The Harsh Vérité of Secret Dreams

...Or the life and works of David Firth. Anyone who has been online for a span is likely to have encountered the work of David Firth, particularly his "Salad Fingers" series of cartoons. Firth's work have an unnerving, dream-like quality, surreal in the truest sense of the word. They are filled with images of bodily corruption, the madness of contemporary social mores, and the latent perverseness of human temperament. None of it makes any sense, but there is something chillingly relatable, in it. Firth's work is like a mish-mash of Edgar Allan Poe, Tim Burton, and William S. Burroughs.

I invite you to experience some of Firth's choicest bits:

Three Skins Without Men

The Original "Salad Fingers"

 

And an interview with the artist.

All Done

Evening folks. Well the day has come and gone once again. I've taken down the haunt for the evening, and tomorrow I'll pack everything away again for another year.

Class of 2013

I was thinking back this evening to a summer afternoon when I was 8 or 9 years old, sitting at the drafting table in my father's studio. I was looking over a mask catalog, and calculating how many Halloweens I could have in my lifetime. 80, I thought, 80 is the average, probably somewhat less than that now, for my generation. 80 Halloweens. It seemed like such a meager number. I wonder how many Halloweens I have left now?

I was working out on a slip of paper what I would be for Halloween each year. Corpse, ghoul, alien, etcetera, trying to make it all fit.

Now, I don't know, sometimes I feel like I'm sleepwalking through that oh so ephemeral life time. The season comes, but I barely notice it, my senses are dulled to it. There is no time for it, or will to enjoy it properly. Every so often I get a snitch of the old season, in the taste of a candy bar on a crisp day, in the familiar cadence of a well loved cartoon. But these are but reminiscences. It seems I am always chasing nostalgia.

But am I forging new memories? Do I sincerely enjoy each of these precious new Halloweens? Do I cherish individual moments from them, as I did when it was all new to me, when the shape of life, and indeed this Halloween thing itself was still a mystery?

I don't know, I don't know.