Last night I dreamed I was pulling parasites out of my butt. Ever had your dog shit grass that didn’t quite make it all the way out? Yeah, like that. Feeling them crawl around I reached down and grabbed hold of one. It was painful and gross, but I wanted them out. I don’t know if this dream is a symbol for something inside of me that I want to be rid of, some concept or belief I ingested that is now stuck in my rectum, or whether it’s a colloquiums visually illustrating my tendency to “pull shit out of my ass.” Either way, the image stayed with me.
Image is the language of the unconscious. That is why we dream in symbols and think in pictures. It is for this reason that I believe that visual media is a ghost that will haunt us and we should be wary of what we give our attention to. It wasn’t until I was re-editing the above image that I realized the similarities between my composition and Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare, highlighting that as artists, we really are what we eat. The artist’s nightmare is realizing you can’t create anything of value because you only take in the mediocre, the basest of qualities, which feed off your creative energy vampirically draining you of nutrients instead of filling you up. Scrolling is the place your creative soul goes to die. The quality of your output is reflected in what you consume. Fast often and eat only what you want to shit.
