Minutes

Someone told me "fill your appetite with stories, they last longer than a happy mean". I thought it was an excellent advise for a fat person like myself.

Went to the office to finish up some work, and specifically to put the Haring portrait in one of the two frames that Nick constructed the day before. Even though I was planning to stay late in the studio, but once I discovered that the painting was too big for the frame because Nick matched the size of the canvas to the outside of the frame instead of the inside, I got upset and decided to go out. I joined C at the Houdini Estate on Laurel Canyon for an event. I got there a bit after 8:30, just about an hour before it ended. We left the Estate around 10, planning to link up at Doheny Room with these two German girls we had just met there. We walked up Lookout Mountain Ave, and then Stanley Hills Dr. to C's car, when one of the neighbors stepped outside his house to attain to his barking dogs as another neighbor was walking his dog passing us on the road. The guy, who was yapping at his dog, noticed us, stepped outside his gate, started talking to us, and asked us about the event and if it was still going on. Somehow the conversation kept going and he invited us in for a beer. The guy turned out to be Danny Lohner, a very accomplished musician who had worked with Nine Inch Nails, Angels & Airwaves, Marilyn Manson and many more. We ended up staying at his house till 4 am. It turned out we knew some of the same people and shared some random commonalities, such as having the same birthday as C's and turns out they're both from the same place in Texas. It turned out to be an interesting night, gossiping about much of the stuff I used to be involved, or wanted to be involved with, during my days as a musician.

Grace told me I should watch La Grande Belleza, so I started watching it last week and little by little finished watching it tonight. It took me a few different attempts because I don't understand Italian and when it comes to subtitles, I get distracted and lose track fairly easily. It was definitely a nice movie to watch, because it holds great qualities and specifically great noir qualities which are hard to come by when combined with a coherent storyline. But what I really enjoyed was Rome, where the movie takes place. My one visit to Rome was pretty recently, in January of 2016, and what a powerful and impactful place. Its exquisiteness stretches to infinity and you cannot be, but jealous of its everlasting beauty. Rome, like Jerusalem, New-York, Paris, Athens and more, was once the center of the world. I like to think, and I hope, that Los Angeles will be remembered as the center of the world of the 21st century. To become the center of the world, a city has to have the circumstances that dictate world affairs - if in arts, politics, media or faith. But then maybe also money. LA's power lies in Money, because it dictates that people with money find what they're looking for, and people without money find people with money. LA is where the American dream is not taboo, but visible. Just like beauty is so visible in Rome. LA is to the 21st century what New-York was to the twentieth century - at least I hope, because it will need more than Money. It will need become a great beauty.

Had to get up very early to meet the people from LA WEEKLY at union station in preparation for this year's Artopia. At 8:30 we toured the very large and impressive hall to the left when you enter the station where the old original teller counter had been meticulously restored and public access is prohibited. I picked the spot where I am going to present my art and work on a painting in collaboration with the public during the event on August 26th. I always found union station very fascinating and an iconic symbol of west coast Art Deco architecture. There is something very magical when combining Art Deco and palm trees - as if palm trees held the secret of art deco design within them until it was discovered by humans. Anyways, Union Station and its surrounding El Pueblo were a reoccurring theme during my college years as part of my curriculum, so my familiarity with the aspects that make it such an incredible historic landmark keep accompany me, and now it brings me to the point where art meets with Union Station and I just find it very unique. I still haven't started to work on my piece for the show but I know if would have to do with Los Angeles and most likely more specifically with Union Station.

After work I made plans to go to Doheny Room for my friend Taylor Chung's, who goes by the name Wenzday, birthday. My plan was to go by myself and stay for a drink of club soda and then to go home but these plans got scrapped when C and his friend T called and said they wanted to go. Just before we left my place, my ex girlfriend Tonia called out of the blue, and asked what was going on because her and her friend Amy were looking to ditch some guy, so I told them to join us, so I ended up going with a little entourage and stay for a few drinks of club soda. Earlier that week I made a conscious decision not to drink alcohol when I am out because I wanted to be productive the next day. My crew didn't make the same conscious decision and after a while everyone got very nutty. When the club shut down at 2 I asked to be dropped off, but I heard the next day that after I got dropped off things got even nuttier at Amy's apartment. I never liked being around Tonia when she got drinking nutty so I was just happy to go to sleep.

Clio sent me a picture of her almost decapitated pinky about two hours before we were suppose to go to dinner at The Ivy. She managed to slice her finger, and part of her nail, with a peeler at work the day before. But it wasn't that bad in reality. It's just that she used this protective rubber sock that looked like a miniature condom over the bandage, which had consequentially suffocated the cut and made the entire skin around it damp and frosty-looking.

T: It doesn't look THAT bad.

C: It looks really bad.

C: I'm just worried, that I already fucked it up - like it's really infected. Does it look infected from the picture?

T: No, it just looks very damp - the skin that is. It's not that bad.

C: It's numb though.

T: Just put a new bandage on it and let's go to dinner. And then when we go back to my place to park the car I will properly take care of your finger and then we can go out.

C: Ok, fuck.

T: I used to be a male nurse.

C: Really?

T: I'm joking, that's not true...

T: At least not the male part.

C: Liar! Why'd you tell me you were!?

T: But I know what to do...

C: You don't think I need to see a doctor? HONESTLY!

C: Please don't tell me that I don't need to just because you want to hang out!

C: I literally need my fingers. I'm a guitar player.

T: I'll see it when I get to your place and if I think it's bad I'll take you to the ER.

C: Okay. I might not be totally ready at 8:15. This has really thrown a wrench on my plans.

T: Try to be, at least by 8:30.

T: I heard the ER is only accepting people till 9.

C: OMG lol.

C: Also uhh, how nice should I look?

After The Ivy, we went to the Highlight, a new rooftop club on top of the new Dream Hotel on Selma and Cahuenga, and then to Liaison where we joined Michael Utsinger and Ivy Levan, and then we went with everyone there to Bar Sinister.

K said I should watch the Tom Delonge documentary, The Pursuit of Tone, so tonight after dinner I sat in my living room and watched it. Blink 182, and more than that, the presence of Tom in the band, and his side projects, have been pretty much the last stroke of musical influence, and reverence, that I have accepted into my heart. Chronologically, there was nothing that really moved me after that - and I'm fine with that. I like keeping my influences specific and in that perspective I am doing a good job in being a minimalist. That is not to say that I don't have many other musical influences, because I do. But the way Blink and Tom stay relevant in my life, differentiate them from others in a way. There is something very attractive, and very romantic, in his campy lyrics that whenever I listen to them I begin to think, or to reminisce, or to fall in love - about, on, and with my life. Just like with everything, I don't dig too deep even when I find a sweet spot. So while I write that Blink and Tom are a major influence, I probably know less about them, than, let's say the average blink fan. So by watching this documentary I tapped into many innuendos that I knew existed but never seen manifested by Tom before and it was nice to watch and let it become so acute and explicable. The way he broke down his stepping stones of learning things about his art, his music, reminded me of my experience with my art development in the past year since I started painting. The way that he observed other bands he looked up to in the beginning, in a way that he and them are basically the same - but that they're just doing the same stuff on stage while he's not, is what escorts me in the beginning of my artistic journey. As long as you involve your human touch, your individuality, and deliver your experience genuinely, it wouldn't matter if you can't really play a guitar or can't paint, because in the process you learn how to shape things so they become beautiful and influential. This is something I had already been practicing, but it just made it a little bit clearer that the potential of my art doesn't lie in my initial artist talent, but in the process of delivering my emotions and in the learning process of improving my techniques.

Had C, M and B over at my place. We watched a little bit of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and then went to The Friend in Silver Lake, a newish bar owned by Andre Saraiva. Wade Crescent, and Dom Prietto, who I went to see there, are some of the same people that used to be a part of an earlier club called Paul & Andre's, and later Smoke & Mirrors, which was what I would consider the closest thing LA has ever had to Studio 54, at least in my time here. This was about seven years ago, and it was a lot of fun. Especially the Smoke & Mirrors days at the Hollywood Standard Hotel. It was a completely dark and undecorated loungey room, with a couple of private areas, that was untouched by any kind of restrictions which LA is so bound to. So that drew many of the nightlife devotees to just unleash their debaucheries until the wee hours, way past the standard 2am party cutoff time. The music was good, I guess I could call it fashion music, or fashion disco, or maybe fashion boogie -  it was just what should be played everywhere you want people to have fun. It was the Lindsay Lohans and Mickey Rourkes type of celebrities that came there and got their kind of models-and-cocaine party style they had always longed for. But these sceney golden days are all very far behind. I guess The Friend is now in the process of bringing it back - or so it claims.  When we got there I noticed the music was the same as it used to be back then, which was a good first step, but nothing else made it seem like there's any potential for the same kind of experience of Smoke & Mirror to get revived. I mean, first you have to have some kind of a weird way to enter to make it a cool place - like a kitchen in most cases, and at The Friend, the entrance is just there on the street, and the inside is pretty visible from the outside. Then you need a much tighter door, and they just let almost anyone in. And lastly, there are no private areas. There are many other factors to why things that happened in 2009 don't happen in 2017. We then proceeded to Tenants of the Trees, where I took more pictures of some of the people we bumped into that night like Russian model Alina Timo.

Went to an event in the warehouse district downtown with J and P. P left early and it was almost not worth mentioning, but then I bumped into Maty Noyes and I told her that I am going to write gossip about her here, and she made a point about starting to read it, so now it's worth mentioning. I took her picture and later she introduced me to Elizabeth Wheeland, a very charming young actress from Chicago. I took a picture of her and her friend Nicole.

Went with C to an exhibition of Vivian Maier's photographs after work at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery on La Brea and 1st. There were a lot of people there and the AC just couldn't handle them all, so just like her photos, the room felt like summer in Chicago. This exhibition was "hosted" by Tim Roth and I'm not sure what exactly was his involvement, but the PR sure played a big role in bringing prices to a whole different dimension. I mean, I couldn't believe it - starting at $3750 for a "limited" edition framed 12"x12" print. Maier's story is interesting, but I don't think it was about selling her photographs to only the very rich. And it wasn't about selling her art at all. She didn't even want anyone to see it! So for her to die poor, by keeping a hidden treasure, just for someone else to capitalize on that after her death, just seems like bad taste. The show opening wasn't open to the public.

I like to think that my artwork comes out of nowhere or nothing, because this would make it very pure. But I know it's not. Nothing ever comes out of nothing, and nothing is never really pure. So that means that my art, or any art, always comes out of something. It's not that I think about what I do too much (when I do it), but it's more about what I discover later. In the beginning when people started asking me about the meaning of my L's, I didn't know what to say. I thought they came out of nowhere. But now I say that they stand for 'Los Angeles', or they stand for 'elegance' or they are the missing syllable from my name when I changed it to Ty. But when it comes to my art as a whole, portraying elegance is very important to me because no one else seems to care about elegance anymore - especially in art. It is also important to me because elegance is the opposite of noisy, and I am very sensitive to noise. I have Misophonia. I used to suffer from Misophonia, but I learned how to deal with it and avoid uncomfortable situations. Now days I don't suffer so much but just seem awkward when I'm avoiding those situations. It also made me choose curtain type of people that I can be comfortable around, so I always assess people by whether they are 'elegant' or 'noisy' before anything else. Someone can be very physically attractive, but if they are noisy they become very unattractive to me. But then someone could be unattractive, but if they are elegant they become attractive. However, it seems that elegance play a more vital part for beauties because being attractive is very important to them. While people who are not beauties rely on other traits, and since being attractive does not play a major role, they are often more noisy. Some people use noisy to their advantage, especially in art. Even if it would make a bigger impact, I would never make noisy art because it wouldn't be my art. That doesn't mean that my art is the most elegant art, but I hope it is elegant enough to counter noisy art.

K thinks that Kubrick's Lolita is an amazing movie so I started to watch it for the first time after dinner. I took the day off to run errands and around 6 pm I threw a small rack of ribs on the grill that would be ready by the time I finished exercising, cleaning and booking a place to stay for Art Basel Miami in December. From the beginning the movie was a rather faint and imbalanced version of the book with quite an unfitting cast, and after about 30 minutes I decided to just watch the Adrian Lyne version which is just as good as it gets.

Today Autumn and I finished working on the website and just before Autumn had to leave early to go to Soho House for a members yoga class, we launched it with just enough content for it to be considered launch-worthy. I kept my biography very minimal and didn't include any artist statements or CV's. It's not that I don't believe in them, it's just that I don't think mine are developed enough yet. It seems that everything is more intriguing when it is untold or hidden anyways. Too often people find me interesting at most on the first five seconds they see me. But once they get to know me they get too comfortable and less excited. Sometimes I feel that those who are fascinated by me the most are people that barely know me. It's because they want to know me but for some reason we never get to know each other. It's the same when it comes to people and celebrities. People think celebrities are so exciting but then, once they get to know them, it's usually disappointing and the excitement is replaced by just a desire to be close to fame and fortune. Being close to fame and fortune is much easier and breezy than actually being rich or famous - which is usually something only a small percentage of people can really handle well. To celebrate the launch of my website I went to Cloak and Dagger which is a black only attire, members only, mainstream industrial Goth club. It's also something to do on a Tuesday night in Hollywood. I sat at Ivy Levan's table. Ivy is really sweet, but she gets nutty when she goes out. Her entourage was four guys who all looked the same - the light short hair, 5 o'clock shadow type. I mainly kept to myself and chatted with other people. I find it impossible to keep up with anything Ivy says or does. It was a mild celebration - it's been a while since anything really interesting has happened at that place.

Went to the office and worked for a bit. Then B came by to ask me if I knew anything about air-bnb. He wants to rent out two rooms in his house on a short term basis, which he is now subleasing to long term tenants. Well he didn't just come to pique my knowledge on rentals, but what he really came for is to see if I can help him with money while he's transitioning from long term rentals to short term ones because he needs to give his long term their deposit back. I told him I'll think about it. B never has any money. It's so depressing. When I met him nine years ago he was a painter and had more money than me. He is one of those people that believe that if you constantly think of something you'll end up having it. Well, he had been thinking alright, but nothing happened. I just can't understand why he insists on thinking so much when it hasn't gotten him anywhere. B has it all wrong. The best things happen in between thinking. Thinking stops you from doing what you would have done if you weren't thinking. Instincts, on the other hand, are when you do something without thinking, and that's usually when you discover how much you can actually do. On the way home I stopped at Ralph's for some groceries for the week. The bagger messed up everything and I had to rearrange everything in the begs when I got to my car because I didn't want to make him feel bad. I just wish they would let me bag my own groceries, but I guess it's also good that someone has a job to do.