Paisley-ontology (2006-2007)
Genius loci
I set out to explore what lay beyond the portal.
During a summer-long, intentional, psychonautic exploration of California's outer and inner landscapes, I first fell in love with the desert.
The Genius Loci, or resident spirit, of the place revealed itself to me and communicated itself through me. Until then it seemed that the material world was muted; we ordinarily don't hear what we see. But the desert came unmuted, and I became transmuted, perceiving tangible, ambassadorial pulses approaching me from beyond the material--from the MetaReal world. They were guardians of a treasure, of the secrets with which to measure the endlessness, and they began shuttling information to me from my surroundings. I called them "metroGnomes", metro-G-nomes.
They taught me how to beatbox. I became a mouthpiece for the desert, which had eons of sunshine to transmit, but until then had no one to talk to (or talk through).
My tongue became possessed by "Froudian slips", as if some fae-like force had taken control, allowing my syntax to transform and form sentences like a Shroomy Rumi, or some shaken Shakespeare gone Lewis Caroling.
This series of paintings analog my explorations of "PsychotropiCalifornia" and its psychic topography--the genius loci of the desert as the Land of the Dead: an oceanic afterlife--as well as riverine reveries from when the exploration continued along the Yuba River.
I encountered in this MetaReal space, what I would later describe as "Merkaba", which means "chariot" and appeals to a mystical vehicle or light-body. I had perceived it to be not something outside-myself, but rather, an astro-physical projection of my inner being. I drew this conclusion after singing into the space and noticing how the sound of my voice energized both the vision and my body. The vision itself was "sound", a synesthetic aesthetic, comprised of somatic cymatics.
Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home!
A band of angels coming after me, coming for to carry me home!
I began to form the theory that within us there is a kind of star-gate, a transcendental elevator shaft, if you will, through which we are able to access the structure of infinity. In terms of what I had come to understand about chakras, the body contains a kind of energetic grail or chalice that can hold the essence of other beings, conforming to their vibes--in turn becoming what we behold. Human nature is that of a mimicrous mirror, the monkey-see-monkey-do-monkey-become-monkey-understand.
This exploration led me to the "desert of the wheel-within-a-wheel", the desert of the abysmally surreal, where I encountered the "metro-g-nomes", who played a pivotal part in this becoming-what-we-behold phenomenon. Metro implies a metric, the measure of something, and a genome is the complete set of genetic information necessary to compose a particular organism—there’s a genome for a human being, a genome for a monkey, a coyote, a plant, a rock. So picture them, these metro-gnomes as little gnomes that act like ambassadors of the vibes of things, and delivered their resonate essences to my empathic vessel so that I may experience what it is like to be, for example, a rock formation, a cactus, or a coyote. Think of them as code-critters—daemonic mnemonic messengers. And then picture them finding expression through me.
Later, as I continued to investigate the genius loci of psychotropiCalifornia, it lead me to the river, where I struck through the walls of time and interfaced with what I have come to suspect were our cellular ancestors.
Swing low, Eukariot, coming for to carry me home!
