Load universe into gun, aim at brain... fire.

I got to thinking about how manipulation is personally significant. It quickly became clear that manipulation of perception was relevant. I've never felt terribly comfortable with reality, so I've become intimately familiar with many means of manipulating, but ultimately never escaping it.

This is suicide no. 11. The profane finality of this escapist is yet to be seen, but there is intention in the gesture. This is desperation and misery at the surface, hope and ideal beneath.



This is the stuff of dreams, a crystal of Dimethytryptamine magnified at 400x. Dr Rick Strassman theorized that in human physiology the pineal gland, a sort of vestigial third eye, synthesizes DMT. The expressed effect of this chemical is perceived as dreams. If a brain is traumatized into shock the pineal gland can release a flood of the chemical manifesting in what is known as a near death experience.


I made some adjustments to the image to create some negative space and optical refinement.


I'm playing around with just how it fits and this was appealing to me. I'm still uncertain how it will be colored exactly, so this is black and white. What I like is the play of contrasts. The material world and the artificial, permanent and ephemeral, dreams and drugs. The themes here have deep personal significance, I am not generally comfortable explaining my symbolism since it has a way of decapitating interpretation. I am beginning to understand that my art direction tends to be downright esoteric, or at least irrelevant to the audience, so I hope these notes help with insight. I was also thinking of some surrealist work like "This is not a pipe" by Renee Magritte.
Some text can lend a lot of meaning to a piece, but more importantly clarify the artist's statement. In this respect I might simply state the analogy and title literally "Load universe into gun, aim at brain...fire." This describes the effects of smoking DMT, in particular breakthrough experiences that can be as difficult to psychologically integrate as a bullet. On the other hand there is always the potential for miscommunication and its disastrous consequence. The first words that came to mind for this piece were "Shall we live to regret..." and "Or forget?" but this seems obtusely suicidal and could detract too much from the meaning. I'm going to experiment with this a little and see how I can incorporate text.