Plague (Reprise)

This entry might come off as disgusting. Don't curr.

I'm writing this entry as a reprise, like they do in songs, because I was hesitant about writing this in the first entry. This is what I wanted to accompany "Plague" with, in my mind, these thoughts are what accompany "Plague".
They're thoughts that came during the making of the piece. Originally, I think I wanted to do the image, because I liked how my jawbone looked on the sides of my face in that specific position and top lit, maybe I'll remember what it was that I wanted to do from the beginning eventually.

So, I'm going to write out what I wrote in my journal and I'll add other things that I also didn't add into the journal entry as notes, either, 'cuz I thought those things would come off as even more disgusting.

Sometimes, I have the desire to burst and explode
Sometimes, feelings seem to be a substance or a being in their own right, they are trying to break free from my rib cage
I'm a big fan of singing and I have serious admiration for singers that I perceive sing sincerely
I find that singing perhaps is the most honest form of output, it seems somehow as the most direct and the most untarnished
You inhale air, it occupies your chest and you push it out through your vocal chords and nose and if you do it appropriately, it's your feelings that come out
So, as far as one putting out one's insides in the truest way, singing is a beautiful way of doing it
I don't know exactly how it is linked with vomiting, because it certainly isn't the same
I haven't vomited many times in my life
Some of the last times that it happened, it was on somebody's bathroom floor, I might have urinated myself simultaneously.
One other time, I was at the tail end of my period, but the contraction of my abdomen pushed a couple of droplets of blood out and onto the floor and my host cleaned it. Both times, I rinsed myself and we continued to have a good time. It actually might have happened the same night, where I started out with my head in the toilet and moved to the shower, because I was peeing myself. I don't really remember.
This happened as a consequence of roofies (GHB) and alcohol.
I remember being amused at the position I found myself in, when I pissed myself.
I was on all fours, on the shower floor, I thought of how rockstars probably go through similar things and possibly even more disgusting, involving shit sometimes (I heard a recording once, of Trent talking about having to take a shit and not having a bathroom and how him and his musicians had to shit into bags and whatever, I didn't have the patience to hear the whole thing) and other bodily fluids.
So, I was in this situation, where I had no control over what my body was doing, except smiling to myself, because I felt so rock and roll. And because it felt so decadent and destructive and nihilistic. At the time, I was also in the middle of a relationship with a guy in which I had a lot of fun and also a lot of very unsavory moments and situations.
Puking and pissing myself at the same time on all fours on his shower floor was not one of the unsavory moments. I haven't figured out yet what it is that I find so appealing about self destruction and just going out and getting really fucked up and shit faced, I just get in that mood sometimes. Most of the time, I'm 180 degrees from that and I take pretty good care of myself.
But, anyway, my abdomen spasmed, pushing whatever it was out.
Vomiting requires a lot of effort, effort over which you have no say, your body takes control of itself without you having a grasp of anything and, in that sense, it's pretty cool. Your body makes this effort for you, it doesn't matter at all if you have the physical or mental energy to do it.
I guess I see some kind of relationship to singing, because it's a situation in which something is coming directly out of the body. In that way, they are both visceral and raw and it doesn't get more honest than that. So for "Plague", I guess, there is something of that happening.
I don't know what "that" is. Do I think there is some sort of evil in me and I'm releasing it to the world? No. Is there something inside me I want to get rid of? Sometimes.
I certainly don't picture the overwhelming feelings that I have in my chest sometimes that way. I picture that specifically as an explosion, not something that makes its way out through my orifices.
"Plague" is kind of a disgusting painting, the texture that the mussels makes is nasty and for a fleeting moment when I've looked at it before, whilst working on it, they looked like the carapaces of roaches. And a lot of people that have looked at the image, think the same thing.
The piece has gotten reactions of "oh, this is intense" or "oh, this is disgusting", I love all the reactions. I love the entire image. As I was musing in the previous entry, I hear some kind of rumbling sound when I look at her, I also hear the retching, she frowns involuntarily at the effort of vomiting the plague out. She is in the middle of a maelstrom, formed by a viscous substance and the plague that is coming out of her.
Sometimes, I feel (or maybe more correct is "I remember") the mussels coming out of my own mouth. I remember vomiting and my abdomen contracted so tight from puking, I remember how tiring it is. I remember the bitter and horrible taste of stomach acid, mixed with morsels of half digested food, out of my mouth, burning my throat and larynx like it was sand paper on the tissue of my insides. It's kind of like a tsunami from within.

Plague

Today, I finished this self portrait titled "Plague".
As usual, I don't really know where the image came from, but at the same time, they kind of "form" themselves as I make them, which is cool. I think sometimes that the work I make is kind of isolated panels from comics and I imagine the story as I advance in the piece, which is cool.
Sometimes they acquire a very deep meaning to me and they become really personal or they're personal from the beginning.
So anyway.
Towards the end of this painting, I really liked how she kind of became this creature that seems to be making an incredible effort to get rid of whatever she is vomiting. People that have seen it are reminded of Neptune or some kind of sea creature, I imagine it's because of the blue.
To me, she's not necessarily good or evil, she is doing a lot of effort to vomit this substance out of her body. The painting moves a little bit, it sounds like a rumble, it looks kind of like a tornado. She makes the retching sound, I can kind of feel the mussles coming out of my own throat. I feel what I feel the few times that I've puked in my life: my torso curving against my will, my abdomen contracting, my throat hurts.

The piece is done over wood panel, I drew first, then glued a bunch of mussles, then put on some blue acrylic paint, then some clear gesso, then painted with prussian blue and payne's grey.