PART 3: Responses to Mechanical Animals

    Released in 1998, Mechanical Animals was a change in sound and image for Marilyn Manson.  This was Glam rock, something akin to David Bowie’s early years.  It was an immediate hit, making it to No. 1 in it’s first week of sales.  The previous two albums brought back very painful and traumatizing memories.  This album immediately brought up memories of events that made me bitter and angry.  I conjured up memories that started my evolution from trying to be a people-pleasing good girl to being someone who hid depression and anxiety.  

    I spent most of my childhood living in a fantasy world.  I was always trying to find an escape.  I would gaze upon something peaceful, the sky, a tree, a flower, a pool of water, something in nature, and the rest of the world would disappear.  I struggled to interact with people.  I didn’t have many friends, but felt no need to have lots of friends.  I was very content to live in my fantasy world and pretend that everything was different.

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“Dream Land Was the Source of Hope” – 05.29.20

Inspired by “Great Big White World”

The face looks upward.  It’s gazing outward towards the tree tops and sky, trying to block out the ugliness of the world.  The swirling lines seek out something beautiful, they seek a  private world to inhabit, some place safe.  Words emerge from the mind.  It’s deep in thought, deep in a fantasy world.  It shares what it sees with no one.  The forms behind the face are a messy cacophony of worldly distractions
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“Not Worth of Archive” – 05.29.20

Inspired by “The Dope Show”

    My fantasy was to become an architect.  It started when I was young, looking at ads for new homes.  I fell in love with floor plans.  I taught myself how to read construction drawings from library books.  I’ve been obsessed with designing houses ever since.  Due to the circumstances of my pregnancy, it took me a long time to get to architecture school and six years to make it through a five-year program.
    A professional, five-year program in architecture is excruciatingly demanding.  It’s highly competitive, not just  to get into architecture school and survive it, but there is this strange, unspoken competition among the students.  It all became about receiving the most recognition from the Studio professors.  The best work was saved for archive.  To have work placed into archive was considered a high honor.  Although I excel in public speaking, writing, and creating thorough and intriguing design concepts, I was never a neat person.  I was the person who smudged drawings without realizing it, and had the worst architectural models.  It requires extreme patience and care to be good at that kind of stuff.  This left me feeling very out of place, very much like I didn’t belong.  
    There was this attitude in architecture school, and even in design firms, where professionalism supposedly exists,  being a good designer becomes less important than getting your name in a magazine or one day winning the Pritzker Prize.  And if your design is chosen over any other design, you relishing the glory of being the best.     
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“Tears, Tacks, and Turmoil” – 05.30.20

Inspired by “Mechanical Animals”

”Tears, Tracks, and Turmoil” is about the day I left Ohio to go live in California with my mother.  My daughter was 6 weeks old.  She was too young to be on a plane.  I had this one opportunity to ride across the country and not have to talk to anyone.  I had no cell phone, very little money, but plenty of shame.  I watched life as I knew it disappear out the window, and I headed into a strange terrain that would teach me many more lessons.

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“I Cannot Renew” – 05.30.20

Inspired by “Rock is Dead”

”I Cannot Renew” has two meanings.  The first is more literal, I could not renew my contract to continue in my Martial Arts training because I was pregnant.  I had reached first degree black belt then left.  But also, I could not renew my own spirit.  I felt broken beyond repair.

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“Noise Consumption” – 05.31.20

Inspired by “Disassociative”

    This song brought back memories of one of the things I hated most about living in Van Nuys.  Van Nuys was like a ghetto cesspool of noise.  There were very few trees or signs of life created by God.  Very few people spoke English.  There was crime to deal with, sirens going off all the time, the never ending stream of traffic, and just so much noise.  You couldn’t find silence in Van Nuys if you buried yourself under the ground.  In addition to that, I couldn’t see the stars at night.  All over the San Fernando Valley you typically can’t see the night sky.  There are too many city lights, and too much smog.  I hated that town so much.  I used to pray and hope for a real home.  Although the situation has improved, I still wonder what a “real home” must feel like.

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“Psychological Breakdown Tower” – 05.31.20

Inspired by “Speed of Pain”

    This is another personal collage.  College can be highly emotional.  You hardly ever sleep.  You cut down on meals so you have more money for model-making supplies.  The lack of sleep leads to more injuries.  Your nerves are fried.  You’re worried about debt, will you have a job after college?  You put your heart and soul into your work and don’t know how to separate yourself from it to receive constructive criticism.  I knew people who turned to drink or drugs for relief.  Some used sex.  I had a special place on campus, to cry, have nervous breakdowns, and pray.  It was isolated.  No one ever went there.  Now I make collages.

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“The Girl from Ohio” – 06.06.20

Inspired by “Posthuman”

The text are signs in an urban environment.  There are words everywhere, all mixed together.  The metallic elements are a woman and child.  They are the same person.  This duality of naivete and a fight for growth and survival.  The line is a quest.  It’s confusing.  She’s tangled up in it.  She no longer knows what she is or why she exists.  There’s shimmering gold to the right, but it’s fake.  Everything in Hollywood is fake.  Everyone wears a mask of sorts and tries to become someone else.  Even the people who think they know what they are, and have life figured out, have this emptiness inside of them.  

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“Metropolitan Displacement” – 06.06.20

Inspired by “I Want to Disappear”

There’s a certain rigidity to bus travel—continuity of bus routes, maps, seeing the same driver, looking for certain landmarks, the sound of the bell chord being pulled—the only thing erratic are the passengers.  Purple is me seeking God and struggling to understand.  Therefore, the edges are  rough.  Metallic materials are the nerves in my body being manipulated and controlled by the stress and fear of the unknown.  The lines are a graphical representation of seeking normal when none can be found.  The orange square is caution.  Red is pain and the screams that remain unvoiced or just ignored.   

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“The Conception of Voluntary Self-Degradation” – 06.13.20

Inspired by “New Model No. 15”

This is a super, chaotic, hot glue mess, inspired by an event that crossed a line into a zone that destroys values.  It was in a darkened room.  Minds become numb.  The gold line is again, Hollywood, and some yellow above that is this glow that pulls in the eyes of the world similar to how moths are drawn to lamps, and we all know that usually doesn’t end well.  The words come from the amoral world and form the darkness.  Strings of deception reach out from the bright colors of dazzling entertainment and reach into our brains, holding us captive.  And we find it pleasurable.  That’s why it works.

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“Is It All Manipulation?” – 06.07.20

Inspired by “I Don’t Like the Drugs (but the Drugs Like Me”

The lines are very wild and chaotic.  This is a moment when a message was clearly communicated: women are things.  They are property.  They exist to bring sexual pleasure only.  The results of this message are devastating.  Notice the yellow squares.  They came from an Ethernet cable, which connects us to the Internet, where porn thrives best.  See how it connects to the figure in the center.  See the red lipstick on the left, and red all around.  It’s the blood boiling with desire and the brain boiling with confusion.  Our world is highly sexual and very confusing.

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“Bound in Desperation” – 06.14.20

Inspired by “User Friendly”

The gold bands on top represent bars that are worn and abused like my spirit.  The wrists are loosely bound.  They are connected to a body in emotional and spiritual danger, not physical danger.  Purple is holiness.  On top it is sending down messages of love, but they are being distorted.  Holiness on bottom is now a jumbled mess.  The metal are wrong intentions, working into the psyche like some sort of parasite.  There is a hint of words, but no real conversation is needed.  This is a time of silence while another aspect of the soul dies.

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“The Unfound” – 06.14.20

Inspired by “Fundamentally Loathsome”

The figure is lightly indicated by hemp string, which is dark, coarse, and stiff.  The remains of an Ethernet cable were used for the strange, joviality that drifts in and out of Los Angeles.  There are so many people who seem to be living cartoons, lost in some world of their own, but physically occupying my own world.  But there is darkness, energy, and chatter that never ends regardless of our position to the sun.  The gold is broken here, because the phony glamour associated with Los Angeles is also broken and always present, no matter where you go.

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“Darkness in the Rain” – 06.15.20

Inspired by “The Last Day on Earth”

There is windiness that represent a swirling feeling associated with confusion.  I attempted an overall darkness as it is night and there is an underlying sadness being suppressed.  The text is jarring, coming from different directions.  It is mostly mental dialogue.  There is gold, but it is damaged, just like Los Angeles.

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“The Drowning” – 06.16.20

Inspired by “Coma White”

The body is immersed in confusion.  In the background there is much text.  There is a flood of information being poured into the drowning figure.  It’s advice, both good and bad, insults, encouragement, concerns, directions, instructions, gossip, and desperate pleas to God.  The yellow are those who have confidence and do a better job standing up under the pressure.  There’s just a tiny bit of gold on the side.  The vision of success has been destroyed.  Now, it’s just a distant memory.  The purple is God.  The relationship with God is also lost in the confusion.  The shiny, blue band in the middle is success found by some and flaunted to the rest.  

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