Outro

Dearest dear ones,
My family, my friends, my life...

It’s not that I don’t love you.

I admire you, I need you to be a part of me, wherever I go.

I love every nuance of your smiles, the harmonies and melody of your laughter.

I love that you all love each other so completely.

I adore the way you have set up your lives, each with the other, to live and die as family.

When I come to see you, I come to observe your way of living.

I am enthralled. I cherish your devotion to each other, each and every one of you.

But I am not like you.

I cannot simply plant myself in one place, like a tree to be watered,

And grow up high with my feet in the earth.

I cannot wither, I cannot lose my leaves.

I must always be moving.

The futures you wish for yourselves, your dream come true,

That is like a death sentence to me.

While many perceive me as an oddity,

I feel satisfaction in my wandering.

I am not a spectacle,

I am a person, with problems of my own.

I pay my monthly mortgage in stress, endless workdays, self-scrutiny and loneliness.

I give more than I take, to somehow apologize for the way I feel.

But I will not apologize anymore.

My work is my love.

I am free.

For post V-Day

Here, a little message from a recent,
confirmed believer in genuine happiness.
This is for everyone who hated Valentine's Day.
(I didn't mention the V-word on social media
until the day after,just to be safe.)
I think that Valentine's Day and
all holidays need to be revamped
like music needs to be revamped (wa-waaa vamp, music... get it?! Oh well.)
Music and holidays used to be an excuse for community.
Now we dedicate both to the spending of money
for temporary happiness for only ourselves.
Well I reclaim Valentine's Day for the community.
EVERYONE can sing. EVERYONE can love.
NOT just those who get flowers can sing.
NOT just those who get flowers can love.
Since its HISTORY is obviously sordid, so let's make history again.
Making history.
Speaking of making things...

_____________________________________________________________________


Make a table out of
cardboard scraps
Make a life from
parents' broken dreams
Make a happy day out of
grey morning slush
Make my own path from
whatever I damned well decide
Make music from nothing
or from the past repeating
Make love and money,
both just to the point of satisfaction
Make space in your mind, un-clutter,
and scrub all the corners clean
Make a life with a partner
out of a history of confused choices
Make the decision to be loved
when you feel undeserving

15 Feb 2014

New Ideas

I have decided to dedicate this blog to poetry and other writings instead of art. I've all but given up art for music and work, but I'll get back to it soon.
Writing is something I do often, and more often with the intensely long subway rides. So, here is one, and more to come.

On the M train

Last night, around midnight,
I stepped on the M train
And found I had a car to myself.

The whole car, just me.

A woman stepped on briefly,
But probably took
My sounds of amusement
As crazy ramblings
And left to a more peopled car.

So I sat for one whole stop
In the silence, the hollow
Echo of a ghost town.
I could hear the groaning
Of the weathered metal
On metal
On tracks
And the wind around the car,
Pushing as went.
The silence was so obvious
And so strange
That I had to laugh
To myself
In amazement.
That bubble of undisturbed

Calm

That came not only from the quiet car,
but the quiet Monday night
At Myrtle Ave. and Broadway.

The noise I can handle,
I can block it out after a while.
Stillness, no; I'm no longer able
To adapt to that quality,
The quality of absence.

A woman and her baby carriage got
on the train car
At the next stop.
Just one.
I, just for fun, though that I
Wanted to offer her my seat.



Francesca Erni

Please do not steal my stuff... copyright blah blah legal waste of time...

New sketch, new deviant

Today I listened to the new album by Queens of the Stone Age -- "...Like Clockwork". True, it's not traditional QotSA fare, but there's something nice and juicy about it. They will never stoop so low as to produce pop, unlike some people. Yes, I'm looking at you, Red Hot Chili Peppers. I'll miss how disgusting Queens of the Stone Age used to sound (BIG compliment), and I'll miss how devious they were before. But this new album isn't necessarily bad, especially considering the fact that it inspired me to draw my first sketch in months. Yay! Oh, the album just finished playing on my Spotify. Find it there for yourself, it's one of the few places the album can be played for free. (Note: Spotify's ads are horrible. Horrible!)

So, here is my newest sketch, "Ideal self portrait". Ink. First draft.
Maybe more color, maybe more detail. Eh, we'll see.
It's one of a series of reversible drawings, viewable from both top to bottom and bottom to top.

Also, I am a new deviant! Find me through my deviantart account here!

Ciao friends!

Artwork 2008 - 2011

This will slowly become more sophisticated as I get more time to add art and labels.

Final Project: Video Art

Here it is! And early. My goodness.

This is the Final project for Santiago Echeverry's Art and Technology class. The theme: decontextualization. The medium: video art. So, here we are. Four people reading in four different languages, all from the same rhythms but with different words. The words were chosen by the quality of their sound, not for their meaning. If it sounds pretty, we used it. Then, to further decontextualize, the sound of the words do not match what (or who) is seen in the video.

So, without further ado, here is the Decontextualization Quartet.

In order of voicing:
Grigorios Zamparas - Greek Reading
Francesca Erni - English Reading
Hein Jung - Korean Reading
Elisabet Fandino - Spanish Reading

Performance Art in Washington Square

This is my performance art project, Binary Symphony. We are singing binary in octaves. In this piece "Yes" and "No" represent 1 and 0 or 'on' and 'off'. I am singing the words "crotchet" and "quaver" while Rick Jermain is singing "quarter note" and "eighth note". The word 'crotchet' is the term used in the UK for 'quarter note', and the 'quaver' for 'eighth note'.

Notes for watching: Pay attention to the people in the background, as they move in and out of our screens. (You will lose focus due to the monotony of the song, so watch instead.) The most obvious person is the man on the phone with the dogs who walks from Rick's screen to mine. There are a few people who blatantly stare at us, a fact of which I'm proud. New Yorkers are notoriously jaded to the point of apathy.

This performance took place in the afternoon on Saturday, November 19, 2011 in Washington Square, New York City.