De Anima

They Don't Know What They Don't Know

Resist the inclination to allow the mindless opinions from others to usurp your throne. Your supremacy lies in your defiant autonomy—your revenge will be affirmed by their oblivious mediocrity.

Boldness is a performance art, and there will always be critics in the audience too basic to understand the nuances that intoxicate us with life. So keep your gaze forward and your hands dancing, their ridicule will be scorched by your fire.

Methods for Demonic Extraction: A Urinary Approach

10:32 am: I got up, made My bed, and inspected the foul container pervading the air in My shadow lair–it was ready.

Over the past 2 weeks, I’d been fermenting a batch of urine. There was a demoness residing in a particular camellia flower in My gardens, and this was unacceptable. After consulting with a slew of elders, I learned about an ancient method the Dragn gnostics would use for such matters of exorcism.

Although I wasn’t a zealot of the Church, desperate times called for desperate measures. I was experiencing a demon infestation in My life that was driving Me to the brink of insanity–they were like baby roaches that would come out during the night, and The Most High was My insecticide.

Closer

I haven't been shooting or writing as much as I'd like lately, or making anything of creative worth really. If you want to know the truth, I've been cleaning, deep cleaning. I started with my bedroom a few weeks ago, afterall, your living space is an extension of you–messy room, messy life. So, I've committed myself to straightening out both, and that impulse has spread to my bathroom. Mold, mildew, and grime have been the evil dwarfs pissing on my leg, and I’m bent on scorning them with a sadistic malcontent–so far I've been successful.

Contrary to what inaccurate and distorted impressions about me I may bait people to suck on, I value structure, discipline, and a work ethic that keeps me hostile toward mediocrity. The more disorder I've compelled into submission, the closer I feel toward breaking through. Through what exactly, I don't know yet, but I'm close–I can feel it.

Aranea Flos

My Favorite Photographs

My favorite photographs are ones that have an element of quiet violence–ones that aren’t thrusted upon your face (those are too obvious), but that rest easily within the boundaries of the frame, with brazen guile.

We’re all domesticated savages acting on this grand stage with a modicum of decency and propriety, but under the hot lights, within us exists the sinister desire to conquer others, to exert our will over circumstances. The thirst for power, not the quench of love, surges through our veins, and that instinct prevails.

Burning in Knowledge, Drowning in Faith

I walked along neglected trails, following a foreign light that led into a dreary forest that clutched tomblike secrets. Step by step I could feel restless bodies stir below My feet, their decomposed limbs entangled within the roots of the earth, and as they groaned for redemption the ground convulsed like a mother holding her stillborn baby for the first time.

Every so often the canopy loosened its bony grip over Me, revealing cannibalistic skies that consumed everything within it, except for the slew of winged serpents that possessed an unexplainable immunity. I stopped for a moment to rest, and admired their grace and beauty as they soared without end–they breathed not fire, but ancient knowledge.

In those days the great serpent was said to be bad, but as I forged ahead, I inhaled the naked understanding that bad is the siamese head of good, and both are protruding atop our torso, looking at eachother, for we are the great serpent, and we are eating ourselves alive. In His infinite wisdom, The Lord, our God, is voyeur to the devouring of flesh and spirit of His children, and that is neither good, nor bad, but necessary.

But only the illuminated will master that unavoidable fate, and find refuge in the bottomless skies above, far removed from the legion that murmur below.

Quietos Fratris: Roll #1, Frame #8.

I uploaded this a little while ago, but realized shortly afterward that I had jumped the gun and forgotten to retouch the dust marks off the film. So here it is again, sans distracting dust marks.

But while I was doing this it got me thinking about process, and the myriad of things we do as image makers to achieve a final image that satiates our thirsty mind's eye, that go unnoticed to the end viewer.

I think of all the untold secrets that my photographs have contained in them, that I don't care to ever discuss, and in this way I achieve a sense of intimacy with each and every one of them. Photography is a graceful relationship.

Color/Flare Study: Roll #1, Frame #25.

These early rolls of film (2010-2011) would lay the foundation to my understanding of controlled lens flare, and manipulation of colors while shooting. Although my creative process is inherently grounded in serendipity, over the years I've honed my secret technique. It's this constant struggle between wild unpredictability and controlled precision, failure and reward, that keeps me pushing myself in my craft, and keeps me humble.

Each one of my portraits has so many variables: double exposure, reflections, flares, colors, that can throw off the composition so easily, and because of this, I've come to the realization that each successful frame is truly a gift from an enigmatic wellspring that I don't fully comprehend, but try to tap into.

Strange Times

We are living through strange times–a time where people care more about their social currency than the caliber of their character.

Intelligence is discarded in exchange for "influence".

But what is needed is more love, empathy, and art–not likes, followers, and personal brands. We are not personal brands, we are people, people with legacies that need not be corporatized, but actualized.

These are strange times, strange times indeed.