Hello. I was not expecting a near 3000 word essay I wrote in two days about a mediocre rapper from Seattle to get so many new people coming to my tiny sliver of Substack. While its awesome—it’s also slightly intimidating. So you should know, I am using this website as a refuge from Instagram.
I started writing as a creatively frustrated visual artist. That’s the gist.
Therefore, my stuff can be all over the place. For instance these “Art Journals” are ramblings, and long winded rants interspersed with images and photographs I have taken on urban walks and road trips across the country.
While I do work on a lot of long range content, and occasionally complain about said content (still not done with the Z600 Part 2- for everyone who has been following me drone on about that project—read Part 1 here) I use the art journals to sort of replace my need to post on traditional social media and to write faster short form stuff in between the images.
I also want to emphasize, I am not here to count followers, and my aspiration was never to get a verified badge or whatever the Substack digital trophy of fame is. I am using this as an outlet for ideas and opinions I felt like I couldn’t freely express anywhere else. Being a writer was never a life goal for me. Funny how things work out, the blog you are using to avoid sitting in a therapist’s chair suddenly becomes something else entirely.
And now: Art Journal 4.
Thank you for reading the fine print.
Come Friday, I will be in the woods of Western Pennsylvania. It’s something I have felt I needed to do ever since the anniversary of October 7th loomed closer. I just hope that once the date passes I can move on a bit with my life and my art.
It was three in the morning on a Saturday in October 2023 and I was doom scrolling on Instagram. My partner was undergoing radiation treatments post brain surgery for a rare tumor called an inflammatory myofibroblastoma.
He had a seizure at his grandmother’s house in the Pittsburgh suburbs in early June that threw our cross country move into absolute chaos.
I was the one who found him pulsating on the floor in a pool of his own blood. I remember lifting up his head making sure he was breathing—he was. Then I remember screaming CALL 911.
I remember the awful police officer who came first and thought he was on drugs or drinking. I remember Evan arguing with the guy like he was lucid and conscious—he wasn’t. Evan still thinks he died that day. I keep assuring him over and over that I hold these memories for both of us. That I am the one who remembers everything.
A tumor the size of a golf ball: 4.2 cm, by 2.1 cm, by 3.2 cm was removed from his brain cavity in late June 2023. The neurosurgeon told us the growth was dense and bouncy, which was actually a relief. Most cancerous tumors are soft and mushy.
However there were other surprises. We initially thought he would not need radiation, but everyone including the doctors were wrong.
The initial plan for moving to Philadelphia was that I could take some months off to work on art. I wanted to finish a comic project and start another. I wanted to ease into living in the Northeast again and visit my parents in Buffalo.
Instead it was get your ass in gear and get a job. Figure out the American healthcare system for the first time and learn how to pay insurance bills. I learned how to be an advocate for myself and my partner. I learned how to talk to doctors and how to interpret weird medical tests.
Luckily I have a background working in laboratories and genetics so looking up things like-DNA FISH (Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization) assay results were less abstract and complicated than they would be for most people in my situation. However this didn’t ease the crippling and constant anxiety of worrying about what happens next—what giant life shattering event is next?
Well, it was October 7th 2023.
So, there I was. Sitting at my computer unable to sleep with a bout of anxiety when the first post flashed through my feed.
THEY ARE IN THE COUNTRY.
That was it. Black text on a stark white background. It was a Instagram story from Israeli influencer Hen Mazzig and it was gone as soon as it appeared.
I was confused. There was no other information about who this “they” were. Then the videos started coming in. A girl on the back of a truck clearly violated. Another being yanked out of a jeep with bloody sweat pants.
They were executing people live on social media. That’s when the news rolled in at around six in the morning that this they was Hamas. I saw things that day that will forever be etched into my eyeballs that no human should ever see.
I stayed up the whole day unable to sleep. I rocked back and forth in bed. I saw posts from “friends” in the west celebrating the massacre. I cried. I screamed. I got no phone calls.
I was emotionally sucker punched, and I am still grabbing my bearings. However I can say with some confidence that I am now fully an adult. Some people have kids and that’s how they mature. But for me? gratuitous violence and medical bills is I guess the secret sauce.
I feel like I have lost a whole year of art making. I have tried to start and finish projects with limited success.
That image up top is from a comic project I want to start called “Birdbrain” about an advanced society of birds and how they deal with artificial intelligence (if you are reading this Franklin I still think about it everyday!—I want to make this thing) I would like to put out another Uncle Scam’s (click here for part 1) comic and make more building illustrations of the city of Philadelphia.
I’m stuck, but I don’t think I will be for long. The Jewish new year is approaching and I feel like I am a rising from the ashes. I don’t care how cliche as that sounds. I wouldn’t have started writing if it wasn’t for October 7th.
My first essay ever was published in a literal magazine in late December of last year. I met Heather the editor of Root Quarterly through an email exchange in late November 2023. I remember being worried about interacting with art people and not feeling like I could trust anyone.
I sent her some art. I emailed her an intricate drawing of a synagogue I had done with cats out front and a piece I had just completed of me as a child roaming the rooms of my parents’ family friend’s house—a Holocaust survivor who collected witch memorabilia.
We met for drinks. Two gin and tonics in she asked if I wrote. I said yes. That was a lie.
I am working on my second piece for Root Quarterly now and I have another essay coming out in a week and a half’s time for FAIR (Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism). I am also speaking at an event hosted in collaboration with FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) in November for dissident artists—another thing I never thought I would do.
There have been so many firsts this year, and I am terrible at looking at the good things in my life. But this week I was able to be give myself grace and process all that has happened. And I am proud of me.
I come home everyday and I beat myself up for not making art. But I have gone through creative dry spells before and I know eventually this too shall pass. I will start drawing Birdbrain and I will make another Uncle Scam’s comic. I will draw again, It will happen—I just have to be patient with myself.
In less than a week I will be in the middle of nowhere. Unreachable by cell phone signal. Sitting in nature and being present with who I am at this moment in time. And I think I may actually like her.
