Today we introduce my new segment, 'I Dreamed A Dream' where I will briefly call my nightmarish visitors into collective perception... so they can hassle you about childhood regrets and the like, I'm quite fed up with them... And yes the title is a reference to haggard songstress, 'Susan Boyle'... and my developing suspicions of her being THE 'Black Annis'. Confused? Have a wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Annis, it may shed some light on my theory.
Well without further ado, I shall begin. As anyone who reads my solo blog may already know, I keep a dream journal, it's a fantastic reference when you really need to assert your sense of self loathing sometimes. As one of those people who enjoys looking for bizarre symbolism and over-analyzing to the point of hilarious conjecture, I find noting the placement and incline of every staircase I dream about a fascinating experience. I figured I'd share some of the more bizarre dreams I've had and leave them open for interpretation or something.
Well to get us started here's a hasty 2am sketch of a vivid memory I had upon waking a few nights ago.
Yes, the subconscious is a worrisome thing.
Now I'd like to get some audience participation going, so whether we can maintain an MSN discussion, facebook comments on the inevitable plug I'll post or on the comments section here, any interpretation is welcome. I will cover some of the links and symbolisms I've noted only, to leave a bit of a gap for you to play with the core of my being... like the sadistic puppet masters we all are deep down... I don't know, if this takes off we should regularly just get some piece of work like a painting, short film, or poem or something and come up with why it's the author's desperate appeal to the audience for organs he harbours fears of needing replaced.
Anyway, I recollect very little from this dream, I just remember a comic book style experience involving these four panels. Concerning the first panel we have one catty bastard and a creature that should be sealed in an iron and silver box, glued shut with holy wafer paste and thrown into the sea. Now the cat to me seemed immensely smug, his... minimal... attire was black and reminded me of that of a magician. For some reason I likened him to Garfield despite not recalling him saying anything and obvious physiological differences... maybe they're distant relations?
Garfield, for anyone who doesn't know... I know you're out there, you freaks who rejected pop culture for a fulfilling afterlife...
Well the magician attire gave an implication of illusion, a degree of mystique, also he only appears in one 'dream-panel' and isn't visibly as hanging from the roof as the other subject by the end. I took him to exemplify sarcasm or cynicism, his clothing as a mockery of the suspension of disbelief of the performer. Now onto the second subject... *shudders violently* there is seriously something worrying about imagining this. The white mask of unfathomable fear unchanging and transcending time, the pitch black body... and the ghoulish anatomy... those... arms... This thing just seems to steal the show, it's the only one who speaks and it's present in nearly all panels. I found it's dialogue disconcerting, 'If the artist should die then we die too' almost seemed to present him as 'teaching' magic garfield. Not to mention the possible religious undertones of life without a creator being like living death. This could possibly be attributable to my often dropped out of shameless pretense Nietzschism, 'God is Dead' but altered from a worshippers perspective. As for the 'incarnate nightmare's appearance, I believe it could be drawn from three sources.
Firstly and probably most obviously, Edvard Munch's 'The Scream'
I'm way too much in love with this painting for my own good... evidently
Now the scream is good because the second panel has the figure appearing to scream in a portrait scale. The 'Terror Spirals' where purple and black and far more psychedelic and inhaling than my terrible 2am drawing skills... What I also like about the potential for 'The Scream' is the fact that I tried my hand at painting it in Year 10 and it sits against the wall in my room, I walk past it everyday, giving it plenty of opportunity to embed it's spirit of angst in my subconscious...
Secondly I've realised a likeness between the face and Pink in the animated Trial scene of Pink Floyd's rock opera 'The Wall'
The trial scene is a psychedelic animated self assessment of the main character Pink, which ends in the deconstruction of his metaphorical wall alienating him from other people. The whole psychedelic factor just adds to the possibility along with the theme. The death of the thing at the end, symbolic of the collapse of the wall or something maybe?
And thirdly, and quite possibly the most obscure, the 'THING' appears alot like the character, 'Arakune' from the japanese awesome grammatical nightmare of a fighting game 'Blazblue'.
Arakune for the uninformed, which I expect and hope should be everyone...
I normally would've omitted this because of how little influence 2D Fighting Games that must be imported to enjoy have on 'normal people', but some of the similarities I found were quite awesome. Arakune is some guy who researched something like the nature of existence itself, learned too much, went crazy and saw the repository of all human knowledge in a nutshell and now spends his time launching insects out of his gloopy body and eating people for their knowledge... yeah, wierd, but ridiculously fun. Anyway, his penchant for outbursts of single lines of unadulterated and unprovoked madness really reminded me of the 'mental atrocity's' line. Arakune spews forth such lunacy as 'Fear more love hate ! Let self crumble away, pathetic mediary' and my personal favourite 'Don't see you and I, pointlesspointlesspointlessPOINTLESS!!! *shrill nightmare goo laugh*'. That and the fact that anytime I wind up taking far-too-effeminate-homosexual-swordsmen into fights with him, I kind of panic and get mauled by bugs from all over... NOT PLEASANT... but this is how I geek out and spend (read waste) MY time and money.
Oh and those boots, I have no idea... it sounds insane but the only thing I can think of is this...
That's right, The Boosh is loose... and it's rewiring your inner being without you realising... there's hope for humanity yet.
Well the only thing I haven't talked about is what were chronologically the last panels, the noose and the suspended boots. Notice in the background that black shape I conveyed horribly with the drawing skills of an inebriated toddler. In the dream it was a doorway, but instead of flooding the room with light, darkness was coming out. Yes, that's right... the door was leaking FRIGGEN' DARKNESS AND MOVING. I can't say I have any idea, I thought briefly 'The Monolith' from '2001: A Space Odyssey'... but in all honesty I'm not sure.
The Monolith... shining symbol of forced progression of mankind... maybe, I always liked the idea that it represented the Ubermensch, or 'Over-man' who would lead humanity to the betterment of itself... although then we've got a pair of Nietzsche references from 'Thus Spake Zarathustra'... aka. The King Crucible Bible...
And now the hanging, visually, well, I mean it's execution... or suicide, definitely of the 'Lovecraftian Bogey Man from Space'. As for the cat, I got a feeling of his tragic passing as well, but it wasn't shown visually, like I said before this image is all I vividly remember, anyway, it's fitting as a symbolic conclusion.
Alright, so now it's over to you, dear reader, I have put forward what each symbol means to me and tipped out the jigsaw puzzle of introspection onto the table, now it is your turn as the pensioner of the soul to reassemble this and determine it's deeper meaning. Are cat's magical? Do I need to kill my inner Nietzsche-fanboy? Should I stop listening to psychedelic rock before sleeping? Or just never sleep again? This is in your hands, and if you didn't understand my explanations... then lie your heart out, go crazy, that's the idea, screw with MY head for a change...
Well, this is Crucible Tongs, leaving you with another Tannenism,
'Marty, here's your keys. You're all waxed up, ready for tonight.'
2 comments:
Why has no-one commented?! Brilliant as usual. The images are good, sketchy comic is very very good, might start doing that myself. Hmm here's some some meaningless speculation the dream. I'm nowhere near as good as you, but thought I'd play around with it.
As you said, a straightforward interpretation I think would be that it's very simple and pessimistic narrative on nihilism. Destructive truth is released, god is dead (the artist) along with preconceptions of meaning, and subsequently we lose reason to exist. Screamy-boosh-guy pretty much just says what he's going to do befor it happens.
I'm not really convinced of that, without a powerful pre-existing faith, I can't see the existence of god being so utterly pivotal, and I don't think he'd fit the idea of the artist. Maybe the artist could be a an archetypal anthropomorphism of expression? The idea could be that we need art, expression and communication to survive. Catharsis as a fundamental need for human existence, without which we lose the ability to cope, a major reason to exist or even ourselves entirely, if you accepted the premise that we only live and are made real throughout our outward projection rather than inner contemplation. You could also go Euchridy on that, that without communication we can never really life, be happy or sane and that silence is self destruction. The lack of words in the last three panels could kind of support that.
Unless floydy mcterror isn't actually authoritative or right, but a grotesque parody of nihilism and excessive pessimism, darkly summarizing that kind of view and painting it as being a self-destructive, but not necessarily true view. Was he sympathetic in the dream? An alt character interp would be that he's preachy, creepy and fatalistic, and ultimately an aspect of our personality that shouldn't be dwelt on. I think visually Arakune is probably the origins, not because of any reason but just regular dream bizarreness, it seems most likely.
One last one is that it's a beckettian meta dream. You're the artist in your subconcious, when you wake up the characters from the dream die.
Oh and stop dreaming about me as garfield, it's a disturbing on several levels. Top hat, unconvincing whiskers, listening to your rants...
Anyway yeah, well done, this would be good as a fortnightly or monthly segment or something. Liking the poetry/collab creative project idea a lot. How would we go about it?
Love the absurdist duo interpretation, I think the only thing stopping me seeing that was the fact that I couldn't imagine them dressing each other or sharing a bath... ANYWAY, finally a response... from the expected messenger... The terrifying guy was the terrifying guy for a reason, he wasn't sympathetic at all, HE PERMEATED DREAD.
I'm seriously leaning more towards The Scream though now, I mean, my version is in my room and all, I can see it from my bed... okay that sounds mega-disturbing... The panel of spiralistic horror had me in my state of raving REM screaming 'The Scream' too. It randomly just reminded me of my abhorrent chalking job on it that just about ruined it... maybe the implication is going the extra mile WILL screw the whole thing over, also the idea of an 'artist' and the fact it's presented in a static 'painted' nature.
Wow, you ARE dream garfield, get the hell out of my nightmares!
Well from your conjecture, I have to give up nihilism and make amends with a world I've shut out (Seriously just watch the last episode of Neon Genesis, I need a Deus Ex Machina like that... yeah a postmodern explanation of the process of animation to free yourself from negative perception, consider it spoiled, Damacus, you had long enough). Or the end of the dream is the 'only death I believe in'...
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