Pilachi_Sketch [ BLOG ]

Having made the effort to break the ten year dry spell, I went out and bought paper yesterday–a very expensive undertaking–but you can’t put a price on love.

A series of things brought this influx of wild untamed emotions back… listening to “fumbling towards ecstacy” again… tremendous emotional upheaval brought on by the time in Ghana… efforts to love me again… a dance troupe called Lalala Human Steps… and a very engrossing and interactive conversation with two women of ilk.

Now I cannot get their imaginings out of my musing; and I wake up having women of ilk for breakfast. That was figurative. Read more

Ten years ago, after a bitter fight with my father, I stopped painting and drawing entirely. Ok… so I had 4 or so interludes with difficult emotions thereafter, leading to a few bastard [paintings]; but none was a pure reflection. For ten years, my heart lay dormant… and now, it is back with a vengeance.

Awaken, Chalk Pastels on Paper 1998

This was the last official drawing / painting that I did in 1998. It was one in a series of three, that my then architect-girlfriend thought was her. It was not. This is an image of an exquisite Mexican young lady–senorita palofax–who for a brief moment in my recollection, danced in the glorious embrace of a sun basked sprinkler in Cuba, while we waited to hear Silvio Rodriques perform. She was one of my wonderful counter-cohorts without contact. Intimacy sin sin.

“Te molesta mi amor? mi amor de joventud?…” - Silvio Rodriguez

I am happy to say ‘mi Unicornio Azul’ is back, horn intact and kicking like a mule.

On the way in, as a source, I learnt how to harness and distill painful memories; now on the way out, I am learning how to assuage said rage in others, as a result of my chosen repression.

If I could show you the beauty of this process, you would find that you are never angry ever again. For this is my truth; my innermost self.

Through painting, drawing and dance, I have learnt how to quiet my mind and my body… and allow the messages to flow out with clarity and sophistication. I cannot put a price on this feeling; just as the biblical mother in front of Solomon could not bear to sever the limbs of her child… I gave it up instead [by choice], rather than have it destroyed or sold into slavery. I cast it on the water from the shore among the reeds, with the hope, faith and prayer, that it will find a home where it will belong, be accepted and flourish happily.

This is my Truth. This is exactly what pilachi means: learning how to cope with, distill and understand difficult experiences through music and art. These are the tools my mother gave me.

Faceless and devoid of conviction… here I am… this is all I have ever been.

As a pre-pubescent four year old, I learnt of intimacy through exposure to / the experience of porno videotapes… and my neighbours’ [insert appropriate shock and horror here] … and not necessarily in that order. At the same time, I also learnt of frisbees, roller skates, Bruce Lee and a Commodore 64 computer. It is by no surprise that my knowledge of such things was muddled from the start.

Now at the risk of sharing too much, with the more important objective of self reparation; to thee I do declare:

Fury, Ink on Card, [age 19 - Jamaica]

I am a miscreant, a deviant, a misguided soul with more passionate intensity and undistilled rage, than most can stomach: a difficult pill to swallow, at best… and that is just in conversation.

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Pilachi is now set up as a bonafide Hosting Service, for dedicated Pilachi clients and projects; however, the objective is not to provide hosting as a publicly available stand alone service.

[ New Server. New Logo. ]

To clarify how the services work together:

Pilachi [Communication] does not sell photography directly to clients, but rather sells Graphic Design services and Print Publishing Services, both of which buy photographic services from Pilachi [Imaging]

Similarly, Pilachi does not sell web hosting directly to clients; Pilachi [Interactive] sells Web Design and Web Development Services, both of which buy hosting services from Pilachi [Systems]

Now that that is clear, all I have to do is work out a few remaining kinks in the taxonomy, then I can complete and upload the Pilachi website.

Thinking about the time spent at Pratt and about just how obsessed I am with the concepts of deterministic chaos, I find myself filling time with design projects, hoping in vain efforts — like a wary prostitute — to find love in the dark.

Having left Pratt in memories, I find myself mourning the fact that I did not become an industrial designer. I think I probably would have enjoyed that.

Anyhoo… this is it… the realization of volume from chaotic fractals… the purpose of my being if ever there was one. Now, as are most things, it is relegated to the depths of my hardrives.

Dead as nit.

More than anything else in life, I found that I am most excited about Industrial Design. To those in my family and elsewhere, who think I dance about like a butterfly, I have to say that to have aptitude does not as readily translate to love.

Industrial design… that was love. That was the beauty of drawing by hand, then model making, then CAD, then 3D modeling, then rapid prototyping… then a whole host of other things… even business topics like branding, identity and market segmentation. I loved it.

If I was to say that I regret anything [ tangible ], I regret not spending more time in the transportation design studio… which translated directly to… I regret not becoming an industrial designer.

Not to be ungrateful: photography, graphic design, web design, architecture and now broadcast journalism+teaching pay the bills… and dancing, painting, ultimate frisbee, drawing and building computers are fun… but where is that sense of place, that sense of understanding… of being understood, that sense of belonging that comes from love?

The funny thing in all of this… I really do not think about or like products. I really like the processes of industrial design though.

Really really.

New content is being uploaded to the Zuar Design Studio site. Zuarjarrett.com was designed a few years ago [using the moniker sekanidesign.com... the precursor to pilachi.com] as a portfolio site for an emerging architect and colleague in Jamaica. Now, with new project content, a few more than a few things have changed.

Updates should be completed in a week or so… provided there is sufficient time to focus on the update.

Slower than mol-asses, not that I have anything against Moll Flanders, the galleryjamaica website was updated again. Were puns intended? Not really.

“One day I’ll fly away,” she said.

Only six months have passed and yet I have not honestly and openly begun to accept that my mother (I cant even write it). That my mother is dead. I want to change this to “has died” so that there is not so much punctuation and permanence to it.

I do not have the closure or that sense of finality (if that is a word) that comes from seeing her before she died, or from laying her to rest. It is as though, she is sleeping, in a lonely home in Harbour View, unsought by those around who know her, but choose to forget her. Read more