myself over it though….

Stock Exchange

DeviantART

I’m not entirely happy with this, but not dissatisfied either.  Some pages I like more than others.  What I think it comes down to is that digital photographs aren’t really flexible enough for comics.

CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW EACH IMAGE TO OPEN IN A NEW TAB

Sam and the Devil Page 1 by ~Chococat101 on deviantART

Sam and the Devil Page 2 by ~Chococat101 on deviantART

Sam and the Devil Page 3 by ~Chococat101 on deviantART

Sam and the Devil Page 4 by ~Chococat101 on deviantART

Sam and the Devil Page 5 by ~Chococat101 on deviantART

Sam and the Devil Page 6 by ~Chococat101 on deviantART

As a quick recap, it’s been decided that my senior project will be changed to a documentary on my life and childhood as a child of an AIDS survivor.  (Stray will still be done, but on my own time and as work for the DIY class)

This has made me wonder why this topic is so important to me.  Why do I feel that this needs to be done?  I have ideas, I have feelings, but nothing that I could put into words–until now.

I want to be normal.

I want to be normal with normal parents and normal siblings and normal relationships.

I am so TIRED of my life being dictated by something that I had no control over.  I’m tired of feeling bad for feeling this way because I am not the one “directly affected” by the disease.

And I’m tired of the way dealing with this has made me interact with others.

I’ve always had to be in the background.  The (unsaid) less important one, the lucky one, the one that should not complain.  I’ve always had to be strong and stable.  Sometimes I wished though, that I was “sick” one, that someone would take care of me.

Having to act that way made me take on the role of the strong caretaker in all my relationships–romantic relationships being the worse.  I have not had one “normal” relationship because of this.  Every relationship I’ve been in has been more mother child than boyfriend girlfriend and I’m sick of it.

I understand that there really isn’t any one definition of “normal” but I do know that whatever I am is NOT.  I hope, through this project, that I can understand and come to terms with my childhood and be able to move on.  I know that “being normal” isn’t necessarily a realistic goal…but…it doesn’t hurt to try.