Salt Shaker, Scrimshanker Waker

Hey I'm back. Life gets in the way of computers. Sun gets in the way. Bike rides get in the way. Fun gets in the way. Love gets in the way. But it's okay, computers don't have feelings* (*yet).  I'm working on a comic. It's about a girl in a boat who cuts her hand off to use as bait for a whale that will swallow her up. This mural concept came from my comic concept. Hopefully I will complete this one. In the mean time...

Here is a mural I (kind of) finished recently at the Black Lodge. The ideas are actually more fun than the end product, so I want to get them out before my artistic attention deficit gets the best of me.  Joseph Campbell started it... 

"The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown, and would appear to have died... This popular motif gives emphasis to the lesson that the passage of the threshold is a form of self-annihilation." - Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Being the narcissists that we all are, we cannot help but to see ourselves as the hero. The role embodies a perfect combination of agency and fate. I love the idea of a HERO scrimshanker.  Scrimshanker. Scrimshanker. The word is British slang for a military shirker, or for person who retreats from duty, a slacker.  The original meaning came from the scrimshaw makers, sailors in the 1800s who would carve beautiful and intricate designs in whale teeth, bones, and in ivory during the long hours of their long voyages. 

Am I a hero scrimshanker? Do I make pointless pretty things while waiting to do important things?  Do I avoid greater responsibility?  I love the notion of a hero slacker being violently in swallowed by a psychic calling toward something greater, and of reaching toward it even in the midst of deep confusion. I want to propagate this consciousness in my own life... metaphoric self-annihilation. 

And that does it for another self-depricating, poetic appreciation of the wandering post-adolescent and hedonistic pursuits of our generation, or at least of me.  I will find more. 

Original Sketch

photos are sucky 'cause they're from my phone

and they are sideways because i am inept