A quick look into Ava Noel's surprisingly large portfolio
I don't know who Ava Noel is, the same way I don't know why her Instagram is down, but also the same way I know she has a Youtube channel. The Ava Noel website is a half-baked project I found browsing Neocities and, oh, boy, do I have a story to tell! For the past hour or so I have been giving a quick look at her stuff, and I mean actually doing it, since I didn't from the day I found it, and it kinda was worth the wait, and I realized it would be worth the trouble of talking about it here.
First things first, you should also take a quick look at the poetry and the gallery of paintings at her website, to have a better idea of what I'm going to talk about here. As far as I know, in terms of both poetry and visual arts in general, that catalogue is very incomplete, and more will probably be added in the future, so it's probably a good idea to leave a follow if you'd like to see more of that.
Ava Noel's stuff hits like some people's you might have seen mentioned around here some time in the past, like SheDiamond or Cowgirl Clue before she blew up. She's part of this strange group of girls that are super cool but don't look like they're any cool, making art like no one could point out they would since they just look normal. But then you're talking at a party or something, and they're like "do you know I make music?", and you're like "oh, really?", thinking it's just a bunch of a capella covers from pop songs they posted on youtube in the early 2010s, but then they link you a Soundcloud and, surprise!, mf is a dj with PRO Unlimited, 200+ tracks and 14 followers, producing urban dubstep before London was even a thing. This is the kind of artist Ava Noel is.
When you're clicking around her website, hitting the paintings tab will give you quite the surprise. It looks strange. Much too strange at first (very important phenomenon in contemporary art museums these days, since people just want to be weirded out instead of experiencing art for beauty like old people do; what isn't necessarily what's happening here, though). But then you click around a little more, open images in new tabs, zoom-in here, a little more there, and then you start to see a something else in that so-varied mix of colors over so much green. This something else I'm not sure what is yet, not sure anybody knows aside from the artist herself; but for the cliché that is the obvious way to see it, expressionism and egocentrism mix together into an anti-Gray proclamation of female independence and self-loving like that guy from Silence of the Lambs: "would you fuck me? I'd fuck me".
But don't take that the wrong way, I might have some good philosophy brewing up inside me for the rest of this post, what might make some more sense of what's "the difference between life and dream, seen and unseen" there, and around her "portfolio".
I remember not too long ago, like a week past, I was skimming through everything and checked out her Instagram, and didn't really want to scroll down much, because it seemed ultra boring, — also FUCK INSTAGRAM — and set it aside for later. But there I did see something interesting, though. It was a post of pictures accompanying a version of the poem "Foma". I don't remember the pictures, they all look the same, but the poem though, that one I do remember. What's in the poetry tab as of now is one of the "supposed versions", but you'll have to take my word for that since the Instagram is gone. What's important though is that the piece can still be experienced, and probably will be until the internet dies because I've been saving the page on Internet Archive like I do with every cool site I find, because people love to erase cool websites from the face of the Earth, and/or not pay for domains and not replace them after the contract expires. You can see how that's going yourself on the Wayback Machine. And since I believe you have given the Ava Noel website a quick look like I told you to, I have some stuff to say both about that poem in specific, and about the "self".
Reading Foma, I have to question: Is that what looking at yourself in the mirror is like? I couldn't say, I can't see my own reflection. Even on my study of reflections I'm careful to always hide; I can't ever see myself on stupid glass walls. I'm never looking for me, at me; my body has learned to naturally drive my eyes away from myself. I won't ever know what standing in front of a mirror is like, but if I ever did, it wouldn't be everyday. That is not a lie. After I shower I'm not afraid of putting headphones on, who's gonna see the dent on my hair anyways?
How scary must it be to use yourself like Ava Noel does? To see yourself, obsess over your self. Shouldn't self-portraits be just a sometimes thing? Or, what is much, much scarier, is it just a different aspect of what everybody does when it comes to art? As just another way of finding in yourself the easiest path to depth and meaning (and understanding of the indecent world around you/I)?, like I do, like you do, like we all do in our unique, different ways?
The husk is something I'm always so eager to brush off but, it is something so commonly explored. The selfie, the chronicle, the I; naturally-intended way, "in my desperation(,) I started with I, because in my ego I know nothing but I". Ain't I so selfish? Aren't we all? What to do with this new found certainty? How anti-poetic! How come poetry can not be deep? How come there's art I don't understand? How come subjectiveness is still a thing in this homogeneous world I live in?
And then you move on to "About innocence". Things become much more clear, in a heavily meta— (—use this prefix on whatever you want, it will make sense for the context—) way, though especially and necessarily figurative. What is I? What is the me, and how does it work? The gift of consciousness comes with a drawback called "memory". It lets you look back and see what you have done, see how you've wronged, and give space for you to think about whatever you could've done different. It's like a second consciousness, or a third, or a large but finite number of different counsciousnesses that are all you, like a version of you that's left behind when the you of after comes along, but is still alive in this "memory" thing. The ability to look back to a past you, might be the reason why this text has had so many "Is" up to this point, and the reason why this poem exists, after all. I am also a "you", you're also an "I", see how this paragraph was made different?
My petals arranged in a delicate way
Enough to want to split the seed in two.
Wanting to give hope to the water heater
That thirst is still quenched in this room.
[...]
She was not disturbed. She made that very clear in her note.
She made it very clear you'd find her in the ocean when she left.
That the waves will have pulled her down.
And she's alright with it, just wanted you to know.
She is fine to be eaten alive.
[...]
And then I changed it to she
the clean sound of piss
And then I changed it to he
a sharp hiss of mirth
And then I changed it to her
the sound of birth
Isn't it weird to analyze yourself through someone else? Or analyze anyone, for that matter. Self-discovery shouldn't be an excuse to kick the turtles, stacked upon one another. It shouldn't suck to fuck a coworker, or a roommate, or a housemate, but should it even be anything at all? Have you ever smelled your used dental floss? People are disgusting. We should talk more about flowers and rain and cool buildings with only one or two windows lit up; keep the innocence of the everyday routine if you can find any happiness in that, seductively healthy-snacking on a break. So many "yous", maybe I know who I am.
Something interesting is that, if you do a ctrl+A on the poetry page and paste it onto the notepad because your head hurts from the fuchsia, it's indistinguishable the last poem from the penultimate poem. You read them one after the other as if they were one, and it makes sense somehow; better sense than they make separated. There's a recommendation and a half right there.
At last, alas!, the emptiness. I wonder if she died. Site's been kinda dead. It do be like that with Neocities sometimes. People just forget their time there was even a thing. So many interesting people and so many dead websites, waiting for the "oh, I forgot this existed" post here in four or five years. Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing wrong in treating this website of mine as serious as I am.
There's a Youtube channel. Very early-youtube-ish, one too many vlogs about a person you don't know and probably don't care about, made by/for them. Here are some really cool things I found there:
A strange way to talk about public proposals
Paradox of life, read by the author
Transcription for posterity
It doesn't really matter if my shirt is inside out, or if my hair falls on my face.
It doesn't.
It doesn't really matter if you sat down at the dance party,
or if you can do the splits
or if you know how to swim or ride a bike.
This moment is over in a minute.
It doesn't really matter if you forget to take a picture,
or skated past the don't do that sign in the park,
and it doesn't matter if you can touch your toes,
or if you have the ability to birth out a kid.
It doesn't matter if you touched her back or said you'd call and didn't.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if you want to never leave then change your mind and move the next week;
or if you're not a social being, or if you have no friends,
or if you quit your job to dream, or if you drink all day and night,
or if you go to church, or if there's even anything that you believe;
or if you cheat and overeat, or if you always lie
or if you are the best parents holding the hands of your young things
and taking trips to the beach.
It doesn't matter if you trip on stones, or shrooms, or bumblebees.
It doesn't matter where you're from,
none of it does.
We're all matter but we don't matter,
Paradox of life
In the end, it wasn't just an hour or two I spent on this, at least not consecutive hour()s. The look I gave wasn't so quick, my opinion of it all was; I make it up as I go. Now, the day after because it was too late yesterday, I must say I can't consider Ava as no more an artist than she is. There's nothing really special about her, and that's part of the reason why she's so great but, it's unfortunate, in a way, that I feel attracted to this poetry. The more you read it, the less special it becomes; the lesser the quality; but from a first glance, from a quick look, the shadow of a something else is overseen from the corner of your eye, like a mirage, like a well, but when you look again, then again and again, the more sure you get that there's nothing but sand in this desert.
I like deserts.
P.S.The website has a "quote randomizer" on the main page now! I fed it a few dozen different quotes already, and will be adding more as they pop up. Yesterday I put some Ava Noel quotes there as well, you can check it out if you're lucky (or refresh the page enough).