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April 19, 2012, 1:03 pm in public
The Flash Player and a browser with Javascript support are needed.. These are versions of the base images I am printing to 8×8 stretched/framed canvases this week for my Life in a Box project. After doing so, I’ll be adding acrylics and epoxy to enhance the images with corresponding translucent colors and glitters/metallic flakes, and give them a thick, shiny finish with texture. April 17, 2012, 9:52 am in public
The Flash Player and a browser with Javascript support are needed.. Went up to Guemes Island for a day of R&R last Saturday, and boy did I need it. Let’s start the slideshow with a picture of my fistfull of dead babies. April 13, 2012, 3:16 pm in public
My skin is smoother now but there are still noticeable impressions in both cheeks and between my eyes. If I go in again, I’ll only want to bother with the cheeks. I don’t need flawless, that would be too artificial for my taste, but I do think that I will take the opportunity to work in a little deeper with the areas that saw the most infection. We won’t know for sure what the approach to a second round will be until 6 more weeks, which is the full life of the process I underwent the first time. As per my massage education, I’ve taken to massaging my cheeks in the morning to stimulate tissue regrowth and get the fibers to lay in proper directions as I heal. April 13, 2012, 10:01 am in public
WigsFor absolutely everyone!
I offer many different types of wigs, depending on your needs. If you have an idea for a project please get in touch and let me know how I can help you.
There are straps with hooks on them that are attached to loops of fabric at the nape of the neck. Sometimes rather than hooks, there are alternative securing methos like velcro, but not often. For added security, put the dreads up and pin the fabric tracks of the wig cap to your natural hair as close to the scalp as possible with tight hair pins, then let the dreads down to cover them. DreadsHand made, steam sealed, 100% Kanekalon Dreadlock extensionsPlease note that the following prices do NOT include installation! 
Double-Ended DreadsDouble-Ended dreads are extra long, and folded in half during installation to create two dreads from the same section. 60 dreads are recommended for a full head of extensions.
Single-Looped Dreads
Ordering Fake HairOrder turnaround time is currently: 8-12 weeks
Shipping: I ship priority mail in very large padded envelopes. I quote the price of shipping with my hair price. Refunds: I will send you progress photos, as well as photos of your finished order before sending to ensure your total satisfaction. For this reason I DO NOT OFFER REFUNDS. I will do the best I can to ensure your total satisfaction with your purchase.
Ordering: I accept orders through email. To place an order please email courtnee [at] gmail [dot] com. Colors In-stock (as of march 2012): The colors I have on the site are just the accent colors I have in stock right now. I can get any manner of natural color including black and have a bunch of that in stock also. I can also get other accent colors as well :)
For more pictures of my fake hair projects, check out the FAKE HAIR ALBUM!! InstallationNon-Chemical synthetic hair servicesAs well as my pre-made DREADS and WIGS, I offer dread installations. I live in downtown Seattle and work out of my house. Here’s the skinny:
I do not offer cuts or color services. AFTERCAREYour dreads can last you years with proper care and maintenance. Washing your dreads: To wash loose dreads, swirl in a shampoo dilution, towel and then air dry, or place in a pillowcase and launder in a washing machine in a gentle cold water cycle with a tiny amount of gentle detergent. I like Victorias Secret detergent myself, it smells amazing. To wash installed dreads, keep in mind these tips from Quinnsters site: Basically, your dreads will become very heavy when wet, and the only part of your hair which really needs to be washed is the scalp. You should therefore try to keep the lengths of your dreads held up and out of the way when shampooing. Try tying them all together loosely on top on your head then tip your head upside down and use one hand to shampoo, and one to hold the dreads out of the way. Alternatively, cover the lengths with a plastic bag (but some water may still run down the lengths when you rinse).
You shouldn’t need to shampoo your dreads more than once a week, and you get away with shampooing them far less frequently than that. Maintaining your dreads: Over time, with wear and abuse, dreads will begin to nub or lose their tighness, or both. This is normal, it’s just like how cloth will develop numbs after many washings or how your New Rocks eventually break in and stop hurting your feet. Here are some tips on how to keep your dreads looking good for years come: Frizzies will develop on dreads over time, they will look like little chunks of tangled up hair that stick out from the shape of the dread. It’s ok to trim these, they won’t mess the rest of the dread up, but only trim the obvious chunky parts off, as dreads are supposed to have a little bit of fuzz and texture to them naturally. Untwisting can also happen, usually in the thick parts of my dreads, since the ends are sealed with glue and don’t tend to unravel. To deal with this, periodically twist the dread back into shape and steam or zap with a hair drier on high heat. Be very careful to keep your heat source moving along the length of the dread so you don’t crispy fry them, particularly with a hair drier. Hold the twist for a good minute so you allow the dreads to cool while still tightly twisted. I recommend doing this after every three months of regular wear, or so. Dreads will also SMELL if you haven’t Washed them. Look up a few paragraphs for instructions. April 9, 2012, 2:32 pm in public
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I believe I may be developing an unhealthy avoidance of accidentals. It’s so hard to keep track of pitch that when I see that shit I just close the music and look for something easier. April 9, 2012, 1:44 pm in public
It’s been a week since I removed my profile from Facebook. With the exception of the occasional realization like “Hmm, I would take a picture of this street art and post it on Facebook if I still had a Facebook..”, and occasionally thinking of people I miss keeping track of, it’s been absolutely marvelous. The conversations I’m having around not having the profile almost completely revolve around the experience of being unable to connect profoundly with myself, form sturdy opinions, and stay in a place of self awareness while using my Facebook to process fledgling thoughts and allowing a group dynamic to inform how they evolve. Additionally, the sense of vacation and welcome quiet are helping me integrate the things I am learning about myself now that I’m accessing my needs, and taking the time and energy to connect with myself and the people who are important to me, directly. A danger I’ve discovered about Facebook especially, but also any form of community really, is the loss of the true definition of “friend”. I am taking that word back and reeling in who falls under that reverence. As a side benefit I am realizing some things about the care and consideration I require of the people who are actually close to me, as well as considering how to compassionately manage people who think of themselves as such who have been, as it turns out, overprivileged. My experience away from Facebook has become about clarity, understanding and acceptance. I am currently enjoying a secure sense of strength and certainty. My prediction is that I will return to Facebook sometime in the next few weeks, with a very different approach to how I utilize it in the communication of my thoughts and feelings. April 7, 2012, 1:41 pm in public
“Om”, Self photographed in 2006. Original description, added to DeviantArt in a rare response to the comments the image received.
April 7, 2012, 12:24 pm in public
For as long as I can remember, I have identified with with my thinking, and being thought of, as a naturally extroverted, gregarious, outgoing person. It wasn’t a conscious choice, it just happened somehow that I caught onto the facts that a) I did well at creating myself as the center of attention and b) that people who are noticeable are the ones who receive the affirmation and encouragement I wanted.
In that moment, I determined that the quiet, introspective me, wasn’t good enough. That being that person made the people I cared about hurt and worry, got me in trouble, and being available and seen was what was best for everyone. Through this and other observations, over time nurturing my fledgling ability to communicate my desires authentically and effectively was overlooked. It is true: I have magnetic, charismatic social talents, and I do occasionally truly and fully enjoy going out into the world and sharing them. Coupled with my intuition and understanding of people, I’ve experienced amazing, even transformative social interactions that I highly value as part of the life I’ve lead, and I am certain I will again. However, I have habitually, and with potentially misguided examination, met my more frequent tendencies toward solitude — though intense and from a deep place — with shame, and all too often with a vehement self inflicted emotional punishment.
Due to many factors I spent years in an agonizing isolated depression, in pain, online; a constant pressurized stream of my fears, my weaknesses, and my disappointments lurching passionately from my mind into IRC channels full of people ready to commiserate and affirm my negative beliefs, which were carefully constructed to appear as though I thought they were completely and utterly right. And I probably did. It took me until 27 years into my life to be able to say, compassionately and authentically, that I didn’t enjoy loud live music, crowds, and bars so packed I’d find myself having to scream in order to be heard speaking. Due to other facets of my personality as well as prioritizing social interaction, it was scary and incredibly hard to ask for the closer one on one and small group connections my soul was really seeking. Until my 30′s I met the physical disturbances in my body, and the numerous emotional hurdles present in most of my preparation for social events, with blame and negativity. For years, I’d get churning nervous shits while preparing to go out, holding onto the promise of inhibition annihilation by way of drugs and alcohol to power through it.
Self scorn, and more frequently now self-doubt, is still my first response toward wanting to be with myself, in many cases. It’s a long road back from it being nearly impossible to trust when I need to be alone, and when I am trying to withdraw to punish myself in silence. Over time, they had simply become the same thing. As I’ve aged and learned more about how and why to be alone, I’ve started to embrace alone time, usually in the form of travel. For a long period of my young-adult life I forced myself to constantly value expressing connection over taking time for myself, in part for fearing that if I took that time my job/lover/friend/parent/insert-connection-of-value-here would be gone when I returned, and as such often undermined the limited time I had so boldly and bravely taken. Boldly and bravely may even be an understatement. Even now that I am beginning to master recognizing my need for solitude in wilderness, and having felt the amazing freeing power in listening to that call, prioritizing it is still incredibly challenging. Over these last few months as I’ve been frantically struggling, I’ve known and even proclaimed to others repeatedly that I desperately need to get away for a while, even just a few days, and have yet to make it happen. There are many, many pieces to this puzzle of worth, of connection, of belonging and feeling accepted, for every one. What this woman said helped me find another one of mine: In health and otherwise, my introversion is where my revelations come from. It’s where the meaningful, impactful words I write, the ideas I share, and my awareness of the connection I feel with humanity comes from. It’s where my performances come form, it’s where the layers upon layers in my shows come from, it’s where the compulsion to create Vita Arts came from. It’s where my paintings, my music, and every self photograph I’ve used in this post comes from. 
My introversion is the birthplace of my extroversion. It’s how I communicate with my soul. Hiding isn’t always a lie. April 6, 2012, 11:45 am in public
My constant struggle to find and retain worth in myself is something I rarely truly embrace about what it’s like to be me. How childlike I am, how emotional I am, how deep and violent my internal conflicts are — Always expressed with a tinge or more of resistance, shame, disapproval, when I talk or think about them. There are so many aspects of myself I can’t actually run away from or ignore, as much as my instincts tell me I can. Which is where my talents have come in. Soul-crushed and speechless over being rejected in a relationship? Music. Reconciled a portion of deep shameful hurt toward myself? Aerial. Spitting angry, spurned, and literally sick with grief? Obsidian. Don’t know what the fuck is going on yet? Paint. They’re all abstract children of few words, they hint at what’s happening in me but don’t fully illuminate it. Through them, I hide from you in plain sight. Through them, I get to hide from myself. Through them, you see me as a truth teller while I see glimmers of truth on the surface of a giant, incredibly intricate lie. I think I’ve begun scratching the surface of what I’ve been concealing. I don’t like it very much. It’s incredibly uncomfortable. But my relationship with myself is changing, deep plates are shifting whether I like it or not, and even if I could stop it, I’ve learned enough to know I don’t want to. How the hell I’ll come through it, I honestly don’t know. What the goal is or what my life might look like in a year, I don’t know. What the fuck I’m doing or what’s happening to me or how I’m managing to function right now, I don’t know. I don’t know. Perhaps it’s all his fault. “Maybe stories are just data with a soul.” -Brené Brown I shared this long enough ago that I really needed to see it again, therefore it’s being shared again too. Her follow-up from this year that I just discovered is awesome, too, and reminds me of many, many things I’ve talked about here on neevita. “You show me a woman who can sit with a man in real vulnerability and fear, and I’ll show you a woman who’s done incredible work” -Brené Brown Hold me. I’m so exhausted. April 6, 2012, 11:21 am in public
I am finding more and more that I am frustrated by music, trying to play with other people, and not being able to pick up songs I want to cover fast enough or easily enough to make the process efficient. I’m also pretty tired of having to re-learn my original songs if I’ve walked away from them for a few months, and oftentimes avoiding working on concepts I’ve jotted down for the same reasons. So it seems I am finally learning how to read music, after countless years of avoidance and fears surrounding mechanizing whatever it is that draws me to playing it. At this point, the limitations outweigh my desire to avoid failing, sucking, and potentially losing my supposed “gift”. It’s been about a week now and I’ve practiced a few times, it’s on my mind, and I am making progress. For now, I’m expect I will stick with it, especially since I’m wasting a lot less time paging through Facebook when I’m at the computer. (It’s good to have a project.) My approach has been to remove my ear from the process as much as possible while I learn the clefs and how to read pitch, so I learn to actually read rather than use a vague sense of written music to inform how quickly I play something by ear. Now that I immediately recognize a few notes on both the standard clefs, I’m looking at a lot of different easy/level 1 music examples that I don’t know the sound of and attempting to muddle through the songs without a) looking at the keyboard and b) recognizing the song and starting to play it by ear. If I find I recognize a song I move onto the next one without finishing it, and I’m only going through each unknown song 2 or 3 times to avoid beginning to memorize it. I’m also trying to remember to say the notes I am playing out loud so I learn the note names, not just where the corresponding key is on the keyboard for each little bubble on the staff. It’s going slowly but surely. Ok, actually, it’s ging pretty fucking fast — I think I’ve spent perhaps 2 hours working on this and can already half-read bass and treble clef. However accidentals, rests, and timing are a bunch of fucking whores, and are making me mad, and can totally catch a terrible flesh eating disease and die. Here are some of the resources I’ve used to begin learning: This guy is a bit of a rambler, however the points he made in his 3-part lecture helped me figure out how I wanted to approach learning to sight-read. This is a nice basic overview I expect to return to periodically for both learning and exercise, including a bunch of stuff I still don’t understand and a really bitchin’ accent. I believe I may invest in a yearly subscription to this site, depending on how the next few weeks goes: http://www.mymusictheory.com/grade-1-contents/lessons/ http://www.mymusictheory.com/grade-1-contents/exercises/ I am using free sheet music from this source: http://makingmusicfun.net/htm/printit_piano_sheet_music_index.htm April 6, 2012, 10:11 am in public
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It seems reading pitch is basically useless without reading rhythm. This sucks. April 5, 2012, 2:52 pm in public
I am very pleased to announce that “Life in a Box” will become reality thanks to Kickstarter. If the Kickstarter goal is further exceeded today, it will be applied to the project, either by printing larger canvases, more canvases, creating an artistic hanging solution for the canvases, adding a sound element to the installation, or so on. My deepest gratitude goes to my Kickstarter backers: Pam Anderson, David Lydon, Gail Lydon, Colby Perry, Greg Rubin, Omri Alon, Michaela Eaves, Jon Nelson, Colleen Mathis, Scott Steffy, Robert Scott, Roseanne Edson, Ryan Lane, Daniele, Butangas, and The WILD SIDE Foundation. Another exciting detail: The last backer which put me over the top was a stranger who found the project through the “Ending soon” tab on the discover section. http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/ending-soon?ref=sidebar April 4, 2012, 2:51 pm in public
Firstly, though metaphysically true, the title of this post is somewhat misleading. I still have a business, and an artist page on Facebook. However, my personal Facebook, which had become my main connection with my friends, many fans, and my own thought process, is currently disabled due to temporary meltdown. Facebook isn’t the problem, really. This isn’t like the last time I voluntarily walked away from it due to privacy concerns and a general dissatisfaction with how the thing is run. The problem is the crutch, the white noise that confuses and distracts me, and the flat-out addiction I’ve come to feel from the instant gratification of using Facebook to express myself, raw and incompletely, to other people. I have to say, though I really do feel that taking a break from Facebook is a smart, good decision for me, yesterday was fucking hard. My phone alerts were virtually non-existent. I repeatedly had the inclination to hop on my laptop, even though nothing new was to be had. I caught myself wondering if anything I would find hurtful or upsetting was being done or said in a social arena that I can no longer monitor. I missed commenting on my friends posts, leaving people <3′s, and sharing funny pictures. I thought about things I wanted to share on my friends walls, and then remembered, I can’t. I wondered if I never did return to Facebook, if I would be able to maintain connections with the people I wanted to. I wondered if anyone would seek me out when they realized I was gone. I felt disconnected, isolated, and more alone than usual. Which is really fucking saying something, I tell ya. I’ve been seeking a lot in the last few days, about myself, who I am, what I identify as, and why it seems so often I lose track of those things and have to periodically find myself again. I’ve subsequently also wondered about the “search and destroy” method I invoke against my psyche when I’m doing that, prompted by missing the convenience and familiarity of Facebook due to my own decision to sever my connection with it. Found a crutch? Kick it out from under myself! What, I fell down? Shame on me, stupid weakling human, what the fuck is wrong with you anyway. Pfft. Missing fucking Facebook. What a LOSER for ‘needing’ it anyway. It felt like ending an abusive relationship, which I’ve had more experience with than I would really like to admit sometimes; the reactions and the tendrils and the ache were real, in addition to all the other reasons I’ve been crying a lot lately. But was it possible I was just punishing myself, isolating myself more, withdrawing more, and falling deeper in my hole by doing this? Towards the afternoon, I made a phone call I now think I probably wouldn’t have made if I’d still been using Facebook as my first-wave outlet. I even took a moment to look AROUND ME while waiting at a crosswalk, rather than paging through my phone at my newsfeed. And then I contacted a friend directly to commiserate about a personal struggle with self-image, rather than posting it generally, and probably somewhat vaguely, on my wall. I realized I’ve recently come to generalize my opinions and experiences on Facebook for the audience, for greater impact, and to reach more people emotionally. It’s subtle, but it’s there. I do it in part to make the experience of following me there worthwhile, accessible, and meaningful for the people who are watching, and I think it had something to do with allowing public subscribers and experimenting with phasing out my artist page. When falling into so often using that created environment as a first line of defense in formulating my thoughts into expressions, it was no wonder I lost my shit about it a little. And now I know that, even though it may seem redundant to have it, the separation I have by maintaining an artist page apart from my private Facebook profile is what I need. Even if all the same fucking people are seeing them both, even if it feels a little dumb, even if occasionally someone I admire scoffs at me and says “Pfft. You made yourself a FAN PAGE?”, and even if what I choose to share ends up being intensely personal, like this. And so today I came here to work my latest meltdown, to write, to THINK about what I’m writing, to work fragments through to full and complete statements that I want to stand behind and preserve. For me. From me. Just me. And I thought — this is good. This is worth it. Also, sometimes time-travel me has some really awesome shit to say. http://neevita.net/archives/5389 I am so, so hard on myself. Sigh. April 4, 2012, 11:49 am in public
I wish you’d just go away. Instead, I forget. I forget I know you, I forget there has been work done by others, I forget there are others like me, that what I deal with is understood, and that I’m not some kind of inhuman freakshow because I struggle with the realities of this. I forget I was ever diagnosed in the first 3 years of intense, wrenching, horrifyingly naked psychotherapy that transformed my life. I forget the answers I put everything I had into finding. Largely, I choose, rather, my idealism, and resistance to psychological diagnosis which is often abused in the interest of drug companies and politics. I choose the sense that, surely, I am more complex than a wikipedia article on human behavior, which took me years to think to look at again. That, surely, I deserve to feel awful about myself an increasingly disturbing amount of my life. Again. That, surely something MUST be incredibly, strickenly -wrong- with me. Where is my courage? Why don’t I recognize when this is happening, or more accurately, that it is THIS IS WHAT IS happening? Why can’t I recognize when I’m watching myself dismantle my life, like there’s another soul inside me that shuts me off and moves and speaks for me. Why don’t I SEE IT FASTER? I’m think-smart. I’m smarter than my own fucking good. Why can’t I be honest with myself about this? Why am I so horrified, so embarrassed, so fucking ASHAMED? How many more nights will I spend paralyzed by incessant, merciless thoughts of how terrible I am? How many more times will I break down sobbing like a shivering, petrified animal? Why does something so common and ordinary feel so fucking WRONG? Why does the label feel like such a copout? Why am I not over this? Why am I not fixed? I think about it sometimes, but I don’t want to die. I want this to go away. Why can’t I STOP IT? I feel like it will NEVER. FUCKING. STOP. April 3, 2012, 6:12 pm in public
The healing was also similar to a TCA peel in that I wanted my skin to stay moist and protected but also let it crisp, and hold off on rubbing off the peeling too soon to make a giant mess of things. My skin tone is much more even in the areas that I deal with acne scarring. The deeper scarring on my cheeks, while it may fill in a little in the next two months, will likely have to be revisited. My sense is that I would have rather had the laser be too conservative than too aggressive for my skin. That said, it’s been less than a week since my treatment and I can already see improvement and the promise of more. I shot a picture of the Melanage, Elta and Eucerin products I was given to use, including the awesome Melanage creamy sunscreen I’ve really liked the feel of. The Elta is good too, but super white. 
April 3, 2012, 5:38 am in public
Over the last few weeks, the life cycle of a typical facebook status of mine is about two days. I’ve removed hundreds of people from my friends list, attempting to identify my social roots and what facebook really taps into as far as my actual life and how I keep in touch with the people I care about. I’ve been uncomfortable, insecure, and upset, and centering that around controlling what’s become the main social outlet of my life. It’s a complex thing, society, and how one chooses to interact with it. However, ultimately, I’ve come to the conclusion that the way I use my personal facebook hurts me more than it helps me. Facebook has become a way to feed a starving ego with junk food that doesn’t actually matter, with compliments that can’t really mean anything, and with conflicts I don’t need in my life. It’s a way to frequently wipe out my existence without dying. It’s a way to attempt to convince myself that people care about me (or don’t), that I’m not being cheated on (or am), that at least someone out there thinks my art is worth a shit (or doesn’t), depending on what assumption about myself I want to feed. It’s a way to feel like I have some kind of lay of the land of my social life that gives me a perceived advantage or understanding that doesn’t actually exist. And it’s become this way under my nose, subconsciously, where I don’t see what it is I am doing until long after I’ve done it. Though Facebook can often provide a great sounding board and access to some fun stuff, more and more I’m noticing that Facebook is a networking application, not a social one. That seems like a no-brainer, but forgive me, I’m slow and stupid and fear intimacy. I fear it so much that I’ve done with Facebook what I, at one time, did with phuqed.org — I’ve replaced my relationship with myself with a bunch of one-dimensional fragments that I can’t count on. Over the last few months I’ve basically been making myself sick with Facebook, thrashing and spitting and posting and deleting, as I’ve systematically disabled and removed my other social accounts online. I’ve stopped understanding why I put myself out there, to be judged and assumed and commented on as if a couple lines of fucking text provide anything more than another thing for another person to manipulate and react to. I’ve been retreating, into myself and eventually to here, where The Stuff That Matters gets put. Shrinking away from all of it feels like some kind of awful, drawn out death. I hope and expect it will result in some kind of rebirth. I’m miserable, and this isn’t helping me. Some things need to change — Starting with how much time I spend on the computer or tapping on the phone desperately trying to reach a mass of people I feel hopelessly disconnected and alien from. My disabled account is intentional. I plan, at least for now, to keep it that way. April 1, 2012, 12:15 pm in public
Today I re-entered the world of face washing and normal moisturizer. It went well, though it felt more like I was washing sand paper than my own skin. I have started peeling, much like what you’d notice when a sunburn heals. The sunscreen they gave me is tinted, and feels awesome. During the procedure, they were talking about how aggressive they wanted to go with my face, and I recall that most of my peel was set to ’90′, whatever that means. I’m meeting up with my friend today to show her my progress and chat a bit. In my next update I’ll get technical with the products and what settings were used. In the beginning, I was concerned for how hard core this was going to be: now, my concern is whether the results are going to be as impressive as I was expecting. |
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