BACK FROM FISHING

man in the mirror

(click image to enlarge)

remixed found negative

MY GIRLS
by animal collective

Is it much that I feel I need
A solid soul and the blood I bleed
With a little girl, and by my spouse
I only want a proper house

I don't care for fancy things
Or to take part in a precious race
And children cry for the one who has
A real big heart and a father's grace

I don't mean to seem like I care about material things like a social status
I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls

my most prized possession

my grandfather (mother's dad) was a political cartoonist for a small kansas newspaper in the mid-thirties. i don't know many details about the man (he died a couple years before i was born) but i've been told by my mother that i've inherited a handful of traits from him--a love of drawing being one of the more prominent.

when i was in my late teens my mom gave me a sketchbook that he composed back in 1924 (my grandfather would have been 19 years old at the time). the drawings inside are sublime and rendered with such a lightness and ease of touch that my heart aches at their innocent beauty. with each image i feel i learn a little bit more about my roots, his era and true artistic integrity.

despite being gone for over 35 years, i feel he can directly communicate to me through his lines...and in turn, i sometimes try to do the same with my work for him.

he was a natural draftsman to the highest order and i long to create drawings with but a shred of his grace and soft-spoken expertise.

SLEEPING UNDER THE CURSE.

i'm trying to kill myself in my sleep.
slowly.

i've just figured it out after another extremely difficult night of arduous twisting and turning and waking multiple times. for the last few months, at least once per night, i will struggle awake with my forearm pressed firmly into my face completely covering up both of my breathing holes. other times i find myself desperately gasping for air from an inherited case of apnea (a sleep disorder characterized by pauses in breathing during sleep. each episode, called an apnea lasts long enough so that one or more breaths are missed, and such episodes occur repeatedly throughout sleep.)
The interesting thing is that i started noticing this significant sleep disruption the day after christmas...the very day my 86-day (and counting) brain fog set in. december 26 is also the same day i decided to move my bed from one room in my apartment to another more 'logical' location in what had previously been my art studio. i also hung the 2007 shamanic drawing- 'curse, the medicine' -above my bed that day.

what does this all mean? is it just an uncanny string of odd coincidences? or is it possible i just might be sleeping under a curse of my own making that has been triggered to life by its hanging in this room...?

paul mccarthy's pig machine