By Sarah L. Myers
New York, NY, USA
“Stay Thirsty” is more than an
idea. It is a call to arms. Founded on the philosophy of Ryan Licht Sang, a
shining young musician, artist and writer who passed away at the age of 24 from
Bipolar Disorder, “stay thirsty for life” is the magazine's clarion call to
shine a spotlight on creativity and ideas in all forms from around the world.
-
From the Manifesto of Stay Thirsty
Magazine
Ryan Licht Sang was born on November 22, 1979 - Thanksgiving Day. He grew up in Palm Beach, Florida, attended the Palm Beach Day School and finished high school in Southern California. He attended college in Florida and Chicago.
At 14, Ryan, with his close friend Kendall Carson, age 15, formed
the band funnel in 1995 and recorded a CD at Echo Beach Studios in Jupiter,
Florida. The CD had eight songs with words and music by Ryan and one song with
words and music by Kendall. Musical arrangements were by both boys, with Ryan
doing the vocals on the songs he wrote and Kendall doing the vocals on the song
he wrote.
The band dissolved not long thereafter when Kendall moved away to
attend high school. Tragically, Kendall passed away at the age of 23 on October
31, 2002.
In 2000, after a couple years of college, Ryan changed his choice
of instruments, moving away from the guitar to the synthesizer, and formed the
band Since The Accident with Jeffrey Wrye. Both Ryan and Jeffrey were living in
Florida where they recorded eight songs in two separate sessions at Echo Beach
Studios. The first four songs were made into a CD after their first recording
session. Ryan wrote the lyrics and did all of the vocals. The musical
arrangements were composed by both Ryan and Jeffrey. Since
The Accident played
many South Florida venues, including opening in the Mars Tent at The Cure show
in May, 2000. At the end of that year, both Ryan and Jeffrey moved to Chicago
and played many of the local clubs. In July of 2001, Jeffrey decided to move
back to Florida and left the band.
Beginning in 2002, Ryan began to compose experimental and noise
music on his own. For the next year and a half, he recorded a variety of
compositions including some original music for the score of an independent
movie. During this period, he also concentrated on producing original works of
art in a variety of mediums and he worked on a novel entitled RANSOM
NOTES along
with several shorter works and observations.
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| Ryan Licht Sang |
Ryan passed away in his sleep at the age of 24 in the early
morning hours of August 26, 2004. His philosophy of “Stay Thirsty” for life and
his larger-than-life spirit are the motivations behind Stay Thirsty Magazine. In his own words in “Death and the
Depression Flower” by funnel, written when he was only thirteen, Ryan foretold the future when
he sang: “…I’m gone but not forgotten”. His old soul knew what the rest of us
would discover in time.
Music
Like his art and writings, the music of Ryan Licht Sang drew from
a number of iconic predecessors. Ryan viewed Joy Division’s front man Ian
Curtis as a kindred spirit. The darker, more industrial work Ryan produced with
Since The Accident is carried by the same echoed drumming and baritone vocals
of Joy Division - most evident in “Atmosphere” and “Dead Souls”, two of Ryan’s
favorites.
Propelled and influenced by music his entire life, Ryan was
inspired by progressive and independent literary musicians. The crossover was
evident. His lyrics were often narratives, written in a style used by Nick Cave
and Henry Rollins, two of Ryan’s heroes. Cave’s work was particularly important
to Ryan in his early twenties and his bookshelves were stacked with every
biography, CD, and tape of Nick Cave, The Birthday Party, and the Bad Seeds.
Industrial and noise music heavily influenced Ryan’s later works.
He sought out anything outside the mainstream, and often discovered artists
years before the media picked them up. Michigan’s Wolf Eyes was a favorite. He
likened them to seminal acts Throbbing Gristle and Merzbow, and predicted they
would bring in a new era of experimental noise. Two years later the band was on
the cover of WIRE magazine.
Einsturzende Neubauten’s front man Blixa Bargeld, however, should
be credited with having the most influence on Ryan’s life and music. Ryan
viewed Bargeld as a genius and after seeing Neubauten in concert in Chicago on
their last American tour, he proclaimed it to be one of the greatest nights of
his life. Everything about Blixa struck Ryan and impacted his life in ways far
more than just those of a musical influence. He was impressed by Blixa's
emotive lyrical content, the complexity of his compositions, and his striking
physical appearance and its effect on those in the audience.
Toward the end of his life, Ryan became interested in underground
hip-hop. He was a fan of Beans, Aesop Rock, Lyrics Born, Sole, Atmosphere,
RJD2, Diverse, Madvillian, and Sage Francis. Beans’ “Hot Venom” was a favorite
track on vinyl. Ryan liked to be challenged, and abiding by his “Stay Thirsty”
philosophy, he applied the intelligence and philosophy of these underground
artists to his own later post-punk industrial noise works.
Music was Ryan’s life. Making it, discovering it, and sharing it
was his passion.
Art
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| Self-Portrait by Ryan Licht Sang |
Ryan Licht Sang’s artwork came through in many forms, in many
mediums, and on many canvases. Uniquely his own, but taking strongly from the
influence of his favorite artists, Ryan’s work is invaluable in gaining insight
into the mind of someone battling a constant noise. He could be either
tormented or content, and both are represented at different stages and in
different pieces of his art. Ryan could also create to entertain, as evidenced
by the many humorous drawings he seemed to always be making for his friends.
But his hand was usually heavy and his work rarely strayed from a theme of
struggle. He used his art to expel the demons that haunted him everyday.
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| Pills Sculpture by Ryan Licht Sang |
Ryan was known for using anything as a canvas, just like
Jean-Michael Basquiat, who painted on the surfaces of doors, refrigerators,
stools and tables. Ryan used wood, butcher's blocks, glass, cardboard, pill
bottles and even the pills themselves. His choices of medium were almost always
pen and marker, or sometimes Wite-Out (always available to him as a front desk
clerk). When it came to imaging, Ryan would use screened prints or Xeroxed
images, even using part of a set of temporary tattoos on the cover of his
"Manifesto" notebook.
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| Manifesto Notebook by Ryan Licht Sang |
He was as experimental with his medium as he was with his choice
of canvas. His present to his parents on their anniversary was a collage made
from shredded and woven paper, and a T-shirt he made contains vertical symbols
in black paint and duct tape, the back reading: "I want war" all the
way down. Keith Haring also used phrases, stenciling things like "Clones
go home!" on sidewalks in the West Village. Ryan's use of phrases was his
way of making similar statements- like graffiti from the front desk. His
favorite phrase, “stay thirsty,” was perhaps his own tag. “Stay Thirsty” was
the culmination of all of Ryan’s ambition.
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| Anniversary Collage by Ryan Licht Sang |
The layering and use of different mediums is most evident on
Ryan’s “Manifesto” notebook cover. His work really looked the most finished by
being completely chaotic and frenzied. He made a wholeness out of several
smaller parts. He took original ideas, everyday things, accepted ideals and
images and manipulated them as incorporations into “Ryan’s World.” He took a
regular composition book and covered it, layer after layer, with etchings,
words, and images. The cover acts almost like a door into the darker side of
Ryan’s world.
His use of color strikes one as characteristically dark, with
browns, reds and blacks bleeding into the background and running together. He
was a huge fan of the dripping paintings of the Clayton Brothers, who create a
similar alternate world with stark colors and somber figures. Ryan's faces were
always strong. He chiseled each feature, down to the lines around the mouth and
deep rivets of expression by the nose. Sometimes the faces were created by
lines run in circles over and over, a technique used by Doze Green, a favorite
graffiti artist of Ryan’s.
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| Triptych by Ryan Licht Sang |
Ryan's art was pseudo-religious and he had a fascination with
Catholicism and the Virgin Mary. In the center of his "Lucifer, Eve,
Murderer" piece was Eve, a fashion advertisement painted over with the X
on the head and the inner skeleton drawn in the neck and chest. Like Joe
Coleman and Basquiat before him, Ryan's own physicality and mortality seemed to
be central in most of his work. He was always expressing the sinister side of
his illness, with figures fighting multiple forces. The devils in his work were
characterized by the X on the forehead and in some pieces have more than one
head, symbolizing an internal struggle with which Ryan himself was more than
familiar.
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| Three Faces Icon by Ryan Licht Sang |
Writings
When putting the pieces together one can really see just how talented Ryan really was. Standing before a collection as inspired and intricate as Ryan himself, it becomes heartbreaking to see a potential that was taken far too early. As quoted about his favorite artist and as relevant to Ryan himself, one said of Basquiat, “He flickered out suddenly, before his artistic star could reach its full brilliance.”
(All works of art, music and writing © Ryan Licht Sang 1979-2004)
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