Skrying

Or, as an alternate title, "My *ba in Hell".

*One of the aspects of a person's soul that the ancient Egyptians believed survived the death of the physical body and was usually depicted in art in birdlike form

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Nostalgia

FOR SOMETHING THAT NEVER WAS

Does anyone else ever feel like this?  Wistful, melancholy, and kinda sorta sad and longing for something, but not quite knowing what it is that you miss.  

In Korean folklore, a human being (and also our beloved pets like dogs and cats) is a star that came down from heaven and became embodied on Earth.  When the body dies we go back to the sky and take our place among the stars again.  You might say that when we feel a vague longing without knowing the cause, it's our soul longing for our old home in the heavens.

EDIT:  Someone told me that the musical style of Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi (born Mamoru Fujisawa), longtime collaborator of animation director Hayao Miyazaki, has been described as making one "nostalgic for things that never were".  Come to think, that description really does fit much of his music. 

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An Old Sketch For Something...

A rummage session in a box of old stuff produced this nigh-forgotten little... gem(?) from the bad old days.  Wonder what the heck I was smoking when I drew it--

'Cause I definitely want some more.

A Pretty Cool Accident

It's the afternoon of Memorial Day. I'm taking it easy and just resting, enjoying the unusually quiet afternoon in downtown L.A. In fact, I was getting a little bored -- so I started fiddling around with some old photos. I happened to color-invert this image from last year's July 29 entry, and I like the result!

Looks like some B-movie scene showing souls in hell or something^, or maybe a scene from some direct-to-video science fiction movie showing an evil alien's lab with a collection of human faces used for disguise^

[Click on image to enlarge]


I fiddled with it some more and obtained this result, which I also like.


Normally, turning a photograph into its own negative will make it look unnatural and 'ghostly'. Interestingly enough though, in these images the darkness functions to some extent as a kind of color -- to me these faces look almost as if they were drawings filled in with graphite or charcoal -- and actually serves to define the features in a more natural way. I guess that's because the originals were colorless and kind of ghostly in the first place.