It Could've Been Forever:
Lucidity episode four: abeautyhere.jpg
Caption: "There is a beauty here. Indiscernible, obscure, but i live for it."
I'd like to delve into my own psyche a little bit today, if you wouldn't mind. What? No, no; you're welcome to come along of course. Let me preamble by saying: in the past year or so i've accustomed a sort of obsession with nature's most unfriendly looking form of vegetation. I'm not sure exactly how this started, but i think the first time i really noticed this unique plant life was in one of my favorite movies growing up, the obscure but extraordinary "Three Caballeros". If you're not familiar with it, it's easily the best but most bizarre film Disney ever made, despite its ripe age of sixty plus years. In it, there's a scene where some cacti begin dancing around the obviously drug induced Donald Duck and somehow transform themselves into Mexican mariachis. Yeah, it just doesn't get any better than that.
From that early fascination with the cactus, my interest in them has only grown in the years that follow. There's just something undeniably strange about them, their climate, their way of life. My first cactus died pretty quickly after i bought it because i watered it too much. It's strange, isn't it? The universal symbol of life, water, will kill a cactus in excess.
This obsession was rekindled after hearing a Pixies song named after the plant that's available on their greatest work, Surfer Rosa. And then it really kicked in when i made a mix cd for Laura, called it Cactus May Dance (no doubt inspired by Donald Duck's hallucinogenic trip through Latin America) , and drew a little doodle of a Cactus swaying to the sounds of my favorite post-punk outfits. Immediately after drawing it i had an epiphany of sorts: i realized i love drawing cacti more than anything else in the world.
So i drew those fuckers everywhere. I drew them with eyeballs, wearing clothes, playing instruments, and occasionally engaging in hand to hand combat. I continued the Cactus Chronicles with another Mix cd called Cat and the Cactus, and even wrote and illustrated a children's book for my creative writing class titled Cowboy and the Cactus, a detective story about a small old west town faced with authoritarian corruption.
But it wasn't until drawing this piece that i realized why i'm so obsessed with cacti. It was supposed to be a picture of something desolate, vapid and dismal to counter act with the optimism of the verse attached to it. And when i naturally sketched a cactus to illustrate this melancholy, i discovered for the first time i associate the cactus with depression.
Everything seemed to reflect this. Cactus May Dance itself was supposed to be a collection of extremely depressing songs that would clash with extremely dancey ones. The cactus symbolized the depression, but he occasionally danced to symbolize the optimism as well. In Cowboy and the Cactus, the Cactus, though the hero, was set in a very ominous situation. Even yesterday's episode seems to characterize this: when i felt like i needed something else to fill the empty space of that picture, i immediately doodled a cactus to accent an already somber piece.
This isn't boring you is it? I don't want to bore you.
But i did want to point out that i seemed to have some sort of subconscious metaphor going on all along, and even i didn't realize it. Obviously, this makes the cactus all the more interesting to me, so i'm sure it'll show up again.
As for today's episode, you can look at it in a number of ways. As i said, i had intended the cactus to be a morbid ornament on an already melancholy landscape, but the cactus could also be the one speaking, if you please. Or, to go way too deep into this, the cactus could be a metaphor for the verse itself. The outside of a cactus is hard and covered in threatening needles, but inside it holds water, a literal life saver if you should ever find yourself stranded in a desert of some sort.
Either way, it's called "A Beauty Here".
Caption: "There is a beauty here. Indiscernible, obscure, but i live for it."
I'd like to delve into my own psyche a little bit today, if you wouldn't mind. What? No, no; you're welcome to come along of course. Let me preamble by saying: in the past year or so i've accustomed a sort of obsession with nature's most unfriendly looking form of vegetation. I'm not sure exactly how this started, but i think the first time i really noticed this unique plant life was in one of my favorite movies growing up, the obscure but extraordinary "Three Caballeros". If you're not familiar with it, it's easily the best but most bizarre film Disney ever made, despite its ripe age of sixty plus years. In it, there's a scene where some cacti begin dancing around the obviously drug induced Donald Duck and somehow transform themselves into Mexican mariachis. Yeah, it just doesn't get any better than that.
From that early fascination with the cactus, my interest in them has only grown in the years that follow. There's just something undeniably strange about them, their climate, their way of life. My first cactus died pretty quickly after i bought it because i watered it too much. It's strange, isn't it? The universal symbol of life, water, will kill a cactus in excess.
This obsession was rekindled after hearing a Pixies song named after the plant that's available on their greatest work, Surfer Rosa. And then it really kicked in when i made a mix cd for Laura, called it Cactus May Dance (no doubt inspired by Donald Duck's hallucinogenic trip through Latin America) , and drew a little doodle of a Cactus swaying to the sounds of my favorite post-punk outfits. Immediately after drawing it i had an epiphany of sorts: i realized i love drawing cacti more than anything else in the world.
So i drew those fuckers everywhere. I drew them with eyeballs, wearing clothes, playing instruments, and occasionally engaging in hand to hand combat. I continued the Cactus Chronicles with another Mix cd called Cat and the Cactus, and even wrote and illustrated a children's book for my creative writing class titled Cowboy and the Cactus, a detective story about a small old west town faced with authoritarian corruption.
But it wasn't until drawing this piece that i realized why i'm so obsessed with cacti. It was supposed to be a picture of something desolate, vapid and dismal to counter act with the optimism of the verse attached to it. And when i naturally sketched a cactus to illustrate this melancholy, i discovered for the first time i associate the cactus with depression.
Everything seemed to reflect this. Cactus May Dance itself was supposed to be a collection of extremely depressing songs that would clash with extremely dancey ones. The cactus symbolized the depression, but he occasionally danced to symbolize the optimism as well. In Cowboy and the Cactus, the Cactus, though the hero, was set in a very ominous situation. Even yesterday's episode seems to characterize this: when i felt like i needed something else to fill the empty space of that picture, i immediately doodled a cactus to accent an already somber piece.
This isn't boring you is it? I don't want to bore you.
But i did want to point out that i seemed to have some sort of subconscious metaphor going on all along, and even i didn't realize it. Obviously, this makes the cactus all the more interesting to me, so i'm sure it'll show up again.
As for today's episode, you can look at it in a number of ways. As i said, i had intended the cactus to be a morbid ornament on an already melancholy landscape, but the cactus could also be the one speaking, if you please. Or, to go way too deep into this, the cactus could be a metaphor for the verse itself. The outside of a cactus is hard and covered in threatening needles, but inside it holds water, a literal life saver if you should ever find yourself stranded in a desert of some sort.
Either way, it's called "A Beauty Here".