This time around, since it's been a while since my last post, and because it's grey outside, no matter how many programs want me to spell t "gray", and because I feel like it, allow me to immerse you in the warm bubbly glow of my pseudo-intellectual, pretentious musings on the true nature of each piece here within, the sum total of which I might have spent an afternoon on.
Four animals of the Savanna, posing together unnaturally. The lion, king of the animals, looks into the distance, gauging the future of his people, but he cannot contain his basic instincts for personal comfort food. The hyena, physically smaller and meaner, but in reality a much more noble beast than the lion, looks at the viewer unsmilingly, challenging our views of traditional mores and norms, and thinks longingly of corn. If only she were capable of eating such a much more basic food, how her clutch could expand! The bird, normally ignored by larger animals as it picks mites and parasites off of their back, works unceasingly and unfailingly without ever betraying the slightest resentment at its lot in life, but it yearns for conquest and glory which can never be his. The tsetse fly, meanest and most insignificant of all, can cause massive damage to any of the denizens of the savanna, and thinks of sex. Brutal and cruel, it cares not for anyone but itself. Villages and tribes lie in ruins while it buzzes blithely on its way to its next pleasure.
Four men. One has died, and while anther one stares at the corpse in disbelief, the other two celebrate without a hint of regret. They are rich and sexually intimate with a number of women. Material gains stave off thoughts of the grave. There will be no mourning for the dead man.
The old dare not face the young, lest they see what they have been, and in seeing, feel loss and regret for chances missed. Already, the old begins to fade into wisps while the young, bold and vibrant, asserts her rightful place. Beyond each of them, a cap.It will not fit the young anymore, and the old will not wear it out of vanity. It belongs to someone else. A connector, perhaps, between the age divide, one who could unite them for the common good? Alas, he is long gone, if he ever existed.
Two girls talk. Or do they? The divide between them, unnatural to begin with, is accentuated by a stark black line. Though they pretend at intimacy, they are merely shells with designer sunglasses, each speaking blindly to an audience of one, or point one. The other pretends to care, perhaps even desires to, but the all-consuming, turgid, black maw of her soul destroys all feeling, leaving her only with petty grievances and shallow victories, compounded by the equally vapid doings of her conspirator. They wear them like a varnish, beautifully.
An old man gazes into the distance, pondering the meanings of actions and occurrences long past, possibly involving unicorns, while two well-meaning strangers engage in the primitive ritual of conversation not two paces away from him. Their colors fade into each other and reverse, suggesting hidden connections, possibly sexual between all of them. The woman, caught between the future as presented to her, and the future she dare not look at, hints at regret to come. She will devour them both.
a Troubadour moans plaintively about forgotten stories he has since remembered, while strumming a happy tune. His attempts at gaiety and preening before the invisible audience cannot conceal the sadness and chemical imbalances within his pit of righteous despair. He grows to fill the canvas, but can grow no further. He is at his peak, and must strain with Herculean might to stay even at that modest altitude of success. The model of his guitar suggests he will ultimately fail. Only pauper's jail awaits him.
A frentic totem pole to those consumed with obsession. Even as the top most personalities begin to quiver and shake, paranoid about their own fleeting appearances and money, the bottom-most totem busies himself with the basest of material concerns. Though bespectacled, he has lost his eyes. No matter, his path is set, and he will move on it at a steady pace until the road is no longer clear. Then he will be lost. As will us all.
A surrealist portrait of two dogs. One maintains her innocence and wonder about the world, and thus, stays small, puppy-like, and a healthy purple. The other, having decided the world was a feast for it's sensual appeasement alone, has lost its puppyish exterior and become something much more grotesque, and green. The bad doggy is no longer a doggy, but what is it? Both dogs wear collars, though the bad dog's has become loose, symbolic if its morals.
A female thinker, her hair, a royal purple waterfall of toxic chemicals, wonders silently at the meaning of her own glasses. Can she truly see without them? Can she truly see with them? Heavenly light washes over her, showing her the way, but she is blinded by its brilliance, and will neither solve her own glasses, nor anything else. The way of the thinker leads to decrepitude and baldness.
An unnamed bartender shirks her duties in a bar for the most part invisible. She is blind and deaf to the thirsty moans of her customers, for she has fallen in love. Not with a man, but with the idea of man, a lust so raw and luscious it has burned her to a cinder, and the rest of her world to white ash. The denizens of the bar will die there, become skeletons, and then dust waiting for the service of a woman who has loved them more than they could possibly comprehend, without their heads exploding. This is a picture of the best of all possible worlds.
Sascha here is a Russian immigrant. Her father is ex-KGB and has only one arm. She studies political science in the hopes of one day reaching an office where she can possibly gain proximity to -- and thereby exact revenge upon -- the man who severed her father's arm: Joseph Biden.
Amelie here has successfully hacked into the NORAD missile system five times. On two separate occasions she has remotely launched experimental warheads over New Mexico. Amelie is the leading cause of UFO sightings in the United States. The government disavows any knowledge of her existence.
Fenwick has taken guff for the past 23 years over his foppish name. A lifetime of verbal abuse has left him alternately sheepish and charming and psychotically violent. During those times, he locks himself in his room and tells his friends he is a werewolf.
Edward is known as "Radical Edward" in his Computer Sciences study group. Since he is not a fan of Japanese animation (ironically, since he's the only Japanese in the class) he has no idea that "Radical Edward" is a character from a popular anime show. The character is also a girl.
Boston has seen more in his lifetime than most kids will see in their lives, all combined together "like a big ball of soap flakes" as he put it. In his time, he has punched the following things: fourteen kids, a bear, two naked women who had pulled guns on him, a werewolf, a brick wall, many hippies, an experimental warhead, and Joe Biden.
