She Sure is {Delirious} Pratt Draw-A-Thon

This June, Mika and I will mark six years at job-job. At high noon on Friday, I had her make my annual pilgrimage to Utrecht on 23rd and 8th so I could fulfill my pre-all-night-drawing ritual, which includes, um... going to Utrecht to buy things I'm going to burn through over the span of 12 hours. In pure brilliant Mika style, after crooning through sketchbooks and drooling over new pens she deadpan delivered this, "I can really mark the year by your weird traditions." This year we know it has been a year. It's Spring. I have life drawing to share.

Also, in pure traditional style, I walked home from Pratt at 8am, absolutely high, my body pumping with pure adrenaline. It's a marathon for a reason, and while I've never run more than a 5K (in which I felt my lungs may explode ;)) I can understand how absolutely crazed with energy you can be after pushing yourself as hard as you can go. After 12 hours of drawing straight through from dusk to dawn, you feel like you're bionic. 

So just like last year, and every year for the last decade, I power walked home. In true traditional Mark-Your-Calendars style I listened to Elliot Smith, Eminem, Eartha Kitt, and Ben Folds, (Maybe there was a little bit of unauthorized Gotye thrown in there).Pratt fuels me, and when I am nostalgic and ecstatic and feel like the world can barely hold my energy, I listen to the music that mattered to me when I lived on Dekalb and when it was an odd day that didn't find paint in my hair. 

I got home. I sang in a cold shower (like every year). I dressed in jeans and a fresh t-shirt (like every year). I dance-ran to my studio (like every year). I got about half an hour of prolific work done, barreling through without even a hint of tired, and then... I zombie walked to my bed, half crazed with an all systems shutting down urgency unlike anything I know 364 days a year. I threw myself across the mattress, where I stayed until 2pm (just like every year). 

This week you'll be getting quick draw reports from that midnight oil reserve that lights my fire all year long, and if you can't wait, there's always last year.