'Man is condemned to be free'

Pen & Pencil on some Wallpaper from B&Q

2014.

Australia 2.

Australia 1.

LAOS. cont

I suppose we're all looking for something more, thats why we're here right? Because our bones are creaking back home

Art doesnt mean anything out here, and rightly so. It's avoided industry and those high class parties where everyone smiles too much but doesn't really mean anything they say, the mountains have a silence that escapes all of that. I feel like I'd love to spend a few years out here ridding myself of that snake skin. 

It's about dedication to things, it's not about wasting your time away in nightclubs without a real purpose. Of course we all enjoy feeling loosey goosey after a few jack & cokes but there is more at hand than that. This view takes perseverance and single mindedness, I have the road tough and the hours hard but the payoff with a feeling of accomplishment that simply cannot be replaced by the standard that a congenital life throws at us, that the mainstream advertises us. It is an insular life devoid of Anything but a shallow hope for future orgasms. 

"fuck living a sick day life" 

The homestay laid bare my bones and rendered me speechless, dumbfounded that I was on the other side of the world deep in a forest by the great Mekong river in Laos and I was being shown kindness pure & gracious. 

We walked through mud huts & passed village showers, all to be shown incredible hospitality by the locals, who wore smiling faces and let their kids run free amongst us, grabbing our arms and stopping in awe when we turned around. 

It's hard to describe exactly how it felt but it was somewhere between helpless & enlightened.

 I'm still digging at the core of it all, trying to work out what it means to be a part of the great human race, trying to elucidate the feelings that beg and end in silence and which make my belly feel full of sadness & happiness at the same time. I tried my best to make eye contact with the children, hoping to find something in their views that gave me an idea about the grain of it all. 

I found nothing but pleasant eyes & forever beautiful personalities, saying curious words under breaths to their friends. life changing is too shallow a word, it feels too shallow to be deserved of such an uprooting event as that. 

it made me feel alive, it gave me a new perspective which I found through the trees and in the view of a sunset on the river. I could see the stars in glorious technicolor and we all stood staring like we'd never seen anything like that before, like we'd truly forgotten they existed. 

I smiled alot and wanted the sky to eat me up, when Seb said "you can see the arms of the milky way" and stretched his arm across the trail of thin lines he could see. I simply nodded and felt my eyes pop to see better, my insides all warm & dancing with the taste of beautiful food & strangers gifts. 

You understand religion in a different light in these settings where you can very much sense the origins of them all, when the lights cut out at 9pm it was genuinely terrifying how dark it was and how imposing the surroundings became all of a sudden, the blackest night I've ever seen. 

You can imagine them creating gods around a campfire, singing long into the flames as the black encapsulated every movement. 

In that minute I perfectly understood God. 

or what it takes for man to create it. 

I was scared, but I lead a privileged life, not just in the sense of my education but my sensibilities, theyre hammered into place through an upper class upbringing and no money worries as a kid, I just had to focus on being nice. 

It was only when the storm came raging home as an adolescent that I began to suffer, and it's been a rollercoaster ever since.