The end of an error

This is the last page in a sketch book I’ve had since college (it’s about 15 years old). I’ve been filling up every blank page until now, when I can put it away and move onto the next book.
In celebration of this landmark, the world is slowly starting to feel secure that they can also actually bid a stony farewell to the Bush administration. Now I know how the men in the trenches in WWI must have felt when they were told the war was over, after having spent a year knee-deep in water in the same trench, in the same insect-ridden clothes, with the same hideous task. The future is bright. It’s so bright it’s almost unnerving. Think, when Obama is president, it’ll be like taking a weekend off and really cleaning your kitchen properly. It’ll be like getting sick and then getting better because you took the right steps. It’ll be like shooting a load into the gut of the girl or boy of your dreams. It will be like nirvana when Obama is president.
I can’t wait; let’s start the momentum of progress immediately. Let’s change.

Good riddance the past, I never liked you anyway.

Make love to the camera

I did six photo shoots today. One photo shoot sucks your soul. Six pretty much make you god’s whore. I always felt a good portrait session was a lot like a good fuck. You warm them up, you encourage them into a kind of pare and slowly you start directing them, start reading them, start manipulating them, then lure out their inner soul to the surface, then you delve right into the person. By the end you can read each other’s mind, they know exactly what you want them to do by the most simple command, and they comply, because its all good. And then it’s over. You take each other’s email address, promise to keep in contact, and they leave feeling great, but a little empty inside; a little robbed. Me? I feel tired, fulfilled, at peace, until the next stirring.

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I have less than 10 name cards left, including the one I’m using as a bookmark in Celine’s “Castle To Castle”. Running out of name cards is always an exciting time, because it means you need to make more, which means you need to do something even cooler than the last batch. Our new cards should be ready in the next day or two. Let me tell you about them. The front side is printed on a material that resembles, and feels like, suede. It’s a very expensive paper but it’s worth it. We have 6 versions of the front, each has a different pattern based on ink bleeding into watercolour paper. There will also be a debossed butterfly stamped into the front. The back is a textured paper, something like really gaudy wallpaper, with an exquisite, etched pattern on glossy card. It’s supposed to be unnerving, the trashy flashiness of the back, next to the natural elegance of the front. I think I fucked the back up though (these are 2 of the 6 versions of the front, by the way). The back looks too hideous, like a neon popsicle that has melted into pure sugar.
I’ve put this blog address on some of the cards. Partly to push myself to draw more, and partly because we’ve got a few jobs because of this blog, weirdly enough. Sometime my clients tell me “I was reading your blog yesterday,” and I assume they are going to say “and I think we won’t be doing any more business with you.” But they usually say something like “I didn’t know you were so odd, can you redesign something for us please?” It feels a little wrong, like the time I had a partially nude girl on my name card and I walked on to the exit ramp at a press conference and forced the president of Mitsubishi to take a card. It all happened so fast, the security didn’t know what to do, and I was back in the press section in a flash after he took it, looking completely confused. He never called me, but it all made sense at the time.
Well, we soldier on, I suppose.

Sick of goodbyes

Baby and I found a baby sparrow on the pavement last week. We brought it home and a week later it died. I feel a little sick with myself; more than a little responsible for taking it away from its nature, no matter how dangerous, and then not taking care of it properly. I still have no idea what happened, but I’m pretty sure it was very healthy until the last day, and it died because of some kind of neglect on my part.
It was a strange feeling, holding it, watching it dying, feeding it sugar water, a kind of helplessness I’m not familiar with – it’s like a panic, but a calm panic. You realize something needs to be done, but it’s too late, and, amazingly, it dies. It seems impossible, something so profound as death can happen so easily.

Creastruction

I ruined the picture I was drawing for Shannon tonight by pouring champagne all over it. It did turn out better in the end, although it was still not good enough to give to her.
This was the best lesson I received in college … we had a 3 hour painting class … at the beginning the teacher told us we would spend the entire class painting a landscape. Half way through the class he told us to stop and paint over what we had done. Everyone in the class cried and complained – after an hour and a half we’d gotten emotionally attached to our paintings and invested so much into them. Our teacher explained that today’s lesson was “destruction”, and we would never progress until we understood the value of re-viewing and re-creating; the value of destroying what we created.

How to hate

That son-of-a-bitch Dom-hating grumpy dick-licker of a security guard has been reinstated by the management of my building. The same whore-fucking dirty rotten son-of-a-cunt who has hated me since the “You’re handsome” (http://dominicharvey.blogspot.com/2007/09/handsome-mans-burden.html) episode. Every time I see him I give him a big smile and a cheery “Hello”, and every time he sees me he half-closes his eyes and his face distorts into a kind of trembling, twisted, infuriating train-wreck of a grimace, which makes me beam with joy like a giddy schoolgirl after the first time she drove a schoolboy to wanton despair.
What can I do with this evil man? Baby suggests the fact he despises me so much indicates he maybe loves me. Baby should know – every time she unleashes her hatred of me she points out it is only because she loves me so much, and if she didn’t love me she wouldn’t bother.
His over-theatrical derision drives me to an exaggerated joy whenever I see him. I don’t know why, maybe because I know it etches the hatred deeper into his crooked spine.
I’m at breaking point. Next time I see him I may just pull out Mr Thriller and wave Him in his face, or maybe I’ll just grab the fire extinguisher and pummel his skull into jelly until I’m sure I’ll never have to see his twisted lips again.
Ah hatred, how energizing you are, how inspiring you are, how intoxicating you are, how I adore you.

I don't know what debt is

I think Baby and I just bought a house. That would put us half a million dollars in debt. This is kind of not great as I don’t have half a million dollars and I can’t conceptualize 30 years from now when we’ll have paid it all off. In times like this I like to imagine Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov throwing the money he stole from the old hag moneylender into the river, and then I start to enjoy the reckless excess of it all.

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I’ve learned the three chords in The White Stripes’ “You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told)”. I feel the power of satan in me.

People!

I saw the photos of the “Uncontacted tribe” on the internet today, one of the few indigenous groups of people who have no contact with the outside world. They are all painted red, full of fear and fire, pointing arrows at the reconnaissance plane repeatedly flying overhead. Man how I love those people – clueless, facing a bizarre phenomenon flying above them, ready to fight to the death. Hopeless, beautiful people. Like butterflies flying in a strong breeze, being tossed here and there, yet still pushing on. Hopeless, like everything else, but with beauty and dignity.