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  1. “The Artist and How He’s Humbled: A Fable”
  2.  
  3. Nothing is more brilliant than the light at the back of your head. The flare that radiates in your bowels springs forth like fireworks when you close your eyes, when they’re open you’ve that oomph enough to pace, back and forth, reading layers of patterns weaving themselves throughout the walls—the noisy marker-drawn pictures—the hole where a roommate’s fist once broke through. While you pace, you think about time, you think my broken heart is another fissure in the brick road towards death. That it would be easier to not wake, to not live. You imagine the Scrooge implications. But you’re content with your contempt. Life is short and fast and mismanaged, but you think that by having a disciplined focus you can make a wake in the world—which is all that matters. Alone in your small house, you wait for inspiration to come, you wait for it all to hit, hard, and drag you away to create something, anything meriting that natural flair you have to have to be successful.
  4.  
  5. Your focus is art. Art is passion. Passion is from within. Being an artist is being hyper-perceptive of the human condition. Of what it is to live. And so you are opening psychological doors, opening yourself up, on a refined melody of ergot and whole mushrooms. You pace, holding a plastic cup of gin-n-tonic loosely in your right hand and your left slides down the hallway wall. Your fingers dance when they come about the red rimmed warden of darkness, a patron of nightmares, composed of scraggly-toothed jaws that wait, and many looming eyes looking deeply.
  6.  
  7. You’re in the Pendragon’s territory: its dark hallway where soft hair stands in fear, where you feel most watched, most small. You thought it would be a fun concept, if just a silly superstition: the walking-cross sign comprised of eyes and smiles; a homunculi painted, like an early-man cave painting, by your stony little tribe. Its gaze is a breach of privacy. Pendragon is steward here. You cringe at the memory of its birth, you turn back, but “It will protect the house! Watch over us when we sleep, guard our possessions. It’s good luck for the crop! Keeps the cops at bay!” You walk your ritual pacing trail, away towards the light.
  8.  
  9. “I hate this place,” you announce.
  10.  
  11. It’s okay though, you think, it’s better than living blissfully unaware. You have friends like a bohemian has friends, you have many and few, your door is always unlocked but not everybody is invited. Some people are impossible to trust. Some people don’t know when to leave the party. Some don’t know when it’s imperative to just leave the fucking party. You sleep where they sit and talk, spilling sticky drinks, sweating, for hours on end, running off in their tangents, drinking and arguing and playing games. Sometimes you want to remind everybody who pays the utilities, who gardens the weed, who’s T.V. and console they’re using, who’s hosting these parties. But if they weren’t there, if they didn’t come, you’d still not be sleeping. You’d be pacing no matter the company.
  12.  
  13. There’s guilt for being so idle for one who wishes to create—for not having moved from this forlorn house. But you don’t succumb to it as much anymore, you know now to take your mood in cycles, to be a martyr of little things, of little evils. But there are always newer and more profound evils to analyze. A good reason to open doors: to air out the sour smell of misfortune. Just maybe a ghost will escape, you tremble at the thought.
  14.  
  15. You pace because your body forces it with impulsive shaking and an uneasy stomach. It’s your churning of bowels—the chewing of worms—the image of death that discomforts. On your behalf, the closest to you painted a monster. It’s okay though, monsters are miracles. Monsters are meant to be fought and overcome. Artists climb mountains of monsters throughout their travels.
  16.  
  17. You walk to the edge of the hall where the walls have signatures in grinning faces and graffiti lettering, where the Chinese-lamps glow and cast very little in the way of vision, the florescent kitchen illuminates all but the way you came, and you’ll turn back to the Pendragon’s den.
  18.  
  19. Pendragon it’s called because that position isn’t yours or anybody’s here. You’re a sufferer. You’re entertainment. Its nature is all seeing, all knowing: a plunge into the iciest depths of a dark, quick river, extinguishing your flame, if just for a moment. But before insight, you think, if anything, I’m blocked because I’m bored to death.
  20.  
  21. Short life, short lament.—it says.
  22.  
  23. And your head will be buzzing away, analyzing rough edges of memorized conversations, too busy to notice. Looking for flaws in the way you drove your rum vomiting roommate to Bob’s burger after he’d snorted a good caterpillar of medicine prescribed for pain. In the way you looked at him with that “I’m better than you because of this” leer—your conceit. You look at yourself in the third person, detailing reasons to become recluse, reasons why you are so internally alone.
  24.  
  25. Intently alone.—it says.
  26.  
  27. “Intently alone,” you whisper, turning on your heel, no longer feeling the wall. The Chinese-lamps bob in the distance. You wonder how long you’ve been feverish. You feel your forehead, the back of your hand is scaly, reptilian. Your back is to a great fire—a great presence, as if the light in your head has ignited a blazing, living trail at your heel. That’s when you notice Pendragon.
  28.  
  29. “Knowing you, Reaper!” you’ll call aloud, believing that hearing new voices (especially conversing with) is surely a credit towards madness. And madness is an invaluable virtue in the existence of an artist.
  30.  
  31. Of course you know that by opening these psychological doors you find new selves, new personas, and because that is what art is: new stories, unique voices, you’ve traveled far for transcendence, willing to use various keys, turning and tuning cerebral gears. “This is fodder. This is what it’s all about!” you’ll be loud enough, but, as everybody is out, there isn’t anybody to rouse.
  32.  
  33. You’re not an artist.—it says.
  34.  
  35. And depression is another motivation, you think; your melancholy is your mastery. Your art is in your internal struggle—your life—your history. You’re an artist, you think, because you don’t want to be a bee.
  36.  
  37. You’re not an artist. You’re not a bee. You haven’t the desire for life or the skill to make honey.—its voice, a tepid growl.
  38.  
  39. You continue pacing. You’ll not answer that which isn’t useful; you’ll save this exchange for when you can write. Pacing should quake the block from your system—I’m creatively weary, you think, cathartic.
  40.  
  41. Scarcely creative.—it’ll respond.
  42.  
  43. You’ll have to overlook this voice before it becomes a mantra, intrinsic, self- fulfilling.
  44.  
  45. Something hits. You feel your body in a stasis as your mind slips out like a soft hand being pulled from a leather glove, but your body catches, the world smells like creamy, burning roses with a bit of honey. The atmosphere is thick and smoky as you watch the Chinese lamps smolder scarlet like cinders through a fog. You stand with your back to the hall shuddering from neck to knees; you feel a pang in your feet as if you’ve landed hard or shoplifted a lot, your stomach churns.
  46.  
  47. Almost had you. Almost dragged you away...—the voice sounds eager.
  48.  
  49. The Chinese lamps fuse into a line of fire; a shining gash in the meeting of the ceiling and wall above the couch that you call a bed. It causes you to turn on your heel, once again, starting towards the Pendragon’s den. Goddamn this was a good idea, you feel, as you take a sip from your cup. You’re as wound up as you were the morning you found your friend cold on the kitchen floor, dead and defecated. Your heart has that broken-hurt but pumps fast, your brain is swarming and rushed and wary and focused—the light at the back of your head, fueled and flaming. You so hate this place, you think.
  50.  
  51. You hate, you hate, but is it passion or play? Do you have a natural flame? Or is your flair mere folly, mere dreaming?—its words sound louder, more bodily.
  52.  
  53. “I’m not sure what to think anymore—I don’t. I just want to curl away and mope!” you begin to sing as if combating the waves of swelling fright and exploding exuberance. There are fireworks now, full-blown ones, without closing your eyes. The house is buzzing, all on fire. You sing: “And so the day will come when I must follow, dear old Brother, into the pits of pain, into the wallowing, following faint! And I, dear Brother, when am I to go, how long past your years am I still to grow?” Marching into the Pendragon’s den with this improv song of war, you feel artistic, bold.
  54.  
  55. Advance. You’ve scraped the surface. You’re bored. Unconnected.
  56.  
  57. “Uninspired,” you say. Depression becomes jaded. Standing before Pendragon, half expecting its mouth to move, expecting a real hallucination, not just these trailing lights and fireworks in the dark—not just the auditory phantom, or the bodily stir—you expect anthropomorphized abstractions.
  58.  
  59. Not depressed. Unconnected. Alone.
  60.  
  61. “The form of a human,” you’ll respond. Looking up at the many mouths and eyes of Pendragon, you’ll remember, you’ll have a clear epiphany: you regret standing so still in life. So still when the end is random, when life is short.
  62.  
  63. Inevitable.—it reminds you. It’s no real awakening insight to now know that you’re perishable. You’d have picked that up in your twenty-plus years… You’re just not perceptive.
  64. “I live. I explore. I open doors and react. I transcend. I am a Pendragon,” you assure yourself.
  65. Narcissist.—it christens you.
  66.  
  67. The dirty wood floors have become impossible to traverse; you look but cannot tell why your feet have stopped moving. Your heart mightily attempts an escape; its hubris sends you nearer to panic.
  68.  
  69. I’m paralyzed by death, you’ve thought about this since childhood. If you can’t see a feature for yourself then it will never happen. You thought, and still think, that you’d die, like so many artists have died, between the ages twenty-five and thirty-two.
  70.  
  71. You’re stuck here then.
  72.  
  73. “Ironically to die early,” you’ll take another sip, but you reject the taste. The Pendragon is patterns within patterns. It’s not a memorial of the fallen and mourned—it’s certainly not a lucky totem—it’s not but a monster on a wall. A reminder of irresponsible lives, of time wasted. The whole house is… a reminder.
  74.  
  75. “You’re death,” you say. “You’re here to drive me to suicide ‘Advance,’ to what?—to my end. Insanity. This whole place just drives me fucking crazy!”
  76. Oh life!—it yells its guttural, bodily yell. Oh! How life is just time and all you’re willing to do is talk about, reflect upon, and predictably misunderstand. You, who wills to never change—who cannot perceive his own emotions, let alone map the human psyche. You are lost never to be found, broken never to be of use to anyone.
  77.  
  78. Beneath the obvious, the terror, you’ll recognize a purpose. Art is passion. And passion is human. Humans exist… “I don’t exist,” you’ll declare. You want to start pacing again. You want this door to close, for this abuse to end. Pissed-off my psyche something fierce—qualifies as a bad trip, I think, you’ll have to just ignore it, try to sober up. What’s nice about acid, you think, is the control. I just need to let the shrooms wear-off. I’ll be fine.
  79.  
  80. “Jesus! Why don’t my feet move!” like in a dream, your legs are planted, you almost lose balance. You weep at the helplessness.
  81.  
  82. “I just want to pace,” you say, with a whimper.
  83.  
  84. Like a four year old. Are you going to collect bogies on your lip? Are you going to cry more—piss yourself?
  85.  
  86. “I don’t deserve this,” you’ll cry.
  87.  
  88. Narcissist.—it’ll say. You opened the door. You brought this on. How are you a martyr if you aren’t answerable to yourself?
  89.  
  90. “If I don’t connect, I don’t exist! I get it!” You plead. Averting your eyes from Pendragon—it seeks you out, looming.
  91.  
  92. Existence is as inevitable as death. You grasp at epiphanies as if they were your sword. There is no knot to cut. No epiphany that is an incantation potent enough to defeat a battle of one. Try making a wake in the world without wielding heavy expectations, without pretense, and maybe you’ll make a ripple.
  93.  
  94. If you don’t connect you don’t make art, you genuinely consider. “I’m not an artist,” you’ll say. “I’m homunculi.”
  95.  
  96. Narcissist.—it’ll say. You don’t have perception enough to listen to your own fantastic experience. You are a unique conception, a free will. You are not a composition of many…
  97.  
  98. Not whole because you’re not connected, this, at least, you know is a truth. You’ve always found it difficult to connect, not with people on an individual basis, but with groups, with the crowd—you don’t join in. That’s why you’re not a Pendragon, you’re “a humble host,” you think.
  99.  
  100. If you were humble, you’d not be here now. If you were humble you’d not have met the people you’ve known. You’d not dream your dreams.
  101.  
  102. “If I was humble I would have never bothered opening doors. I’d have never seen death. I’d have a better life.” You’ve moved without realizing, your body does what it does, it paces, you think.
  103.  
  104. And if you believe that you can go back, you’re a fool as ever before. Life is time. It’s not all dreams and qualms—not unless you live it so. Short life, short lament; and you do so have a way with self fulfilling prophecy.
  105.  
  106.  
  107.  
  108. You do have a way… you still live there—that’s a concern. You’ve not opened anymore doors, but you’re still gaunt, haunted. You can’t paint over that which will always be there, like a body behind the bricks, or that hole in the wall, you’ve patched it but it’ll always be, as long as you’re there to remember. The voice of Pendragon had faded over time. You said that the immediacy of its voice had left within the hour, but for days afterwards you would hear it, sometimes loud, sometimes just a whisper, biting your back.
  109.  
  110. You never did become successful, did you? When asked if your fantastic experience could be written you said “not by me. I’m no artist. I don’t even know myself.” So, knowing you well, writing your story was as important as could be. Of course, the experience of other’s is as much fodder as one’s own fantastic experiences.
  111.  
  112. Thank you for being such a willing subject and inspiring friend. One hopes that you find your own voice, that you finally shake that block. Some advice: leave, and live while you can. Artists are humble, but not to the point of avoiding the human experience. Art seeks truth and that isn’t a humble question. Shake your fear of death, maybe the block will follow.
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