https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=BeDWMfNrHas
All right, so now I want to talk about, because we’ve been talking for a while, but I do want to talk about the image that we kind of made together. So I’ve had this theme in my mind where I’ve been talking about the notion of the fool. My brother as well talks about this quite a bit in his book, The Language of Creation. The idea that the fool is always turning and he’s always turning things, but the strange thing happens when things are already upside down, when the world is already upside down, is that the fool will continue turning and then will end up reinstating the, let’s say reinstating authority or reinstating the king. And so I had this idea of a joker card, which could have a joker on one side and a king on the other, and it looks like the joker was turning the king. And I actually tried to draw it myself and then I was like, nah, this is not good. Like, it’s just not the type of image that I’m really, that comes close to the art I’m doing. And so it just didn’t ever look right. And then when I saw your art, I thought, okay, this guy, he’s the one who can put it together. And so you did and I love it. I just think it’s so awesome. So maybe you can tell me a bit about the process you went through to kind of bring this image together. Nice, nice, cool man. Well, I’m glad you feel that way. I’m glad I was able to step in in that role. Yeah, it was super cool working with you and doing it. Process wise, well, yeah, you told me about that idea and it’s something that I resonated with really strongly. I mean, you take on commission. So I think you probably know there’s a spectrum of someone being like, hey, can you draw this? And you’re like, yeah, I probably could. And then sometimes people are like, hey, can you draw this? And you’re like, oh yeah, oh yeah, buddy, I can definitely draw that. So yeah, it’s something I resonated with really strongly. I really, really, really, the full archetype is like a big part of like what I’m about for sure. So I guess we can go into that more, but yeah, I really resonated with it. And in terms of the visual, like the purely visual, like truly putting it together like in a visual sense, yeah, I felt like it was perfect for my style because like you were saying before, it’s almost like everything in my art is kind of like flat, but in this weird way where it’s like flat, but also kind of like has depth. I think I got that from the medieval art where, it’s like the picture plane that you’re looking at isn’t really a window into a three dimensional space. It’s almost utilizing like the flat nature of the surface you’re looking at to convey information to the viewer. So yeah, we talked about it a little bit, sent some sketches back and forth. I think the most interesting thing for me was conveying the idea behind it of like the fool really flipping the king over. And we got this like spin with the cards on the back. But yeah, one of the things I like about it and that we hadn’t talked about, because I just said, I’d like the fool to be like kind of grabbing the king and flipping him over. One of the things I like, and I don’t even know if you did it on purpose, but you can tell me if you did, but I like the fact that he’s not taking the king by the hand, right? He’s grabbing him by the arm and it almost looks like the king is resisting. It’s almost like if the king is resisting, he doesn’t actually want this to happen. But if the fool’s like, sorry buddy, this is happening, like orders coming back, even if the king doesn’t want it to happen. Yeah, no, totally. Yeah, yeah, that was definitely intentional. Yeah, when I’m working with, I guess all my work is kind of like this, when I’m working with more of like a simplified, like I keep using this word, but informational way of like conveying visuals, people’s body language, even like really subtle aspects of it is something that I really, really think about a lot, probably to an extent that people would probably find like kind of weird. So yeah, I definitely made it intentional because I wanted to make it clear that he was like the leader pulling him. I had this art teacher once and she did this exercise where she had people line up and she went to hand someone a pencil and before she gave them the pencil, she had them freeze. She went to hand someone a ball and had them freeze, hand someone something else and had them freeze. And you could see that their hands, even just the way they were, the frozen people, the way they were positioned, you could tell what object they were about to receive from how their hands were. And that really made me realize that yeah, like everything about someone’s body language, even how their fingers are or anything, conveys their state and what they’re doing and what they’re feeling. So yeah, I made it intentional for sure. And it’s also, even with the thumb out, it’s kind of like he’s like pulling. Like he’s just casually, kind of like authoritatively, like whoop, here we go, like flipping over. So yeah, that was definitely intentional. Yeah, that’s awesome. So tell me a bit about the fool, why you feel the fool is something that you connect with. Yeah, probably for a lot of reasons. On a purely, I guess not purely surface level, but in the most basic way, I feel like, tying back to the emperor’s new clothes thing, I feel like we’re dealing with a world, whether you’re into politics or just culture or even just theology and religion, or just living your life and hanging out. We’re kind of dealing with a world where things are so inverted and people get the wrong idea about what you’re saying. And there’s all these kind of informational archetypes launched. I’m sure anyone watching this probably has been in a conversation where you say something and then what the other person hears is like a stereotype of what you’re saying and then they can’t actually hear the words that you’re trying to get out. And I feel like the fool is like a really powerful way of bypassing that. It’s almost like the fool is able to cut through all the rules of how language and information is meant to be structured in society. And because of that, he can get at these deeper truths without attracting these crosshairs onto him. I think that’s one of the aspects of a jester. A jester could even critique the king because he’s quote unquote just joking. And that’s something I’ve always resonated with really strongly the whole time I’ve been doing anything like this. Even when I was just posting on Twitter and stuff, I get people DMing me all the time, like, hey, this is really cool, but are you joking or not? I can’t tell. And I feel like that lets me honestly get away with a lot of stuff because if you feel strongly about anything, if you just come out and you’re like, oh, I feel it doesn’t really matter what it is. Let’s say it’s gun control, it doesn’t matter. If you just make a post that’s like, hey, we should all be allowed to own these guns. Everyone’s kind of like, okay, like whatever. But if you make it something funny or make it like a joke or maybe like subtly, then it gets a lot more traction and people are more interested in it. And especially if it’s something more controversial than that, whatever it would be, you can reach more people if it’s kind of like, hey, I’m just joking, but like, am I just joking? Like, you can’t really tell. There’s this alchemy book, I never read it actually, I just saw it in a bookstore once, but it was called A Serious Joke. And I really just loved that title because it’s like, yeah, it’s a joke, but what the fool’s saying can also be like serious. There’s not actually the dichotomy that other people imagine. Yeah, well, that’s what the people who are using memes right now, those that are using memes almost in a weaponized manner, that’s what they understand, you know, all the 4chan, 8chan types. They understand how the use of ironies and double ironies and all of this is a way to, it’s like an in, and it’s a way to kind of change the world without people understanding exactly what’s going on. Yeah, exactly, exactly. There’s also kind of the fool also dovetails with like certain elements of like mysticism, I guess you could say. Maybe you know, like there’s the fools for Christ and like Eastern Christianity. And then in Western Christianity, there’s also the kind of like the mystical fool archetype. Well, St. Francis is really that. I mean, he’s usually not, people don’t seem to see it that way, but St. Francis does all the things that the fool does. Like he undresses himself in public, he does all kinds of crazy stuff, you know, so he’s definitely a fool type as well. Totally, yeah, I also feel like when we live in this world that is such like a, I don’t even know what to call it, almost like a cult of like this particular type of like intellectualism where it’s like, you have these like intellectual authorities that kind of like are telling you what to think, I guess would be the most basic way to put it. The fool has like a really interesting role to play in all that, I guess you could say, yeah. No, the fool is undermining, that’s the rule of the fool. And so sometimes it’s dangerous, right? Sometimes it can be, if it goes too far in one direction, sometimes it can be a destabilizing force. In small doses, it’s actually healthy because like you said, prevents the king from puffing himself up or thinking that he’s self-sufficient, right? At some point, the authority thinks that they’ve got it covered when the fool is there to say, hey, you know what, this thing that you’re hiding here, you know, this secret that you’ve got is not, is showing that there’s a piece, there’s some stones lacking in your Tower of Babel, you know? And so the fool is useful for that as well. But I’m really, for now, at least I’m really interested rather in how, because the revolutionary types, those that were there to destabilize society to a certain extent, because they’ve become so powerful and they’ve actually taken over a lot of the institutions, then the fool in that role now all of a sudden looks very strange because the fool is actually trying to take power away from those that were trying to be revolutionary. And so it’s just interesting because it really does show this strange double irony where it’s like, what happens when contemporary art, you know, let’s take it in terms of just art, why art, which is there supposedly to be transgressive, is now in the Guggenheim all over the world and there are these multimillion dollar buildings and are being propped up by the institutions. Like, what is going on? How is it possible that something which is supposed to be questioning authority is now taken up by the highest authority? Well, that’s when the fool all of a sudden, you know, becomes a very strange figure because the fool is bringing back iconography. Like in your case, you’re like bringing back iconography using almost like a subversive language, which is still there, but it’s pointing towards something else. And so, and that’s one of the reasons why I like your work too, because I could see that double flip that I talk about or this double inversion where, you know, someone who is using imagery that looks subversive at first glance. Like when I look at your work at first glance, it looks like graffiti or it looks like, you know, kind of esoteric, weird esoteric stuff, but as soon as you do a double glance, you see, oh no, there’s something else going on. It’s actually pointing towards something else. Yeah, totally. Yeah, that’s awesome. I’m glad you feel that way. Yeah, that’s something else I kind of picked up that I guess really actually does fit with the fool archetype. Someone I really liked, I mean, I still like him, he’s still cool, is Bill Watterson, the guy that did Calvin and Hobbes. He actually talked about kind of what you were just getting at a little bit where because it’s like, quote unquote, like just a newspaper comic and people aren’t expecting something deep from it, when he did do a comic about like, you know, maybe like a bird dying or something like that, he could kind of just like sneak in like a big punch and get at these like way deeper themes because, oh, it’s like just a comic. It’s just this like little thing. It’s kind of like the fool, like, oh, I’m just playing around and then boom, you like sneak in something that otherwise people would have like a ton of filters up for. Yeah, and it acts as almost like a Zen colon, right? It actually goes really deep and will like shock, it can shock your worldview in a way that you weren’t prepared for, right? That you weren’t guarding for, let’s say. And so yeah, it can have a very deep effect. I totally agree. Yeah, that was the other thing that I really responded to about your initial kind of like our discussion about it was like the idea of, you know, what happens when things are already inverted and you have this figure that inverts things. It’s actually like a really interesting like paradox. I guess that’s kind of what I was getting at with like the cult of like intellectualism, I guess you could say, because we’re kind of in this position where like, you know, things are so much about like having the right view and trusting like the right authorities and stuff that I feel like the fool plays into that in an interesting way too, because it’s almost like we’re in this position where like the smartest questions you could ask will sound to most people like the dumbest questions you could ask. And I feel like that’s kind of like a big part of like how I got led down this road and everything, like we’re all like so confident in all this like, scientific explanations for the universe, but then you’re like, yeah, but like where the first like living thing come from? You know, and it sounds like kind of a dumb question, but it’s not really like, yeah, why are there like all these things around or, you know, I always think of Isaac Newton, for example, kind of a bridge between like esoterica and science, like the classic like tale of him like sitting under a tree and then being like, yeah, wait, why do apples like fall down? Like, what’s up with that? I felt there’s some fool energy there just asking like the dumbest question possible. And then it leads you to, you know, changing the world basically. In his case, changing the whole world. Yeah, totally.