Role-play

I’m flying back to Old Lady Manhattan this morning. It generally takes me 24 hours door-to-door as I fly through South Korea. This 24 hours is fun, fun, fun. I like airplanes. No phone calls - you’re forced to do nothing but doze off and watch movies while beautiful girls serve you and you play “If I had to choose just one” and read the Financial Times. I pay tones of money for each flight, but it still thrills me to get a free newspaper on the plane.

When I used to live in Bermuda I had to write my occupation on the arrival card, so I used to write whatever I wanted to be, like opera singer, conductor or matador. Travelling is just a form of pseudo-suicide.

I think the people in the Cartier shops in HK, S Korea and NY probably know me by now, but apart from that I could be anybody. I’m very tempted to act like an asshole for the whole trip, to play that role, just to see.

Thoughts (part 1)

I’ve been thinking about Tommy Lee from Motley Crue recently, and imagining we are friends. I think we’d make good friends, but he comes across as much more outgoing than me, so I wonder what we’d actually do together.

Nothing can stop me now

Today I hired a 2nd assistant, bought a new laptop for over US$2000, and purchased a 2nd-hand accordion.

That’s right, an accordion.

Diagnosis, murder

It’s Saturday morning, or more accurately, the end of Friday night. I’ve been with people. Generally I don’t spend a lot of time with people, I’m quite busy. This is the 2nd weekend in a row I’ve associated with people.
When you hang out with people you need to interact with them. This sometimes means putting up with their asininities, and sometimes, if they’re quite clever, means you get to intellectually pare with them. Tonight was a bit of both, but ended up, as any good human event should, with intoxication and dancing.
I like people, I really do. I just wish so many of them weren’t so hung up on themselves. Really, we’re here to fuck and have a good time. You can diagnose it as much as you like, but you’re going to come to the same conclusion: fuck … good time. Art … girls and boys. It’s really not that complicated.

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I believe my grandfather coined the title "Diagnosis, Murder" in his novel of the same name, under the pen name of "Sutherland Scott". A fine writer in my somewhat biased opinion.

Move on

So Israel just swapped Samir Kuntar, plus 4 other Lebanese prisoners, plus the remains of 199 Lebanese fighters for … the bodies of 2 dead Israeli soldiers.
I would usually laugh at the “persecute-them-before-they-persecute-us” circus that is the Middle East, but this whole thing is just a case of humanity gone straight out the window.
Sometimes I just wish everyone would kill each other and get it over with, I’m sick to death of all this petty god, possession, hatred idiocy.
I’ve seen a little of the Middle East, and I can tell you friends, they’re all just a bunch of people, just like me. Just as useless and pointless and beautiful as everyone else.
I know what it’s like to be pissed off and get in a fight, but I get over it.

The slow train to Tahiti

Can’t sleep. It’s been another productive, perfectly coordinated day (the worst kind). Had to get up and draw … spend a little time with myself. I’m seven small inches away from doing a Gauguin – quitting the bank and going to a small tropical island to unearth my soul in purely sensual pursuits. I think I’d take Baby with me though. And I don’t work at a bank.

I used to amuse myself and exasperate my history of art teacher by saying “I could do that” every time he showed us Gauguin. One day he handed me a sketchbook and some colours and said “Okay, so go and do it.”

That was the 2nd best lesson I ever received.

Nothing's wrong

I’ve spent the past 3 weeks stone cold sober, and the last 2 weeks in complete control of myself, dealing with mortgage brokers, insurance brokers, printers, deliveries, premeditated ejaculations, hair care, ironing etc. Adult things. Everything is running smoothly. I feel great. It’s so nice. Everything’s nice. Nice, nice, nice. How pleasant to see things running smoothly. How nice. How tediously nice. How comfortable and predictable everything has become. How stable I feel. How clean. Like I’ve been disinfected. Like I’ve been wiped down with bleach. Sterilized. Sterile. Squeaky clean. Like a soldier’s button. Like a happy, shiny soldier’s button. Happy, clean and nice.

Tomorrow I will do something stupid. Tomorrow I will make a mistake on purpose. Tomorrow I will feel my pulse again.

Vanity fair

Baby has a high school reunion next January so we are in training for the event. To start out with I’ve become a recovering alcoholic again – this is a sure-fire way to get rid of that unsightly ‘spare tire’ flesh that is becoming a constant pest. I thought maybe it had been a month or two since I stopped being a filthy drunk, but actually it’s been only 2 weeks. I remember last time it was 40 days and 40 nights and by the end I felt like some kind of lean, sexual python, slithering down Hubba Hubba Street. This task is, frankly, tedious, but it’ll be worth it in 6 months’ time. I won’t let anyone accuse me of not knowing the sweet poison of conceit.

I decided to draw with my left hand today even though my right is functioning pretty much as normal. I was a little disappointed to discover it seems to be exactly the same as drawing with my right, just slower. Perhaps I’m ambidextrous. Or perhaps I’m just not very good. Or perhaps my old suspicion is true after all, and god himself is moving through me.

Son of a bitch

I have recreated here the painful last moment I could feel my right hand. I have drawn it with my left hand because my right hand has been chewed to pieces by a vicious dog. This is the 2nd time I’ve been attacked by a dog – it happens very suddenly, and all in the same moment you hear that horrifying snarling sound they make through the saliva of their flapping lips, you feel the tugging against your limbs and you feel the sharp pain of the teeth breaking through the skin, pushing into the muscles. Almost immediately they let go and then go in again for a better grip, and at that moment, because you have already analyzed and understood the situation, you try to outmaneuver the animal, which is virtually impossible, but you can at least give it a less important section of your hand/arm to tear up. At this point, you’re in a bit of a conundrum. Do you attack the dog back? It’s hard to kick a dog when it’s locked on to you, and if you hit it with your hand you stand the chance of it shifting its teeth over to your one good hand. This is a good time to find a suitable piece of furniture to beat the dog off with.
Actually, after 4 days I do have the feeling back in all my digits but one, but I thought it would be more dramatic if I pretended I had to draw with my left hand. I almost enjoyed it - makes me feel like a tough guy, especially with the wounds.

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.

Meet my new mistress

Every just so often I abandon drawing and everything and become someone else, like a playwright or a matador. At this moment, I have become a guitarist. I am already on p21 of “Progressive Guitar Method Book 1 – Beginner”. Studying is a beautiful process. You sit and you look at it and you practice it and then suddenly it all makes sense. Like one little, hidden room suddenly becomes illuminated, and you’re allowed to go in and enjoy. I love the sound of the C chord moving onto the E7 chord. I could do it over and over again. My fingers are killing me; I now know how Bryan Adams felt back in the summer of ’69. I will start using phrases like “At least I still have my guitar”, and “The guitar is my woman”. I also have a new fuck-you rock’n’roll haircut. Essentially I stand in front of the mirror and spend 15 minutes loading my hair with clay and wax until it looks like I haven’t washed in 3 days and just rolled out of the gutter without checking the mirror. Yep, that’s me, the genuine article.

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Until I start drawing again, I’ll just post random scans from old pictures. This is a banana I had a particular affection for, and I didn’t want it to decompose into obscurity, so I drew it.

I want you

Ah recovery. The days following a minor cold are the best. Your insipid body blossoms with the sweet surges of necessity, and your broken spirit becomes enflamed with guiltless want. You stand at the toilet and your cock weighs heavy in your hand, all rubbery flesh; soft, yet somehow twice its normal size and full of insinuation.
I have a plan. I’m going to invade Burma. All those dispossessed people, all those passive monks, that inept and globally hated junta. It’s practically a revolution just waiting to happen; just waiting for me. Oh how fucking fun it will be, choosing a new national anthem and watching statues of myself going up. I’ve checked a map. We’ll sail from Sri Lanka. There’s nothing in the way, and there’s no one in Sri Lanka who can or will stop us from gathering. We’ll go in many small boats. If we go in one big boat it might get stopped by the Myanmar military, but they won’t be able to stop many little boats. I’ve thought of everything.
We’ll need weapons, but we’ll barely need to use them. We’ll need them just to show we’re serious and to cut down the very few people who will resist. I calculate the Burmese military will almost immediately join us. They will have sensed long ago that the current leaders have lost the plot and are on a one way street to obsoletion. Still, we’ll cut deals with the current leaders, giving them ineffectual positions in the new regime where they can at least live out their worthless lives in peace. I want it to be a quick, clean revolution, otherwise it will drag out and we’ll have stupid little fractions to deal with afterwards. As king I will appoint Aung Sang Syu Ki as president. This will please the peacemongers and Europeans who feel they have a vested interest in the country's wellbeing and may get in the way.
For the initial army, I need only 50,000 men and women. I will pay you after we secure power, US$1000 each. Not bad for ten days’ work. I’ll cut a deal with the United States to pay you off – they will be happy to settle the account to have a friend in Burma. They do it all the time. I’ve calculated it, it comes to 50 million US dollars. Believe me, I know how these people work, and it’s a goddamn bargain. Send your contact details to: domboy@wrongdesign.com and I’ll cc everyone with the time and place to meet. I’ll need someone to help purchase all the boats and someone who’s good at logistics. I’ve really thought of everything.

It’s all swell when you’re well

Dreaming I was preparing an exhibition honoring Herman Brood. I was being emotionally tortured. In defiance I offered a knife to use against me, and in greater defiance it was ignored and the torture compounded. When I woke up my throat was killing me and I knew I was sick again. Then I fell asleep and dreamed of hamsters, just like the last time I was sick. A man had neglected his hamster – it was in a poor state, all malnourished and half bald. I helped orchestrate the campaign to save the hamster. Later, I walked past the man’s shop. His hamster sat on the sidewalk in front of his shop. The front of the shop was all glass, and the hamster looked tiny. I saw the man inside, completely broken with his head in his hands, awaiting his fate. I petted the hamster, which had completely recovered. The hamster stared stupidly in front of itself, completely unable to comprehend its current state, or even its previous state. It sure looked cute though.
Later Baby mentioned Laika. I always thought Laika survived, but it turns out her spaceship wasn’t even designed to be able to make it back into orbit. Later Laika was honored with all sorts of statues, postage stamps etc, which somehow makes me feel even more sorry for Laika. I bet all she wanted was some food, a place to run around, and a good fuck.
Well, in a nutshell: I’m sick, we’re all going to die, and existence is futile.

The libertine

I first learned I had no soul in Egypt in 1999. I was in an oasis town called Al Fayoum, taking photos of romantic poverty, when a local man purposely walked into me, knocking me sideaways, mid-photo. I assumed it was an accident and looked up at him, and he turned to face me while he was walking away and gave a clear grimace, somehow both facing me and walking away at the same time, grimacing, with piercing, unfriendly eyes. I’d seen that look before a few times in Egypt; enough times to make me stop and think what it meant. This was pre-9-11, when I still had a healthy disrespect for all religions, and didn’t know the difference between a Jew and a Muslim. I now know there is no difference – they are just the same as me: insignificant human animals with overblown senses of importance. I’d made a lot of faux-pas during that trip. I still remember the whole room filling with laughter - absolute uncontrollable, unexpected mirth, after I asked if I could get a flight to Israel. I remember the student coming up to me in the Mohammed Ali mosque (no, not that Mohammed Ali) and telling me I was not behaving respectfully. He was unapologetically angry, veritably incensed. I remember the man saying, with contempt, “No, they are not singing, they are praying”, and I especially remember that pregnant pause during an argument about money in the Khan al-Khalili souk, after a non-Muslim female had literally ripped the cash out of a male Muslim’s hand, when I could see in their eyes the thought: “Should we beat the crap out of them, or laugh it off?”. That look followed me everywhere, and I eventually interpreted it to mean “that base infidel”. Those challenging eyes, coming from an animal that had spent an entire lifetime in devotion to a spiritual ideal, facing an animal that had spent an entire young adulthood in devotion to folly and fleeting sensual whims.
What troubled me most was that it was all true. Where they had a deep spiritual conscious, no matter how absurd it was, I had only an indiscriminate fancy, based on nothing but orgasms, pride and desire. I have no soul. I am like a Labrador, running through a sunlit field; it’s tongue hanging out, with a glorious, idiot smile on its face.
I wish I had a soul. I listen to Mahalia Jackson and I wish I had a soul. I meet my fiends and relatives who have a certain and defined faith and I wish I had a soul. I speak to virtual strangers who are discovering subtle and profound truths about themselves and I wish I had a soul. But I don’t. I am hollow and empty like the rotten core of a decaying tree trunk. Like a shell whose inhabitant has long left for a larger housing. Like Kenny G. I am on a path of existence, leading towards a death that will lead me into eternal nothingness. It makes me feel so … liberated.