Sorceror Series: With Death on Your Back, Turn the Page

So this one was not inspired by music or women. More than anything this painting is a commentary on the constant that is change. A few years ago I was obsessed with the writer Octavia Butler. She died recently and it is truly a great loss. She was one of the first authors after Anne Rice that wrote a vampire story I enjoyed. But more than that her works were about the difficulties of existence and how our ability to adapt to change was our greatest asset while our inability to accept change and difference our greatest weakness. Read anything by her. Also the phenomenal Sandman series by Neil Gaiman strongly affected my thoughts as well. But the greatest inspiration for this painting is the Invisibles comic series by Grant Morrison. I can not sing the praises of this series and its life changing effect. During the five year run of the series in three incarnations, I became gainfully employed, began acting again(for a moment), traveled cross-country, went to graduate school, graduated and began working as a college professor. And much of that change occurred because of those funny books. Grant Morrison broke the fourth wall repeatedly during the work but more importantly he used the structure of the graphic narrative to explain his view of the structure of reality. And how you can get the cheat codes. Now I am not a proponent of Chaos Magic, like Mr. Morrison but the power of the word, the symbol and belief is a hell of a thing. More than anything I named myself a Sorceror because of the Invisibles. You know the things all around us that we cannot see because we have not discovered a name for it or so use to it being there we no longer pay attention. Fear is my greatest enemy. It makes me wait when all I have to do is move forward. The greatest fear I had was death. The unknown unseeable ending. But on the otherside, well from this view, is only the glaring white of possibilities and the new. Like a blank sheet of paper before I draw. Something is always there, it just needs the trigger. Like change. If you do not like what you are then become something new. We do it everyday.
The Sorceror stands in the desert his past blocked by the scourge of death, his spirit one with the universe, and in a moment of epiphany he finds the cheat codes, he sees the structure of reality, he understands the cheat codes. He turns the page. And if nothing is there... he'll make something.

The Struggle Continues.

Espresso Stories

So there's a web site called "www.espressostories.com" which aims to be the largest collection of the shortest stories on the internet. To qualify for submission, stories must be 25 words or less, and should be sensitive to all the elements that make a good short story -- plot, character, setting, theme, etc. I've submitted nine. Five have been archived, and three are pending. I find it totally addictive, and I highly recommend it. If you want to read mine, you can look me up in the author index ("Willmott, Matt").

Sorceror Series: Slowly surely..

Slowly surely I walk away from I walk away from
Slowly surely I walk away from love
Oh slowlyy, surely one step at a time but surely
I will pass the old love aside and love me slowly, surely I walk away from slowly surely
I walk away from
desperating love
caught up in the maze love
crazy crazy craze of love
slowly surely, I walk away from [repeat 5 times]
Slooooooowly Suuuuuuurely, slowly surely
-Jill Scott "Slowly Surely" from Who is Jill Scott

One of the perks of my job is Spring. When the rain cuts back and that southern sun peeps out, it's warmth drives young ladies to forget all civility and show off as much of there wares as is publicly possible. There is nothing like the beautiful diversity of women in the bloom of physical maturation.
My time here forced me to begin thinking about how my expectations and image of women have changed. Also by being in an environment where youth decides popular culture I drown in a very carnal and material sense of beauty and sexuality. Young people not quite aware of there many other gifts define attractiveness by a MTV reinforced image of the ideal. Growing up. I can't look at women that way... I mean not all the time. Cause I got a preteen niece and second cousins staring at adolescence and my sister and my female friends and my momma... well you get the idea. I've spent alot of time reading the "booty" magazines, which usually focus on seductive and sugestive photos of video chics, models, actresses and singers. I realize that there are various layers to my attraction to women. I also realize that I have a long journey from the carnal to the spiritual. So I structured this paintng by aquiring my favorite physical desires from magazines and hiding them under a bit of paint. At the four corners of the painting are the Guardians at the gates of lust. In front of themare iconic representations of some of my great loves abstracted towards their specific zodiac signs. The Bull, the Crab, the Water-bearer, the Scales. Next are the aquired images of women I am attractive to for deeper reasons but still have no personal relationsships with. Finally the Blue nude form of the Sorceror stands before all of this a bridge out of the carnal. The yellow glowing from of Elia Infinity walsk away from the confusion Slowly surely.... And I am still walking. Sorry for the light reflecting on the painting. I was really into gloss medium when I was working on this piece.

Two dollars, see. Two dollars for 24.50 oz. That's a bargain, see, a good price.

I don't know how to tell this story, see, so I figure to start from the beginning.

We were headed to colonize this new planet. Fourteen of us, see, settled down for a 15 year nap. I woke up stuck in my cryo-tube, see, and so were my friends. A big, hairy monster was eatin' 'em, right from the tubes. The monster ate all my friends, see, and came over to me.

He opened my cryo-tube.

I told 'im, I said "Don't be a scumbag!" and I ate him, see.

But I was all alone after that and it was like I had eaten my friends along with that big hairy monster. I never been left holdin' the yogurt so bad in my life, see. Just standin' there, holdin' the yogurt.