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January 1st-2nd
I ask if it’s too late to call.
January 8th
On December 26th, my cat suddenly started having seizures. I was quite upset.
December 22nd, I’d posted two books I’d recently bought, which brings him to
records from my uncle in October 2017 that I’d arranged similarly angled in front of carpet.
The image of my stripey socks and nude Bowie in turn remind him of a video call between us, with his wacky striped glasses and my naked post-shower shoulders diagonally nearby.
(When I was sad living at my Aunt’s, Stefan would cheer me up with deadpan ridiculousness.)
And so… he makes a David Bowie video to cheer me up about my cat. [IG]
[ PRESS PLAY ]
January 9th
I’d spent the first year of pandemic fixing up my attic loft as a bedroom. Now that Miss Kitka started having seizures, I was forced to abandon it, and complained.
The photos from May 2020 of my loft [fb]
The TV bathed in red light with speakers on either side…
leads him to a sad robot with a rectangle head from ComicCon, October 2013 [flickr]
A sad worried clown cube.
The overall face: frown and nose from the laptop wire and light reflection on the television.
One month prior I’d posted two books I’d bought myself for my birthday. [fb] The cover of Berlin with its framed tower and angled lettering
brings him to this cemetery photograph from June 2015.
These cemetery photos were autouploaded to flickr the same day as some shitty photos of a doom metal show with a red skull on a screen.
The cemetery shots combined, the blue of Sienkiewicz’ Revolution used for the sky, the skull becomes zombie, the compositional beams of light in Berlin duplicated by diagonal blood splatter. More singing puppet singing theater. [IG]
[ PRESS PLAY ]
He was singing to me, and I didn’t see.
January 11th
Stefan and I talk about Jersey City.
January 13th
I ask Stefan to critique a stupid video I made, and we talk about our artistic collaborations, past and future.
January 14th
From the beginning of January; a repost of a sad selfie from living with my Aunt [IG]
and a video of my cat Miss Kitka clutching her fish [IG]
which brings Stefan to a photo of me clutching a cat which I’d posted [IG] the previous summer.
The blue and green matching the colors of my portrait, the red of the carpet for the wounds and football, the football laces copying the pattern of light against the wall. The black hair like mine, the swirls of hair and dress collar dictated by the carpet pattern. [IG]
Two weeks prior, December 27th, I post scenes from Zero Hour! (The film upon which Airplane! was based) [IG]
which leads Stefan to a photograph I’d taken of my brother in the Ocean Grove Days (which he’d already used for this animation throwback painting)
More singing puppet theater [IG]
[ PRESS PLAY ]
January 15th
Upset about Miss Kitka’s health woes.
December 26th: “I was angry. So I made japchae, a korean dish my Polish gramma used to make on Christmas Eve. It came out pretty good, even though I didn’t have sesame seeds. But I’m still angry.” [IG]
which brings him to old family Christmas photos of my Korean aunt celebrating a Christmas engagement at my Gramma’s, and other festive family photos. [flickr]
That weird forehead ridge and using the pattern of spots on the Christmas tree topper for blood splatter, the noodles a living creature on the stairs, the house following a similar layout to my Gramma’s / Aunt’s house. [IG]
January 16th
That previous month, I’d posted this video as my solitary Christmas celebration [IG]
which brings him to this misty and strangely lit photograph I’d taken in 2010
and monster toys [flickr] I’d uploaded the same day in 2010
a volt meter [flickr] found that same Junk Night
The sleek retro lines of the volt meter brings him to the sleek lines of the car behind my uncle in this family photo.
and then to this photo of that same uncle, aunt, and cousin.
Stefan draws a Space Girl. The meter on the arm, planets from light spots, fuzzy monster stripes on the boots, fabric folds from his front, my cousin’s face and uncles collar, goggles inspired from wheels.
But wait! It’s another puppet song!
[ PRESS PLAY ]
She matches the fuzzy pink monster with pink hair and pink bow, the extra staples around her mouth like tusks.
She sings of her man leaving her and finding someone new, remembering their happy times on the beach.
January 18th
Even a generic tree background is identifiably one of my photographs of Ocean Grove. [flickr]
Another singing puppet video [IG]
[ PRESS PLAY ]
January 19th
December 29th, I bring my cat to the ER for seizures and post her test results.
This reminds him of when he took me to the ER with kidney stones.
He draws a red background from the test lettering, copying my hospital bed pose. [IG]
The crosshatched face lines and nubby teeth inspired from his metal watch.
He also posts a tinted image with green tones that match shadows in the photo of my IV arm.
January 24th
The glowing red and the knees up position of his last drawing brings Stefan to this similar positioned photograph from the 90’s, with a bike reflector glowing in the background.
and this photo in the same folder of my early 20’s.
which, combined, leads Stefan to my heartbreak.
The Happy Hour flier inspired by the drunkeness of my old roommate, the vertical lines of the hallway from the wooden fence behind my naked figure, the bright red from the bike reflector shining in the hallway background.
February 4th
February 8th
I send a link:
https://www.instagram.com/matieresfecales
March 7th
Shortly after I posted a throwback to my second lung collapse scar,
he posts two old wound photos. [IG] [IG]
January 8th, I post a video, my eyes slits with a dot of light, wondering about smell in my pandemic isolation. [IG]
He draws my face mid sniff with similar eyes. [IG]
On January 22nd, I posted this Bernie meme as mashed up with The Prisoner. Because I am predictable. [IG]
The medical mask and cradling arm position brings him to my preemie baby photos, one tagged [fb] from 2010, the other posted 2014 [IG].
He draws the doctor’s hands in hospital green, but in mittens like Bernie. [IG]
You brilliant man.
March 8th
February 9th, I start posting photos [fb] while staying at my mother’s house with my sickly cats. First this:
which brings him to these old family photos of kids frilly dresses. [flickr flickr]
(I found this image on a google search of Stefan. It’s not in his Instagram anymore.)
The dress color and abstract rocking horse from my mother’s textured metallic decorative boxes.
Two weeks prior, I post to instagram my first two oil paintings from childhood. [IG]
These bring him to a [flickr] photo of woman gazing at art
right below it in the the [flickr] feed, three photographs of me with red hair and my cane.
he combines it with the previous family photo:
We become four girls, looking at a window [IG] with the pastel color scheme of the painting.
March 10th
More Mom’s house. [fb]
which brings him to the private, personal progress pics auto-uploaded from my phone to flickr, when body-checking myself years prior with a shaved head.
which leads him to my work for hire photos of kewpie dolls.
So he draws this [IG]
Posted February 22nd, a favorite old photograph of mine [fb]
The purple haze to the upper right, the lettering above the head, and the similar pose leads him to repost something from his Myspace days. He adds orange light flare to his old graphic. [IG]
March 18th
And these [fb] at my mother’s house
makes for a repost of this older self portrait of his [IG]
and me in a beach hat [fb]
which brings him to my mom in a similar hat on her wedding day [flickr]
incorporating a nearby image of her past [flickr]
and a [IG] post of my childhood from 2014
The abstract shapes of light on glass in the wedding background becomes a rectangle of monster horror, the cat becomes a shirt graphic. [IG]
This [fb] photo
brings him back to our last Halloween together, a similar expression on my face
and others from that night.
His drawing is tinted to match the dark purplish shadows of his bloodied face. His hand becomes mine. Instead of a unicorn doll, the horn becomes a clown hat. (reposted [IG] in 2024)
From that same last Halloween:
He draws the inverse matching the drawing to the tones in his skin and the cardboard. Our initials behind him. I’ve got one eye. He’s wearing a clown hat again. [IG]
Both of us capturing each other’s scared soft inner tiny squishiness.
The [fb] of me with a watering can
brings him to me wearing the same dress, which I’d uploaded in 2014 [IG]
Uploaded that same week; a photograph of my favorite Christmas ornament since childhood. [IG]
The dress and forward lean of kidsy me, the plants inspiring flowers. The chubby face, stick up hair, green, and arm positions from the pixie ornament, the Christmas theme continued.
And these [fb]
bring him to this photo I’d also uploaded in 2015. [IG]
The pointy leaves angled towards my forehead becomes a knife, my mother’s hands and mine swapped.
March 20th
March 28th
And these [fb]
which becomes warring sisters [IG]
March 30th
These [fb fb] posted of my mother’s house from February of this year:
brings him to this image [IG] of her house from June 2014
and this showing the OCD of my mother’s painted lightswitch plate. [IG]
The green walls of mom’s sunporch, and mom’s lightswitch plate, combined, leads him to this of googly eyes on a green lightswitch at the WFMU radio station from 2019. [IG]
So he creates a video of a one eyed creature hand in hand with another [IG] and tagged the video with the following:
#planetstef #friends #friend #bffs #bestie #bestfriends #friendship #love #depression #loss #construction #paper #puppets #instafriends #insomnia #support #mentalhealth #grief #suffering #laughter #live be #silly #die #death #originalart #originalthought #creativity #is a barren #wasteland #thankyou
[ PRESS PLAY ]
just fucking kill me.
April 4th
April 7th
April 8th
I’d once emailed Stefan:
“For the record. You are my physical ideal. You have inferred in the past that you seem to think I prefer something somehow other than you. Terribly not so.
Ben Gazzara in Anatomy of a Murder. John Cassavetes, well, at any point really. a very very young Martin Landau. Peter O’Toole as a very young man in a white collared shirt with a cigarette in his mouth and a drink in the other, frazzled. Sting in Dune (but only for his physique). Very very young David Gilmour. Christian Slater in Heathers, for the teenage girl me. I think the fellow my Great Aunt was married to, who then ran off three months later never to return was probably one of the most handsome faces I’ve ever seen in my life.
That’s what I actually find physically attractive in men.”
He didn’t react well to this. I clarified:
“I only brought up examples of aesthetics I like because of things you’ve said in the past about what you mistakenly seemed to think was my type, the sort of look I preferred, that very different from your own. I was trying to somehow show you that you are the epitomy of attractive in my world. Purely physically, aesthetically, purely based on that body of yours that I know you are self consious of, I find you lovely. I can only say that with confidence based on how I viewed you when we first began hanging out before I knew you well, though – because since then, learning who you are, getting to know you, becoming close to you, that has made you more attractive to me than anything I could have imagined, and I’d still find you staggeringly beautiful and desirable if you looked like Seth Rogan.”
Two weeks prior, I post a screenshot of Anatomy of a Murder [fb] with the caption:
“I’m trying to watch Anatomy of a Murder, which I know I’ve seen before, but the goddamn shots, the music, the lighting, the reveals, the acting, it all had me in awe already. But now I’m finding myself truly distracted by the overwhelming presence / sexiness of broody Ben Gazzara. It’s just too much. I can hardly even look at him.”
Stefan draws Gazzarra in clown form, his upswirl hair, the peak of his open collar, the background echoed with square shapes to one side, the long rectangles to the other. [IG]
When in doubt, compare ear shape.
April 13th
One week prior I posted these selfies [fb] [IG]
My orangey hair and big head brings him back to this self portrait from early 2010. [flickr]
and self portrait taken previously in 2010. [flickr]
The jack-in-the-box legs from the iron jewelry organizer behind me, the radiator inspiring the accordion of the clown body, the stripes repeated, the color palette adapted from all, the art on the wall, the door slammed shut, my wacky head and hair. [IG]
May 20th
Three days prior, I’d posted some of my landlord’s stellar craftmanship [fb]
which abstractly brings Stefan back here to May of 2012 [flickr]
and more from that evening [flickr]
and another uploaded the same week in 2012 [flickr]
which leads him to a similar photo from 2013 [flickr]
The sausage, bent and unbent fingers, and drawings inspire the creatures with elements added from the black and white photographs. [IG]
You clever adorable man.
More of my landlord’s bullshit, installing a new buzzer. [fb]
Which brings Stefan back to more WFMU googly eyes. [IG]
This inspires more of Stefan’s googly eye puppet singing, him choosing a plain background that matches the wall behind the intercoms, a triangle nose like the down arrow button. [IG]
[ PRESS PLAY ]
this is killing me.
June 9th
Repost. [IG]
I’d thought that he’d given/sold the painting to the hospital, that it was hanging somewhere. I guess that’s naive of me, but I’d assumed he’d charmed the nurses and gave them a present or something? He had first posted this painting to his instagram two years prior (which I’d totally missed at the time). Only now, pouring over his instagram for this obsessive documentation, I have found that initial post [IG] and his conversational comment under it:
Wait. He brought this crazy painting of me with him when he was doing inpatient treatment?!?
He brought a painting of me to an institution.
He brought
a painting
of me
to an institution.
This was a scene from our comic book Romance From Beyond. The painting depicts the expression made when the girl, waiting for her fella to pick her up for their first date, gets a phone call that her beau has died in a car accident on his way to her, and she screams in heartbroken fury at the news.
He can’t be dead, we are supposed to be in love!
June 12th
June 14th
I post a silly video.
June 16th
Stefan and I talk to each other about our recent ups and downs in life, medical woes, and mental health.
June 18th
One month prior, I repost a high school photo for World Goth Day [fb]
leading him back to self portrait from 2010. [flickr]
He keeps the pink tones. [IG]
July 3rd
Posted three weeks prior [fb]
He matches the color to the highlight of my face. [IG]
A cosplayer? The profile does not exist. [IG]
July 5th
June 15th, I post the cover of my composition book with stickers. [fb]
The grasping hands and open mouth of Art Ettinger leads him back to party friends in the 90’s. [flickr]
The woman on the left now has Art Ettinger’s arms, with a rectangle behind them like the shape of the other stickers. [IG]
July 5th
Stefan and I talk about cheezy horror.
July 11th
June 18th, I post about learning how to DJ at WFMU with square red and yellow buttons. [IG]
The color and subject matter leads him back to May 2012 of a Doctor Who record donning the locker of a WFMU DJ [flickr]
near it in the feed this 2012 drawing [flickr]
and 2012 selfie [flickr]
He combines them.
July 16th
<link to my WFMU show>
August 5th
July 20th, I post a new version of “four fictional characters that describe you” as well as my previous versions. [IG]
Spawn of Chucky brings him to my old headshot I’d posted years prior [IG]
next to my headshot, these images [IG IG]
The roughly colored dark red square mimicking the blood splatter in Chucky’s background, emulating the white border around my childhood headshot. [IG]
August 6th
July 25th. A pie made for a movie night event themed for The Shining [fb]
This leads him back to this bloody cake from the wedding I attended in June of 2014. [flickr]
He uses wedding guests at different angles
as well as a photo from the Seattle Erotic Art Festival uploaded a week prior to the wedding [flickr]
to create a woman looking at her reflection in a mirror. [IG]
Face angles combined.
The hat topped with skirt folds and hair buns, the mirror made of pie crust, the fire dancers hand repurposed.
a drop of blood on her thumb like the dripping heart on the wedding cake.
August 8th
July 14th. An Arthur Rackham illustration I’d had framed and long forgot was a flyer for the goth club Limelight. [IG]
So he mixes it up with this from July 2018 for the release of Deep Red a horror magazine [fb]
Combining the faces. [IG]
The color tint chosen from the Deep Red background.
One month prior, July 21st, I post a throwback [IG] to my early 20’s when I was fifty pounds heavier.
The stripes in the background bring him to the thin stripes
on my shirt pattern from 2017. [IG]
He combines them, my fat squinty eyes, my toothy grimace, the plastic bag on my head becoming a skull helmet, tinted blue to match the clothing of the men behind fat me. [IG]
September 3rd
June 6th I repost this image from seeing Jane’s Addiction perform. [fb]
which brings Stefan back to our museum trip. [flickr]
He combines them, the ripples of water from the round satellite dish. [IG]
These colors. Rain from streaks of stage light.
September 10th
Stefan and I talk about the pointlessness of existence and King Crimson.
September 13th
Again, my previous “Four Fictional Characters That Describe You” [IG]
The woman on the lower right from Fleabag brings him back to this, which was drawn by me.
He combines my drawing with Fleabag, adds the cheekbones and eye scar of Herr Star, adds a pink/orange border like the color that is behind Fleabag, and adds a vignette to match the scene from Logan’s Run. [IG]
[DATE???]
Again, on July 20th, I also post a new version of “Four Fictional Characters that Describe You”. Leela’s hair, Joy’s tank top, and Cinderella’s dress [IG]
leads him to uploads of me trying on outfits to attend Hedwig
The spider/vampire theme from the spiderweb pillowcase in the background, the facial expression and upturned pointed shoulder and hair from the selfies, Marty’s eyes, the textured blue from Cinderella’s floor.
September 15th
Three days prior. A photo of me having a sick day with my cat. [fb]
which brings him back to these reclining post-party photos from the 90’s [flickr]
He replicates the vignetting of the disposable camera, giving a pink and green tint to match the frogs [IG]
More 90’s. My first girlfriend. [flickr]
The red tones from the poster in the background. [IG]
September 20th
October 18th
October 20th
I post a Hellraiser quote [fb]
and an old painting of mine with a woman holding a sausage, which end up atop each other like so [fb]
which brings him to this photograph of me from 2019 with a blue scarf, a yellow background, splayed arms, pork roll label behind my head. [IG]
He keeps Pinhead’s question mark. [IG]
December 5th-30th
Stefan and I speak through December about rehab.