BEFORE THERE WAS DESPAIR, THERE WAS EGO

This project serves as a confrontation with my past, to a time where I was all but blind and faced torment for my mistakes. Both the scenes that follow and the echoes I painted are meant to immortalize that saga – a photograph of the past. The scenes tell the tale of a stooge that threw itself into a calamity before being extricated, while the echoes are its reflections from different perspectives in various contexts. This project was also experimental; I wanted to try out new techniques to express myself such as exposition, monochromatic coloring, various brush strokes, and dipping my feet into the horror aspect of art as I attempted to take a more abstract approach with this project. Now, without further ado, bear witness to the apprehension that is EGO…

Prologue:
Demise

Before despair, there was struggle. Before struggle, there was slumber. Before slumber, there was ignorance. And before ignorance, there was ego.

Icarus was vetoed by a star and endured a slow, chaotic death. Despite their divinity, stars burn. The only way to escape from their rays lies in the shade; even the eyes of the monochromatic could see that and yet, the ace could not. The luminous was blinded by its own brilliance: the bigger a star gets, the faster it dies.

Prisms can divide the rays of a star, splitting it into fragments. These ‘echoes’ roll back to a time where the merry breathed a pure fallacy – blinded with every step it took; its eyes became nothing but murky pools of grey. And so, the victim would wander about, directionless, oblivious to the turmoil that was eating away inside it.

Scene I:
Apollo's Wrath

Scene II:
Blissful Blindness

In its oblivion, the sloth had devoured itself; all that was left was a hollowed carcass – a husk of what the deprived once was. Devoid of any destination, the carcass continued to limp – held together by a single thread drawn from the fallacy it once breathed.

However, like all illusions, the fallacy began to fade, and the thread began to untwine. Slowly, the turmoil had begun to take control – the victim wished to turn back (but a sense of direction was no longer a liberty) and the victim also wished to hide in its illusions (a path, it knew, that would spiral into pandemonium but chose to ignore). At last, the conflict broke the thread apart and the blinded could see again.

To think that attaining vision would be so painful, the oblivious could finally see what it had done to itself. There was no fantasy, there was no star, there was only void. Its ignorance had impaired itself and the thread of fantasy puppeteered it into the abysm of insanity; the prisoner had confined itself to its own purgatory.

There it lay, alone, powerless, groveling at the imminent peril it had fallen into. The thread that once held the creature together transformed into shackles, leaving no window of escape, and the creature was enveloped by the hopeless abyss. It was in these chambers that the impotent finally faced retribution.

Scene III:
Enter Tartarus

Scene IV:
Ghastly Fate

The sensation that followed could only be described as the wrath of a thousand suns – burning into your eyes, charring your skin, igniting your innards, and impaling your heart with every beat. Engulfed in a lagoon of white-hot agony, the only thing the scorching could do was scream, scream until its aguish was heard. Until someone or something could put it to rest.

Eventually, the roach’s squeals were heard and by great vigor, it was retrieved from the abyss. However, what was left was an entity whittled to nothing but bones. Could it be salvaged? Some stars create supernovas, a burst of raw energy, leaving behind a shadow of its former self. This, however, is no star. Whatever it may be, it can be salvaged, it can persevere, it can survive.

After despair, there comes acceptance. After acceptance, there comes enlightenment. After enlightenment, there comes discipline. After discipline, there comes determination.