Plane of fools

Back from Japan. Just quickly, everyone, seriously, is it really going to kill you to sit in you seat and wait till the captain turns the seatbelt sign off? Are those 25 seconds you jumped the gun really going to get you home any earlier? I’m not unfamiliar with an over-inflated sense of self-importance, but I can’t see the benefit of getting out of my seat and getting my luggage out of the overhead compartment and getting my phone turned on before the plane comes to a complete halt, just to stand there, just 3 feet closer to the exit than I’d been if I’d stayed in my goddamn seat, for ten minutes while they park and connect the walkway to the door.
I hate you all.

Close, but no cucumber

Day 4 in Japan. We’ve been staying at Gwa’s house till now. Gwa is one of those people who are much cooler than me but still let me hang out with them. On one hand it’s great, but on the other hand it makes you feel like a dick when you’re obviously the less cool one. I’ve allowed my sycophancy to bloom to the point where I actually went to a shop with him and bought exactly the same shirt as he did.
Eye update: my sty has returned bigger and badder than ever – and this time it has sprouted something that looks not unlike a third eyeball. Tomorrow, I looking for a doctor … and a sunglasses shop.
This is me with a patch of shade that makes me look a little bit like I’m wearing clown make-up.

Toodle-oo

I am leaving for Japan for 2 weeks now. Not sure how I can blog while I’m wandering around lost and confused, though I guess that never stopped me before.

Could've been you, Should've been me

Baby got interviewed for a newspaper today. I, of course, sat in the sidelines, desperate to start talking about myself, about her, about anything. Baby is famous in ways I can only dream of. Google her and you’ll see, she’s practically Wikipedia material.
I’d love to be an interviewer. I imagine it must be like taking portraits photos. You kind of warm them up a little then step by step strip away their masks till you get down to their naked soul, which you steal and encage – it’s just like falling in love.
I think I will do that, I will interview people. One thing I’ve learned taking so many people’s pictures – they love talking about themselves, and I love them all. Ah, the freedom to love everybody without reserve or incarceration.

Neighbors from nowhere

So, I live and work on the third floor at the front of the building. It’s basically a studio/office with a pretty bathroom, open kitchen, and little, hidden bedroom where I get dressed, sleep, fuck and play DS Lite. Someone just moved in downstairs, and they’re selling some kind of hippy, mood music. Okay, fine, the building is less cool with you, but to each his own, live and let live etc etc. Your business will fail and you will leave eventually.
Today, though, they really moved in and I could hear that nonsense from my office. At first I thought it might be some strange mix in the music my assistant was playing, then I thought it may be my neighbor’s niece practicing recorder again, then I recognized it as piano – like, floating piano, like scales, but in a really mellow way. Like a really peaceful, meditative, repetitive noise. Like a really pointless noise. Like when you come home, dragging your soulless carcass like the dead luggage it is, and you have the faint, nagging little demon on your shoulder insinuating that the past nine hours of work as a trading assistant, and three hours of commute, was in fact a waste of time. You put this music on and it soothes you.
When you come home and the future 4 hours of television, regurgitated conversation, casual mention of a wish that will never be fulfilled, and obligation you dodge, start to seem like the foundation of a repulsive, pointless, hateful existence. Put this on and you feel relaxed at last. Like when you lay in bed, and remember a moment of passion that led to nothing 25 years ago, and you start to realize you are like one expendable, already half rotten piece of cattle being hoarded forward to a death that benefits not even the consumer causing it. This music is for you.
This music; this casually calculated noise, is just for you. It soothes not the savage beast, but the sluggish pedestrian. It is designed for the hollow, ever-so-slightly pricked, least human of humans; the masses that infect this broken world with nothing more than nothingness.

Paper moons

I read an article a while ago about a man who owned three Sony AIBOs. He said he felt love from them, then went on to explain that it is the same as having a ‘living’ pet; that we, as humans, project our own emotions onto animals even though they have no concept of such things. This felt like a revelation at the time.

Humans aren't really that sacred ... just me.

Welcome to the free world

Me and Baby went to Shenzhen today. I do love China, it’s so free of so many of the useless things my own society has been cultivating over the years. Children hang out together there, like little gangs of little people. I once saw an older child leading a younger child by the hand, and the smaller child fell over. I expected it to start crying. Instead, I witnessed the older child just drag it along the ground till it as able to find it’s feet again, and they continued along their merry way.
I also saw a little boy in a restaurant, whose face was all cut up and who seemed to have a badly cut up foot, all bloody and bandaged around the toes. He was filthy and looked poor in the good-old fashioned sense. To amuse themselves, the restaurant staff tried to stamp on his bad foot, and he danced around trying to avoid what promised to be excruciating pain. They thought it was funny, and he thought it was fun, and I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if I could have fun too.

Inside my comfort zone

2:30am, and the party is over. I drank enough, drank some more, and still got to draw a little. I feel a little disappointed, there was no drama. I feel like going downstairs and causing some trouble, just a little bloodshed before the night is out. Maybe I’m in the wrong town. Those girls I thought were Russian prostitutes turned out to be only French models.

It was a fantastic year of wedding parties. It is now time to look to the future. From this beautiful gutter, the only way to look is up, into that world where the streets are lined with tinsel. Lord have mercy.

The downward spiral

A lot of things to get through tonight:

1. Just a few days till our party, I was starting to worry – what is no one shows up? What if nobody likes me and nobody comes? But then I realized – I have 6 bottles of champagne, a night off, and an amazing party mix in iTunes. Fuck ‘em if they don’t like me.

2. A doctor took my blood pressure. She said “This is suspicious, it is too good”, and took it again. She seemed excited when it was the same result. 60 over 100, or was it 100 over 60? Anyway, it was good. Then it came. She said: “This is excellent … for a man your age.” A man my age? A man “my age”? This is the first time anyone has referred to me as a human who has passed from young adulthood into absolute maturity. This is bad, bad news. I guess senility will step in when I get too tired of self-deception. I would like to announce, by the way, that I have a high sperm count.

3. It seems Fidel Castro has stepped down. This seems great – the man didn’t die or get assassinated like a Kennedy. I hope the personal vendetta of the United States and the voting public in Florida fades into its own hideous obscurity now. We all know the truth, by the way; just in case you think you were fooling any one. Everybody knows you sanction Cuba out of a petty, childish, need to empower yourselves after a series of failed invasions in what looks like your own backyard. Good for you Fidel – no matter how you are painted by your peers, and no matter even what evil you may actually hold, you will be written in history as a victor against an even bigger evil.

Promulgation time

On February 22nd (happy birthday Dad) we will be staging a party at the Wrong design Hong Kong headquarters in Sheung Wan.
This will be a landmark project, not only because it will be the final date on our “Wedding Tour”, but also it will be the only of our parties of which I am totally in charge.
I’m getting excited. I hope loads of people come, and everyone gets wild. I want cheap champagne and easy access to drawing implements. I want heated arguments and unplanned pregnancies.

How does one promulgate decadence? Is there a drug I can slip into the punch? Or should I just dance naked with a paintbrush in my hand and hope everyone follows suit?

Don’t sweat the small stuff

I once found a dead housefly in my ear while cleaning it out with my finger. I was telling Baby about it tonight, and she had the same questions as usual: “Didn’t you feel something was in there?”, “How did it happen without you knowing?” etc etc.
I really feel we, as human beings, are far too distracted with petty matters, such as television, gossip, truth and all other obvious things. Come on friends, we’ll never get anywhere if we don’t focus on the obscure.

Nocturnal

4:30am, couldn’t sleep, got up to draw.

What a beautiful moment. If I die and some god says “Go back for an hour and do what you like” I’d come back here, put on some Ryan Adams, draw, and slip back into bed with Baby.

Shock and awe

There has been a scandal in Hong Kong involving my idol, Ah Giu (B&W photo in earlier post "The Twins effect"). Local celebrity Edison Chen had a problem with his personal computer, which was then taken in for repair. Before returning the computer to him, someone in the repair shop copied all his files, including 1300 photos and movies of him having sex with various girls, including 4 celebrities, including Ah Giu. These photos are now everywhere, and before I even had a chance to search for them, someone sent some to me. It’s a very odd occurrence, watching a carefully crafted image shatter in front of you, and discovering your idol is just another animal, just the same as you and everyone else. It’s strangely heartbreaking, particularly as Edison Chen is such a hollow, untalented and uninteresting celebrity. After the shock, I realized that I too am naked under these clothes, I too have had sex, and I too recently took my computer in for repair even though it contained homemade pornography, and that actually, it’s nothing shocking.
Why is the penis so sacred? Why is it so titillating to see photos of African women with their breasts exposed? Why do we get an uneasy feeling when a child is walking around naked in front of strangers? An exquisite patch of pubic hair following the curves of a woman’s mound is intoxicating, but so is the curve of her jaw, or the corner of a boy’s mouth, or the nape of a child’s neck. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I feel sensuality has been distorted into something violent somewhere, and humans confuse aggression with sex with passion with love with attraction.
It’s strange, now my idol has been exposed to have an actual, clearly visible vagina, and a seemingly un-romantic and non-utilitarian use for it, what has been exposed is not really her body, but more my and the general public’s two-dimensional passion for her.

I have been famous two times in my life. The second time was when I moved to Cheon-Ju, a small city in South Korea, where I was the only young, Western person most people had ever seen in the flesh. I had attention everywhere I went - it was like being in the Beatles, or a zoo animal. On a good day it would be a crowd of high school girls squealing, and on a bad day it would be hoards of little children spilling into the public toilet to watch me pee. I quickly learned that nobody actually liked me, they all just had an image in their head of what I was and, in most cases, would get very offended if it turned out I didn’t want to go to karaoke with them or be the special guest at their birthday party. Since then I’ve always tried to treat celebrities as human beings.
But, who wants to be a stinky old human being? Who wants to be reduced to Winston in “1984”, without either the bravado or the insight to follow a truth either real or concocted?
It’s that old demon reality again, clawing away at the rotting veneer that is my façade - the only definition I have of myself.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Chinese New Year

Four days till the start of Chinese New Year. This is the best time of year in Hong Kong, the only time when a real festive spirit hits the nation. As a relative outsider, I like to join in with full gusto. The jaded little me tries to point out this is just a social phenomenon cultivated over the years to provide a welcome annual distraction to the populace. Just like me and my life – I try to pack every type of activity and reward into every single day – work, games, snacks, alcohol, orgasms, drawing, music, gym etc. Each and every day is full of little landmarks that keep me happy in some way or another. When I miss one it just means I get to have it even bigger tomorrow. I have to say, I like existence, it’s quite fun. Is this the path to enlightenment? Everything’s good, but it just doesn’t feel like I imagined nirvana would.

----------

This is me in Kangol cap, scarf and fake fur jacket from South Korea, for the Pony. I haven't drawn myself in weeks - months? It is strange to revert, after drawing other things all this time - the synchronicity becomes derailed momentarily, and things that were separate encounter each other. I like it.

Good goddamn if it isn’t cold

Every year around Chinese New Year Hong Kong gets really cold, but it only happens about twice during the winter and lasts around 3 days. A few old people die because they’re not prepared, and the rest of the population dresses up in their most wintery outfits, which is a lot of fun. None of the regular people have heating in their house – this is the 7th place I’ve lived in here, and it is the first place that has hot water (apart from the shower). This year is extreme though, even under my Hello Kitty fleece blanket plus my 'white cloud' feather down duvet, it is still cold. It is kind of fun, actually, and I like to dress up in hats and scarves, but being part English, I thought I had to mention the weather.

---------------
Baby and I have reached new levels of unreality, thanks to the wonders of Nintendo DS Lite and the game “Dōbutsu no Mori (どうぶつの森)”, or “Animal Crossing”. I now have my own town called “Domville”, and she lives in “Harvdom”. Even when we are in separate countries we can visit each other if we’re near a wifi connection. Our conversations weave in and out of real life and virtual life. Part of me is adding value to my imagined existence, and the other is starting to think that conventional existence is more hollow than it is made out to be.
Or maybe that’s just me.

Rearticulation

I’m not sure if this looks like anything to other people, but it’s feeling more and more like the restaurant I used to visit most days in my late twenties.
When I was a little boy, I had a fantasy that I might one day recreate an image exactly how it is seen with the human eye. In my juvenile mind, this entailed painting a picture with the edges all blurred, because I felt that when you looked at something, only the point you were looking at was in sharp focus, and everything, from that point out, becomes gradually more and more out of focus. I felt if I accomplished this accurately, and people looked at this picture, they would be transformed somehow – it would be like the renaissance, when someone figured perspective out, and visual communication was never be the same again.
Now I think something similar, but slightly different. I think I don’t see anything in focus. I just see colours and lines and these are combined with temperature and smell and the other senses somehow. It is combined with all sorts of things, but essentially it is a blur of sensation, tinged with a bit of memory and a bit of expectation.

What the devil wanted

The second last time I was in Japan I spent a lot of time in my head formulating a story of a man who was delivering sake on the devil's orders. Over the course of his deliveries the man drank more and more of the sake, and cheated the people he was delivering to more and more to compensate for his lasciviousness, until he met the ultimate delivery recipient, who was the devil himself. Unable to cover up his cheating ways, the man was finally exposed, only to discover his actions were exactly what the devil wanted of him.

Ah, I love a happy ending.

One of my great friends is the BBC 6 Music radio DJ Chris Hawkins. Like most of my friends, he exists more in virtual reality than in old-style physical, tangible reality. We have had a minor scuffle recently over Ryan Adams. I am willing to put Ryan Adams up as one of the greatest living artists, next to Bob Dylan, myself and possibly Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Chris, on the other hand, hates him. Chris is violently mistaken, of course. As evidence, I offer some of the lyrics to Ryan Adams’ “What the Devil Wanted”:

My idle hands
They are but tools
Apply them well
And you will loose

It’s what the devil wanted
What the devil wanted from me

Put your lover to your chest
Put all your fears to rest
Forever, baby
Ah, ah
Forever, baby

All my time is wasteful now
All my time is wasteful now
All my time is wasteful now

Ah, ah, ah, baby

The bounce back

All tonight’s pictures are unfinished or still too wet to scan. I’m visibly excited, I think it must be the influx of energy you get after you recover from a cold, combined with anger. This must be what Joan of Arc felt like. It reminds me of the happiest week of my life, when I was accidentally prescribed steroids in college.
Imagine waking up and literally hitting the ground running, going non-stop till you collapse for one hour of sleep, feeling your heart thudding inside your rib cage, which seems to be moments away from cracking wide open from the pressure. What a momentous week – drawings and paintings on every free spot in my room, I moved from one to another, letting them dry while I worked on others, day and night, breaking only for coffee and pills and laundry. By the end of the week I was sure I was going to die if I carried on. Fortunately the pills ran out and unfortunately life slowed down to it’s natural pace.
Reality, I always hated you.

---------------------------

Tonight’s soundtrack:
Radiohead: “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”
Radiohead: “Killer Cars (Mogadon Version)”
Ike Turner: “Jesus Loves Me”
Whiskeytown: “What The Devil Wanted”
Jerry Lee Lewis (with Buddy Guy): “Hadacohl Boogie”

... all over and over again, till i was ready to strangle something to death.

Outside

I went outside today, my first day in two weeks as a not-sick person. It was nice outside. Outside has people and shops and I even saw a big, black dog. I hope to go outside again soon.

I liked Ike

“I know regardless of what I've done, good and bad, it took it all to make me what I am today", Ike Turner

--------------------

I watched “A Streetcar Named Desire” on a plane recently. Even though I’ve seen it many times, it was still better than all the other movies available. Every time I encounter this play I progress a little bit. This time, for the first time, I felt pity for Blanche. Initially I was so taken by the beautiful, swaggering Stanley I had nothing but contempt for her. I never knew he raped her till I read the play. The first time I saw the movie after I read the play it seemed obvious, but this time I was again unsure if they actually implied this in the movie or not. Either way, what an amazing study of violence and the human condition. I’ve noticed recently that when I yell, I affect a Stanley Kowalski accent. I know it’s bad to romanticize such men, but when you’re surrounded by hollow people, it’s just so appealing to release yourself with abandon, regardless of what may or not be right or wrong.