I just finished reading Stephen King's Duma Key. It is a novel about a recovering artist who encounters the supernatural after a tremendous head injury. There are truths in this book that artists such as myself know to be true. They are truths that concern reality.
I am an artist who is recovering. I am recovering from a very slow-growing brain tumor that was removed from my head. Ever since I was little I have been able to see bits and pieces from the future. When I was a small child I had an accident in which I got hung from a cord. I was quite blue when my grandmother burst into the room and saved me. Much of my youth was filled with dreams of being with the dead. Many of these dreams were nightmares of escaping death, of drawing another future.
The drawing below was finished in 1995 when I was a student at The Savannah College of Art and Design. I have always seen bits and pieces of the future. I learned two years ago that I had a brain tumor, whose origins have been traced back to a time before art school when I was in the Marines. We know this from the very unique symptoms of my particular disease. Acromegaly it is called. It is a very slow-growing brain tumor, something that starts small and grows bigger and bigger, like a stack of dominoes waiting to cause problems.
The Stephen King book, although it held truths, also ended up missing the mark. Hit and miss, Stephen's work is like that. Sometimes you get an "IT" or something like "The Stand" or a work of genius like "The Dark Tower Series" and other times you get... "The Tommyknockers." I'm not saying the book is a total wash, it may have missed it's mark but it still hit some pretty high points.
Anyways, after reading Duma Key I have definitely made the decision to continue to be an artist. Duma Key is not going to stop me --- "Be brave. Don't be afraid to draw the secret things." --- Stephen King. I am an artist. I am fearless. I am illuminated.
I feel the "itch" to draw but I am content for the moment to put my thoughts down in sketch form and save them for my "Act Three." You should see a doozy of a sketch I have in mind. Still up in the noodle. I'm going to call it Persephone, or maybe... "Persephone Unbottled." Yes. Much better title, given that it fits Artist Ken D. Webber so fucking well. I'm sure Stephen King would understand. Do you?
"Crazy Man" copyright 1995 by Ken D. Webber; All Rights Reserved.
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