Radiant Daggersby Iliad Terra

“So I thought about what you said earlier… and it reminded me of Uncreated Light.”

“I haven’t read it.”

“Oh but you should…,” he smiled knowingly. “It’s the sourcebook for iconography.”

“Did you check the fruit –

“You mean at the mouth of the rabbit hole, the serpent and the fruit?”

“Yes.”

“Goodness, what treacherous path you lead me to…”

“…there’s a book, the title escapes me… — no wait! Quarantine! You must read it!,” I insisted. “It’s about passion –

“Oh boy, I can tell you about passion, about lust…”

“No, you don’t understand.  Beyond flesh, beyond matter, deeper than you can imagine is a passionate love affair with the Universe, when you can understand the vibrant language of the One Verse – it’s hidden in plain sight, isn’t it –

“The Rabbit Hole again?”

“Always, the little death, or whatever else you must call it, it’s time to deconstruct in order to reconstruct, and why construct, why exist in the duality of the matrix, perhaps… but imagination is a distraction isn’t it?  It deludes by fabricating tantalizing cerebral voyages that issue forth into the fabric and bleed into a world of patterns, random pattern recognition so that you can design the sign –

“That’s real good, a clincher, design the sign, you should rap with that one!”

“Nothing left but derisions?”

“I was enjoying the intersection of verse and truth, the One Verse did you call it?”

“Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you…?”

“Yes, only choices, right?”

I sighed with relief, “yes, only choices, a string of pearls from the depths of the blind see, or a noose made of barbed verse – what on earth, choices to do what?  Play the F’n game – morbid vicarious voyeurs of pain, sadistic isn’t it?

“No, illuminated parcels of light, you fool, symphony of divinity, each choice a note in a grand orchestra , symphony, no, no, infinite vibrancy! Each choice a note, a mark, a sign in the design….  All these worlds belong to you….  All your choices define the world, the face of god is constructed every and each moment by what you choose –all gods and one, my god, your god, the  state of flux, constantly shifting form, form without form, so you sea your own face, you drown in yourself, my god, my God, G-d, have you, are you unable to love without destruction, am I your consciousness, out of nothing you have fathomed me, I am you, a quantum beauty – no, damn it, that is passion – you speak of passion? Lust?  What collection of molecular dystrophy ever compares with… but then again… if flesh is animated with illuminated fire… …”

“I’ll be late…”

“Yes, drive safely, won’t you?”

He looked back, smiling, frightened, emboldened, broken, and other things all at once…

-Iliad Alexnder Terra, 0400 hours, earth orbit, advent horizon third axial shift

4 AM, I’m thinking of you three fools, WTF?!!!   Have a wonderful day of Thanks…  Even though I don’t get it, I will summon my sheer suspension of disbelief and celebrate by ingesting the carcass of another, disintegrate its nuclear syntax so that my organism may proceed forth.  It repeats the cycle ad infinitum…  Culture has indeed become as stale as sliced bread on a shelf — affected and broken like a gouged-eyed hollow plastic doll staring at the memory of the little girl who had once played with it when it was pretty and new, out of the box…  Aeons have since gone by.  Now dolphins roam where man had once been king.

-IAT

Deep in the desert he rose to the occasion and chased a crimson bird to where suns shone with purple yearn, and the valor of a thousand souls crisped to the token wish, to the token choice, spiraling betwixt a dada stream more righteous than all the hope of fractious men and their wretched order of the beast, oh prince of Dardum, doth hereby I command thee that this charge be spoken upon your keep and, and…, n’er hast in the years of olde been birthed such death.

Laugh ye heathen saints, laugh yer tears of regret, but there is nothing to do, alas, — do you not see the yellow palm trees, her summer dress against blue weathered doors, dissonant syncopation that deflates only to bolster, oh how the nectar of a discordant moment shapes the trajectory of your entire ambition…

So I told that old iconoclast about the rabbit hole, eh, and about the  ‘shroom lining the mouth, pretty polka dotties dancing the prancing mollies, grey old follies mounting nothin’ but dry vaporous dust of lore…  LMAO, ye tubby old Buddha, or are ya crying over a heartbroken sophist dervish blinded by the fire of true love, a ghost no?  Do I hear soulful violin playing through the open fenestrae of an aged apartment in Prague, no doubt played by a displaced Russian prince, reminiscing… wasn’t it great to taste the milk fresh off the farm Kakoshka?  Wasn’t it?

-Iliad Terra

Perchance to dream

Of a time when

Truth reigns,

Of a time when summer dances and sparkles,

When your eyes are on fire

Looking at the world.

Never, she said, never let that fire extinguish…

Perchance to dream

Of a time when the veil is lifted

And that village,

On the flip-side of Switzerland,

Rings with laughter of children…

-IAT

A painter was asked:  Why…?

“I paint because there is nothing else to do, or perhaps it’s the only thing to.

My paintings are love stories, about a man and the infinite, and about a man’s quest to understand the Anima.  Each painting is a story, a gift, a legacy, I don’t know…  Each painting is everything, strings of moments wrapped up in gestures.

I paint so that I don’t dissolve, so that I can see – see the vibrancy of our eternal soul – it sounds abstract perhaps, but I don’t know how else to describe my motivation.

While my art derives inspiration from popular culture, and is presented as figurative work, pop culture itself is a dynamic and multifaceted language.  Pop language is a key ingredient in my visual narrative.  However the subtext of my work is the flow of lines, the expression of color washes, the rhythm and pattern of symbols, thus a meta-message communicated to the viewer.  In essence my work is sensual, provocative and layered at once, acting in concert as a set of experiences designed to take the viewer through layers of meaning.

Ultimately I paint, and create pieces, and search in the dark, only to ignite fires, so that the radiance may illuminate the heart of darkness and reveal the face of divine.”

-Iliad Terra