Dreams, Interpretatations/Ideas & Art/Lyrics/Prose Inspired by Adventures in The Bedlands
by Troy Palmer on Thursday, January 13, 2011 at 3:04am
The following two excerpts are taken from conversations on Facebook about dreams, the subconscious and reinterpreting a difficult childhood experience through the mind of an adult. Food for thought...
1. Opening Thread by Gary G- Children’s Drawings Painted Realistically: www.buzzfeed.com
Troy: "An old friend wants me to reproduce a shrinky dink from childhood as a painting or in my psychedelic sharpee stylee. She believes it is evidence that I was abducted."
Gary G.: "Fucking Awesome!"
Troy: "Yeah. What sucks is the original has disappeared since I took it to a friend's house in Cripple Creek around my birthday, and it was a very special relic. I'm praying that Christina's foul housekeeping habits mean it's buried under something in the house, but I fear that It's very small size could mean it was scooped up during a blitz clean (or the one time I let her brother clean the house) and dumped in the trash! It survived the Barrio, all sorts of shit growing up and me leaving for school & a record label job in CA for 4 years (then another family move out of The Barrio) and finally coming to CO in 2000, only to possibly disappear forever once some real significance was attatched to it when I took it with me to Flagstaff in Oct. to show my friend Kim, who saw deeper, hidden meanings in the artworks of a sensitive 7-year old. She interpreted some heavy stuff from the 2-3 still fully intact shrinky dinks I have on my shelf, as well as a mask I made while 9 and related them to recurring themes that more consciously appear in early artwork from college, late HS doodles and the slides, but the bulk of my work that dug deep into my young subconscious was stolen at a gallery in late '98, which was like ripping out my soul. That's why I have so little artwork from the past decade. It really did a number on me. But I don't wanna be like that forever- and I see a friend-based community gathered around your circle- and it makes me feel like I just might be able to rebuild after all. I did my best work and kept at it when I was part of a collective in Px where everyone was doing art and feeding off the collective energy... Things just seemed to click the way they were supposed to, for once since I've been here. But I'm rambling, possibly uncomfortably... change gears.
What made this piece so different was that there are numerous reports of alien abductors "experimenting with ways to make their youngest targets more at ease. They would make quick studies of cartoons, kiddie books, toys...but mainly try to piece it together through a kind of telepathy with the jumpy, disjointed waking consciousness of a preschooler. My drawing began with a giant eye for most of the head, with an odd semi-jaw looking almost like a clown collar. The teeth were long & rounded nearly to a smile below the eye. It wore a big muffin for a hat, which slid down the left side of it's head and had what looked like a cherry. Then there was the big, oversized shirt with a Charlie Brown zigzag toward the bottom. Here's where I get just a little foggy: the amount of tentacles. I think two were coming out from the proper holes, then up to four extended from underneath the waistline. It was offering me a lolly and a toy with the sleeve-tentacles, while two just coiled downward from the "waist". Meanwhile, two others crept up each side of the picture more sneakily, with puppets on the ends like some kind of angler fish. This is especially important, because the most important "dream" I remember from this age involved a similar scenario. It was so traumatic I remember it all to this day, but I'll focus on the important detail, right now: I was trying to go outside through the back door to pet my dogs. There was a bathroom at the right in a short pantry hall just before the door. These two sock puppetheads with earmuffs and googly eyes seemed to grow from a crack by the bathroom door, blocking my path. I was terrified. They had big Guy Smiley mouth slits that made their heads flip open like Pez dispensers (or an eggsnake, I thought later-possibly because I was so young, like a human egg). In my 4yr old mind, I desperately tried to find a way to get past these things or pacify them (it also occurred to me later that they might have been sticking out of the crack between the door & the hinge- it may have been very thin but we're talkin' aliens- or they may have shut the door just enough so all I'd see were these damn sock puppet things!). Anyway, the best I could come up with was to treat them like my doggies... I approached slowly and said "good doggie", then reached out to pat one on the head. They open their mouths and swallow me whole. I remember feeling it happen very quickly... my body compacted and changed shape/dimension, followed by a quick whooshing feeling- finally deposited into a large white room with conveyor belts, Rube Goldberg-type stuff and near-blinding white light I was grabbed by some seemingly mechanical -type claw and deposited into a cubicle surrounded by mirrors... 3 or 4, in a triangle or square shape. I'm looking at myself from various and infinite angles. The front mirror psychically "grabs" me and my eyes sort of cross and I freeze. I'm stuck and can't move no matter how hard I try. I start to seriously panic, which soon enough snaps me back to Earth/waking consciousness. I run screaming down the hall to the only room with another person in it: My mom. I'm not sure if she believes me or if she thinks I'm trying to avoid going to sleep or sleeping alone with the door shut... that part's currently unclear.
Anyway, that's the significance of the puppets. What's really freaky is that I never noticed that I drew them, they were done in a way that I couldn't or never tried to make out before Kim said something last October. She remembered the story of the dream from twenty years prior, because it stuck in her head back then as something very peculiar & possibly important. I had since developed a small obsession with puppets... Punch & Judy were major symbols in a very large painting I did in college, pictures of which have been in my photo gallery since I got my FB account (a year before I reconnected with Kim).
Now, I'm not saying anything concrete, here. What I am saying is it bears some serious musing/thought/introspection, whatever the conclusion may be!"
2. Thread by Gary Grossman- FUCKED UP DREAMS
Troy: "I had one recently where I was on the sidewalk and soon all the streets and lawns disappeared, leaving an almost black watery abyss. You could see giant creatures moving through it, just below the surface, only to dive down again. Sidewalks were the only thing solid left. I give that one about a 5, especially lately. I'm left to wonder what kind of psychic fuckery could be attributed to The Earth being knocked a bit off its axis by recent environmental disturbances..."
(Gary later mentions a dream involving cameras)
Troy: "Films & cameras in dreams... a very interesting subject. There are many ways to approach it, from both sides of the wall of sleep!
For a long time, I used to dream of TV's in almost every major room in my dreams. They would have TV shows that didn't exist, sometimes Jombie-like rotating heads while Kurlian photographic auras would emanate wildy from them. One of the worst ones happened when somebody mentioned turtle soup in the background one day. That night, part of my dream involved a TV show that was half wildlife show/ half cooking show. The host said he was gonna show how to make turtle soup. He "captured" a small turtle in "the wild". He spoke like a trad cooking bimbo. The screen goes all tracer-like and into closeup. He pulls the shell off the turtle. It closes in on the head/face of the poor turtle, still in tracer-mode. Boppy cooking music is playing while the turtle screams and tears stream down its face. The camera goes back to a thick brown boiling pot of goo, with taste testers eagerly gathered round... eyes wide and hungry. I woke up severely disturbed. I couldn't believe my mind would do that to me... again! It wasn't a traditional nightmare, but I felt shaken & sickened for possibly days after that. It really upset me.
I think my subconscious extrapolated in part the images of the sickest thing I ever saw: White Coats testing some product on a pig by first holding it tight and slowly burning it with a blowtorch. That's all I will say. I saw this when I was 19. It wasn't part of some activist video or program- too early for that! No, it was part of a thrillseeker comp...probably a volume of "Faces of Death". I was never the same, and would never again try to challenge myself with images of suffering. The only blood & guts flicks I will watch now are either social commentary (George Romero), slapstick (Simon Pegg) or just plain good films ("Fido") that go beyond the gore. They are also clearly fantasy 99% of the time.
The good side to all that is I became a caretaker for my animal brethren afterward! Yay, Animal Frenz!"
Troy: "On the art side, I try whenever possible (if the situation allows) to put a TV into a picture/painting and draw/paint the psychic/subconscious subtext of the whole scenario within it. I'd like to do the same thing in movies, if given the chance!"
Gary:"Whaaaat? Lol MADNESS I TELL YOU!"
Troy: "MADNESS? Perhaps I've been licked once or twice by The Million Eyes Unblinking, but it makes for interesting company... don'tcha think? No crime more heinous, more methodically soul-stripping/starving than Mundanity's proudly shapeless features!"
Troy: "Give me puberty or give me food! Bubbling lewd lube lude! Ut!Ut!!UBU!!!"
1. Opening Thread by Gary G- Children’s Drawings Painted Realistically: www.buzzfeed.com
Troy: "An old friend wants me to reproduce a shrinky dink from childhood as a painting or in my psychedelic sharpee stylee. She believes it is evidence that I was abducted."
Gary G.: "Fucking Awesome!"
Troy: "Yeah. What sucks is the original has disappeared since I took it to a friend's house in Cripple Creek around my birthday, and it was a very special relic. I'm praying that Christina's foul housekeeping habits mean it's buried under something in the house, but I fear that It's very small size could mean it was scooped up during a blitz clean (or the one time I let her brother clean the house) and dumped in the trash! It survived the Barrio, all sorts of shit growing up and me leaving for school & a record label job in CA for 4 years (then another family move out of The Barrio) and finally coming to CO in 2000, only to possibly disappear forever once some real significance was attatched to it when I took it with me to Flagstaff in Oct. to show my friend Kim, who saw deeper, hidden meanings in the artworks of a sensitive 7-year old. She interpreted some heavy stuff from the 2-3 still fully intact shrinky dinks I have on my shelf, as well as a mask I made while 9 and related them to recurring themes that more consciously appear in early artwork from college, late HS doodles and the slides, but the bulk of my work that dug deep into my young subconscious was stolen at a gallery in late '98, which was like ripping out my soul. That's why I have so little artwork from the past decade. It really did a number on me. But I don't wanna be like that forever- and I see a friend-based community gathered around your circle- and it makes me feel like I just might be able to rebuild after all. I did my best work and kept at it when I was part of a collective in Px where everyone was doing art and feeding off the collective energy... Things just seemed to click the way they were supposed to, for once since I've been here. But I'm rambling, possibly uncomfortably... change gears.
What made this piece so different was that there are numerous reports of alien abductors "experimenting with ways to make their youngest targets more at ease. They would make quick studies of cartoons, kiddie books, toys...but mainly try to piece it together through a kind of telepathy with the jumpy, disjointed waking consciousness of a preschooler. My drawing began with a giant eye for most of the head, with an odd semi-jaw looking almost like a clown collar. The teeth were long & rounded nearly to a smile below the eye. It wore a big muffin for a hat, which slid down the left side of it's head and had what looked like a cherry. Then there was the big, oversized shirt with a Charlie Brown zigzag toward the bottom. Here's where I get just a little foggy: the amount of tentacles. I think two were coming out from the proper holes, then up to four extended from underneath the waistline. It was offering me a lolly and a toy with the sleeve-tentacles, while two just coiled downward from the "waist". Meanwhile, two others crept up each side of the picture more sneakily, with puppets on the ends like some kind of angler fish. This is especially important, because the most important "dream" I remember from this age involved a similar scenario. It was so traumatic I remember it all to this day, but I'll focus on the important detail, right now: I was trying to go outside through the back door to pet my dogs. There was a bathroom at the right in a short pantry hall just before the door. These two sock puppetheads with earmuffs and googly eyes seemed to grow from a crack by the bathroom door, blocking my path. I was terrified. They had big Guy Smiley mouth slits that made their heads flip open like Pez dispensers (or an eggsnake, I thought later-possibly because I was so young, like a human egg). In my 4yr old mind, I desperately tried to find a way to get past these things or pacify them (it also occurred to me later that they might have been sticking out of the crack between the door & the hinge- it may have been very thin but we're talkin' aliens- or they may have shut the door just enough so all I'd see were these damn sock puppet things!). Anyway, the best I could come up with was to treat them like my doggies... I approached slowly and said "good doggie", then reached out to pat one on the head. They open their mouths and swallow me whole. I remember feeling it happen very quickly... my body compacted and changed shape/dimension, followed by a quick whooshing feeling- finally deposited into a large white room with conveyor belts, Rube Goldberg-type stuff and near-blinding white light I was grabbed by some seemingly mechanical -type claw and deposited into a cubicle surrounded by mirrors... 3 or 4, in a triangle or square shape. I'm looking at myself from various and infinite angles. The front mirror psychically "grabs" me and my eyes sort of cross and I freeze. I'm stuck and can't move no matter how hard I try. I start to seriously panic, which soon enough snaps me back to Earth/waking consciousness. I run screaming down the hall to the only room with another person in it: My mom. I'm not sure if she believes me or if she thinks I'm trying to avoid going to sleep or sleeping alone with the door shut... that part's currently unclear.
Anyway, that's the significance of the puppets. What's really freaky is that I never noticed that I drew them, they were done in a way that I couldn't or never tried to make out before Kim said something last October. She remembered the story of the dream from twenty years prior, because it stuck in her head back then as something very peculiar & possibly important. I had since developed a small obsession with puppets... Punch & Judy were major symbols in a very large painting I did in college, pictures of which have been in my photo gallery since I got my FB account (a year before I reconnected with Kim).
Now, I'm not saying anything concrete, here. What I am saying is it bears some serious musing/thought/introspection, whatever the conclusion may be!"
2. Thread by Gary Grossman- FUCKED UP DREAMS
Troy: "I had one recently where I was on the sidewalk and soon all the streets and lawns disappeared, leaving an almost black watery abyss. You could see giant creatures moving through it, just below the surface, only to dive down again. Sidewalks were the only thing solid left. I give that one about a 5, especially lately. I'm left to wonder what kind of psychic fuckery could be attributed to The Earth being knocked a bit off its axis by recent environmental disturbances..."
(Gary later mentions a dream involving cameras)
Troy: "Films & cameras in dreams... a very interesting subject. There are many ways to approach it, from both sides of the wall of sleep!
For a long time, I used to dream of TV's in almost every major room in my dreams. They would have TV shows that didn't exist, sometimes Jombie-like rotating heads while Kurlian photographic auras would emanate wildy from them. One of the worst ones happened when somebody mentioned turtle soup in the background one day. That night, part of my dream involved a TV show that was half wildlife show/ half cooking show. The host said he was gonna show how to make turtle soup. He "captured" a small turtle in "the wild". He spoke like a trad cooking bimbo. The screen goes all tracer-like and into closeup. He pulls the shell off the turtle. It closes in on the head/face of the poor turtle, still in tracer-mode. Boppy cooking music is playing while the turtle screams and tears stream down its face. The camera goes back to a thick brown boiling pot of goo, with taste testers eagerly gathered round... eyes wide and hungry. I woke up severely disturbed. I couldn't believe my mind would do that to me... again! It wasn't a traditional nightmare, but I felt shaken & sickened for possibly days after that. It really upset me.
I think my subconscious extrapolated in part the images of the sickest thing I ever saw: White Coats testing some product on a pig by first holding it tight and slowly burning it with a blowtorch. That's all I will say. I saw this when I was 19. It wasn't part of some activist video or program- too early for that! No, it was part of a thrillseeker comp...probably a volume of "Faces of Death". I was never the same, and would never again try to challenge myself with images of suffering. The only blood & guts flicks I will watch now are either social commentary (George Romero), slapstick (Simon Pegg) or just plain good films ("Fido") that go beyond the gore. They are also clearly fantasy 99% of the time.
The good side to all that is I became a caretaker for my animal brethren afterward! Yay, Animal Frenz!"
Troy: "On the art side, I try whenever possible (if the situation allows) to put a TV into a picture/painting and draw/paint the psychic/subconscious subtext of the whole scenario within it. I'd like to do the same thing in movies, if given the chance!"
Gary:"Whaaaat? Lol MADNESS I TELL YOU!"
Troy: "MADNESS? Perhaps I've been licked once or twice by The Million Eyes Unblinking, but it makes for interesting company... don'tcha think? No crime more heinous, more methodically soul-stripping/starving than Mundanity's proudly shapeless features!"
Troy: "Give me puberty or give me food! Bubbling lewd lube lude! Ut!Ut!!UBU!!!"
I did edit & clean this up a bit, but I must have sent the wrong one to Blake in my rushed state. I guess that means a rare peek into how I write when in a hurry to get info down quick before it loses shape in my doctor-addled ability to longterm focus.
ReplyDeleteBesides, If I were in the film 'Naked Lunch', I'd be more inclined to side with Ginsberg over Keruac when it comes to shaping each thought for maximum clarity and precision of concept. Jack may be right when it comes to writers who are still uncomfortable with themselves, but I'm not going to omit a possibly embarrassing detail if it adds life to a piece (if it goes off track or gets boring...)! In fact, I feel the most I have to offer these days has little to do with some scholarly approach to any subject. The more personal evaluations of how a certain character interprets observations related to a given subject are more likely to provide a fresh info jolt toward a previously overlooked direction. Perhaps a greater flexibility in our overall thinking patterns is just what we need to ease our different specialty areas together like a magick quantum jigsaw (as opposed to pounding more square pegs into round holes, which happens every time different schools of thought choose to fight rather than compare notes). HA! My true notoriety for trying to stay on topic and finding myself hungry, bleary & confused hours later is in full effect...
BTW, The Killing Joke selection is a eulogy to Paul Raven, the second bassist in a band that was created on the foundation of a ritual in two weeks. In a time when finding compatible musicians for such a specifically-envisioned sound/band wasn't at all easy, KJ found a perfect fit. Events just unfolded around them, soon forming a mythology that has continued to build significantly since 1979. When originaal bassist Youth went mad for a short spell in 1982, Raven filled his shoes with an earthier, more gutteral sound that made for another perfect-though-different fit. Raven's good-humored nature provided healthy balance for frontman Jaz Coleman's darker explorations & concerns, no doubt.
Anyway, Raven & Youth would strangely swap places every few years in KJ, each welcomed as family by fans & band alike. That stopped just over two years ago when Paul died very unexpectedly of a heart attack. Though this prompted the reunion of the original lineup for the 1st time in 25 years (and a definite rejuvenation of sound & purpose), the cost was the life of someone a great many musician fondly called friend. This song is from their new album, 'Absolute Dissent', and pays tribute the only proper way... not only an expression of grief in the communal manner KJ are known for (a very close bond has existed between band & fans that has been kept up for over 20 years and is very real), but with a song worthy of such weight.
-Troy Palmer (sleep-deprived & largely unaware of the past two hours' typing again... the light went out when I started talking about Raven and have had to hold the damn keyboard up to a largely black screen for any light at all)
I still haven't worked out getting a proper handle for this site, but until then you can find me on Facebook.
Anyone who wants to contact Troy directly about music, magick, and everything else can always find links to him on the ABOUT page, he is listed in the Friends and Enemies list. And I am attempting to make sure that the proper links are provided on the pages when artists contribute. The above article shows Troy's name as a highlighted link and it takes you to his Facebook.
ReplyDeleteA note to all readers, that although a few of us know each other from another lifetime ago as artists, everyone contributing to the 800 besides myself is either in different cities, or countries and continents away from each other. So far we have contributors in four cities in the US, two cities in Canada, and two from the England, and one from India. If I have forgotten anyone I apologize. My point being, it is more a matter of Chaos Magick bringing it all together, and none of it is being coordinated other than by our loose and networked ties via the internet.
IAOTIO
Thanx to Troy Palmer and the fans. Blake4d
Troy you write just fine! Freewriting or polished, it's all good!
ReplyDeletemyth~~
Awesome Troy
ReplyDeleteThank you
Kimberly