: Get You. Oil on Card. A1 594 x 841 mm

Alluded to in Process…….27/8/18

Buy into the illusion, it's the only way anything means anything. Once you do that you can pick and choose your Truths. Walk well my Brothers. I am ill in you sweet. Not a negative but a positive way to say i am real for you if you will allow me to be. We meet at the head and part in direction. Buy into that illusion.

 : The Fragmented Realist. Oil on Card. A1 594 x 841 mm

: Untitled. Oil on Card. A1 594 x 841 mm

The Return…..25.8.18

And like breaking the water’s surface, it was over

23/8/18

My voice is returning……Slowly, like a drip. Nourishing and feeding, relaxing and coming. I breathe again. And it is I, I weep. A smile becomes my face as I remember: I’m coming home. The foreign land is behind me, I hope. The assault is over. And my life can go on. ? .

I want to perpetuate and trust my inner feeling…..Can this be done? Am I still effected? Will I return? I feel unsure, uncertain,  afraid. Regretful. Tired. Beaten. I smile wryly. And salute the pain. I must love it for it is me. I cradle myself and whisper soothing words. Get better. Get better. You can overcome, overbearing dread. This is out of my control, let there be peace…..I must paint.

The Green Man……17/8/18

On the 16/8/18 I went with my partner to The Green Man Festival in the Brecon Beacons. A music festival set amongst the beautiful valleys of South Wales, where I would unintentionally be involved in and experience psychosis induced by the inhalation of Cannabis smoked by the revellers there…..here is what I wrote of the experience and the consequences to the mind I am still as yet dealing with….

17/8/18 13:30

I am enjoying the sights and sounds of The Green Man. I have yet to be confronted with the issues of psychosis…..

“Searchers on the road. Passing by, a glimpse into another world, not your own. Frequented stripes, visited by the populous.  Nothing but others, relative but unnecessary, real but a figment, we travel and meet searchers on the road. I like them there, opposed to me but adding to me. Searchers on the road. Love and life. Experimentation and certain thoughts, some of them aloof. But we all become searching on the road. “

17/8/18 22:23

I have just inhaled cannabis, smoked by another festive goer……

“The guessing light……Imagining, thinking feeling, playing. There’s a kid in the corner with two balls of light attached to two strings. (Swinging the lights into diverse lights - pattern captivating) . He’s in the corner there. A woman, with long ginger hair is singing, moaning really. There’s a feeling of disassociation as I stand in the crowd, listening to the moaning washing over the air. And this kid keeps bringing me back to the guessing light. And then is gone. Like a part of me left. The moaning stays strong. And the kid is gone. Where to next?”

17/8/18 22:41

The hit feels good and I’m feeling pretty fucking inspired…thinking lucidly and experimentally I produce…..

“Everything we think is thinking of a reality of some sort: Art. Does the tiger know why he has stripes?”

Then:22:54…..

“Precise, dynamic but elusive, he growls his name.”

19/8/18

I have recovered somewhat from the day before. The hit was sweet and bitter and the come down does not make sense. I feel like I’ve lost a part of me: My certainty in myself has gone through a tectonic shift. I am no longer myself. I grasp for some sense of myself but the drugs are quick…..

“Psychotic enough to be ill, but well enough to know I’m psychotic”

20/8/18 00:03

We have been exposed to cannabis again today. The festival ends with the burning of the Green Man. A massive effigy of the spirit we embrace and (should be able to) celebrate at the Festival. It seems the climax of the event is celebrated by many with a joint……

“I feel a violation of my human rights having to participate in an identity crisis, psychotic without my permission.”

I turn to Alex:

“I have to go through this so someone can have a joint!”

At this point I feel awful. My thoughts are tight and seem to get tighter in my mind, leading nowhere but offering frustration and confusion I want to escape, go through some door to the past me, before the experience started. But I cannot. There is no exit in the mind. I must endure and forge a new reality, one filtered, and distorted by the effects of the drug. We walk back to the tent and I can feel/perceive my mind ceasing up. My thoughts tight and strange. I feel like I have visited a strange land, where nothing known before is present. The whole landscape of being which was so self-assuring is gone and I am presented with an experience of utter psychedelia, “I must adapt” I think, but the drugs are too strong….I must submit, nae, I must embrace…..

20/8/18 14:46

Reflecting on an experience, slightly dismorpheous of the weekend, before the final hit, written about in the paragraph above. We are watching (rather ironically) a band named: War on Drugs. Im feeling pretty sensitive and react…..

“On my way to the promised land I discovered the journey is more so beautiful than the destination”

But this is fleeting moment of peace, was really to be sunk and engulphed by drug induced confusion.

21/8/18

I have recovered somewhat, some more. But the drugs are still in my system. I am falling into and out of familiarity, visiting part of the past me but experiencing effects of the foreign perception:….. the way I see myself has changed and I need to just ride it out, to be not afraid. To become what I will become, and to become me – but not me- I must reintegrate and realign. Surely I will return to myself given time….

“In a labyrinth, meeting only dead ends in my thinking.”

I am still tense. The psychological effects of the drug are not totally known to me but I must not fear the future but embrace it no matter what it is.

In The Nile…….4/8/18

He is a non-friend because he cannot be genuine.  He cannot handle me because I am real.

To my non-friend: Unless one has truly looked down the barrel of a loaded gun and said: I am not afraid, can one truly live