Because its human nature to just go into yourself when trauma happens
But thats the wrong thing to do
You gotta concentrate on getting better.
And so since i never opened that door to ‘ok, so how really screwed up was i? poor me’ instead all i concentrated on was ok, what do i need to do next
To see my baby? getting better so i could see my baby
The question was always what do i need to do next? what am i working on now to go forward
So when i learned a few months into it,that i really couldnt draw anymore
At all
I realized ‘what am i going to do to make money to feed my baby
Eventually?
Because most of my money had gone to hospital costs and just keeping me eating
And i paid for all of these extra therapies, whatever anyone recommended to me
Even a bunch of what i guess you would call new age or alternative healings
Well, i couldnt hold a pencil
Because my hands and fingers didnt work well enough yet
So i went back on the computer.
They actually wheeled in an old fashioned computer for me to use
And at the time i thought huh, this looks familiar
Well turns out it was actually just like my old computer
My first computer from 85 or 86
Because i was into computers way way back when i was just a kid
There was a space shooter game and a game called life where you just placed these little dots and watched them grow
Or watch them fizzle down to nothing
I got to play all these old games again and it triggered something in me
And there was a rudimentary drawing program on it as well
So i started drawing with a mouse
And the first thing i drew was actually mickey mouse
The symbol for mickey mouse
But i didnt know what it was. i knew the symbol but i didnt know what it meant at first
And my weird cousin joked that it was the symbol for a brainwashed childhood
And bad copyright laws
And for some reason i could laugh at that but i didn
Didnt know why it was funny
But slowly slowly i started remembering everything
And drawing as much as i could
First on the computer and then finally on paper
Then after more months go by i asked my doctor ok, let me start watercoloring again
She said ok
Then i went into oils
And then i started sculpting for a little bit.
And this time it was all like i told you before about most artists growing up in a nonverbal way
This time everytime i relearn something i stop and go ok let me verbalize what that is
Just to make that idea and memory stick in my mind as much as possible
And so now actually because of that time
And it was years, it was years
And im thankful for the people who let me draw and paid me to draw during those ten years
The first ten years of my real new life i call it
And im thankful for people who paid for my artwork during that time, all of those mixed up pictures
You know i really should not have been drawing
Not professionally
Cuz my memory was just lapsing
In fact i only understand now this many years later that my short term memory is shot
I didnt remember that i didnt remember, you see
But now i know that i dont remember that i dont remember.
Hahahaha
There was a time where i could look at somebody for 5 seconds, put my head down and just draw it all from memory
The entire scene
Now i have to keep looking up and keep remembering and concentrating or it all slips away and i just zone out and freeze
Freeze like im hypnotized by nothin
Thats why youll see my sketchbooks now are just full of anatomy studies
Even if im happy with what ive just drawn professionally
I still have to keep remembering it
Making an effort to keep remembering it in the sketchbooks between projects
Practicing and looking back on it constantly
But these ten years have allowed me
Because i did it consciously and verbally
Have allowed me to draw better than ive ever been
And more consistently
And to actually be able to explain and teach others to an extent
Actually maybe im not as good of an artist as i once was
Im not as natural
But im more deliberate and consistent
And i think its worth it to know what im doing for once
Instead of just working off instinct which has its limits in so many ways
So i am better overall even if people can point to my earlier work and say ‘that is just better natural raw talent’
But it is a struggle
But because of the setback i know what to do
I know when to stop, i know when to shutdown, i know when to go sideways
Is this stuff like what you call sideways tactics? maybe its similar
Or a parallel
Parallel to sideways, oh boy…haha
Anyway i know when to go, i know when to jump
Instead of just being frustrated with the pencil
Or winging it and hoping that the muse takes over
Which the muse…i dont have a muse anymore
My muse dumped me
People asked me how it felt when i found out and if i was angry with the doctor who lied to me
I tell them no
I didnt care that the doctor was lying to me
Because what were my other options and what were the doctors options?
Id rather just keep meeting her demands and improving myself in the process if it meant getting to see my baby, and the doctor knew that
In order to make me keep working and come back from what i had to come back from, i had to think i was working for the person i thought was gonna be my wife eventually
But the person i loved most then couldnt do anything for me
So the doctor had to hide that from me so i could do it myself
Because otherwise knowing how alone i was would have devastated me
I wasnt allowed to realize how alone i was, and thats a good thing
There were a few relapses along the way, so i needed a reason even more to get through them
The doctor would have me try to draw a clock or a human face with my eyes closed
But it would always turn out with the numbers and hands all over the place
Not on the face
Like it was a picasso drawing
And you know how i have mixed feelings about picasso lol
Well even after i started drawing again for the first 5 years or so my art was still abstract
And pretty bad
But i am honestly grateful for the people who bought work from me while i was recovering
Im even grateful for the reviewers who said they liked my new style
Like i could help it
And it isnt like i blame the people who have criticized me now either
I do wish they would stop asking my ex for interviews though
Assuming some of them are still doing that
Because i dont keep up with anything
They remind me of people who always sort of made fun of my accent and put that into interviews i did with them
Or maybe not made fun of it but they changed the spelling to bring out my accent
Which i dont mind a little bit but the way they did it made me seem stupid
I dont even think they thought i was stupid, but it made me seem stupid to myself when i would read the interview
And they said ‘no we look up to you’
I told them ‘you say you look up to me but
you turn me into something that i think sounds pretty stupid. and youre looking up to that?? then you have a real problem
If youre looking up to a dumb image of me you made and think is something great to learn from
I used to get real angry at them when i was young
Too angry
But people always got the wrong impression of me in a lot of ways and still do
No matter what i say
So i know my words look stupid and unprofessional but you know how it is and you told me you do it too
You have to clean it up for me though
Sometime can i show you a poem i wrote and you can clean that up too?
It is not very long but its important to me
But people take the things the wrong way
Like when they looked at my horrible drawings from when i was an outpatient
They said they were really profound versions of men as monsters and machines
Or cyborgs or demons
Well no they werent, they were all i could draw and they were supposed to be more or less normal people
Maybe with a certain twist to them, thats all
I messed my life up and can barely do anything that makes any kind of sense, and you wanna give me awards for it
What does that say about your whole institute?
But that kind of miscommunication is just one example and its not really what im trying to say
Im sorry, its tough to explain
I dont really blame the critics or museums because as many mistakes as they make in my opinion, we are still better with them than without them
And i know you didnt ask this, and i know you said we could keep some of this out of the published version
But i honestly dont remember what i did to my baby. that isnt just what i told reporters. i really dont remember.
And i dont want to remember
I dont need to remember it
I dont want people to find out and tell me either
And maybe i didnt do anything, maybe it was all her
But ive gone this long
And im not that person anymore anyway
I almost literally have a new brain
It is the same brain but it works differently
Its been rebooted
So
I have more skills now
And im a better person now too
At least thats what people tell me
Not giving anything away
But they say that i never did anything wrong in the first place
And i dont think thats true either, to be honest with you
I can tell you that she had it planned before we left the islands
I trusted her to book things because i always was too disorganized to do that stuff
We were going to touchdown in hawaii and she had secretly got different connecting tickets
To send me back to the islands while she went on
She left me there and went on even after my episode
She still went on to america
To california i mean, cuz i was left in hawaii
And she filed a restraining order while i was in the coma
Even though i never touched her like that or even threatened to
At least not that i remember and not that anyone ever told me
You know to be perfectly honest i dont think you should put this in the article
Do you believe that the last thing i heard from her, which she told me through someone else who works in law enforcement
Was that if i ever looked her up to just find out where she lives or what happened to her, that could count as domestic violence
That would automatically trigger a domestic violence charge
Even though we arent living together or even seen each other in years and i dont see how getting information can be a form of violence
But they said it was automated
Huh, ‘auto-mated’
Anyway maybe even looking that law up to find out if its true will count as some other sort of crime
And this is from a woman who used to say the one thing she didnt like about america was feminism
And she read tons of stuff online saying that the laws are unfair to men and that wives use them against husbands
Which i dont even know about
But the point is i dont think she was ever on the mans side and i think she just liked to hate women and looked for an excuse
She used to say to me ‘girls are poison’ and that she was afraid that she was poison iv
Ivy
So, a woman who hates other women for whatever reason, probably because she isnt happy in herself and is jealous of women who are having a good time
But i guess now she hates me too, so she can switch it up now and hate a man too
Ive never been into any of this stuff man
Good guys and bad guys
Or good girls and bad girls
I never looked at life that way, and maybe that makes me stupid sometimes
Because they say if good and evil are just relative then evil will win through this confusion
But i dont hate her anymore
I dont even have any bad memories of her really, i could only find good ones
Which hurt in a way
To remember them now
Cuz hanging over all of it is how she chose to end things with me
Oh well
I can always draw new babies, you know?
I drew her before i even saw her
I drew a woman that looked like her and then met her the next day
Like i conjured her up
Thats a true story they tell
But thats another story
I dont draw her anymore, not for a long time
You know that a year and a half after waking up i did fly back to our old house
And i looked for pieces of her hair and fingernails that she left in the carpets there at my familys house
Because ivy would always bite her nails and just leave the little pieces on the floor which had a shag carpet
So much that itd still be there even after you vacuumed
Some was still there a couple years later, that is how much she shed and bit her nails
And how shaggy that old carpet is lol
Well i wanted to take some of that stuff to an old woman i knew who helped raise me actually, and she was what you could call a voodoo priestess
It wasnt voodoo but it was what is known as a fetish religion
I guess you could have called her a witch doctor
But she was a very highly respected person in our town and could control almost everything and everyone
My parents would drop me off with this woman sometimes when they were arguing, and they would argue alot
My mother was christian but my father was not and he would smack her whenever he caught her praying
For her own good he said to get her to stop that superstition, but then he would drop me off with the old voodoo lady so go figure
Well from her i knew that the hair and fingernails of someone can be used to put a curse on that person
And for a time after my coma and recovery i wanted to put a hell of a curse on my old baby
Because i wasnt mad at first and im not mad now, but back then for a little while coming out of my setback a madness did build up inside me
Well i found out the voodoo priestess had died a few months before i got there
And i was talking to the womans son
Or probably her grandson actually
And we were talking things over and he said that my baby had actually been to see the priestess before we got on that plane
So im thinking that for whatever reason my baby had a curse put on me
And thats why i had the episode and the coma
And probably it freaked her out that the curse even worked
Because she didnt believe in that stuff
She didn’t believe in anything
; But for whatever reason the voodoo priestess who was like a grandmother to me had helped her do it
Maybe as a way to get back at me for some other shit
Because when i was a little kid she said i was supposed to be the chosen vessel for her group
To be possessed and a spirit would speak through me
But i wouldnt go for it
I said it was bullshit
Because i was afraid it could be true and that was my destiny
So i dont know.
Excuse me for cursing
Hahaha
Hey tell me is that like a double meaning? curse words and actual cursing?
You said spells and spelling was but i think you coulda been pullin my leg with that one
Anyway i ended up not using the hair and fingernails though.
I just threw them away and felt stupid
So
I dont know how much any of this will help you for the write up
But there you go, it should be enough lol
Please dont make me sound too bad lol
I hope the article comes out ok and i hope your boss finds what hes looking for in all this, whoever he is
Never met him yet huh?
Weird
Mr Nobody huh
Oooook lol
Anyway let me know if you have other questions or if you need more artwork for the article
I really appreciate it my man
Sorry again that i was late tonight
Sometimes i just lose all track of time and take naps in my hammock
V. The Train of Fools
This old Train of Fools keeps rolling on steadily,
stopping quickly to board new passengers readily
but never letting anyone off. Only a few anyway
ever try to exit. Thwarted, they grumble but stay.
Almost always, the protestors are young adults.
Unable to escape, they eventually form into cults
based on warring theories of why they can’t leave.
These small groups argue over what they believe
but all contend that the door-guards are the least
important obstacle preventing passengers’ release.
Only one of ten riders ever joins these dissenters,
however. We consider them crazy and off-center.
They loudly bemoan every new family who enters
the train and are rightly mocked by TV presenters.
Cultists’ cries of overpopulation are pure bigotry.
More people on the train just means more industry.
Most of us view the boarders as a happy display.
The families arrive with children leading the way.
Often the older ones seem skeptical or suspicious,
but the kids have convinced them of the auspicious
offer our train gives them to step into the future.
Upon boarding, each person gets a new computer
and is asked politely if s/he’d like to be neutered.
They are then clothed, fed, and assigned a tutor
who teaches them the ways and means of the train.