Dear Friends of Jano,

Man I actually worked a full summer, that hasn’t happened in years. Def not a fan, even though I did get to do fun things this summer. The price of freedom yields monetary gain for joy. Yay Capitalism…. I suppose.

Anyway.

This another entry in the existential Infinity stone saga that started in the wee early days of 2017. For those keeping up this would be the fourth stone of the arc, 2 more and I’ll have a full set.

Side note, As I type this I am still in search of those two stones. As long as it has taken to get to this point I hope that they are worth it.

MAN, on god nigga, on GOD my nigga this concept was pretty simplistic, it was. But for some reason it took a year and four months to achieve it.

Spoiler Alert.

Who remembers that one part of the mermaid saga when I said I went to go scout Midtown Park for a possible shoot location? Well I am piggy backing off that for this issue. When 2018 started I remembered that location on that aggravating as fuck day. Couple that and the random images I see on the internet from Instagram and Pintrest, an idea gestated in my mind. I decide to do a 90’s era photoshoot.

But Jano that sounds like it would be simple to pull off. Why did it take so long?

Have ya’ll not been paying attention to my life? How often are any of my ideas simple? Exactly.  I promise this art journey comes with more side quest than most modern video games. I should have hella trophies unlocked now. Fuck I should have bonus points for cussing anyone out. Wait would I get a trophy for actually loosing my cool? I might go for a trophy next time I get hit with some 1080 HD  4k fuckery.

I was scrolling through my IG timeline and thought to ask this girl I follow and models, who I thought  would do it. I had asked her to model for me in 2017, but I didn’t really have an idea in mind unlike this time. I approached her with the idea and the time frame I wanted to do it, Ie when it wasn’t cold as fuck. She was down for it.

YEET.

I wasn’t saying Yeet last year, but I am now, So fuck it. Time travels is a fluid concept.

Eventually I bought an Old school 90’s boombox, ya know the type you would see on TV. The type you can carry on your shoulder and disturb all the peace, but be harmonious to yourself and those who appreciate the genre of music you like. I found some old blank cassette tapes I had in my room from when I use to actually listen to the radio, and record music off.

MAN the nostalgia of simple times, take a nigga back.  Not gonna lie tho Spotify is def the best, especially since I can’t stand what is on the radio nowadays.

At this point we are in Mid March. I emailed her asking what songs would she want on the mixtape. I like going for a full effect of what the fuck I am trying to shoot if I can.

Ya’ll bitches be the worse. They do, the absolute fucking worse.

I would email her, and assuming that not everyone checks their mail all the time (even though our initial conversation about what I was trying to achieve with this shoot was via email and she replied, but whatever) I would message her asking if she got my email as a prompt for her to check it. Bitch would leave me left on read, but on god would like all my memes. All of em.

Bitch Whet???

At some point when I attempted to communicate with her, she did reply saying that she hadn’t checked her email. I took a screenshot of the msg and sent it to her via IG DM’s….and still no reply.

FUCK IT.

Just absolute fuck it.

Ya’ll think this is bad, wait til we get the last 2 stones. Oh boy those are true anime arcs, long as fuck. Filled with Daunting moments of existentialism.

Timeline wise we are near the nigger heat summer of 2018. I got laid off from my job, so I was free as fuck. Figured I’d make the best of my time the best I can. It was upsetting because on the photography part of the art journey, you can’t do a photoshoot without a model. And unlike the mermaid saga and the candy queen arc, this wasn’t a difficult concept.

AT ALL.

Summer came and I would fill my days of being laid off of going to restaurants, of stuffing my face, working on  acts 3 and 4 of my book, while using their wifi to play hours of music on Spotify. At various points I would have random text conversations with friends.

One friend in particular, I was telling her about the aforementioned events. And she said she would do it. Awe struck I was, especially since she told me can’t be out in the sun for too long. Truthfully I had thought about asking her, but there was reasons I didn’t. Mainly because us hanging out is always difficult, typically the days we have attempted to hang out something always happened. At this point in time, we had only seen each other 2 times….

…and we had known each other for a few years.  I know adult friendships are hard but this was final level boss hard.

I knew better, but hoped for the best.

Unfortunately the same patterns repeated themselves. The days when we had made plans to meet up to pick the songs for the mixtape, something drastic came up on her end. And at some point I stopped hearing from her for a while, found out who later  on why which has no bearing on the rest of this issue.

Again this project was dead in the water. I kept searching, and eyeballing people of who I would want to do this.  Eventually I started working a new job in October and  2018 ended and 2019 arrived.

Now we are getting to the climax of this story.

At some point in the cotton field I became cool with one of the fellow slaves. Due to the weekend shift being dissolved, her and a few others were now part of my shift. As time went on I noticed she had a 90s aesthetic. I figured maybe I should ask and see would she model for me.

So one February day in the cotton field I asked.

She seemed squeamish to the idea, but gave me her email anyway so I could give her all the details of what I am trying to do for the project. She told me she would give it some thought, I was like Koolio beanzo.

However, *deep sigh*

Her started to get complicated for various reasons which I don’t feel like typing. But emotionally she was starting to go through it.  The tiny part of me that is humane thought it would be in bad taste to ask her about it.

I promise this could have been so simple, but was like Nah Nigga.

Anyway, One week I saw an art event on Facebook about Art, Beer and Chicken. And this nigga likes chicken and art.

Spoiler Alert.

Friday came, and I made an effort to stay awake post cotton field. If I passed out like I usually do I would have not made there at all. I got there and legit didn’t plan on seeing anyone I know at all. I didn’t. Social skills was not a thing I was planning on using that night.

Ironically enough I did.

At some point I went to the restroom, came back and while I was waiting in line there was a girl ahead of me in line. I recognized the green hair and the pointy cat ear frames, internally I was like I think thats a person I follow online. And it was.

You know how you what if scenarios play in your head? Well sometimes I have ones where I’m out and someone who follows me online sees me and they go OMG you are so kool, nice to meet you, you are hilarious as fuck. Well thats what happened.

We catch eyes and she starts talking to me, and me being the awkward, tired person I am finds myself in a scenario I legit never thought was gonna happen especially since I didn’t think I would run into anyone that night. Oh irony. We talk for a few mins, goes off  to grab some food and thats it for our interaction for the night. I see her with 2 other people, but don’t go over to them because I legit didn’t wanna be a odd as fuck spare wheel who is socially awkward. At some point I leave to go home and pass out, but before I do send her a message sorry if I came off awkward as fuck. She said it was kool, she thought she was awkward and I was like nah you were ok.

Awww tender moments.

Ironically enough, I ran into her the next day at Abari’s block party and it was like we were friends from 10 years ago. It was me, her, the two guys I saw her with last night and my homegirl. It was a pretty chill day. At some point I started to think maybe she would model for me.

The following week I asked my aforementioned coworker when did she want to work on her mixtape. Man the apprehension and nervous on her face was all the answer I needed, and after a discourse she told me my least favorite words when it comes to a photoshoot.

I’ll let you know.

Essentially those words are nails in a coffin for me, because no one ever lets me know shit. Spoiler Alert, its several months later and I still have not been let known anything. I decide to message my recent internet friend to real life friend, and she said would totally be down.

YEEEEEET!!!!

HOLY FUCK, THE YEEET I FELT DEEP IN MY HEART. The ball started rolling finally. Something that should have happened last fucking spring finally was happening.

We started an email correspondence, of what songs she would want on the mixtapes, when each of us would be free, and what not. Her playlist was crack on a stick. I somehow downloaded all the songs from Spotify using some program, and the transferred them to a cassette tape.

Kinda.

The transfer didn’t go as smooth as I had planned. First I had to order a new flash drive because my kool Transformer Ravage one fragged out on me.  Even after that I didn’t get the order of the songs arranged like I thought. And for some reason the last 30 secs to minute of the song would abruptly cut off, which was really fucking odd considering the songs were downloaded in full.

Odd, but not odd enough for me to sweat it. We chose Easter Sunday to do the shoot. As excited as I was, I was also nervous as fuck. To be honest I was nervous that it would be a repeat event of Incandescent Spirits, where I had acted like I never held a camera before Plus this was the first photoshoot Ive done since August 2018.That was humiliating for me and I didn’t want that to occur again. At any costs. As usual I spent the day mentally preparing how I wanted this to go down. I had recently scouted the area again, since the last time I was there was August 2017.

She and her boyfriend arrived, which was kool because he helped carry some of the things that were brought.  Oh I forgot to mention, she had never modeled before which really didn’t matter because she did a great job.  She had made a comment how she hated how she looks in photos, and then I showed her and she was like well damn.

Not to be cocky, but thats usually the reaction when I show people photos of them. Nice how I make people believe in themselves….even though I am a legit asshole.

As the shoot went on we laughed each time a song ended abruptly, not gonna lie it was hilarious and annoying when it was a song we all really liked. At some point we called it quits for various reasons. She was exhausted from her job which I totally understood, and there was a still a good amount of the park to shoot. Plus there were other areas we had to skip over because people were shooting there already. And she wanted to do her make up better than she had for today.  We ended it for the day, and did the 2nd half a week later.

MAAAAN Listen. She came out her car looking like Rachel True from The Craft and I won’t mad at it. At all. We did the rest of the park with no problems.

Wait, no there was a problem. So at some point this random old white man, who we presumed was homeless and drunk. Decided to piss in the area where we are shooting.

NIGGA!,  There is a whole park for you to piss in and you chose the area where we are. Smells like racism and expired Budweiser. Cunt.

And after that I fulfilled my promise of feeding her when it was over. She originally wanted to go this sushi restaurant, but at some point we were talking about how I went to this Ecuadorian restaurant that my friend took me to while I was in Raleigh J.Cole’s Dreamville festival which led us to Viva Chicken. OMG blessed be Viva Chicken and the purple and yellow sauce.

YEET NIGGA YEET.

Also Dreamville Festival is where I heard the word Yeet. It was during J.Cole’s performance, and at some point after he performed Middle Child this white girl yelled it and it has been part of lexicon ever since. Damn White girls.

Anyway to see the images from this shoot that honestly should have taken this damn long go here.

With this the 4th stone was collected. Green did infect beat gold after all.

Don’t ask.

Anyway I legit just spent a good while typing this, and I’m all typed out plus hungry for some chicken.

Until next time.

2 stones left.

UGH.

On another note, my goal is to finish Final Fantasy 7 this month and finish Grave Destiny by Kalayna Price. Since ya know they should have been done along time ago.