Nearly 13 years ago my younger and only brother Luke was in a terrible car accident that he barely survived. It’s hard to believe it was that long ago. I was only 23 at the time and about to graduate from college. I returned home one night after going out with my then girlfriend (she is my wife now) to find a message on the answering machine from my mother that my brother had been in an accident and I needed to rush to the hospital immediately.

After a night of partying my brother hopped into a car with some friends, none of which should have been driving. The car lost control not long after they left a house in the country outside of our hometown of Kearney, Nebraska.

My brother was thrown from the vehicle and suffered severe injuries and head trauma. He was clinically dead when the ambulance arrived. He was later revived but in order to survive the brain swelling he was put into an induced coma for the next two weeks or so.

That is only where the story begins. My brother died multiple times as was recorded by the medical staff and each time had different near death experiences. It’s truly a miracle that he survived. His memory of events both in and out of his body are unique in my opinion amongst the mass of people who have had similar experiences.  I say this only because he remembers so many of them in extremely visual detail.

It took me many years to come to grips with my brother’s experiences and it put me on a coarse to search for meaning in my own life. His accident came at a time when I was supposed to enter the world confidently and begin my adult life after my education. Instead I began that life in question. All of my beliefs had been stripped from me. The next several years I struggled to care about the frustrating system in which we are supposed to live. A brush with something totally spiritual is enough to make you wonder why we have made life so difficult for ourselves in this world.

The only answer I have found is love. I love my brother. I love my wife, my parents, my friends, family and now my beautiful son. Love is the spiritual twine that binds us to this world and whatever is waiting for us on the other side.

My brother was asked last year to share his remarkable story with The Biography Channel. I suspect he will likely be asked again in the future to share his story at greater length through another media channel. His episode of I Survived…Beyond and Back will premier Sunday January 29^th at 8pm Mountain Time (10pm EST).

I am apprehensive about watching it because I know he is going to share things I am sure I have probably never heard him speak of. I am very proud of him for deciding to tell his story and share it with such a large audience. He is my only brother and I love him so much. It’s been hard for him to pick up and carry on with life but he is now doing extremely well. It is amazing that he survived such a traumatic accident with barely a mark on him. He’s currently attending University with a major in theater and an interest in someday becoming a director.

I will be watching the show with my wife this Sunday. I invite you to join in. Lastly, I want to thank all of you who have read this blog and supported me over the years. This special place I have created has opened many doors for me and introduced me to some amazing people. I have always left the myself open on this blog as to who I am, the experiences I have had and what inspires me. It’s a line directly into who I am as a person. My brother’s experiences have had more impact on me than almost anything else that has happened in my life. There is nothing more personal that either I or my family could share. I hope his story will now further inspire you as we all look toward a more meaningful and spiritual future. Thank you for all the love you have given me through Changethethought. Hopefully this story will actually inspire the name I adopted for both my work and this blog a decade ago.

Jose Mertz is an artist and illustrator based out of Miami Florida. It’s a fitting setting for Mertz as his work is a total mashup of cultural influences that somehow all settles on some startlingly memorable imagery.

Nick Cross is apparently animating an entire feature-length film titled Black Sunrise. This is the second trailer he has released. It looks promising.

Apparently this music video uses animation/film all taken from the 1920′s. That must have been a fun decade.

SpineTV has assembled a series devoted to what may be the world’s most quirky metropolis, Tokyo. I have never been but this series has me itching to travel there as soon as humanly possible. It must truly be an amazing place. In order to view the entire series you can dig into Spine’s Vimeo account here.

Here is the description of episode 6 of the series that you can watch above:
“In episode 6 of our Tokyo City Series we visit Kokoro HQ, part of the Sanrio Group responsible for one of the most famous Japanese exports, Hello Kitty. Since their inception on 1984 Kokoro have created various ‘ofrobots’ including people friendly vending machines, massive animatronic dinosaurs and life-like ‘humanoid’ robots, developed in ‘continous observation of humans’. We meet Takeshi Mita who shows us the female actroids (actor/android) they are currently developing and tells us of his hopes for an actroid and human integrated future.”

“Photography for me is much more than the act of “taking pictures.” I use photography as a way of literally opening my eyes to the surrounding world… and that particular perspective carries over to even when I’m not photographing…

So often we either live in the future or live in the past … that is to say, we’re either worrying about what comes next or we’re re-living trivial moments out of the past. Consequently, we’re blind to what’s happening around us!

The act of photographing forces you to live in the present and concentrate on “the here-and-now”… a very good thing in and of itself… Others achieve this through meditation and religion….Photography is a way of achieving this state of mind… and be creative at the same time… a great “two-fer”!

Flickr is an inspiration. It’s nice to see there are lots of other people like me out there.

My thoughts and commentary concerning some of my photos are included in the introductory section of my sets entitled, “New York Streetscapes,” “NY in the 80s,” “WTC” and “NJ Meadowlands”. Here are links to these sets:”

www.flickr.com/photos/stevensiegel/sets/72157600382916817/

www.flickr.com/photos/stevensiegel/sets/72157626376913418/

www.flickr.com/photos/stevensiegel/sets/72157600382734172/

www.flickr.com/photos/stevensiegel/sets/72157600383109538/

Wow, this guy is a lawyer. But he is also a damn fine photographer and that makes for an interesting blend.

Vinicius Quesada apparently sometimes uses his own bodily fluids, blood, urine, etc. (don’t ask what etc. might mean) in his work. And yes, there is definitely some similarities to Shepard Fairey’s work but there are still some individually fascinating aspects to Quesada’s work.

“My work is illustrative, but I’m not an illustrator. My friend Jen said it best, I’m a Drainter: a drawer and a painter. I was trained to paint with oils at a small school in Michigan. These days I’m working with graphite and gouache a lot.

This is as close as I will come to maintaining a blog.
In my stream you will find art in progress, some finished pieces, polaroids, self portraits and snapshots from my life. I wish to live in Australia in the near future, making drawings and paintings for the rest of my days.”

He’s very good at ‘drainting’.

Artist Scott Hove is a man of many talents. The one of which probably will immediately stand out the most is his sculptural work resembling cakes. Yes you read that correctly, I said ‘cakes’. So just how freaky can a cake get, well…click here.

I am digging the nature/spiritually-infused work of Korean illustrator Egeen Koo. It’s even better to see her work utilized commercially in a public space. It’s a rare thing that genuine art squeezes it’s way through advertising.