kingtycoon | Entries tagged with projects

In the end I think I'm better at painting that photography, or maybe my camera is poor, or maybe my lighting is crummy, anyway, this one is (and take my word for it) nicer than it looks. But it's also pretty complicated and hard to explain. It was hard to think about too.

Here's the image I was going off of. You notice that it's #11 in the Waite deck - but that's to do with Astrology and I honestly haven't included any astrological themes so far, I don't know if I will. Astrology is cool and all, I won't speak against it exactly - but this is my deck and it's all about the Wasteland and my experience and I don't see a lot of stars in my city. When I do - I don't recognize them, so Astrology is out. But Justice is often enough and traditionally the 8th card. So I started thinking about Justice.

This wasn't awesome for me - it turns out that I don't really value justice as a virtue. True fact, I think of Justice as being fairly regressive as a quality - right up there with Honor. It is altogether worse to have Justice than it is to have something else, that Justice, conceptually, negates. This was just a feeling I had, a sense, but I wanted to understand it so I did a little studying. What is Justice? I looked into it and thought about it a lot. In the end I concluded that Justice is a concept in the West that is based on principles of Natural Law - which I do not condone. Life-Liberty-Property - okay? Sure you have these rights? Except that no. No, that's a purely western and I think, reckless construction. Now in that state where you have those natural rights, then Justice is a significant concept because you're constantly going to be in conflict with other people. Your liberties and properties, maybe even your life is always getting on the toes of everyone else's life liberty and property. So you have to have a system of justice to figure things out within the paradigm. You with me so far? So I thought and thought about what that all means - and I couldn't get anywhere. Locke is, fine I guess, Tabula Rasa.... hey man, if you say so. But people who know me know I tend to hold with Hobbes, a little more. And after looking into Utilitarianism etc... I found that I liked Hobbes a little better in terms of his ideas about Justice.

So this image was very informative for me. The Leviathan, the state, the power of the overwhelming giant-king. See? I put it in there too. Giant menacing kings.

At this point though - the symbolism kind of spoke to me. The sword- my sword is the Sharpie Pen - the pen being the sign of political stakeholders (i.e.: Legislators) and intellectualism (i.e.: Me and you). So a pen, he's got that big pen? Sure, I get it. And the little village, heck I like that little village, that speaks to me.

But what's my idea here? What's my thought? What is the concept I'm trying to convey that will eventually have a mythic and mystic connotation when removed from this (overwrought) context?

So I consult the I-Ching, and it's showing me Hexagram #8 - Holding Together - Union So I had it. The union of people. From there some of the imagery came. Now - I'm kind of happy that I paint these things without a plan or special insight, and maybe I'm doing a lot of after-the fact rationalizing. but look.

Here's the little village in the valley with the wall of bricks in a ring. The Bricks. Unity - apart, alone? What's a brick? Together they make the strong wall that holds the predatory giant king at bay. More than that they're a ring, it's a ring - the union of lovers, the sanctioned, unbreakable union. Together - together and united the little village in the valley is not menaced by the king, he may prey upon them, but together they resist his overwhelming strength, force him to reconcile, to wait. His pen, the law, his official strength, it looms over the village but the walls are strong. The roads - the roads join together, all unity of the hill. There are the terraced little farms on the hillsides

in the image of hexagram #8 - they're common, together, the road leads to the safety of the village where they are joined together into the one road.

But what about this guy?

This shirtless little weirdo? Well, this came about. Honestly this was a hard painting to paint. I had ideas, but couldn't make them come together, I actually erased and repainted it a few times. But I kept having this other hill. And I thought - it's got to mean something, and the menacing king. Look - Justice, conceptually - is delivered by an overwhelming power - in our society justice is handed down from the court, it is decided by the bureaucracy. There is an element of inequality inherent in systems of justice - of all vs. all within the concept of Natural Law. So this shirtless little madman represents that - the idea of the individual claiming his rights, challenging the power of the king. He stands atop the other peak and is not effectual, not against the power of the giants. He carries his own pen, trying to go to the battle, thinking that it is a swordfight. See, he's undone already, he has contended according to a lopsided system that automatically doesn't favor him. He is aggrieved and considers Justice to be something he deserves, but that he must fight for. Because Justice has within it that quality of inequity. So there is the little village, that is untroubled by the predation of the great, because in communion the many have the power to resist. So... Commonwealth.

I suppose I should note that these cards, these ideas flow out of one another, into one another - there's an organism being made. $6 Satisfaction leads to a journey - the journey requires the #7 Infrastructure, which suggests the unity of action, but is also a destination for the querent - #8 the Commonwealth.

Current Mood: twitchy

So right away you can tell I will never-ever be a civil engineer. Or a traffic-engineer,or a car designer or an aeronautics-designer. You can tell, and I concede. Someone tries to offer me those licenses and diplomas and I scatter them on the ground and say: "Nasty old Fishes."

So! The Chariot. This one was a little tricky, to think about. I was debating my processes a little today and i mentioned to an interested party that I don't actually plan these out. The meditative painting-act is fairly sublime and I kind of make what wants to be made. Without being too gross or mysterious - that's what I do. I start painting and try to have a fugue state or something. Then I step back and fix everything that's gone wrong whilst I was fugueing. The Chariot itself isn't easy to interpret. It has a meaning of war and strength - probably lost on contemporary generations - something filthy, something there is that doesn't love a war, or strength. Romantics you know? They have a faith in the more sensual conflicts - can't see the muscle on muscle violence for their fixation on the glorious dead. The Chariot - to me - implies victory. It's... Antique. More than the other cards so far, they're rooted in their time - the Chariot bespeaks an elder age, of martial cruelty, of danger and an intimate conflict. That's a strange strength.

But too, I wanted to move away and out of the personal. I'd tackled that, the personal and the innate, the Self - I did that. So I wanted a step out of there. The Duke of Zhou was helpful with that - the 6th Hexagram being THE ARMY. See there. Public works, the strength of the united public, of the polity, or the social order - all pulling together to exert a profound and effective influence.

The Army - a good start. I went to the Infrastructure, and I've painted up a highway or... Something suggesting a highway - and that bespeaks the power of the many. Denies the significance of the few or the one. There are cars on it, trucks, buses - and those don't arise from a vacuum you know - there's a profound potency in the world - that allows these things to come to be - that then demands that they exist, that builds roads and bridges and a whole unseen, forgotten world to house them.

I had thought that my Chariot might end up being a fighter plane, or some kind of racecar. I thought about it. But Power, a strange and hard to define or understand strength - to me this speaks of the unity of society, of that strength - which is fearful and beautiful and altogether the best part of being all together. I'm writing this to you on the internet and McCluhan was right- the medium is the message. We make the world together and the world is made for us. My Chariot -the Infrastructure - it's meant to suggest that. To imply us all being in this together, to accomplish amazing things, and then to regard those things as commonplace.

Of course the infrastructure gets rusty, it gets graffitied upon, it gets used in novel ways and ignored in depressing ones. This power requires maintenance and unity to hold together. Energy, Success, Wealth, Bravery, Command, Discipline. These are identities that go with the old Charioteer -but I see them in the highway and the bridge and the structure of the world that we inhabit. In the best version of the world, no doubt these things are constantly refreshed -but in the meantime they're made so powerfully that they'll last through the ages.

The chariot is traditionally pulled by a black and a white Sphinx - and they've got abstract and unfamiliar provenance. I went with the airplanes - because they provoke a sense of dread - menace - they could bomb the whole thing to pieces, they could. They could erase it all - but if they do, that's the conquest of one infrastructure over another. The plane builders who had the iterative capacity, built over and over and developed through development to overwhelm the underdeveloped. But they are reassuring too - these images of mastery, of a strength over the nations - of motion and speed - we have those, we have it within us to make those. To exert that might. Which is a great thing, a great mastery that sprouts from the shoulders of all the generations before.

So continuity and the threat of ruin, of motion and unity, of the recklessness of disunion and the folly of individuality, and self-seeking. That is The Infrastructure.

Current Mood: Some of the Links re Grand

I know what you're thinking. Look what you've painted Kingtycoon! Look at that. How the heck does this relate to This

I have answers for you. A few.

First of all - look at that image. The Lovers. I love the period at the end - The Lovers -Period. Obviously though, I think there's more to say. Look at Adam and Eve and their bellybuttons. Look at them. Stupid. There they are in the Eden, in paradise. They're about to go the wrong way. But look - look at the magic figure connecting them. You see these lovers -but the figure putting them together is central to the whole image. That's the figure I connect with in this image, and that's who I kind of focused on.

The Lovers has some traditional meanings involving a few conditions. First of all - Choice. So my figure, and I say MY kind of insistently - if you didn't know or can't tell - this is pretty much a self portrait - you can tell because of the green kitchen table. Just like mine. So this figure is presented with choices - there are choices - right there on the table. Do I eat? Smoke? Drink the Coffee? Paint? Write? Read? Write? Do I look at the empty chair and feel... Something? Want? Need? Loneliness? And then you look at the card and see it's called Satisfaction. So are you happy because you have choices? Or are you happy that you've made the choice that you've made?

YES.

And really, just look. Peanut Butter & Jelly. Coffee & Cigarettes. They go together don't they? They're more identifiable, comfortable pairs than Adam and Eve any day. Paint and brush? These things are on teams, together. Paper and ink, books and more books. There are pairings, combinations - you put things together- you create. You choose a thing to make. That, the fruition of your combinatory exercise - you're GENERATIVE CAPACITY - that's satisfying as hell.

It's also a choice. The choice of human things, of material, creative endeavors, which to pursue? Creation? Art? Learning? Chemical dependency? Or... Look at that Empty Chair. There's room isn't there? You can collaborate, there could be a collaboration... Why isn't there?

See this is the Eden. This is the paradise that you can be tempted away from. Hell, as you know, is other people. Here is the suggestion of peace, of heavenly paradise, and there's that empty chair. There's that temptation to seek out the other. A girl, a lady - someone else. That's the temptation - to abandon paradise for something else. Or - or to invite someone else to the paradise. Empty chair after all. Available space.

So I've accommodated the concept of choice, of desire, of pleasure, humanism, personal values (I missed you Wikipedia! I missed you so bad.) But where is the Sexyness? Where's the beauty? The Physical Attraction?

Seriously? You're asking? Look at this motherfucker

So there it is. #6 - Satisfaction.

True story - the name was the hardest part. rejected ideas:

#6 - Kingtycoon
#6 - The Lover
#6 - Bachelor
#6 - Loner
#6 - Paradise

So all the way to #5! Nice work. Actually, I ran out of the canvas-paper that I've been using so I bought some biggish boards to paint on - so #5 the Television is the biggest painting I've ever painted. Nice, I know. It's also, now, the only television in my house.

The cable-girl, who came to sell us upgrades and so on - she was shocked, I think authentically shocked, when we said we don't have a TV. We sure don't. That is how I am able to talk about it in the way that I am about to. The old Cathode God is pretty entrenched -and when it came time to paint my version of the Pope -the Hierophant - I didn't take too many minutes to realize that I'd paint a Television. Here's the story. First of all - the hierophant is meant to indicate the Orthodoxy, connection to faith, communal identity, and - significantly - to connect the material with the celestial. If you look at the old cards you'll see the pope giving that two-fingered blessing. 2 up 2 down - the bridge between the heavens and the earth. Well the Pope of the world that I live in is the TV. Dig it - the American Orthodoxy relies on the TV. If you, like me, don't have fluency about contemporary programming, if you don't follow television sports (football and basketball) then you're out- you are in the out crowd. People will think you can't talk and they won't talk to you, they'll suppose you've nothing going on or if you do that you're strange.

I'm painting my own tarot deck for the purposes of amusement and metaphysical awakening - so I probably count as pretty weird. In this respect the TV is easily compared to the Pope - cause Religion and TV are things I've dallied with and both of them are things I've tried to get away from, and both of them exert a tremendous influence over my interactions with people and the social world that I exist within. The TV is the contemporary orthodoxy, and participation with TV is a vital sacrament in the social circle. Channels, Cable, that kind of thing - it's like denominations, pastoral or monastic callings. The television also connects you with the unreal - the world of imagination, the heady heaven of thought and shared drama, the myths of the time, the socializing power of the collective imagination. I won't deny, I won't hate, or be hostile, but I'll resist, just me personally, with my life, I'm too busy and too generative to absorb religions or imaginary ideas. I make my own man.

I gave the TV some acolytes. And kind of pillars. The Antenna point up, the screen is the connection to the earth.

The Vicar of Christ carries the keys - and I thought it would be alright to put some keys in this- and where else, you rest them on the boob-tube.

I know this an old-timey TV and I know that there's the internet. I know about these things. The internet, it's community but still an outlier, the TV is orthodox - look at how the internet is used - Netflix man, it's all watch and commune, and be part of the community. People come to the faith, called to the temple, it is a conversion experience.

More than that, I mean - I first used the internet on a TV like that - C128 baby, Amiga and the VGA graphics on an old staticy TV. Atari? All of that the old CRT Television is an awesome icon and I don't care that wood-paneled - no remote control - bunny ears TVs are out of the world now, the image and identity of the Television goes to here, to this.

On today of all days I painted the Senator.

This is my version of Tarot #4 - the Emperor. Sure, sure, the Emperor. You know what? I prefer the imperial system, over the nation state? I say Empire. It's a better, maybe even more robust and correct version of organizing people. More humane. That's my position. Now. I grew up with Star Wars, a little movie you might have seen. The Emperor - he's the bad guy, and Senators are kind of good. Kind of. See this is America. Now I have to get upset and say some political things - for a minute-I just have to. Listen.

So you have representatives, and they're supposed to represent you! It's a whole thing, the Republic. But the thing is - I've noticed that politicians keep deferring to ideologies. Now - I hate ideologies, and by god you should too. You know why the person who represents you wants to talk up ideologies? Because they don't care about you at all, and by talking about pie-in-the-sky notions, they can trick you into thinking that they do. True Fact - if I were the representative for my congressional district - I would hold out, and hold out and hold out and cast tie-breaking, filibuster defeating votes for any bullshit that came across - anything at all - as long as thy would concede that my constituency was granted a $100,000 tax credit. There, job over, represented your interests. Gamed the stupid system and won - for you. Your representatives don't do this -because they do not have your interests at heart - at all. They will tell you some kind of libertarian claptrap about ideals - and that's because they won't do anything for you - at all. Ever. Anger over.

So aside from being kind of angry about politics - today of all days! I painted the Senator. Here's your guide to the iconography. The Emperor is Card 4 in the traditional tarot and it's the Emperor -the universal and maybe sublime father. As I've said - Emperor as a title sits uneasily - what with the nurturing ministrations of star wars. But Father, older, elder, system of governance, the world. Senator is a Roman way of saying 'old man' true fact- the Senex, from the latin for codger. Senators are supposed to be old men who are staid and steady, pillars of the status quo. So - since I like these things: Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood (ya heard!) I went with a democratic symbol of terrestrial dominion and antiquary patriarchy - the Senator. Senators are old men (overwhelmingly) - and they govern, they choose the world you live in. Heck, even if you aren't an american (on today of all days) the old Senate will govern your life in a meaningful way. These are the old guard. I... I'm not trying to make my Senator card a villain. I'm not, just today - it wants to be. I live in Ohio and we haven't had a decent Senator since Glenn returned to the stars. True fact.

So a symbol of terrestrial dominion, masterful excercise over the system of the earth and a patriarch- which, if you value Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood - you don't value or respect all that much - but the Old Guard. The Ancien Regime. The Senator fits the bill.

Now - old timey tarot will put the Emperor as a domnitor, a substitute for the All-Father. Now, this I get. I have a love of the WOTAN of the they Sky Father, the embodiment of childish desiring. Of a want for comfort. I'm a father in fact,and I tell you true- I give some thought to my activities and say: "What would Odin do?" Because Odin plucked out his own eye to see the motherfucking future. You can talk about divine sacrifices, but I am here to tell you that making your hand take out your own motherfucking eye is pretty much the winningest style. So... Okay a door slammed, and I'm... okay I was here. There is a power in the FATHER of all things - and that is something I want to touch and know and care about - not because I want that comfort - but because I want to emulate that strength and goodness. This is lost. There is a lot of talk about the villainy of patriarchy, and I feel - that this talk is fair, it's totally fair. But I also feel that there is a place a vital needful place for the potent, correct and Good Father. So there is that. I abided by convention and gave my Senator a little Col. Sanders Beard. Greying at the temples. And throw in a cane - to complete the iconography.

Or anyway approach completion. I painted the Senator's Cane and kept thinking of Preston Brooks (wikipedia is protesting, google for yourself - unless you're wise). Senators should all have canes, and maybe pistols. There's a strength in the world and in Democracy and maybe the best version of that is the Senator. It's only that when it all goes bad, when it's the worst that it can be -the Senator, the Emperor, the Father - he's the villain, he's Darth Vader, he's the bad-bad-man. Which is a turn. But interesting. First in greatness, least in deficiency. That's my Senator.

I topped it, you know, with the goat-head. Capricorn you know - pretty satanic right? I didn't mean for the excess of Satanism. True story though - I think this is one of the better paintings I've painted. I thought hard about casting the whole thing in the shadow of the Goat-Head- but resolved instead to replace the anthropomorphization of democratic ideals with a terrible goat head. Because it's relevant to the esoteric symbolism - but also Creepy As Hell. So while you contemplate sinister goat-heads - look at this:

By now you may have fallen on the wrong side of fate and found out that I can almost paint a picture. Nah, I can totally paint a picture, all the way through. I'm not the worst at painting either! Maybe 5th or 6th worst - but not the worst. I also have a bit more than a passing interest in divination. The contemporary landscape demands that you qualify such interests, so here goes that: Intuition and Induction my friends. You see and hear a whole lot more than you know, and in your dreams you put it all together in novel and inconceivable ways, and from dreams you have inspirations, and from inspirations you have the whole wide world. My point is just that, if I have to justify my interest in magical and esoteric stuff to you - I'm very disinclined to do so* - but if you really want an explanation, I'll tell you that it's correct to train yourself to perceive your circumstances in a metaphorical light, and that you should work constantly to erode the barrier between your dreamlife and your waking world.

So here's a way that I have decided to do that, and to get (maybe slightly) better at painting pictures. I decided that this year a project I would carry out would be making my own Tarot. Starting with the 1 in the first place I commenced today painting the first of the major arcana. Note to you who are weird about these things - and by weird I mean, reverential or easily drawn into the rigor common in religious and esoteric clubs - I Do What I Want and so I start with #1 and skip #0 for the moment - plenty of time to get to the fool.

So there it is #1 the Salesman. Traditionally the #1 has been the Juggler or the Mountebank (if you're french enough) later on the Thelemites swapped the stage magic for the idea of Tony-Robbins style Personal Power and ended up with the Magician. Now what I have seen in the world and what I know about secret societies and religions is this - if you can persuade people that your average street performer is a personally empowered demigod - you've perpetrated a cunning act of salesmanship. One of the best. Salesmanship man. Persuading the rubes that you can heal by faith, that you have the innate power, the voice of god, the magic tablets, the ten commandments - that's the alchemy right there - turning falsehoods and petty ambitions into Reality. Plenty of con-men have drawn followings, and sometimes those followings go on to do amazing things. Like found nations, religions, put people on the moon. That kind of thing. Turning ideas into reality is pretty much magical, so my magician, the magus for the moment is the Salesman.

Here's a little guide to the Imagery - if you need it. First off - the yellow background and the flowering plants? Stolen straight out of Rider-Waite - because hey, sure, and also - I am terrible at painting feet/shoes. Next you have the folding table and the laptop. He's got that folding table, standing in the weeds because he can give his pitch anywhere. A good pitch - if you haven't heard one before, is like an incantation, it'll bring you on board, it'll draw you in, it is a kind of power. He can perpetrate his pitch any old time, any old place, standing in the weeds at the old folding table. He has his power point presentation as well- useful for the sales-minded. On his Power-Point? The Hermetic Elements - cause after all, dude is still related to the old guard, Trismegistus and all that. Now, understand, I struggled mightily with settling on the hermetic elements, I thought very hard about switching to the 17 elements in Pokemon - but I don't think I can paint 17 elements in a 3"x3" space - and besides, it's still weird to me that Normal is an elemental type.

Next up you've got him eternally juggling the suits- "the infinity sign is just an 8!" you protest. You know what? it isn't. It's on it's side - why? Because that's the way it goes. Now he's juggling the suits, he can bring one out at any time, the one that'll persuade you most. He's like a politician, he can be patrician and condescending, he can be earthly and common, he can be an erudite true believer. Now, I've changed the old suits to suit me. First off - Cups, kept the same, but it doesn't mean much about Clergy now.

I put in the starbucks cup because honestly, I doubt there's a more recognizable kind of cup, and what's more, I think that the hospitality industry and the daily drugging we all take substitutes well for the medieval church. Well enough anyhow. The cup is also water, it is also compassion, in the way that the barista knows what you want and has it ready for you before you order, because you are a regular and you have attained coffeehouse absolution.

Next up is the 2nd Estate - which in the past was the nobility, represented by the Spade or the Sword. I live in a democracy where power comes from legislators, that is, people who write, so I put a picture of my favorite kind of pen to substitute for the sword. There's that old chestnut about the pen and the sword as well - I just know that the ruling classes rule with a pen and not a sword, and if I subbed in a gun for a sword I'd have to acknowledge soldiers, cops and gun enthusiasts and knights of some kind - which I will never ever do. So the Sharpie Pen.

After that the Pentacles are obviously replaced by Bucks. Maybe eventually and later I'll get into it about gold and fiat currency and dollars and whatever currency isn't dollars. For now Money will substitute for Money - the urban classes, commerce and civilization. All there, all at the Salesman's disposal.

Then? See, you're supposed to put in Clubs, or the Rod - to mean the farmers. This was the hard one for me, but then I reasoned, everything else is something you carry with you, something you have on you that makes you capable of having your day. You need a pen, your coffee, some money, you also need a phone. You can leave your house without keys anymore, but you dare not go out without your phone. The phone, the smartphone - also substitutes nicely as it suggests the content-creator, the people behind the internet, who are a kind of farmer, farmers of ideas? Well, if you believe that I've got a car to sell you! And a bridge you can drive it on.

The Salesman. Learn to emulate his confidence, initiative and personal power, learn to give the pitch, to say things that are compelling, to draw the congregations, to pull in the swing voters.

* Okay, I'll give you this explanation. My friend said 'why would you believe in ghosts!?' All stressed that I might, I said 'Because it makes my life better to believe in them.'

Current Mood: None, or other.

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kingtycoon

The Pleasantist

February 2023

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#8 The Commonwealth
#7 The Infrastructure - Also The Lackluster Effort.
#6 the Smug Fucker
#5 The Cathode Pope
#4 teh $enator
Part 1 in some other number in a series

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Page generated Jun. 9th, 2025 09:43 am

I'd like to see you try and stop me

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Entries tagged with projects

#8 The Commonwealth

#7 The Infrastructure - Also The Lackluster Effort.

#6 the Smug Fucker

#5 The Cathode Pope

#4 teh $enator

Part 1 in some other number in a series