By the Mission Bart, I saw Satan’s girlfriend and Jesus’ disciples
She really liked her blacks and her he-goat pin
Elvira clocking out and needing a 10 smoke chain off-set
Her eyes saw my blacks, a handshake really
I wish I was brave enough to ask what lead her down the left-hand path
It’s just another form of elitism
You see hardcore punk is a lot like a Latino church on Mission Street
Screaming for a crowd is all the same
Disciples just scream what everyone feels
We all the righteous ones, undoubted and true
Don’t that head rush feel good?

There was a “blackgaze” show that night,
Act 1: mariachi outside a taqueria
Perfectly sloppy, loud, all natural lo-fi. Home and honesty.
The crowd had a tough looking guy with a dripping moon neck tattoo
Truer fan than I’ll ever want to be
Bosse-de-Nage closed with “A Mimesis of Purpose” that night
It was the vocalist’s birthday too

I’ll tell you punk rock is also a lot like being Single Mothers
Babies don’t pay the bills
I wore my baby blue when I met a runaway hippie girl on Haight
She told me about the Rainbow Gathering and how they were all her family
Money didn’t exist there
She got to Ocala on a bus full of “kids like you and I!”
Her face reminded me of a rich girl I went to school with
“I have a baby, so any dollar helps!”- minute 5 of 7
She didn’t seem worried about a thing in the first four
$20 donation for local business

Passing Dolores there was a geeky hipster with the rare, beige Burzum
On my way to Berkeley, under the overpass,
a pauper with a black one this time
Black metal got gentrified too it seems
At the next light, a black woman was squatting,
Quaint and nun-like wrapped in cloth with only her face exposed
She stuck her tongue out and howled mockery at my existence
Today I walked over a man tweaking out to get to my door
Shame goes both ways

In Soma, I saw a black man get stabbed with a toy knife
The boy who did it ran off laughing, jokes always been on you
I wonder if part of you wished it was real
You’re in the 11th sub level of some kind of hell
Prime, indivisible with liberty and just-…
“Kill yourself. You still belong to us”
Your limp is too relentless to ever miss step
Tongo could tell you better how someone’s actually dead already
MC Ride would fit in nicely with those painting inside Nola,
Next to Robert Johnson, Or was it Tonny who sold his soul to the devil?
Turn a blue into a green if you ever can

Dunkelheit: the falling of nothingness to give new meaning
I took a whole class on it and how you just can’t win over
Gottlieb paintings were the closest I got to getting metaphysics
An unbranded brand’s abyss of light
Nothing changes much wherever you look

I beg to be in some kind of womb in the primordial Amazon,
A gentle roar of water and the breath of every animal
I hope everyone else has some place like that
Maybe I am making a mimesis of purpose with everything I see
A book in Dog Eared said Western literature has always been that
“Life is so busted and I just wanted to be loved by you”
I’ll just keep it simple and harbor every affection I can get

Together and by ourselves || Together or separate

- Spray Paint by Black Flag*

(*Also covered by my favorite Bay Area hardcore act, Loma Prieta. Look ’em up!)

Once you’re a hardcore punk kid, you’re a punk for life. Punk owes a lot to Black Flag, one of the most iconic bands of the 80s hardcore scene. I owe a lot to the punk mentality.

I’m an immigrant from Bogotá, Colombia who grew up on punk rock, skateboards, and computers in the muggy suburbs of Ocala, Florida. Like most immigrant families, mine didn’t always have the easiest time adjusting to America. They paid their dues waiting tables, working in hot factories, and scrubbing toilets. Actually, they still do all that, proudly so.

I was surrounded in love by black, Latino, teenage punk communities that carried the spirit of irreverence. We knew the odds were stacked against us, but that was just glue to make us rely on our collective kindness. We had each other, our struggles, and no fear of being a lil scrappy to make ends meet. From strip mall churches that served as community centers to DIY punk shows in backyards and skateparks, people power was everything.

Long story short, I found myself at Stanford excitedly diving into artificial intelligence. AI isn’t all just number crunching and programming either. I felt some philosophy and neuroscience was key in getting the full picture of the limits of our own intelligence and its role in human culture. Thankfully, there’s the perfect major for that. I owe my intellectual development to the always relentlessly curious folks of the Symbolic Systems program. From neural networks, to metaphysics, to critiques of technology, it’s all the reason friends back at school chuckle at my dinner table ideas.

I got to know (and be inspired by) Obvious through Applied Symbolic Systems in VC and Entrepreneurship, a class in the SymSys program taught by Obvious’ very own Nan Li. I’ll be coming back to Stanford in the fall to extend my SymSys education with a Masters in Computer Science (concentrating in AI, of course).

I’m getting a thrill over the idea of democratizing AI and technology in general. It’s a concept I picked up from François Chollet, creator of the ever popular Keras deep learning library. I’ve spent some time working at Google and was even lucky enough to get lunch with François there.

The concept of democratizing anything fits squarely in Obvious’ People Power investment theme. It’s about letting people govern their own technology and using it in a way that promotes equality. Equality gives people power. The people want to live long, well, and free. Freedom lets people help themselves in the most innovative ways. What would be more radical than letting people spray paint whatever they want to say? Break whatever inefficient and constricting environment is around them?

I think if we enable every individual to have full control and ease of use with the latest AI technologies, they’ll go positively wild making fast, efficient, sustainable, and social business. That’s my personal mission of world positive.

Skateboarding is all about falling down, brushing it off, and trying again until you land that flip trick like butter. Venture capital is kind of similar. Not every project will land the impact desired, but it’s always worth trying. It makes the sticky landings all the sweeter.

I’m joining Obvious over the summer as a software associate intern. I’ll be be writing some code to help us find better ways of scoping out those world positive projects and taking notes along the way of how AI can be imagined with an eye for improved empowerment of the individual.

I’m simultaneously humbled and angsty to be here. Humbled by the rad people enframing technology in all the right ways; angsty about dropping into the ocean of wealth in Silicon Valley and making sure it’s put to the right uses. A little angst never hurt anyone. If anything, I embrace it as my energy to be relentless.

The Bay Area has grown to be my home for the past four years. It’s still a fantasy land to me. It’s full of technology and individuals who genuinely bring people together. Neither is the Bay Area a shining utopia, no matter what the clean-cut, minimal websites make it seem like. It’s a stage for the growing complexities of modern life. The rest of the world is watching us.

I’m restless.

Nothing sums up the flourishing emotion and energy of it all quite like some lyrics from my favorite San Francisco metal act. Their album, Sunbather, has stuck with me since my first week of living in the Bay Area. It sounds like the enriching light of a bright San Francisco morning. Sunbather is about striving for perfection but never quite catching it, yet being intoxicated by the pursuit of it all.

“I’m dying”
“Is it blissful?”
“It’s like a dream”
“I want to dream”

- Dream House by Deafheaven

I want to dream.

Spray Painting Venture was originally published in Obvious Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.