Owie

"I'm just like anyone.

I cut and I bleed."

-- Michael Jackson

Boo boo finger face 6-29-13

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. 

Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."

-- Mel Brooks

Linoleum block with actual blood drop  6-29-13

"Mishaps are like knives, 

that either serve us or cut us, 

as we grasp them by the blade or the handle."

-- James Russell Lowell

Nobody can say I am not willing to bleed for my art.

I was carving a linoleum block self portrait, and the knife slipped and jabbed hard into my left thumb.

It hurt, but not too bad, and so I put a Bugs Bunny bandage on it and kept carving.

I should have known better.

I should have had enough common sense to realize what a knife that can cut through hard linoleum might be able to do soft flesh.

I should have put on some gloves.

Should-a. Could-a. Would-a.

A few moments later the knife slipped again, and this time I seriously cut the shit out of my left index finger. 

It hurt.

It bled.

A lot.

How does that saying go?

"If it happens once it's a mistake. If it happens twice, it's a choice."

Lucky for me there was a doctor in the house.

He injected a syringe full of Lidocaine into my finger to numb it, then scrubbed out all of the linoleum block debris and sewed me up with 8 stitches. 

He swaddled my "Frankenfinger" and said I was lucky because I just missed cutting the tendon.

I, of course, gave my boo boo finger a little sad face and took its picture.

I also gave him a name.

I'm calling him "Art."

Nobody knows the truffles I've seen

“I was like a chocolate in a box, 

looking well behaved and perfect in place, 

all the while harboring a secret center.” 

-- Deb Caletti, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
 

Chocolate faces 6-24-13

“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. 

But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls!”

-- Ted Grant

Chocolate faces (2) 6-24-13

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 “Nobody knows the truffles I've seen.”

-- George Lang

Someone recently gave me a box of five chocolate faces.

In the box they looked identical and factory made.
In the box they looked dull and waxy and dead and more than a little spooky and weird.

But through the camera, they became amazingly lifelike.

The sheen on the chocolate became remarkably like the sheen of oil on skin. 

Through the camera, the blank faces took on individual characteristics. 

Through the camera, they looked as though they might possibly have souls and thoughts and worries and concerns and dreams and disappointments and hopes and troubles inside, instead of gooey centers.

Some looked pensive. Some looked peaceful.

Some looked wary. Some looked aloof.

Some looked masculine. Some looked feminine.

That is a lot to attribute to candy, I know.

But if any candy can stand up to being that heavily anthropomorphized,  it would probably be chocolate.

Tune in tomorrow and see how well they can stand up to the heat.

The real thing

“Wear your heart on your skin in this life.”

-- Sylvia Plath, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams

 

Self portrait 6-15-13

 “Tattoos are a right of passage. 

They're a marker of bravery, of maturity, of cultural acceptance. 

The tattoo represents not only a willingness to accept pain -- to endure it -- 

but a need to actively embrace it. 

Because life is painful - beautiful but painful."

-- Nicola Barker, The Yips

I've done a handful of self portraits with faux/temporary tattoos:

A swallow.
A panther.
Paper dolls.
Japanese lettering.
A gecko.
Henna.

The tattoo in today's portrait is the real deal.

I have been thinking about this tattoo for a long time. For about 2 years, in fact. I did a self portrait in 2011 with these same words, in removable stickers, pressed onto my neck.

This time the words are permanent. Inked indelibly on my arm.

Forever.

Today's face is kind of a continuation of yesterday's post, the one about self-destructive tendencies.

I know the words "don't let me get me" are just lyrics from a pop song. But that doesn't mean they can't be deeply meaningful. That doesn't mean they aren't powerful. That doesn't mean they can't be the cry of my soul, or that they aren't necessary and relevant to my everyday existence.

I am not much of a pray-er. Never have been. Though I have tried it in the past, I never really took to it. It always felt weirdly formal and forced and awkward. It's much easier, more natural, more honest for me, to repeat the catchy lyrics of a song -- to let them replay in my mind, over and over.

You might call it an ear worm. I prefer to think of it more like praying without ceasing. Because these words do function for me as a sort of prayer. Or maybe they're less like a prayer, and more like a mantra.

A plea.

A cry.

A petition.

A request.

An appeal.

Whichever, to whoever, or whatever is out there to please hear me and please help me and please heal me so that I don't wreck myself.

Voices can be silenced. But these printed words, embedded into my skin via needle and ink, say what they say no matter what anyone says. Even if I cover them, they'll never stop speaking into the atmosphere.

They're always there.

So even when I'm too tired, too broken, too afraid, too discouraged to utter them ... these word will say and say and say what they say, every day, for the rest of my life.

Amen.

(Thanks a million to my genius tattooer, Robin H.M., at Tattoo 546. This one's not my first, and definitely not my last.)

Inka dinka doo

"Something stirred beneath my skin,

some being inside I'd only suspected existed, 

demon or angel, I couldn't say.”

-- Ellen Hopkins, Burned

Self portrait 5-26-13

 “Tattoos, after all, are a passionate, 

usually doomed assertion of mastery of your own destiny,

or at least a defiant embrace of one that you cannot control."

-- Mark Simpson,  

Saint Morrissey: A Portrait of This Charming Man by an Alarming Fan

 

"Ink, a Drug."

-- Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister