Looking Outwards for Inspiration

Constantly looking inwards for inspiration is akin to digging for treasure and discovering a mass grave. And so I have been suffering the cliched, albeit timeless struggle of, How long can I indulge my dark side before it completely consumes me? Normally, I find it incredibly difficult and counter-intuitive to enjoy art and literature while I am trying to be creative - it is an exhausting and futile task, akin to swimming against the tide. So then, How to reconcile my love of reading, the enjoyment of observing and contemplating art, and the need to learn and expand my knowledge, with the want to produce original, uncorrupted art???
I have decided to attack this dilemma head-on. The other day I began this daunting task by tackling a not-so-daunting novel by Ayn Rand called Anthem, which explores the concept of the individual in a Dystopian future. This has inspired me to explore the theme of Dystopia and how I envision it.

...she disappears...

Soundtrack to My Demise (or What I've Been Listening to Lately): On An Upswing, Wishing for Summer...

2 TY SEGALL - MELTED I am a sucker for raw, reverb-heavy, fuzzy garage rock. With the bass turned up to its max and my headphones on, it feels like two boulders pummelling my skull from both sides, rendering me into a giddy, blissful state. The catchy melodies and sentimental, slightly off lyrics...sounds like summer: unwashed, reckless, up to no good, and not giving a fuck about anything.

"...talk talk it's all you do, so I never talk to you oh no....cause you're in my head so I never go to bed oh no...cause you, you are Imaginary Person, you're in my head but I am certain you are real..."

3 THEE OH SEES - WARM SLIME

In a similar vein - this album alternatives between making me bop and pony like an idiot, and disintegrating me into a meditative, thoughtful trance. It reminds me of a summer a few years back when I spent a couple of sick, doped-up weeks in Fresno, California, during a record-setting heat wave. The sweat evaporates off of your skin as quickly as it appears. Everything about my surroundings seemed ridiculous and surreal. It was an absurd and memorable experience. I kept a journal at the time, in the attempt to keep apace with my thoughts. I can't follow a single strand to the end - they all just get tangled into a giant knot. All of my writing is in alternating hues of neon ink - most likely due to the influence of a certain prescription drug known to cause hallucinations.

The five palm trees on the edge of the parking lot are five skinny punks leaning, hunched, cross-armed and mohawked.
Another tree has leaves large and glistening like so many metal chandeliers hung atop one another - a pyramid heap of kitsch discarded, dumped, glinting and giggling in the sun.
Flower heads bob lazy and drugged like sprung Jack-in-the-boxes.
The sun preheats the sky to a scorching blue. A hot wind scrapes the crumbs of baked foliage off of the surface. Worms grill on a cement hotplate, crispy and still twitching, and are scavenged by ants and birds.
The heat prickles beneath my skin. It bubbles and boils red and sore along the top of my arms, on the backs of my knees.
My bones, body agitate my skin, shake and rattle me. The old layer of flesh shingles off, weeks after my foundation shifted and cracked.

A New Beginning...

It is mid-July but last night I left a window open and an autumn chill snuck in. It brought a squirrel that ran haywire across the kitchen windowsill and knocked over a couple of empties. The noise woke me up too early. 
The cat is content on the warm place in the centre of the stove.
I have the window to the fire escape rigged so that it is always open a couple of inches. The constant flow of air masks the smell of natural gas that would otherwise fill the apartment since the pilot light went out a couple of months ago. I am too embarrassed to let my landlord in to light it. But not enough to make an effort at scrubbing the crust off of the burners and sweeping and washing the floors.
Half-awake, I turn on one of the other three burners to boil the kettle for tea. The cat is startled but doesn't jump down in time. The fur around her butt and tail are singed.
I try to console her but she wedges under the bed in the far corner where I can't reach.
Aside from the cat, I share my apartment with two cacti, a dressmaker, a record player, and a typewriter. If it weren’t for the murphy bed, I wouldn’t have a single piece of functional furniture.

Ghost Story: Part Three

Utterly deflated - I need new life. So I put a record on.
I shimmy my bones to the record playing. Close my eyes and feel it fill out my hips, my ass, my soul. Dance real slow. A cold beer in one, numb hand. A clove cigarette in the other. Slink around the apartment. Pause in the bathroom to tap the ashes into the sink and glare at myself in the mirror.

Swamp Thing

Born from the swamp, out of the sludge and mire.

She is radiant - glowing with something beautiful but menacing.

Another Work in Progress

Who is in the details...???

The Shut-In

In my room:
two rotary phones,
no dial tones.
All connections are severed.
I have no leverage,
no blackmail, no chainmail,
no links whatsoever.
The rain falls in cold, solid bars outside of my window.
Beside my bed:
a jar full of keys,
of mysteries,
to doors left open or kept shut,
that can't be bribed
from their hinges, or their convictions
about lost loves.

Dead or Alive

The last thing that you need
is the first thing that you get
And baby you need me like
you need a hole in the head
And I wantchawantchawantchwantcha alive
But I'll takeyatakeyatakeyatakeya dead
I've got two eightballs for my eyes
but you still seem so surprised
that I gotchagotchagotchagotcha alive
Then I knockyaknockyaknockyaknockya dead

Sublimations: The First Layer

Amorphous Matter

Friends?...Sisters?...Lovers?...Or...

Monster???
Everyone gawked and taunted. What was it? The ambiguous creature was frightening to behold: it resembled two girls, but no one could tell where one ended and the other one began. They were inseparable; a grotesque, amorphous figure; womanly but offensive. Something needed to be done...

The First Omen: A Bird in the Sink

The bird in the kitchen sink is an omen, I think.
The house is sealed against the humid summer heat: the window frames are swollen and stuck; blinds and drapes are drawn defensively against sunlight.
I don't know how it got inside.
Uninterested, the cat is a puddle on the cool kitchen tile.
Overall, the household is undisturbed.
I dig out a pair of mittens from the hall closet and carry the bird outside, onto the front lawn. It doesn't flinch. A few bully crows gang up and encircle the small bird, who is motionless and unaware as they close in. I save the unfortunate creature and put it in a box in the garage .

Twilight stirs me from the sofa, where I have been dozing all afternoon. Night spreads upward from the horizon like an indigo stain, dousing the burning sky.
The house is tense, so I open the windows easily and they exhale the stale breath it has been holding in. I open my lungs to the warm, fresh air and go outside to check on the bird.
It is where I left it, but something is changed. The box is transformed into a coffin.
The moon is unblinking. The air is static, and unaffected.

Soundtrack To My Demise (or What I've Been Listening To Lately)

1 CLOCKCLEANER - AUF WIEDERSEHEN

"I am just a dreamer, and you are all my dreams...None of this was real, except when it was..."

I was hooked up to this record, on repeat, for several hours on Sunday while I pulled an all-nighter. The four tracks on this album - pulsing, melancholy, dark and dreamy deathmarches - matched my state of mind (despaired, destructive and delirious) dead-on. I am currently hooked up for another dose - as rusty and ominous as intravenous iron but WAY BETTER. It gives me the strength to grit my teeth and trudge on, to get through another long, uneasy night...

"It's okay, it's the same, something's always on her brain...

It's okay, I am fine, this will all just end in time...she will always be insane...cause something's always on her mind..."

My neuroses are novelties, bruises that bloom into psychoses. The maniac laugh; the woeful, doleful sideways glance; the half-smirk; wise-crack; wiseass remark.

I can't keep a straight face. Can't form a sentence that isn't punctuated with a scoff - a once-quirky affectation gone haywire.
I am on a loop, looping, loopy.

I can't quit [spinning]...won't stop [skipping].

To others I am a mere curiosity. The death on my breath brings them to the brink with me. It's a thrill that I know well: the headrush, heady brush with what's next. The closer, the better.

I have no remorse, no resentment, no ill-will.

In fact, I have nothing at all.

"The sadness at your parties was my fault...When I say this is over, you will not exist...

Would you please be quiet? Would you just shut up? I'm sorry...I'm trying to say goodbye..."

*All lyrics in quotations by Clockcleaner

Shipwrecked

A wreck, adrift,

Sink or jump ship...

I'll drown my thoughts,

if it suits me,

I'll cry mutiny.

All of my relationships set sail,
hit the rocks,
hit rock bottom.
I'll let the wind fill my lungs
if I can't.
I'll let my whims fill with wind
if I want.

A Little Ditty on "Love", Loathing, and Denial

Self-sabotage is a clever and unfulfilling device for me. Instead of letting myself be vulnerable, honest and open, I distance myself by "swallowing" my emotions. I act heartless, unaffected, unfeeling and, ultimately, inhuman. The following is a short poem that I wrote on the subject:

I haven't even got half-a-heart to tell you that

I haven't even got half-a-heart.

Selfishly, I ate it.

Ghost Story: Part Two

Darkness pours from the sky. It swirls and eddies around me, cold and cajoling. It is thrilling and frightening, the way my body responds to the cruel night air. How easily my flesh excites. How my own darkness reflexively leaps to the surface. The little life remaining in me barely keeps me inflated. I exhale and watch it come out in a puff of smoke. Then disappear.

 

Lost

Ghost Story: Part One

An apparition in black silk and lace. The shift dress hovers around her form like a spell.
The gust of wind that brought her was exhilarating and terrifying. You can tell a spirit by the way the wind moves her. It enters her orifices and bends and shakes her limbs like a sapling.

The slurp and hiss of a bottle of soda being opened - that's what it sounds like when my head pops off. It's one of my favorite sounds. Last evening I uncorked myself and let my soul out to roam. It wandered the whole night looking for a new vessel.
I awoke in a fetal position covered with bruises. It has been a brutal rebirth. Upright, my vision turns to static. Slowly I regain reception and stumble into a scalding shower to thaw. I wash my new body with soapy hands and marvel at how dangerous the soft, downy skin feels stretched taut around such sharp bones.
This body has a weak grip on me, so close to death as it is...

Fortune Cookie

This is a short story that I had good intentions to submit for a writing contest I saw on geist.ca. I believe that the premise had to have something to do with a fortune cookie. Of course I didn't finish the story in time for the deadline. Here's what I have pieced together from my attempts:

Florescent street lamps chill the November air. We trudge home from Champions Canadian/Chinese Restaurant across its small, cratered parking lot, vacant of cars but full of slush and salt. This will all be frosted over by morning, but for now my canvas sneakers sop up the wet mess to my ankles.
As we walk it starts to snow.
At home, Sam changes into dry clothes and lends me boxer shorts and an old soccer t-shirt that says THE HONEYBEES on the chest and 13 across the back. The house is empty. We hunker down in the basement to watch one of three fuzzy channels on the old TV set, and pick at cold tofu and broccoli out of its Styrofoam container. The basement is damp and the air smells earthy. The carpet is light-brown shag; there is a grungy yellow foam mattress in a corner, a tweed couch and a small television on a built-in shelf in one pine-paneled wall. High school parties always took place in basements like this, and there is something cunt-like and sexy about it that makes me self-conscious, exposed.
Anxiety builds up in my mind, flake by flake.
I don't know.
Later, Sam shows me her new record player and SLR - gifts from her grandparents. She doesn't own a single record. I'm the one who took photography classes in high school.
During a rerun of SCTV we crack our fortune cookies.
My slip of paper is blank. I show it to Sam.
"Ooooooooh, spooky!" she says, "Do you think that means you have no future?"
I wad up the paper and toss it at her head. "Fuck you. What does yours say?"
"It says: 'You will soon have an important decision to make.' Duh! Bo-ring!"
While she eats both of our cookies, I break off a piece of Styrofoam and crumble it into tiny white pieces on the rug. "Maybe one day we'll go to a Chinese food place that actually uses those little folded-up Chinese food boxes..."
"Ha! First you have to get the hell out of this hick-town!"
I already know this. So long as I am stuck here, my future is a blank.
The wind blows a drift of snow against the high, narrow basement window.
I think, 'What did I want my cookie to predict?'There are times when something comes out of her mouth and I swear it came from my own head. And it thrills me, makes something leap in me that I didn
Now I think about it and I am scared to death that I don
I resolve to keep close tabs on my ideas at all times so that they don
"Since when do you take pictures?" I say.
She shrugs. "Max is gonna show me. And there's a darkroom downtown that's cheap to use."
The last time we hung out alone, I took a picture of Sam in a spiralling yellow stairwell at the university. When I saw it developed, it was black and white and embarrassing. I was amateur and uncertain with my camera, and all of the prints were out of focus. Sam was blatantly bored and restless, her expression drugged. Her black-rimmed eyes were ghastly, ghostly streaks. But that is not why it makes me wince.
What is most revealing about the photo is the obvious vulnerability of the photographer.
I hadn’t know was there, and I'm either going to be sick or scream or cry or explode.’t have a single original thought in my head. ’t escape. ’t seen Sam in a few weeks and she had chopped off all of her hair and dyed it black. Her face was shocking - she had had bangs and long hair since we had first met years ago. Max had cut it for her the previous night, and afterwards she had dropped acid with him for the first time...

Daydreaming

"Apparitions No. 4 (Daydreaming)" - mixed media, photo transfer, acrylic on canvas/cardboard

This piece actually started as a simple experiment in photo transfer and other techniques I learned in a "Built Surface" continuing studies art class. It has been tucked away in my portfolio for three or four years, untouched until a friend complimented me on it and asked me to finish it for her. It may have started as a humble, technical exercise, but I think that the final product may actually be my favorite piece to date.

Thinking About Writing

I long to write. But there is something about creating art, using these images of anonymous and forgotten ghosts, that is easier somehow. I give these characters my narratives, assign them my identity, so all of my paintings and collages are deeply personal. Still, writing is messier and unbearably painful. Rooting around in my mind is akin to performing exploratory surgery without anesthetic.

A Poem

In the centre of my pale moon-face,
aglow with sickness,
two craters -
two sunken eyes.
It takes a little longer to reach
your gaze,
at the end of a long, shadowy corridor.
It is a little frightening to look
so deep into mine.
Dragged in with the tide,
and down by the undertow.

Work In Progress

What To Live For

Yesterday someone asked me an interesting question: where, in your body, do you reside?
I used to live in my head but lately my answer is: "in my gut." I reside in my pain.
The follow-up question was: what would your gut say to you if it could speak? A ridiculous idea, for sure, but...
What would it say???

Literally Editing My Past

Here's some "found" writing from one of my many abandoned notebooks. Unfinished stories. Stories without beginnings, middles or ends; without heads, torsos or limbs. Cut and sewn into something with a semblance of sense.

Perched on a headstone, we take sobering swigs of coffee from a mason jar. I point out Orion's belt, the only constellation I can find. We have that in common.
Her legs are bony and downy, like a little boy's. Her black bob haircut has light brown roots.
I rub my hands over my freshly shorn head. It makes my molars tingle and my body turn into pins and needles. At home the bathroom is littered with hair. My head was getting so heavy and morbid that I had to get rid of some excess weight before I snapped.
I've drank too much coffee and my mind is humming, my nerves and bones are vibrating inside my sore, exhausted limbs. I'm a twenty-watt lamp with a sixty-watt bulb. I'm shooting sparks but nothing is catching.
Eventually day cracks on the horizon and slides its sickly yellow yoke across the sky. It's a queasy, greasy Sunday morning. My stomach won't settle until dusk.
Like a pair of zombies, we stumble out of the graveyard towards home.
We pass by the park where she first got me drunk on vodka and orange juice, and sent the world hurtling. It has been spinning wildly ever since. I look into her cole-smudged eyes, and the world spins and spins. I look up at the stars. They pin me down.

Looking Inward for Inspiration

As much as I would like to avoid the outside influence of media and other artists, I am not delusional enough to think that I am immune. But I like to think of popular culture in particular as a sort of tumor - not as crucial to my existence as a limb, but an extension of myself nonetheless. So, sequestered in my apartment and simmering in sickness, I am using my time to rifle through old notebooks for inspiration. It's a chaotic and disordered catalogue.

Experiments in Lomography