Patrice Murciano – Featured Artist

W r i t i n g

Patrice Murciano – Featured Artist

** Novel Excerpt **

I emerged from the stream fully-clothed, wet-clothed, plaid-clothed, mad-clothed, with the sound of the animal in my head. And in that very moment, in my very purified awakening—assuming I believe in such things as cleansing or God—I made my decision to follow it… or perhaps that decision was made for me.

The voice, a murmur of crumbs, leading me into a chamber, pulling my arms and legs out from that peculiar body of water and into the unbeknownst wilderness. It was fate… or maybe karma. I could feel the beginning of new days. This was destiny.

As I scrambled onto dry land in what appeared as forest terrain, I realized I had no idea where I was or how I ended up here. So I continued to follow that voice. It sounded mostly like gibberish, but, whatever it was, I understood the emotions it was evoking. Sometimes it sounded like it was in the near distance, not too far off, and other times, it was inside my head… and then it began trickling along my spine… it was laughter. A terrible cackling choking on itself, then dividing and multiplying into a cacophony horde. Strangely, I felt the intention of this—as if it were my own; interrogating my humanity and the entropy of my species. Beating its drum and embedding that chortle of derision; attesting its overly dramatic predilection for the end of the world and the beginning of a new order. Then the mind-images began. So lucid and demanding. So primitive. So… humanlike.

It was the first vision I had of the animal. It appeared to be some sort of ape. It was big and gray and powerful, though completely hairless, which was unusual. Its eyes, brown like topaz jewels, and almost human. Its posture, also more resemblant to the primitive human—more upright than slouching into itself. It looked as if it were either a product of evolution or devolution. And as I studied it and stared and wondered about its origin and why it was in my head, it stared right back, watching, observing, reading my thoughts.

I was in a time lapse. All of this information was spilling in through this one source; through this kinetic being that’s taken solace within me. An animal spirit guiding me by sound and impulse. A force of gravity I had yet to meet outside my mind. Perhaps I will catch up to him and he will be presented to me. It never felt as if he were far off—always just a step ahead…

Let me back up for a moment. Throughout my entire life I’ve fantasized about the crumble of civilization and rebirth of the indigenous platitude, and that by an exemplary perception of ideological origin, conforming to a more animalistic standard and expectation of naturalization. Though not within the motive or aptitude of abolishing progress or technological advancement, but cohering all worlds to the principles of nature and spirit. I always felt She would eventually reformat Herself, no longer allowing the spoils of civilization to forge ahead unfettered… and I was right. Civilization was nothing more than a rash on Her human body, spreading fervently and destroying mostly everything in its path. There was too much karmic adversity behind it, too many negative polarities and not enough positive ones, and the ongoing alterations were continually extending beyond the principles and purity of organic life. It was designed and perpetuated within the enduring lackluster of suffering and grandeur, and each and every solution became only another feeding to its behemoth. At least this is what became of it. Was it a necessary footnote of evolution? It must have been. It’s impossible to argue with what was. But as the saying goes, “God will change for you what you cannot change for yourself.”

Civilization didn’t stand a chance. So there was a dark period, and the rise of the third war that took most of the population. And those that survived, beyond that transformative vacuum claiming its own retribution, just on the fringe of the horizon, sat with a new idea. An idea that imagined a population of people living primitively, instinctually—forging for survival out of necessity—in harmony and equanimity with Her, as if She were once again amongst them. And referring to those in the barracks of altruistic opposition, among the beasts, in memory of those slain through the cavity of subjugation by the machine of the old world, had come to understand the parity of the universe by the simplicity of their own inherent will… and that in the will of all things. But there, in that same modality, held on the other side of that coin—were those that were pushed deeper into darkness; forced to the threshold of evolution. And the world had not yet homogenized these two repercussive factions of war. And in the separation between light and dark, sat the dire divide and birth of a new pendulum and its extreme schools: New World vs. New Order.

This divide happened generations ago. Before my time and before yours. And now these thoughts grow stronger, and relentless in their own defamation. And here, today, in this very moment, by the hand of some visionary animal—an animal deformity arose through its own inherent will and spoke an attire I, one, could never imagine in my own wit:

“There is no need for a paradigm shift, but an integration…” a smokescreen whisper arising in my head—“it shall make way for the new evolution.”

Progression has floated downstream from the moment I emerged and was met with a bombast of hieroglyphs, hypothesis, laughter, and recollections of torn indigeneity. Though this was all beside me; I’m not crazy and I don’t usually have such lucid imaginations. And I can’t say for sure this is the truth—though I will search out the answers and set this right.

by LORIN DREXLER

About the Artist