Magic Theater
Not for Everybody. Madmen Only.
(Digital; based on a dream I had after Safeword)
It always takes me a few days to recover from the massive sensory input that is Safeword — the erotic art show put on by the Otherworldly Arts Collective every year.
There are so many people and the space is warm and moist with their closeness. It's loud with their shouts and cheers and conversations. The lights are soft in one place, sharp in another. This year there were multiple rooms connected by a long, pink-lit hall: two rooms for performances, the gallery itself, and the entirety of Norseman distillery, where art hung on one glowing wall, but people could also sit at tables and in booths and chat, drink, and eat. I did plenty of chatting and forgot to drink water or eat.
As I walked down the pink hallway, everything taking on a slippery blur because I wasn't wearing my glasses, I thought about the party at end of Steppenwolf, where Harry finally dances and goes to find Hermine in hell. Hell, in this case, is just another room at the party... which is actually probably the most apt description of hell there is.
Steppenwolf, published in 1927, was eventually banned in Germany because Hesse vocally hated war, nationalism of any flavor, and the Nazis. The book, and Hesse, was considered grotesque and immoral. It was then banned by the Americans, who don't hold a great record for their reading acuity, because they thought it was about Nietzsche's Ubermensch and therefore written in support of the Nazis. When Steppenwolf finally hit American audiences, they misunderstood its point to such a violent degree that Hesse wrote a new introduction for them specifically. It said, and absolutely not in these words:
"Listen up, you illiterate assholes; Harry Haller, the lonely wolf of the steppes, is only redeemed by ceasing to be a judgy, isolated elitist who clings to norms and myths of self! He is a warning, not a goal!"
And the American people, who would go on to idolize Patrick Bateman, Walter White, Rorschach, and at least a dozen other shitty, evil, and downright Puritanical at their core characters, said: don't tell us what your book means!
As an occasionally terrible and perpetually rigid human being, I think I have some insight on this. It is an absolute bitch to even admit you're making your life small through neurotic strangling, let alone LET FUCKING GO and actually live. Making it all the way to the point of entering the Magic Theater? Well, that's reserved for the suicidally brave. Which is why the sign says: For Madmen Only. If you're not willing to kill the self you've cultivated so very carefully, you can fuck right off.
I think Hesse would see Safeword as a perfect little glimpse into his theater. Art devoted to sex, people dancing, music so loud it reverberates in your sternum, mad costumes, and drag. The man who wrote of the lovely Hermine, only to recognize she had always been Herman, would definitely love drag.
I've grown to love Safeword (almost as much as I love Steppenwolf, which is saying quite a lot). It's fun in an absolutely necessary way. Like the Magic Theater, it's not for everybody. But the madmen it is for, are of the very best caliber. It might be expecting too much for an art show, but I like to think that the wildness of it echoes out into the world, eroding myths about the quiet, normal, middle road and perhaps giving people a peripheral glimpse, like a haunting, of the life they could have if they would just let go.
Tarot and Journeys
(Ink on Paper; scanned and Digital)
I worked up the digital version of this to create ads and flyers for the Tarot art show that’s going up at ALTR, with opening nights on April 11th and 12th. I am ostensibly one of the organizers, but the other Sarah (aka Dovanna), actually did all the work. I think I contributed a whoppin’ 2% to this endeavor, but that’s because I am kind of an idiot and Dovanna is a powerhouse of organization, not because anything about the show itself is lacking. If anything, it’s a bit overwhelming to be so emotionally invested in a show. I think Dovanna would agree that working on a project that tethers us a tiny bit closer to Rachel Pollack, with her grace and wisdom, has been a solace in the last months (To Dovanna, Pollack is the woman who was the master of the Tarot who just happened to write comics; to me, Pollack is the woman who wrote fuckin’ Doom Patrol but just happened to know a ton about the Tarot). I’ve also enjoyed spending more time with Crowley’s Thoth deck. I’m not a woo person (all shiny rocks and esoterica knowledge aside). I’m really not; but, if there’s a tarot deck that’s an asshole? It’s the Thoth deck. We may need grace and wisdom, but we also need some serious fuck-this-fuck-you energy. All the options. Just like the Tarot itself.
Growth
(Digital; drawn on my phone)
I hate February.
March might be more aggressively depressing and April is the war of light mania against seasonal shift despair, but I fucking hate February.
With only slight fluctuations caused by deaths and triumphs, every year follows the same rhythm: June, July, and August are lovely, filled with grilling and pool days and trips to the river. The only drawback of the summer is that I grow tired of weeding, mowing, and the endless war that I must wage with a buckthorn hedge. In October, I cut, split, and haul wood; I watch horror movies and decorate for Halloween and go on adventures to farms to buy gourds and punkins; I go to the MN Zoo for the Jackolantern Spectacular; I say goodbye to summer. In November, I get nervous about the dark and the cold creeping toward me and when December shows up, I don’t notice it has arrived because I’m too busy. In January I think: hey, this year wasn’t so bad! In early February, I’m attributing my blushing, shining mental health to all the time I spend outdoors, and not two weeks later, I’m suddenly so sick of the dark and my feet being cold and my hands being dry that I feel like crying or screaming all the time. In March, I get my hopes raised up by a little more light and the odd 50° day and smashed by the traditional Final 4 Minnesota snowstorm. In April I rinse and repeat but with extra mania because the world is suddenly too bright and my poor little mammal brain doesn’t know if I should throw a party, found a cult, or hang myself in my garage. But finally, near the end of May, I feel good again. Not, like, gold-medal mental health champion good, but, you know: human.
Because it is the time to be so, I'm dutifully sick of the winter and its maladies. My feet really are too cold and I’m convinced that persistently chilly extremities leads to a pervasive sense of emotional isolation.
But I’m also doing exciting things. I’m starting classes in a couple weeks to study counseling, I’m working with my community of artists through Project 25:365, and I’m raising a colony of shrimp who are very likely going to invent crustacean-driven FTL travel due to density alone.
I can do all of these things (and at least a dozen more) because I’ve been able to grow from the mulch of my dead selves. I used to be ashamed of them, like they’d done something wrong by dying. But they didn’t. They got me here. They’re bloody, but they had to be. There’s no reason to pretty them up, or pretend like change (which is what growth is) is nice. Sometimes, it is horror. That’s okay. It’s not fun. But it’s okay. Blood is a bitch, but it is also a fuel. And sacrifice deserves its due recognition and reverence.
So here it is, in the razor-sharp cold of February, when everything is asleep, including hearts, but seeds and corpses wait, resting in the dark: I say thank you. Everything about you is beautiful.
There is a Room
(Digital; drawn on my phone)
I also worked on inking tonight:
(Pencil and Ink on Paper)
