December 31, 2017

On Leather Masks and Honesty to Oneself

A leather mask, covering half the face, as a thought for 2018…


A possible explanation (insert yours here) is that I’ve been constantly annoyed by people who clandestinely tries to change one into something beautiful that one isn’t. To the best of my knowledge, unicorns don’t have foul manners, never swear and only drink water. But I’m not a unicorn… One also happens to be an artist, and as such we work with All emotions, All aspects of being a human being, even the less appetizing ones. I know an excellent actor, a good soul but an annoying fussbudget too – she’s utterly perfect for characters that demand a certain hypocrisy, shallowness and so forth. Because she is the one that she is. Light can’t exist without darkness.

When you truly Accept a person, you accept the whole works, the entire Gonzo – thinking of Hunter S. Thompson now, who was a truly difficult person, with endless faults, and thus the only one who could’ve written the works of Hunter S. Thompson. There’s a notion that I’ve often heard:
“I like X’s plays/movies/books/etc. but not this or that part of X.”
It is a notion for cowards, who refuse to see the complex thing that a human is; to be a Self is to be a self-contradiction.
“I am large, I contain multitudes.”

There are of course limits. You might not have to be a murderer in order to write Crime Fiction (even if some poor works in that genre – there are so many – would’ve been improved by it) but perhaps you, at least for a moment, have to Want to kill?

So, now when you sit wondering what lofty promises that you’re to make for this year, be careful of what you wish. Above all, don’t wish to become a Better person. Lord knows what’ll happen on the dark, masked side of your soul then. You should rather wish to know thyself. Have a whole face.

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A glimpse behind the curtain: this is the tinting before I added the details on top…


…and this is the original pencil drawing.


Happy New Year 2018, Happy Same Old You!

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