home is...

Yesterday I drove seven hours to discover that you can never call a place a your home unless it has your heart.

Today I drove eight hours back to meditate over the amount of heart that is in my own home.

(100% cintiq+photoshop)

"soulfields of the spirits"

FloydFest2010

So last weekend I hit a milestone in my life and went to FloydFest 2010. It was the first time I have ever attended an event of this magnitude. It was the first time in 17 years that I had set up my own tent and slept in it outside.
My good friend deven came on down as well along with his camera and took the few photos I have here. The fact that there are no more photos than these testifies that we were too engaged in the beauty of the earth music to fulfill our "tourist" duties.
My life is changed...

It hit me around 1:45am on Sunday as the children of the earth were dancing around a campfire under the light of the full moon that we are all part of one big soul...we are all connected to this world and the few of us who are awake to this need truth need to do all we can to reconcile the relationship between our mother earth and the rest of her lost children.

I'm not fearful that humans will wipe out the earth, we don't have the power, but if we don't stop acting as a cancer on the planet, the planet's immune system will kick in and wipe us all out and replace us with a species that has more respect for the host.

I have seen Floyd, I KNOW we can live a sustainable Green life.

The chorus of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" comes to mind

"We are Starlight,

We are Golden,

And we have to get ourselves back to the garden."

Peace and Love brothers and sisters!

-RP

Star Field

For Maurice...

Musical Interlude

Hey, I ain't all business all the time...

Here's some highlights from a couple recent home recordings of me jamming out with my Roland FP-7. This is all pretty much improv...

I can be found jamming with others in an undisclosed warehouse in an office park near my house every Thursday night.

BP oil spill

I've tried to avoid making outright political statements on this blog (you can bet they are subtly implied through most of my artwork) but it's irritating to keep my thoughts on this issue bottled up inside...

When you have the "Cleanest/ most Eco-friendly/ Socially minded" oil corporation of them all create such a environmentally catastrophic event through their complete greedy disregard for any type of life and continue to epically fail in their response....

You get these moments where you tell yourself that your "progressive" views probably don't have a full rooting in reality, that your judgement of these global corporations is a bit biased... I mean look at BP, look how much money the give to land preservation funds and Eco-friendly groups! Now they can't be all that bad?

It's all a lie, they donate massive amounts of money to keep the environmentalists out of their business. They don't give a flying fizgig about you as a human... if a billion people have to die to turn a profit, so be it!

I'd rail out that this is all the fault of capitalism, but let's face it, if Adam Smith were still alive, he would probably be calling for justice to be granted to these corporate criminals.




Humans of the world unite! you have nothing to loose but your chains!

New Pencil Test

Here's a few seconds of the long 3 minute sequence from "MKT"

Ana's Story

So in late December 2009 I was asked volunteer some illustrations to go with a story written by a 12 year old girl from the area.

It was called Ana's Story

She wrote about how circumstances in her family situation had forced her mother, younger sister and herself out into the street.

She went on to write about the difficulties of moving around and trying to have a normal social life at school. What do you tell your friends when they want to have a sleepover at your house...

...When your house is a homeless shelter?

...or the street?

She also wrote about the things and people in her life that inspired her to persevere through the hard times.

Her family was fortunate enough to get into a transitional housing program and eventually move on to affordable housing.

In North Virginia, affordable housing has become a sad political issue. We have a very large population of people making less than 25K a year. These people need places to live, but the housing market in North Virginia is ridiculously expensive, what few plots of land that are left are generally turned into lots of high priced professional condos or "McMansions". This means employees in the service sector have to move farther and farther out of the area to find an affordable home adding to their transportation costs.

What's even more disturbing is local politicians and groups of local home owners have been working together to suppress development of affordable housing. They believe that a close proximity of affordable housing or rental properties near their wealthy neighborhoods will cause their own housing value to drop making it harder for them to sell off their properties for more than what they are physically worth when they decide to retire.

It's unfortunate that the greedy nature of these individuals creates such hardships for the lower income workers in the area. The lower income workers often work longer, harder hours in the foundation services that keep the higher end of the local economy afloat.

It is my hope that this book will bring awareness to the plight of the lower income workers and their families. These are the hands that truly built and maintain our communities and they have just as much right to live in the communities where they work as anyone else. If the current residents cannot comprehend this, then I hope their children can.

As Ana says about being homeless...

"It is not a choice
It can happen to Anyone
If we work Together, we can overcome Homelessness"

We are still working out how we will distribute this book, so I don't have a listing for where you can see the full story and set of illustrations at this time, however, I'll update this blog on that info when a decision is reached.

In the meantime if you are interested in Reston Interfaith and the critical and varied social services they do in the Herndon/ Reston areas of North Virginia please visit there website...

www.restoninterfaith.org