Hurt? Tabarnak.
Frustrated? Tabarnak.
Existential Terror? Tabarnak.
Tabarnak, a French Canadien catch-all, semi-equivalent to GODFUCKINGDAMMIT in Bostonian English, is blasphemously derived from tabernacle, a cognate in English and French.
I found the backing medium of this piece in an often visited material source as thrifted out in Brookline, which documents the Ark of the Covenant and the ancient Hebrew rites surrounding its construction, housing, and transportation. The chapter pages are a lovely vintage pearlescent gold.
The seven interwoven, interlocked hexagons capture just a slivered sample of the subjects. The teal blue pieces are from an image of the highly invasive and venomous lionfish; rampantly unwanted, unapologetically destructive, and introduced to the coral reefs it devastates. The red and gold, and all gold segments in the mid and upper positions are from an image of the Imperial crown jewels of England, an important parent figure in Americanistic catechism from whom we overthrew and cast off, entirely on our own, bootstraps hiked high, with absolutely no assistance from the French, Spanish, Dutch nor anyone else at all.
My favorite segment is the red/gold piece that formally punctuates the piece at the bottom right. This is lifted from from Artemesia Gentileschi’s absolutely superb Judith and Holofernes, 1620-21, referencing the righteous and careful manipulation required to not only literally have a man become black-out-drunk off his own grandiosity but to smoke the fucker with his own sword before bagging and tagging the raging a-hole.
The centered, subjected piece is from a coffee table volume (I know for a fact how petty she can be so I shan’t name names though I so want to) featuring wedding venue stylings that are so bad they lap past good right back to fucking terrible in a maximalist’s hormone-fueled wet dream. Let’s just say that this was the groom’s third marriage and her European modeling career was so prestigious she received an Einstein Visa, absolutely not a post Soviet handler who just really doesnt care, do u? It rhymes with Blar-a-shclago. And absolutely won’t be raided by the FBI anytime soon.
Between 2016-20 it was terrifying to exist as myself with a raving lunatic at the helm. What was worse was that through a bulk of it, I felt insane the entire time. Thank goodness for therapists.
It was really more so the never ending media firehose I couldn’t stand. It’s still pretty bad given all the yahoos he’s rattled up and let out of their cages posthumously now known as shame and polite silence. I had no power in all of that, but still had to do something. I focused a great deal of anger and my reeee screeching desperation for some kind of Justice into this work.
Ahab signed off best so there I’ll rest, and won’t bungle Melville.