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1,041: RAISING ROOTS

The window of an undertaker, Vietnam. These roots are all roughly 9 months old. At the start of pregnancy, local women are expected to begin tending to this peculiar & fast growing tuber for the term. The matriarchal council that enforces this policy insist it reveals much about the future child - when the vegetable is wide & healthy, strength; swollen at the ‘head’, intelligence; malformed - disability. Of course it is no accident that it also prepares the expectant mother for a routine of caring; in some cases, the practice works too well. Here, post-vegetal depression is more common than post-natal.

The father lifts the root from its womb of earth as the baby crowns; often the first sight the child sees is the sacrifice of its mandrake twin. The bereavement is hard for some mothers - there are various popular funeral preparations (and a few good recipes*) but the ones we see here, preserved in formaldehyde, are for women who don’t want to forget their roots.

* The best of these tend to incorporate the placenta, or ‘bucha-co-satthi’ (baby’s friend) either fried into a scrapple to restore the mothers energy after birthing, or blended with some sweet apple and preserved with a cap of rendered fat until the baby is able to eat solid food. The puree’s consumption and subsequent unification of the child with his mineral and vegetable twins is considered spiritually significant and is comparable to a western christening ceremony.  

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934: THE SUNDAY TREE

The tradition of the Sunday Tree was thought by early explorers to be simple nature worship; with further study, they gradually learnt what the natives always had☞. By hiding the trees from the sun and exposing their foliage only to the light of the moon, its berries gradually take on a pure white hue – and, due to the lengthier ripening process, can swell to the size of apples. The harvest continues year round, with only the largest specimens removed for the weekly crop. This night fruit is shared amongst the locals every Sunday – the wealthiest (or most gluttonous) among them possessing skin the colour of snow.

☞ A whole team of botanists perished upon consumption of the copious dark berries that Sunday trees produce in daylight; they have been considered highly poisonous ever since, although none of the tests recovered from the lab showed signs of toxicity. Locals remain tight lipped on the subject.

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870: GAS GIANTS

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Frequently seen on the sides of motorways and the industrial zones of the country is the Gas Venus (Fig. 1) – swollen planets of hammered metal, in systems of ten or more, towering over the buses that bear me through them. I soon learned that each site lay on sacred ground. Ritual gas – a powerful hallucinogen – spilled from fissures in the earth all across the region. Small cracks would serve a single shrine where, on holy days, villagers would visit their local seer - interpreting their contortions and tongues in the pursuit of some local matter☞. The larger temples, sites of pilgrimage where the land was striated with gashes and caverns - are almost all leveled, replaced by vast factories (Fig.2) in order to keep up with demand. Nowadays, people have little interest in old religious follies; the gas is sold by the canister, and bought in clubs and bars.

            The particularly adventurous - or the especially addicted - go into the deep country with pickaxes, searching for caves where the gas nearly reaches the surface, in order to vent their own supply. Squatter communities have sprung up around the few that last; keepers of the old religion occasionally visit, desperately parsing the prophecy of a hundred oracles.

☞ No secret was made of the gases role in the ceremony; oracles were chosen for their strong constitutions, and the best of them were still able to speak words or short phrases in the local tongue while inhaling ‘under-air’ (trans. from the local) Long ago - in order to aid in the translation of lesser oracles - temples would paint instructional murals on the shrine walls, transcribing the various signs, motions and noises (as well as combinations of all three), which corresponded to the solutions to common problems. The few remaining modern day believers pass these movements down through the generations as ritual song and dance. 

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486:

Although nudist beaches are common to the azure coast, they still ascribe to certain antiquated moral laws. Pictured here is an example of a ‘Yoke d’Eros’ or ‘lustful yoke’, punishment for anyone who, ‘sur les places sans vestements’, is unable to control their baser bodily instincts. 

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Further Tail/Fin

273:

 Upon viewing this miniature village, my first thought is to look up, to see myself looking down, as we have all done at the local fun-fairs. I am quickly informed that this is not a traditional infinite village, but instead a quantum one - existent only when it is observed. Upon further enquiry, I was privileged with its tragic history. At first studied like any infinite village, under the microscope, a husband and wife team found countless iterations of Roque Brune within. The husband was the first to go mad; whilst he was working under the microscope, his wife briefly left the room. Without a protective secondary gaze, confronted by the paradoxical knowledge that, unobserved, the original model village no longer existed – that the x100 village under his lens was real but that somehow, impossibly, the others had ceased to be – he baulked at his sanity, taking refuge in the animal corners. It was not logic but guilt that turned the wife; when taking her eye off the microscope, gazing at the original model, feeling the reality of the within-town disappear, confronted by that terrible knowledge – that every time she studied closely and looked away, she committed endless genocide – she baulked at her sanity, and took her own life. After the suicide, a scheme was set up, to prevent re-occurrence. A man of strong will and 20/20 vision would watch over the village 24 hours a day, and all magnification equipment was banned, so my informant claimed. I would have reason to doubt his story but his eyes never shifted from the town, and not once did I see him blink.

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A recent quake shook loose some missing pages from Tail/Fin, my 2009 opus. Enjoy!

195:

This manhole cover was producing the most unearthly sound – the notes of its music started at H and took off beyond the alphabet, all at once from deep below and right at your feet. As we neared it its scent filled us, and we knew – these were the smells of the things that have none, of captured light and mirrors, of the sun and the moon. Gingerly I placed a finger to it, expecting a sudden trembling, the electric, orgasmic rush; instead I was flushed with a soft placidity, a sense - a knowledge - of place that would take eons of study to gain. It was the greater gift. I removed my hand, no longer – never again would I be – greedy for more. My father, more boldly, stooped to engage his taste; 'Ambrosia' he exclaimed, 'the nectar of the gods', a beatific smile on his face. The only sense it did not stun to disbelief was sight; but what form could do this thing true justice, what fevered hallucination could it take that would not leave men mad and gibbering?

201:

 This is just a really lovely example of the 'Gaz' (Gas) covers so prevalent in rural France since the 1950s. Found on a rarely-trod path, the letters are barely worn down; the distinct rectangular shape, far larger than modern mains covers, speaks to the antiquated nature of its service tools. Nice work.

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CORK TREES

It was a landscape that stretched out to the horizon, and we sat on it. A mountain reared on the right, the summit a spring where rivers grew and ran, watering a forest below. It could have been majestic; it was simply a shame the artist was talentless. Trees were green paint circles on brown paint sticks; the forest was separated by a hashed-out chasm from a desert on the other side. The desert was incredibly poorly rendered; in order to inject some life, the painter had attempted to show the desert in sunset, with the light hitting the sides of dunes and crags. No matter that it was clearly midday on the forest side; by this point he was hopelessly out of his depth and gunning hell for leather.

The light curved round rocks and cut through shadows, not in shading but as forceful lines of yellow on brown. It was this forcefulness that had made us take it; a conviction ran through the entire painting that could not have been born of the imagination. That's why we had cut it from its frame, to find the vista it depicted; but for now, the ground was wet, and it was, after all, a canvas, and so we sat upon it.

  That's what I told Wuppleheimer the trip was, at any rate ­ we had sat staring at that painting, discussing it and embellishing it and convincing ourselves of its truth for days, until we knew we would find it - had to find the reality of it. But more than that, I needed something; there was nothing left for me in that town, since the strangers came for the gold rush, the wagons and the merchants and the vagrants and the bandits, the murderers that came with them, packing the town until I couldn't hardly breathe. I knew Wuppleheimer was starting to have second thoughts about the turn his life had taken since. It'd be good for his mind, he'd said, it'll help him with his book; at the bar, he'd launched into an 'impassioned discourse' about the dizzying freedom of the plains, the anxiety that comes with possibility. I needed some company, so I said to him 'On the other side of fear is life' ­ it's something my dad used to say ­ and he thought he'd found a kindred spirit. Once we'd torn the painting off the wall, been chased out of the saloon, stolen a horse and shared it into the dark, and once his whiskey wore off ­ then I knew he was having second thoughts. Me, I loved it; it's what I needed, to be the only one kicking up dust. It spreads out here, curling thin along the ground; it gets so dense and high in the town, all the grains up on top of each other.

  I mention this to Wup, and he tells me such obvious projected meaning should embarrass me. He says he'll read me some of his work, that it'll give me a feel for what a true wordsmith can do, and before I respond he's rooting around in his satchel. When he starts reading, his voice is clear, but I can feel him shaking behind me on the horse.

  'I know the things we all have but never mention ­ stray long black hairs rooted in fair-haired arms. I pluck them, or hide them, and I know you do too. Once my fingernails were too long and, in plucking, curled one like a ribbon; and I'm sure the same of yours. We keep them out of sight, our anomalies, because if people knew them then they'd know us.

It's built in, rooted in our psyches like the hair in the arm; go to bed with a girl and your body knows not to pass gas. You wake up, and your stomach is bubbling from it all, and you know she can hear so you pass it off as hunger; and still you wait until she leaves to go to the john, and she never goes either; because romance would die if we showed what we were, if we showed our reality. I used to live with a friend, saw him so often I watched his spots grow...' That's enough, I say. 'It's very good.' and then, 'Why'd you choose to write about that?'

'Well, beyond the words themselves, it lays the universal principles of society bare - ' 'Uh huh', I nod, my eyes fixed on the trail. I hadn't wanted to be out with just my thoughts, but I didn't want to have to think his. I have seen the truth of society, the reality, and I left it behind in the town. Why write about society in the middle of the wasteland, I want to ask, why do you think we are here? But I can still feel him shaking so I bottle it up.

  That night I dream of it again, and its clearer and stronger than its been before. I'm in the chasm, or I'm riding above it, or on it; it still has no depth but I can see the vast mountain rearing to my right and the streams that run from the peak, fall and merge, and pool, split and fall again, till they reach the trees and join with the roots, become them, the vast forest that he now could see were cork trees ­ the bark stripped off the bottom half, down to raw red wood, but they keep growing ­ a resource, I think to myself. People will come ­ people are already here, how else could I explain the trees ­ and towns will be built and the boom will hit and rot will grow and she will die, she would have died even here. I lie awake and look at her picture and think about how Wup was right and how Wup was wrong. I never hid myself from her; from the first time I met her she could see my black hairs, and after a while it’s impossible not to use the john. I chastise myself for using his terms. But the hidden parts of humanity, the dirty bits, people just go on pretending not to know they exist. Because how could you have a society, if everyone knew it all? If they knew that they had taken her from me? I understand Wuppenheimer better, now. I put her photo away; already it was becoming worn, the features unclear.

  I allow myself to remember the beginning of that night. We had been joking, laughing about the fat cook who served slop to the miners. The grease in the kitchens was so thick that if heavy rain was falling when he went outside, it slid off him like he had duck feathers ­ a downpour on his bald head was like holding a spoon under a faucet, she had said. It was really quite beautiful. I laughed, and we imagined a sport of it - the greased up obese dancing in unison beneath angry clouds, synchronized swimming in reverse. A man-fountain of man-mountains, she had said, pride in her tone. And then it was me running through the rain, and it wasn't sliding off, the drops were striking me, and slowing me, and I took their chill into me. Too far. She had died and I had left and that was that. I had to tell her parents. Maybe they'd live at the landscape, I thought as I forced myself back to sleep; maybe they farm cork.

  Wuppleheimer was up and scratching away recording his latest revelation when I woke up. He was too absorbed to see me watching him. Scratch, scratch, stop. ponder. Scratch scratch scratch. I wondered what bodily function he was strip mining for meaning today. I sit up and look around, but I see no landmarks, no mountain, no streams ­ no streams could be a problem, I thought, as I shook my canteen. All there is here is the dust and the distance. 'Hey, Wup', I say, 'how long you been up?'

  He tells me he had an idea in the night, and had to put pen to paper. He thinks I'm listening, and wants to go on, but I go to check on the stolen horse. I refuse to have it be 'my' horse. Then theft implies ownership and then she was 'their' woman and then ­ Stop. The stolen horse starts in shock as I yell to Wup - what are you writing then?

  'A refinement, I hope, on my previous work; perhaps at least a more elegant way of relating to the conceit. Would you - ' I say that I would.

  'Well then, try to keep up. As a child, the worldview is simple. People are archetypes - Father is hero and Mother is saint. Now, I posit that - ' he pauses, assumes I do not know the word, and continues, ' - I put forward that we surround ourselves with layer upon layer of veils. Not literal ones, you understand ­ but veils that nonetheless obscure our view of the world. Wrapped in such swaddling, we lack truth but gain comfort, only to have them torn from us, layer by layer, as we age; as people fail us, as we are hurt, as we mature, and discard some of our own free will. Ah ­ here's the line I like ­ 'And finally, we stand there naked, and the abhorrent truth chills us, and we construct new veils 'gainst the cold.' I'm thinking of making that the last line of the book; A fine summation, don't you think?' And I think, boy do you like to talk. I effuse some banalities ­ you're not the only one who can use big words when small will do, Wuppleheimer ­ and say we'd better get on our way. He looks different, now, than he did when we met, or I see him differently; I've seen his spots grow, and he's seen mine.

  We ride on, until there are no veils left between us. I know him and he knows me and we know the others reality. I hear many readings from his book, all the same, and I understand them and reject them. He's right, I think, about the truth of things. But it is not my truth; out here, in the wilds, I do not have to accept such ugliness. I do not know what would have happened between Wuppleheimer and myself, if the painter had not found us; he arrived in the night, we assumed, because in the morning he was there. He was working feverishly on a new canvas, a towering city of smoke and iron. I confronted him; how can you paint these things, if you are not there? 'I paint my way to them', he says, 'it is my reality.' We would have scoffed, before. I gave the painter my photo, and unrolled the canvas for him; Wuppleheimer would stay with the painter, I knew. I had seen the hunger in his eyes for that city. I saddled my horse ­ it was my horse, now that they could no longer have her ­ and the painter pointed me to where he had painted from. It was a small change, to the canvas; his artistry had not improved, and the photo by now left little to go on. But the painter saw the truth of things, and I would find her in the cork forest.

  "It is awful to look into the mind of man and see how free we are...outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must preserve appearances, a hundred things you cannot do: but inside, the terrible freedom." (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal, 1832)

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STRIKUS

I wrote some Haikus on the day the earth stood still, 04/02/14: Never forget (there was a tube strike in London). Putting them here for posterity, now that there's no chance whatsoever of me accidentally tapping into the zeitgeist.  Also please enjoy a tangentially relevant and totally bananas old underground poster (thanks to io9), to keep your eyes busy. Rats forced into light Board double decker plague ships Hey I got a seat  Kingdoms rise and fall Heat death of the universe Still at Notting Hill Birth, Death, a wedding The bells ring out in chorus A bus - or a world? The mewling pups walk Litter born at Marble Arch Not all will survive Greetings, Apocolypse And your surprise fifth horseman Hail, Inconvenience! Quick, electric glance Lightning - I knew you once We rode together And one I wrote once the second tube strike was called off: Sitting in a tree K I S S I N G Oh, Bob and Boris!

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RARE BEHIND THE SCENES FOOTAGE FROM GIRAFFE CREATION Still got the jewellery bug, am now making a menagerie of spirit animals, one for every occasion. First up, the giraffe - for when you need the power of height, tongues and gormlessness. Created as a christmas gift for my girlfriend, as those are the traits she most often needs to channel with me.  Never before seen: the original, prototype wax giraffe! Considered 'too gormless' and 'just, just not good enough' by the powers that be. The poor idiot is now sqooshed in my wax box, an endless torment.  The silver giraffe was a lonely unique for a long stretch there, but he's just come back from the casters with a brass friend and a mould made; an army of giraffes is in the offing.  In case that's too subtle, IF YOU WANT A GIRAFFE LET ME KNOW AND I'M SURE WE CAN COME TO SOME ARRANGEMENT Also watch this space - will be doing a longer post about the other existent animals soon. For now there's some pix on my twitter: https://twitter.com/ViggoBlegvad

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So I've been playing a lot with casting lately, due to the almost non-existent barriers to entry what with my sister being a professional jewellery maker now. Above you can see my most elaborate creation yet - an inverted crucifix made for longtime collaborator and fiend Alistair White. The punchline is that it's Jesus upside-down on the cross, and his loincloth has flapped open due to gravity, revealing his ding and bibbles. Maybe thats self explanatory?  Commissions welcome!

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Another old project, this time with my long time collaborator and fiend Alistair White. We did these while getting a feel for what we could do with an OHP for stop-motion animation, but I think these were probably more successful! One to revisit. OH MAN I sure hope that one of the people who read this blog doesn't see this and steal the idea but do it super professionally (I'm looking at you, Damien Hirst, you hack)

On the other hand if anyone from the big OHP...lobby? is checking in then get in touch because boy I think I've got some ideas to really turn your marketing around

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A quick one to get back into the swing of things - 'Boy imitates Art', from 2009. Likely never bettered.

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It was my sisters birthday again; I made her the most useless object yet, a face-in-hole blackboard for cats. The grid of holes is to enable her to display her jewellery from the board: http://www.datterindustries.com/ That's good jewellery, y'all. It's also more relevant because whilst I am excellent at drawing cats in space she is a fully fledged illustrator: http://kayeblegvad.blogspot.co.uk/ Those are good drawings also. Big thanks to William Warbrick for using his mega tools to realise my vision, a good man with wood: www.williamwarbrick.com

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Viggo's Big Brain - BIG BRAINS BIG NIGHT IN. First in a series, and part of a much larger work that may one day see the light of the internet.

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A fairly local entry to 452, relating another encounter in the village. Funny old place. 

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Photo shoot from a few months ago - the slim excuse being that my friend needed a new portrait for his work to send out to prospective clients. Things may have ballooned slightly out of control; god help Beattie Communications. 

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My current distraction - a personal encyclopedia of everything I have ever encountered, resting at roughly 350,000 pages so far. Some would call it an endless task; I aim to have it finished by 2015, including pre-prepared pages for every possible future contingency.