The Field Next to the Other Road- Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat birthed "The Field Next to the Other Road" in 1981 when he was only 20 years old. Measuring 13 feet across, it was one of the largest paintings he produced that year, but scale was unimportant to Basquiat having come from the graffiti traditions of New York City. It depicts a meeting between a man and a beast, presumably a cow. He depicts the cow's utters, which could be to signify gender or could be to suggest where the duo was headed. Could they be on their way to a morning milking, a routine they probably engage in daily, or could they be headed to something more grim, possibly slaughter. The figure in the painting is male creating a dichotomy between the two mammals. Covered in some sort of grey haze, there is an ominous feeling cast around this human character. This haze paired closely with a sun void of any color could lead the viewer to create a darker tale of the two companions. Is this cow walking to its death, or is it on its way to its daily routine? Basquiat leaves us having to answer this question alone.

In case anyone wasn't sure about the title of my blog, here's what noodling is. It consists of sticking your arm into a hole so that a catfish bites it at which point you wrestle it to the surface. It's pretty epic stuff. Catfish Jawn is an alter ego I use for my glass art and is taken from an old country song that was often covered by Jerry Garcia Band "Catfish John". Using an alter ego in glass is an ode to the American pipe movement which sprung up in the mid 90's and continues to grow today, with glass pipes even being considered and sold as fine art. Many of the top artists in this movement, for fear of prosecution, used alter egos to try and fly under the radar as enforcement around cannabis was far different in the mid 90's and early 2000's from what it is today. Party on

Picture Poem

My poem depicts a moment from December 2017. My father had a malignant melnoma on his ear that he was set to have removed after the holidays. While on vacation in New Hampshire with the rest of my family, he began to feel some eye soreness. That soreness turned into some sort of infection that was related to his stress and diabetes around the time, and forced him to postpone the removal of his skin cancer to have his eye operated on. After the operation, he was left without vision in his eye with close to zero likelihood that it will ever return. He then took to having the melanoma removed from his ear followed by radiation therapy. When removing the growth from his ear, the doctors hit a nerve which basically froze up one side of his face for a period of a few months, forcing him to blink his one good eye manually with his finger. As of last week, my father is cancer free. He lost thirty pounds and controlled his diabetes for the first time since being diagnosed, He missed almost no work throughout both of his treatments, and didn't seem to be slowed down whatsoever. My father is my hero. This poem takes place shortly after his eye first began to bother him. Tensions were extremely high, and it provided a very interesting holiday season. Regardless, our family rallied around him during his fight, and subsequently a lot of really necessary healing occurred. I went with fairly ominous pictures to set the mood. The only picture that is my own is the title page that my brother took while on a doctor's visit with my dad. The black and white filter he chose was fitting. I hope you enjoy.

In The Name of The Father

Imagine with every decision you made your entire life there was a small voice in your head judging that decision. Sometimes, that voice was right, but often it was simply confusing. This voice tells you you're a bad person even if you're not hurting anyone, not even yourself. Sometimes this voice tells you that you're doing the right thing. Growing up as an Irish Catholic was definitely formative to my life. At the age of 4, I began attending St. Joan of Arc Catholic School in Boca Raton, Florida. St. Joan was an extremely large parish with a beautiful church and a pre-K-8th grade school run predominantly by a group of nuns that came together in County Cork Ireland before immigrating to the United States to run this school in South Florida. The motivations for this specific group of nuns running this school remained unclear to me throughout my time there, but I'm not here to say that they had any bad intentions. Many of these nuns were well into their 70's and 80's by the time I was at St. Joan, and while they were definitely stern and intimidating at times, they were extremely committed to their faith and were very loving individuals. My faith shaped much of my early life, I prayed before every single class with my classmates, before bed, before meals, and every weekend at church. I genuinely loved church mainly because of the singing. Ms. Morgan was our school music teacher and she used to absolutely jam on the organs during services while the choir met her with equal enthusiasm. The two most important parts of mass are the Gospel, when a story from the Bible is read, and then the Homily which is basically the priests deciphering of what that story meant. Some priests were able to deliver really strong Homilies that left much of their own opinion out while delivering a message about faith or love or community. Other priests were incredibly dull and difficult to sit through, and some would bring current events and politics into it and put a hard Catholic twist on the world around them. It's important to note that these priests were very well paid, lived in nice apartments in a rectory directly adjacent to the church, and effectively lived in a bubble of faith. That didn't stop some of them from publicly denouncing things like gay marriage, abortion, and premarital sex. Catholic school was an extremely confusing experience during the age of the internet when information was liberated, and I often questioned things I read directly to both nuns and priests. Things like pornography, rap music, drugs, and even topics like the end of the world were becoming incredibly more pervasive, and as many of my classmates and I reached middle school we became far more restless during things like religion class, DARE, and mandatory services. Times were clearly changing, but we were still being told that if we had sex before marriage we were going to go to Hell, and cannabis would turn us into junkies that would wind up dead or in jail. My experience in Catholic school shaped my entire understanding of the world. I was convinced I wanted to be the pope in fourth grade. When I left Florida, and found myself in an all boys boarding school in New England receiving arguably one of the most liberal educations in the country, my world view began to come crashing down. I realized quickly that I had grown up in a bubble, and while that bubble had provided me with a loving community, great friends, and strong lessons about how to live my life and treat people, it was clear that my education up to that point had been incomplete. No matter how hard I tried to shake it, I lived with a lot of subconscious guilt around how I began to live my life after leaving Catholic school. I know for a fact that I'm not a bad person, but I know I'm not a saint, and when that is what you aspire to be in your youth, there will always be that little voice in your head to tell you you're fucking up. These days, I find faith creeping back into my life after ignoring it for a long time. I treat others the way I want to be treated, probably the most useful lesson I took out of being Catholic. I find myself compelled to make religious art, partly because it is important to me, but also partly as a way of making money off of imagery that is the most important thing in the world to some people while also being extremely polarizing to others. This yin and yang of religion is something I find myself diving deeper into. I have my own relationship with a higher power now, and not necessarily the kind I was taught to have. Life is good, and I'm not afraid of admitting I believe in God, but I also don't define God the same way I did in religion class. God always had to be a man, which I think is a cop out. There's zero chance an all present, all knowing, eternally forgiving force fits into a simpleton human model of gender. God is everything, God is everyone, and God is you. By taking this approach in my life and seeing the unlimited potential in everyone and everything, I have found peace. My faith and relationship to a higher power is dynamic, and I will continue to explore it throughout my life. I see myself now as an eternal being in a dying animal body. My Catholic faith promised me an afterlife, but it did so from a place of instilling fear. You had to fear death to make sure you kept going to church so that you were a good person. Lame. Do not fear death, because no ones making it out of here alive. The inner monologue that allows me to type this without saying a word is the focus of my faith these days, consciousness. Does this voice inside my head and all our heads turn off when I die? If it doesn't, then am I even dead? These may be the ramblings of a crazy person, but I think they're legitimate questions. My faith taught me to believe. Believe in the power of yourself, in the power of others, in the power of God or the universe, or quantum physics, or whatever it is that makes everything tick. Maybe it's nothing, and maybe this is all pointless, but that seems like a pretty depressing stance to take. Just believe in the good, and it will begin to manifest before your eyes. You shouldn't have to go to church every Sunday to do this, but if you do, I get it, and I still love you.

Multimedia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycPr5-27vSI

-the first multimedia link I chose is a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, a podcast I frequently listen to. This episode is a conversation with Elon Musk which the media blew up over because Elon amateurly hit Joe's blunt about two hours into a two an a half hour conversation. Cannabis shaming in the media is unfortunate, and people should really listen to the entirety of the interview as there's some amazing things said about A.I. and the future at large. Elon Musk is a polarizing character, but I think this is one of his longest form interviews and sheds light on the inner workings of him. Take from it what you will.

-The second multimedia link is a video from my Instagram of my friend Jake teaching me to make the first item I ever sold in glass. A simple glass pipe. When I sold my first batch of pipes I realized that I would be able to blow glass for as long as I was willing to put the work in. This was an incredibly liberating moment in my life. Enjoy.

Welcome to My Life

Nolan Callahan is tall, Caucasian, and very plain looking. His simplified aesthetic, often composed of black Levi's jeans and Fruit of the Loom tee shirts often masks the passionate individual it clothes. Nolan grew up the 2nd of four brothers in Lighthouse Point, Florida, a tiny suburb of Ft. Lauderdale with hardly anything going on. The sons of two Northeastern transplants, with father Kevin hailing from Connecticut and mother Lisa from Rhode Island, the Callahan boys kept themselves busy for much of their childhood playing ice hockey and getting yelled at for practicing too much in the house. Upon reaching eighth grade at his Catholic school, St. Joan of Arc, in Boca Raton, Nolan found himself faced with what would be one of the most formative decisions of his life. While playing a hockey tournament in Chicago in the fall, his team was approached by two coaches from a tiny school in the woods of New Hampshire, Cardigan Mountain School. Having grown up spending time visiting his grandfather's farm in New Hampshire at least once a year, Nolan became intrigued with the opportunity to pursue his dream of playing hockey at a higher level within the New England prep school system. Upon further research on Google, Nolan became captivated with Cardigan and decided to run the idea of checking it out by his parents. While hesitant, they had never been pleased with the school system in Florida and the prospect of a boarding school with two hundred boys and an average class size around 8 seemed enticing. After one visit on Cardigan's campus both he and his father were completely sold. Surrounded by mountains, and seated on a lake, the natural beauty of this new place were in such stark contrast to what he had experienced in South Florida his entire life. By the next fall, he was enrolled and found himself embarking on a scholastic journey that would take him to four schools in four different states over ten years. 1500 miles from home without a cellphone or access to Facebook or YouTube, Nolan took full advantage of his new surroundings. Sharing a dorm house with students from Finland, Mexico, Korea, Texas, and oddly enough another student from South Florida, Nolan realized quickly that he was experiencing something far different than his fellow classmates that remained in Florida for high school. He was exploding with excitement for the winter to roll around so that he could prove himself on the ice and show everyone at this new school just how serious he was about hockey. When tryouts came around, the reality was far different from what Nolan had imagined, and he quickly realized he was not at the same level as the other athletes and found himself on the JV team. This was soul crushing, and Nolan spent weeks pleading for his father to let him come home to Florida. His entire identity had been wrapped up since the age of four in his ability to play hockey, and his dream had fallen apart before his very eyes. Smartly, his father made him tough out the New Hampshire winter and remain at Cardigan reminding him of the incredible opportunities that he had by being there, and reluctantly Nolan obliged his father. Later that year Nolan decided to give lacrosse a try, a sport that was familiar to the boarding school world but had evaded him for much of his life in Florida. He was hooked. Within months of making and playing every game for the varsity lacrosse team, Nolan's dorm parents were informing his father that Nolan would one day play college lacrosse. His father was mostly shocked at this news, but seemed to trust their confidence and did all he could to nurture Nolan's newfound love for lacrosse. Upon returning to Cardigan for his ninth grade year (Cardigan is grades 6-9) Nolan was met with interest from secondary school lacrosse coaches across New England who wished for him to join their school's communities and play on their lacrosse teams. Many of these schools were national powerhouses in the sport and the attention that Nolan received mostly surprised him due to his short time playing, but he took it all in stride and after a long process of school visits, interviews, and applications much like looking for colleges he found himself enrolled in Avon Old Farms, another all boys school situated in Avon, Connecticut with a nationally ranked lacrosse program. Nolan entered Avon no longer defining himself as a hockey player, or really any type of athlete but rather just another student, but was met with enthusiasm from other students that had heard of his lacrosse prowess prior to him reaching Avon. The pressure to perform was evident from his first day stepping on campus and Nolan was very ready for the challenge spending much of his free time getting in extra practice for the lacrosse season that awaited him in the spring. Upon reaching that spring, and after tryouts, Nolan had made the varsity roster although he found himself as the fourth goalie out of four on the depth chart. Understanding this was much to do with his age at the time, Nolan continued to work tirelessly to be ready when his name was called to play. Later that spring, that moment happened as the All American, Johns Hopkins bound goaltender Will Ryan went down with a broken ankle from an unfortunate stickball accident. Now was Nolan's time, and he rose to the occasion leading Avon to wins over nationally ranked programs, and earning himself All Western New England honors as just a  sophomore. Next came the grueling summer lacrosse circuit in which recruits travel around the country to play in front of college coaches looking to find their next players. Nolan rose to the occasion that summer as well and rather than finding himself boating around South Florida he found himself visiting colleges across the country ultimately finding himself at Syracuse University. Syracuse is the most storied program in college lacrosse, and Nolan was in awe from the first moment he stepped on campus. While his entire lacrosse career had been a whirlwind to this point, and not much thought had gone into what he wanted to do with his life outside of play lacrosse, he found himself committed to Syracuse before returning to Avon for his junior year. With college decided already his junior and senior year at Avon were largely uneventful, as Nolan prepared to be at Syracuse. He graduated with honor roll grades and was off to make everyone proud on the national stage as a member of the Syracuse Orange lacrosse team. If only it was that easy. Once he arrived on campus, Nolan was met with something that he had really not experienced in high school, partying. There was also an aspect of Syracuse he had not been familiar with since middle school, girls. This led Nolan to become less and less interested in the prospect of being a professional lacrosse player and more interested in having an awesome time. This was a recipe for disaster as his grades began to stagnate, and in the fall of his sophomore year he found himself deciding to leave the lacrosse team to take time to figure out what it was he really wanted to do with his life. After intense existential dread and a period of academic probation, Nolan found himself in a creative writing class studying food politics. The research topic he chose was organic farming, and Nolan quickly found himself down a rabbithole of the state of American farming and problems surrounding the food system. Nolan recognized immediately that this was what he wanted to do and after conversations with his father decided he would transfer out of Syracuse to chase this newfound passion. Nolan found himself enrolled in the Agriculture and Food Systems program at Rutgers University, and hit the ground running participating in an entrepreneurial agriculture internship in his first year in which he managed 2 and a half acres of diversified crops that he even took to local farmers markets. Nolan had found his love, and his purpose and had a newfound love for his life that fuels him to this day. Nolan is currently a full time glassblower and is in his final year at Rutgers. He hopes upon graduation to save up enough money to purchase land and begin his own diversified organic farm and agricultural consulting firm in New Jersey to educate farmers and the public alike on the importance of sound agricultural practices that mitigate negative externalities affecting our health, environment, and future.

Glimpses Inward

This is a picture of me from a fake wedding photo shoot that my friend and I designed a chandelier for this past summer. The photo shoot was real, the wedding was not. I love the aesthetic of this photo. This was the first endeavor of this kind that my friend and I partook in, and on the same day we were able to visit an organic farm in Princeton. It was a day filled with things that I love, and it was a big turning point in my life realizing that I was manifesting the reality that I had longed for.

This picture was taken during my first week of learning to blow glass. It is very bad ass. Glass saved my life and continues to captivate much of my attention and creativity. I am forever grateful to the individuals that made it possible for me to follow this passion, and have no plans of stopping any time soon.

This picture was taken while I attended Cardigan Mountain School in Canaan, New Hampshire when I was in 8th grade. The man in the background is Dudley Clark who passed this year and was an incredibly influential figure in my life, and the lives of all the boys that have attended Cardigan. His relentless will to serve others throughout his life is something that helped to shape me into the person I am, and he came into my life at a time when I was 14 and living hundreds of miles away from home. Dudley's love is not lost on me, and I think about him daily. RIP.

This is my father Kevin circa some time in the 90's. My father is the hardest working person I know, and my biggest role model. He's worked full time since he was 13 to be able to provide my family with every opportunity imaginable. This picture captures his humor that he has carried with him throughout his life during both good and bad times. The stache is also pretty epic. When I was 4 he shaved it and I cried all day and stayed home from school. He is yet to regrow it.

This is baby Nocal. Flowing red locks, and a shirt that reads "Drug Free Body". I've always loved this picture of me, mainly because I was too young to really formulate memories at this time, but the shirt is also extremely ironic.

This is my roster picture taken during my freshman year of college at Syracuse University. It's probably one of the better portraits ever taken of me, so I keep it around for LinkedIn. Playing college lacrosse for a year was both incredibly challenging and rewarding and helped me to realize that the last thing I wanted to be was a professional lacrosse player.

 

 

Pictured here are my three brothers and myself in a photo shoot that we did for my father's 60th birthday. We went to Beall's and bought ridiculous looking shirts and while much of the photo shoot was serious, we snuck in this picture for ourselves to have. My brothers are my main inspiration in my life and have always kept me incredibly entertained and grounded. Shoutout to them.

This is my mother Lisa. Lisa is an incredible woman who raised four strong, self-reliant men. While we didn't always see eye to eye and had our share of issues, she was always incredibly loving. This picture is incredibly pure, and takes me back to a time when things were far simpler. Love you, mom.