What kind of hell should I carve into words about myself?

I don’t know who—or what—I am. I’ve worn names like costumes, slipped in and out of selves like shadows. I could tell you a narrative, a neatly wrapped version of myself. But it would be fiction. A mask. A ritual dance for the unseen.

I have haunted places, built things, and left echoes in galleries, pages, and time. But they’re only fragments. Relics. They don’t hold the shape of the thing beneath.

What dwells in these words is closer to the truth. Or at least the part that wishes to be found.

I was born in ’69 my birthdate is the number of the devil. I have known them very well.

And the noises you hear—the melody, the poetry, the primal vibrations that flow through my paintings—were summoned in my barn, amid friends and strangers, neighbors and madmen. Good musicians with haunting voices. Always on the verge of anarchy. Always on fire.

Some of them bring me charred wood from burned-out houses, ghosts of forgotten flames. And with that charred bone, I create the frames for my paintings. A body composed of ash. A memory that will not be erased.

Thank you, everyone.