The Art of Writing

I haven't written much about the mixed-media project I've been working on. I've posted a lot of the completed works, and I introduced the concept back when I started working on it, but the process is something I've wanted to share with you. It's been such an important part of why I've enjoyed working on it so much these past few months. 

Being a visual project, the images are extremely important. It's the biggest visual art project I've worked on it years and I've been loving this new outlet. But the writing aspects are equally important to me. I've been employing a cut-up technique in the writing part. I search though batches of text for a word or string of words that infuse the story portrayed in the image. Sometimes a string of words end up on my "thinking board" and inspires the selection of images that will be pieced together.

I've arranged the text into piles of small, medium and large font. Once I make a word choice, I dig into the corresponding font pile and search for completing pieces until the phrase captures the theme. I never try to force it, and never for look for a particular word (with the exception of a conjunction or article). There have been some times where I've spent as much time on the word puzzles as I did on the picture puzzle.

I use this title as starting point for the stream of consciousness pieces that follow. It's a kind of free writing style that I used to do all the time, and it's been great revisiting it without having to worry about coherency and plot structure. At the same time, there is a plot trajectory within the project as a whole. Each spread or page are pieces designed to borrow from the "hymn" structure of the book I'm altering.

The original book was hymnal and the poems in my project are meant to follow that genre or storytelling. They are little vignettes of a vast fantasy about the evolution of imagination as a magical power in children, and the empire of science and brutality attempting to destroy it. It is the fantasy of the main character in a novel I'm in the early stages of working on. 

I realized early on that I needed to transcribe the words before putting them into the book. Often they become illegible once I incorporated them into the artwork so that the words become part of the visual. There are at least two completed ones that that I don't know for sure what is written. Now I write the stream of words on a piece of a scrap paper, trying not to think too much about them.

Under My Wings

Under My Wings

A

promise

of 

peace

as far as

the shadow of 

my wings can spread

and that all

imaginative 

sins of self-exploration

will be 

           forever

                     blessed.

 

Silent Explorers

 

Silent Explorers

Every you & every me, sitting in a tree.

K - I - S - S -I - N - G                   

                                         games now broadcast on screen for the whole world to see.                     

Spy on your neighbors,

Spy on your friends,      

             Never allow their secrets                          

                            to belong to them.

 The Day of Worrisome Synergy

A habit of learned behavior  accelerates when self-created . . 

and evolutionary war instincts take hold inside

                                                              Magic Creatures.

New Holy wars are born in the conflict . . in which

Angels arrive and Angels die.

Devils always remain the same . . 

    living somewhere out of time.

 

Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time there was heaven.

Once upon a time there was not...

Once upon a time they believed there'd be heaven again.

Once upon a time, they did not.

Time is Coming Apart

 Time is Coming Apart

What happens before will happen again

What is to become will come another way.

There is a split in time,

       a tearing of the pages that reconnect in a series of new unexpected events.

The time has come for time to come apart . . 

    for time to become art . .

    for art to be alive in the form of children with insect eyes . .

Seeing multitudes . .

Seeing the future and the past,

    but the present falters in a haze. 

Autonomous Weapons Systems, Determining How we Relate to Other People

 

Autonomous Weapons Systems, Determining How we Relate to Other People

Assemble your doom: Instructions for Cyborg Control Unit

Annihilator cannons to be placed symmetrically,

    hazardous wiring if mis-aligned.

Hive mind to be installed. 

Dismantling of your dreams, comes with assembling your nightmares.

give in . . give up . .

give them all you can.

Let it rain on anything you've begun to love

and never remember what it means to be loved.

Imagine the Mind of Paper

 

Imagine the Mind of Paper

In the pages of your notebook, 

in the words written is where the tortured find a place to dwell

Where dreams take shape, 

free from the watchful eyes of the cyborg dictators,

free of the judgements of those with small minds.

A place of creative reprise.

But these dreams are built with flimsy trees and washable ink

Paper houses and paper faces are easy to burn,

are easily discerned,

and brought into the harsh existence of days made not of paper

but of dusks and dawns,

of suns and secrets that are not easily kept when the paper is exposed for all.

We All Dream of Human Hybrid Mutations

 

"We all Dream of Human Hybrid Mutations"

 

Iridescent fins sweep the sea . . create the waves

and spread the disease of imaginary beings.

We are better than pure in our new forms . .

we are free . . through the act of creation

we reproduce and get dirty

creating a new race of alterations.

Some Heavenly Theme of angels with butterfly wings . . 

of boys with horse half things and girls with scaly fins . .

of cyborgs and other contolling beings.

 

Rejoice!

 

But know you've done a very seriously bad thing.

You dared to dream.

You dared to dream.

You dared to dream.

You dared to dream...

Hymns for the Living...

 

 

 

I've been working on a book alteration project over the last few weeks. It's been therapeutic to work on a creative project that isn't just writing. But that's not to say it isn't writing. I conceived this piece as a scrapbook of ideas that the main character of a project I'm working on might create. 

 

The themes are themes that run through the manuscript. Hymns for the Living. Hymns for the Dead is his view of the world as he descends into the madness of his own imagination. I hope to share more of these over time, but wanted this to serve as an introducion.