Falling Apart in Pieces: Disconjoined Breakdown Manic Musings

·         Why does everyone else seem to have more trouble letting go of this house than me?

o   Where were you when I needed help maintaining it, fixing it? Where were most of you when I constantly put out warnings of how lonely I was out here? You don’t get to guilt me. I’ve lived and breathed this house for 12 years. It’s time someone else was more important that something.

o   You all reaped the benefits of this home, took advantage of my fortune, without any of the struggle or responsibility. You don’t get to make me mourn a fight I’ve lost a while ago.

o   For 12 years the Kinney Estate has been a monument, a museum off my ever-evolving art-life journey, but it’s time for me to make living that journey more important than enshrining it. Pieces of it will always live on in me, in the relics I keep, in digital perpetuity; in my son. Without it, however, I fling open the doors of my prison cell, stop hording my stores, and let people in.

o   You did not love this house. You did not accept its flaws and imperfections, fix what ailed it, coddled it, and built it up into something greater than its meager walls could hold. No, you only loved the idea of it. I’m tired of people only loving what they think of me, not all of me.

The next phase in my life will be heralded by another scar. To move forward, to keep pace with my son, I will have to learn to live with another permanent mark upon my skin.

Mogo's Memorial

This is perhaps one of the most enigmatic projects for most of my friends to understand. This car only lasted a month and was based on a comic book reference only I understood.

On the surface artistic level, Mogo represents the death of an idea. A dream that failed before its time. Personally, this car was my first attempt at fatherly responsibility for my new son. I didn’t just get a car; I made it mine and his. It represented my intentions to be the man I wanted so badly to be for my son. And I failed. Or the car failed him, but at that time in my life I was entering a very depressive episode. It wasn't the car that triggered the depression, but rather my feelings of complete inadequacy to raise a son. Mogo was intended to be a symbol of my paternal protection for this new boy, but instead it became a symbol of how I really felt. The car wasn’t going to make it better. Only my son could. To this day, I still feel inadequate for the love my son gives me. So much in my life, I have been proven undeserving of other's love. No matter what they have said, constant rejection leaves me with little else in confidence. But my son, he loves me no matter how stupid I am. During the year Mogo was in my barn I struggled really hard to breathe some life into this emerald Green Lantern car. It sat as a stark reminder of how much work I had to do. Eventually, I decided it was dead and gone. It was over. That didn’t mean it wasn’t important. So I chose to build a memorial out of it and hung it on the barn it languished in for so long. It took a while, but finally I made something respectful and good out of my failed ambition. Maybe I can do the same for Xander.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qje-FVWg3bM