Month: November 2022

 

The last of my drawings for my Popol vuh commission have been satisfied.

I should feel a sense of relief but in truth I feel a sense of disappointment, of hopes once bright , now dimmed a bit. I am not sure where this project, one in which I have invested so much energy into , will go. Perhaps its just the creativity bubble bursting a bit.

What I had understood to be a project slated for publication after I had completed my commission  now seems in limbo. The publisher suggested by the poet  I found to be lacking in creativity and vision  with no apparent back up option-given the publisher was a pay-to-play  publisher was disappointing as well.

But that seems to be the reality. I am now in the position of needing to find a publisher , to pay or to not, willing to publish this heavily illustrated tome. To be honest I feel sick to my stomach but I have put so much into these drawings to just allow them to be stashed away into a folio seems too great a defeat. I also feel ill-equipped and inadequate to the task

So I will begin researching , I dislike feeling  a bit alone in this but from recent exchanges I fear the poet and I now have different intentions for the project. My initial understanding of the collaboration was a shared enthusiasm for Blake, inspiring a  universalist, humanistic approach to this distinctly Maya creation myth, an uplifting  celebration in the Jos. Campbell “Hero with a Thousand Faces” vein. It now seemingly more activist, too anti-Western Christendom in approach than I’d prefer.

 

 

 

There is profound relief in at last being free of the Xibalban Underworld, C.S.Lewis, in describing the creation of his Screwtape Letters  dwelt upon the  difficulty of being immersed in such darkness. The last year or so of trickster demons, their wanton cruelty, the viciousness of unwholesome, perverse gods and the relentless bloody sacrifices has had a similar darkening upon my soul. I’m eager to emerge into the light.

 

That said, the  following are the images for the tacked on poems to our Popol vuh.

Poem Images:

Chapter headers, the theme being puppetry and nursery amusements:

I am going to take some time away from thinking about this project, but not so much that I can wish it away. Just an opportunity to rekindle inspiration, to aflame motivation. David and I are tentatively planning a trip to Mexico City, with old gods underfoot and new above that just may do the trick.