Pantheon

Let's begin by talking about my mother. I bought Janice a book for christmas called 'All My Friends are dead.' and I read it while having dinner with the fams one night. It's a picture book and contains many funny pictures.

I liked the one of a baker that reads 'all my friends are bread' I find it especially tragic.

But then I turned to a page that had two bearded castaways sitting on a desert island.

I think it read 'All my friends are Ted.' and the other dude said something like 'thanks patrick.'

Then you flick the page and have the same image, but this time patrick is saying 'The only "ship" we need is friendship' and now Ted has his heads in his hands crying.

Sometimes an image speaks to you, and looking into Ted's cartoon desolation I felt an empathic epiphany:

This is what it would feel like to be stuck on an island with Bryce.

I immediately thought it would make for a good if odd daily comic, to just document life on a desert island with Bryce but stuck it on the backburner reason being I had twelvemoments comics to finish (still unfinished), a pile of commissions (still unfinished) and schoolwork presumably to do.

Much of the creative process though I have come to realise is just scaling a project back until it is doable.

The thing with Bryce is, that I love and hate him. I love unprofessional Bryce, 1am Bryce, Balifornian Bryce. But I can't rely on him being the Bryce that I love, so often he is the epiphany of charm and professionalism.

1am Bryce is unpredictably unpredictable. Something I cherish, someone surprising. For a long time this Bryce of the early hours of the morning that made me laugh messily into the face of Suzanne at the high school party we first made out at, was the only unpredictably unpredictable person I knew. Furthermore I thought it was a temporary state.

Time passes and I have since collected a grand total of 4 unpredictably unpredictable people I can call my friends. Furthermore I did not know such a thing could exist With Bryce I have 4.5 friends that I don't understand, can't understand and don't want to understand.

People whom I have to adopt a zen like mindset to converse with, to sway in the breeze like a suple reed rather than fight it like a brittle ah, stick.

If people can be divided into three categories: the predictably predictable, the unpredictably predictable/predictably unpredictable and unpredictably unpredictable. I feel I fall in the middle, I have tried to actively dissociate from the predictably predictable but sometimes they can at least be flattering if not surprising.

These are the people that routinely (and predictably) say: 'Man, what are you on?' to me as if I'm speaking in tongues. I fear for them as they seem to think my mind is complex and labrynthine, which to me seems consistent and rational.

But they are to me as I am to my 4.5 people whom I just don't understand, but admire. These people make me feel smaller in a good way, an inspiring way. A way that fills me with hope that universe is not as grey and drab as I fear it may be.

Somehow I roped 2.5 of them into my latest project, it is my pantheon of the highly unpredictable. I hope my 2D effigies give them the glory they deserve: lostartofconversating.wordpress.com/