Happy Aniversity, Far-Eviler!

a year ago, i joined hitRECord in a grand gesture 'to expand my horizons', etc. It was really an act of weakness-- I couldn't take on paying work anymore because I started dropping things, getting cramps & spasms from doing everyday things, I'd get tremors that'd sometimes last for days. I felt broken, unreliable & false when people wanted to talk shop.

I dunno what I thought it'd be like. I'd never really collaborated before; I thought it meant losing control. Since I was losing that anyway... I uploaded only things made for personal use, things I loved but was never going to get a chance to put them to use. I figured playing around with these RECorder's would placate artist-smartist self.

The word 'small' I doesn't begin to describe my thinking, but the word "Tiny" began to have a much better ring to it.

It's been a year; Fibromyalgia looks likely to be the culprit of my deterioration but with no really-for-real answer there is no satisfaction in the knowing this but there is satisfaction in getting this.

I hadn't seen it in print, so I wasn't certain. I hadn't known what I was getting into but then I never really do. I'm a published artist now, I'm handicapped, I am not giving up, I'm frightened everyday, I am certain this is not the end, I am grateful were it to be.

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You can get your own

@  http://hitrecord.org/store/tiny_book.html

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also, this guy here who signs my checks, you know My Boss is more Awesome than yours will ever be.

"Imaginary Fiends"

written by samanthamay, Metaphorest, greymalkin, lovee_91, godofwine + Patrice_Michelle, wirrow & Major Tom [over @ hitRECord.org]
edited + art by val freire, my small s'elf.
with assistance from Crystal (age 15), Veronica (age 14), Grace (8), Vanessa (5) and especially Aria (age 8) whose hand-writing is now much improved.

Made in 7 days.

RE:CITIES

"Being born and raised in New York, but nowhere near Manhattan, gives a kid a skewed perspective of the term 'Hometown'. Things are still that "Larger Than Life" sort of big but never glamorous, still over-bright and siren-loud but somehow tuned to a different frequency, where the only constant is change. From that stems the weirdest sense of homesickness for a place you still live. But there is a bitter-sweetness to it. And there is an endlessness to it. Fast and fierce and furious as this town can be, you stick around long enough you learn 'keeping up' isn't the answer. Sometimes letting it overwhelm, just letting it flow is the only way to really be.

I left NY when I was 15. Sick to shit of it. Did the wanderlust tour of 30 homes in 3 years; London, London's much preferred bastard brother LIVERPOOL, Ballintoy, Paris, Montreal, San Francisco, Seattle, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, well,... I'll stop there cuz the list gets pretty effin' long.

But I missed New York, functioning anywhere else was work, New York just flows. I didn't mean to come back; I just stopped over from Los Angeles the morning of 9/11. It seemed the universe, the world, the city herself had grounded me.

For a year after 9/11, on my new queen-size bed in my new four-story walk up, I'd lay for hours, dangling my head back to look thru the window up at the broad hi-rise stapled sky and watch planes fly by, willing them to not fall.

Maybe we all did that, I don't know. I still travel, lots, but because the city needs me, I come home."