The Guided Tour

I am a collector - even though my lifestyle since the age of 19 has never allowed me to keep very much with me at any one time. Well, not much beyond the practical, and the practical has come to consist of less and less as the road goes on.

The non-practical things that I do keep with me don't have as much to do with nostalgia as they do with proof. Some I've held onto for years because they were valuable proofs of things I had learned, seen, heard or of people that I had met and who's connection to me required or produced some kind of marker. Some just snuck along 'cause they've always happened to fit in whatever suitcase I was living out of. Some have always been with me, some I have rediscovered and some have just shown up at the last moment. Many have been given away, lost or left behind because I no longer needed physical proof. I think things find their own way and have their own itineraries. We just help them move about. They never leave the planet so it's a sure bet they're always somewhere meaning something to someone or just being forgotten for a while. I don't tend to miss them. I usually forget them till they're pointed out to me.

For most of my life I have kept a small case somewhere in or near the area where I was sleeping. I don't know what it held originally. It may have been my grandfather's. In it though is where the majority of my proofs are stored. There are a few photos, tickets stubs, bits of tile from a temple, odd shaped stones, jewelry, letters, rings, souvenirs, some cinnamon bark and so on.

Though I only open it occasionally to put something in (and often, at the same time, take something else out) this case is the one thing I have always known the location of - even when I wasn't sure where I myself was. It would be the one thing I would grab if I had to grab just one thing: before the passport, before the wallet, before the cellphone, before the keys. Fire, deportation, the police arriving to kick me out of the squat, those I could pretty much handle. Losing the case would have meant losing the few bits of proof I had and more importantly still needed. This, in my view, was not an option.

"So what is a Fairy Cowboy, exactly ?", she asked me.

I smiled and with an unfamiliar (and very fake) drawl to my voice said "it's kinda like a Fairy Godmother ma'am ''cept ah'll turn your cow patties into corvettes....." Not very exact I guess. Not even very funny, but if cowboy humor has always been obscure then Fairy Cowboy humor is even farther out there. I usually don't get it myself but it just vibrates right on my tongue till I breath behind it and it just comes out.

That wasn't the moment I created him, but it was the moment I understood him. The moment that that side of me presented itself as my travelling companion for the next bit coming up. I had been waiting for him for a long time. He'd always been there. That keeps happening. I don't get it.

He's a bit of a Do-It-Yourself archetype. A collage of my collective unconscious. He also tells really bad jokes.

So we've been walking along together for a while now. Not going anywhere in particular. Not really moving. Just keeping each other company, getting to know each other again, living the day to day and figuring out just what it is we think need to take with us and what needs to find its new home. We're planning a very big adventure (though we may not go anywhere.) We look for foxes in the city and howl with coyotes on the prairie. We talk to each other about very little things and listen to others talk about very big ones. We spend a lot of time thinking about time and the time before and we've worked our way up to a current working knowledge of who we are now and what now could be - the good and the bad and the rest.

Theories mostly. Backed by small bits of proof found in a small case not far from our bed. We may even be leaving that behind soon.

This is a self-portrait of us. It's a bit of proof in itself as to who we are and that we were here. Though some of it is just for decoration - just like us. It's a curio chest that will never have to be dusted. It's a sculpture for a for my good friend Gunder's garden. That's all it is.

Welcome to the guided tour.

Forensic evidence leads us to believe that this is probably the first apparition of the Fairy Cowboy. Very Hollywood. I was three but it seems I already knew the look, the posture and how to pull off a white turtleneck in the most unlikely of situations. This photo was the inspiration for the sculpture's pose: the next thing one would do after looking slyly to the side: draw and say Bang!

Bang would've still acceptable at that time. Later, I would fall from grace with my friends as I failed to learn the names and correct sound effects of more sophisticated weaponry. Hence I became an Indian, a spy or someone who needed to be rescued from more and more perilous situations - often with a circus theme involving a trapeze and evil asian clowns.

_______________________________

The following photos show the work in progress. I start with an idea. The idea changes, mostly because things fall over or because after a certain amount of scrutinizing I knock them over. Once the cement has set there is not much you can do but make your peace with it and hope that it will make sense in the end. Usually if you've made your peace then it does make sense...

Making a self portrait has been an intensely interesting interior experience. I would like to thank all the folks who've been around me as I have obsessed about details, techniques and meanings of this and that. Your patience and advice have been greatly appreciated. I hope I can be there for you when you make yours - and you should, because you are fantastic people.

I've set up this section in response to the questions: "What is that?", "What did you get that?" and "What does that mean?". Anyone who has known me at least ten minutes knows better than to ask those questions. Especially the last one. Especially if they have an appointment coming up. I do go on sometimes. I promise to keep it brief. I promise to break that promise sometimes. I promise to not mind if you hit the back button on your browser and just look at the pictures. I promise not to mind if you call me to ask me how to do that Dad.

Let's go shall we?


The cowboy boots are root beer mugs from any one of many steak houses found across the United States. I love root beer. The wings, sprouting from his heels, I ripped off of an angel I found in an alley in the trash just after Christmas- seemed right somehow. The Scarab came from Morocco via someone who wanted to bring me a gift from there. It really was the perfect gift, though I didn't know it then. The Duct tape and marbles and pebbles holding it all down were acquired from various places.


I don't know if this is the proper way to make a cement slab. I found no mention of using a reconstructed box held together by duct tape and lined with an old shower curtain on the various websites I visited while I did my research. The newspaper, however, was recommended. There are a lot of rules as to how to do these things properly. I suggest you read them all. The first time I ever tried to lay a foundation upon which I could build my life I did so on shifting sands. Most of it came crashing down. I do learn from my mistakes. I've learned that I'm not the foundation kind.

Man made products tend to ressemble mankind. Cement needs water to bind. Concrete continues to harden as it ages. Cement, the main ingredient in concrete, needs moisture to cure. Glass slowly flows downward through time. Metal rusts. These are statements that the Fairy Cowboy likes to say out loud as if they were meaningful.


It would be wrong to not mention the Hermes connection here. The winged root beer boots are a dead give away. Ok, I confess: He's my God. The Fairy Cowboy is nothing more than a Trans-National, Cold-War, Post-Feminist, B-movie fusion of me with Hermes - and we have the same calves. It's called syncretic conflation and it's a good fit. Everything that happens to me seems to relate to the realms he governed over back in the day. At least I have decided to see it that way, and it's my life. The more I learn about him the more I understand things about myself.
I could go on and on about him but I won't go on and on about him though it would be wrong not to at least mention him. Besides, he'll be back later I think. If you don't know him it might be good to honour him before going on with this tour.

To honour him: Type the letters of his name into any search engine and get lost... he is the God of the Internet.


The boots get their lovely caramel colouring from a broken bottle of Belgian beer. A very fine Red Chimay - no skimping here. My connection to Belgium is stronger and richer than their beer, it had to be included - if only in its imported incarnation. The bottle was dropped off the lower level of the fire escape in a tied plastic bag and then carefully carried up to the studio, where it was reassembled in its present form using a pair of chop sticks covered in duct tape. The toe area of the right boot is filled by a gaudy flower shaped broach of blue rhinestones. The creator has said that this is to represent the presence of low grade arthritis in his toe joints after a dance career of twenty years. The Fairy Cowboy has said that he just thinks it looks pretty in the sunlight.


The second apparition of the Fairy Cowboy happened to while hitchhiking on the Trans-Canadian Highway: I was 19. I had just dropped out of school and finished my first stint as an illegal worker at the Blue Note Café in Winnipeg. I was going east to Ottawa and then on to Montreal. Nobody knew where I was. It was early June. Warm rain drizzled on me non-stop. There were very few cars and fewer still that would stop for a wet hitchhiker so I walked and worked on my thumbing technique. Sometimes I got lucky and I'd get a short ride. Mostly I walked.

Early one morning along "The World's Longest Continually Paved Road!" I came upon a section that for some reason hadn't gotten paved yet; it was just a graded dirt road. At the spot where the pavement ended I climbed down into the gully that ran parallel and up onto the higher ground on the other side of it. The rain had stopped for a while and the sun was coming up warm and hazy. I took off my backpack and my shirt and lay them in the tall grasses. I left a stick in the ground to mark the spot and then went back up to the highway/road and just started walking.

It was quiet and I said to myself: "this is all you really have in the world."

I walked like that for about three hours.

Sometimes I whistled.

When ever I heard a car coming i left the road and hid. I didn't want a ride anymore.

The road became paved again and led through a forest. The outer edge of the forest was too quiet. It was nearly summer but everything was grey and black- the leaves, the pine needles, the grasses. I kept walking and the quiet got louder, colder, thicker: all those things you never want to hear quiet do. Soon there was nothing but bare, charred branches, ashed at their tips.

It was smooth and beautiful.

It was acid rain.

I was in a dead place with nothing but my cut-off jeans and tennis shoes.

And that was really all I had.

I whistled.

I kept going forward till the crisped leaves started appearing again and eventually life made itself known with all its dappling green mellowness and birdsong and bugbuzz. It all looked wrong at that moment, like it was trying too hard to be alive, but then I guess the approach of death will do that.

I turned around.

I walked back through the dead zone, over the dirt road and as I approached the spot where the pavement began I watched the approach of the stick on the other side of the gully. It was there I tore in two. One part of me wanting to keep walking with all I really had, and the other part knowing that there were still other things that really had me.

Most of the day had past and I caught a ride with a trucker all the way to Thunder Bay. He played an 8-track tape of "Elvis in Concert" : Elvis' last and perhaps least. He played it too loud through the blown speaker next to my head. 8-track tapes never stop. There was no way to talk, and, apparently no way to turn down the volume. So he drove and I slept, visions of a nearly dead, fat, warbling Elvis dancing in the right side of my head, the stillness of the dead forest in the left.

The boots symbolize the path: that's all I wanted to say.


The scarab:
From my horoscope for the week beginning March 9th, by Rob Breszny:
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Dung beetles were considered sacred and lucky by the ancient Egyptians. In fact, the seemingly lowly insect, also known as a scarab, was worshiped as a symbol of transformation and resurrection, in part because it derives its nourishment from the waste matter of other animals. Since it also pushes balls of dung to its nest, it was thought to resemble the god Ra rolling the sun through the heavens. During the coming week, Aries, the scarab will be your power animal. May it inspire you to turn crap into treasure as you're reborn from the deadness of the past.
Crap into treasures huh? I prefer cow patties into Corvettes! But it was a nice affirmation to get this one month after having cemented my scarab in under the boot. Thanks Rob! But I'm stepping on my power animal... I don't know how I'm going to explain that one, um.... Let's move on shall we?


Ok. The right knee and thigh are composed of of two perfume bottles from the store I am currently working at. I don't know if I can mention the name here. I would like to say thank you to the folks above me for letting me re-use these and many other upcoming bits of glass.


Inside the thigh is a small icon of Saint Agatha. Don't know where I got it. I know I found it in the street but where that street was is unclear. Let's just say Europe.

From a previous email to Dermod:
Thanks for the link guy.... I've always liked Agatha, hence her inclusion in the right thigh of my self portrait. I first came upon her while learning to bake bread during my year long stint as a vegetarian in Paris (cue soundtrack). She's the patron saint of breadmakers, nursemaids, bellringers... The "repeated cruelties" she suffered which led to her "glorious death" (of which "we still possess no reliable information" - though we are looking, cause we need it, bad) ended with her having her breasts cut off. Some pretty hardcore oils of that moment do exist... She didn't die from that 'cause Peter went and visited her in her cell and healed and restored her paps. Later she was hauled out over the coals to die.

This is all hearsay of course... Yeah verily.

Mostly she is represented as a woman carrying a platter upon which two breasts, and in more discreet, germanic regions two round loaves of bread, are placed (as she is in my Fairy Cowboy)... she also protects against fire, earthquakes, natural disasters, famine, lightning and a bunch of other things - and of course has now taken up the breast cancer victims cause.

She's a busy lady. I guess my choice to use her icon as representative of my female side has some interesting implications. Does it help that she is in a perfume bottle?


The left leg is made of a blue drinking glass bought in a second hand store... inside it is a burnt out light bulb from work. It's set in a soft metal coil and looks a bit like a snake. It glows purple in the sunlight. The Fairy Cowboy likes that a lot.


The fact that he is walking forward caused me to scrutinize much more than I was used to scrutinizing.... I remember in Art History that the Italian's re-discovery of the Ancient Greek contrapposto in sculpture was a major marker for the beginning of the Renaissance. When you actually try to do this you understand why Europe stayed in the Dark Ages for so long. I haven't really achieved it here. I blame the medium.

But in a way I think the whole contrapposto thing is over-rated. It ended up shifting the focus of how we view people to the exterior, to the pose. We're still dealing with the fall out and it's affected us more than we know. It may not be a bad thing but it is a little unbalanced.

One of my best jobs was modeling for the "Anatomy in Motion" class at the New York Academy of Art. It was a three month long gig that paid well and didn't ask much of me but to walk around naked while the students observed how things were working beneath my skin. Dr. Gianfagna, a physical anthropologist, worked us through the evolution of the species, as well as the species' evolving understanding of that process, using me as his second chalkboard. This here chalkboard paid attention as he took the class from the initial spark of life on this planet to me. There were some disturbing moments when I worried I might not come out right; but we got there in the end.

He was a Roman Catholic scientist from the Bronx teaching evolution in a classical art school: so it was just a question of having faith that all my bits would all fall into place.

One day Dr. Gianfagna berated the students while they were sketching me in the warm up period of the class. He had been walking behind the students watching them hurriedly try to reproduce the muscles and tendons and bones correctly, the way they had seen them on all those statues they had copied. He told me to put on my robe and sit down. The students protested that they still had more warm up time. He said:
"Why, what are you going to do with it? Continue to copy Ronald? Try to show just how the light falls on his metatarsals? Do you have any idea how offensive that is to me?"

The students were a bit confused. He slowly put his unlit cigar stub out of his mouth and put it down. In the six weeks of the course, I had never seen that happen. No one else had either.

This little old guy was mad.

"How dare you try to just copy Ronald! You don't just copy life! Do you realize that deep inside Ronald there is a tiny fraction of the first moment of life?! Do you realize that while you sit there trying to make him fit into some well lit idealized greek statue that he is breathing in and out particles of dust that have filtered through the universe from Venus and Mars?!

I have to admit. I had never thought about that. It had been a shitty week, it had just gotten a whole lot cooler.

"Your drawings are sterile! You are so busy trying to get the perspective right that you don't even see that there's a young naked man in front of you! Doesn't that even turn you on?!"

The girls in the class pulled out an objection concerning the appropriateness of that comment in a place of learning. My mouth was hanging open and under my robe I realized I had a hard on. This had never happened before.

"I'm not saying you should jump on him right here or anywhere else. I'm saying you should recognize the sexual energy within you caused by all the chaos of existence that is happening within him. Your job as artists is to learn how to channel that sexual energy down through your pencils and charcoal and try to express it. Look at DaVinci and Michaelangelo, look at the Greek and Roman sculptures you copy so carefully. The anatomy is all over the place. They didn't know half of what I've taught you but they were definitely turned on by the models in front of them. That's why they look alive. That's why we still look at them!

Big Silence in the room. He picked up his cigar and put it back in his mouth. He came over to me and asked me to finish up the warm up poses. I asked him if I could have five minutes. I told him why. He laughed and told the class to take a break...

Like I said: a great job. I found myself thinking a lot about that day as I tried to cement my glassware and trinkets into some shape or form.


ah now we get to the good stuff... candle holder buttocks lighting the way...... the structure of the pelvis getting in the way. What funny creatures we would be if we stopped at the pelvis. "What funny creatures we become when we do" , said the Fairy Cowboy.


The first thought for the buttocks was, as you can see, a little different than what followed. I liked the way the Dollar™ moved through the chaps, but it moved away form the self-portrait aspect of the piece. Money has never held a huge energy for me- and it's not just about the Dollar™. I tried Euros™ and Bhat and Rupees as well but couldn't get used to it. I tried to think of it as, at most, a pain in the ass that we all had to live with. But the Fairy Cowboy stepped forward and found something better...


... a disco ball.

"Dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire"
Robert Lee Frost (March 26th 1874- January 29, 1963) Poet Laureate 1958-1959.

"Shake, shake, shake - shake, shake, shake
Shake your booty, shake your booty
Oh, shake, shake, shake - shake, shake, shake
Shake your booty, shake your booty"
Harry Wayne Casey (January 31, 1951- ) Grammy Award Winner 1976

A note on the feather: Yes it is a real feather.
Die Feder ist mächtiger als das Schwert. La plume est plus forte que l'épée. The quill is stronger than the sword. Now there are a quite a few men that will dispute that. They may reverse it if they wish. Conquering or communicating. I have tried both but I am more into the later. The former has its place but that place has always seemed a bit predictable, weighted down with rules. It is easier though. I like a man to be telling me a story and be listening to mine, even if we're just making it up as we go along. Yes, we're talking about sex.


The torso is made of a tequila bottle I found in the trash. I love tequila. It's the silkiest, nastiest thing around. It has led me down some amazing roads especially when it comes to expressing myself vertically. Plus the etching on the bottle as well as the window where the label were too perfect for the little drama I hoped to set there.

The key was given to me in a "rite of passage" moment from someone who felt I had finally passed some rite. A key to the kingdom is how it was put. When the kingdom turned out to have a very ornate door but no real walls I was devastated. I went to the Gold Bar with a friend and ordered a bottle of Tequila. It was the first time I ever drank to get drunk. I failed. Having grown up at a higher altitude than New York City had given me a tolerance to alcohol that made it very difficult for me to get falling down drunk. My friend didn't have the same problem. I helped him home and walked around the East Village soberly, kind of disappointed. It was the first night that I began thinking of moving to Europe.

The heart shaped lock I found in Lisbon at the Feira da Ladra - the Thieves' Market. Most of the world has fleas, Lisbon has thieves. Though it has also been known as the Feira das Almas- The Soul's Market. Did I mention that Hermes was G. O. D. of thieves and the psychopomp? The heart-shaped lock was at the bottom of a small box I bought there, it was filled with little religious trinkets and handkerchiefs- there was no key. The box and its other contents are long gone and I am now leaving the heart behind.

The suitcase: I do try to keep my baggage packed and to a minimum, but every now and then it comes undone and gets strewn about the place. I try to do this in private but it does sometimes happen that there are witnesses. I have never managed to leave it behind completely.

I am amazed at the people who put out personal ads seeking a long term relationship with someone who has no baggage. I wonder where those people could be. The morgue?


My mother or father told me this story: When I was at some small age, I was asked by someone of a larger age what I wanted to be when I grew to be an age similar in size to theirs. I told them I wanted to be an eagle. Kids say the darnd'est things and that large person knew that and so they tried to pursue with their inquiry into my future larger being by laughing gently and saying "you can't be an eagle..."

I had already learned enough about "can't" to know that there was no getting around it with larger folk. Not while they were looking, at least. So I thought a while and told them "well, then I want to be a wild horse." More laughter and that small glint of embarrassment in their eyes. "You can't be an eagle or a wild horse because you're a little boy and little boys have to want be a doctor or a lawyer or a fireman or something like that..."

"Oh, then I'll be a fireman." I had the red fire truck already. It didn't work out though.

I later shifted to marine biologist. I had never seen the sea but I figured if I could just collect all the seashells in the world that would qualify me for a place on one of Jacques Cousteau's television specials. I have been told since that this is indeed how it works. The procural of this dried Hippocampus Erectus was a major score for a kid in Michigan.

The current Wikipedia entry explains: They are notable for being one of only a few species where the males get pregnant. A seahorse pregnancy lasts approximately two to three weeks. Seahorses are also unusual among fish for being relatively monogamous.

Seemed like the perfect steed for a Fairy Cowboy.

There. On the inside of the elbow. That secret spot. A smooth folded place to stroke. The first place where you feel the reverberation of (what? discomfort? pain? shivering? tingling? pleasure?) when you strike your funny bone. No one laughs at that moment. It is the place of irony not humor. It's very odd, not even a bone actually. There's that brief look of surprise in their eyes as they feel something they so rarely feel. A look we all recognize and yet can never reproduce at will. The surprise travels down the radial nerve to the hand. Which almost cramps.
An open mouth fits there intimately as well as the neck of a friend, roughly, as you walk down the street, singing a bit too loud a bit too late. Do the math and it doesn't work.
I've never really understood this place. There. On the inside of the elbow. That secret spot.


Finding a left hand is much more difficult than finding a right hand. There are many more choices of right hands. It is a right hand that knocks on door knockers, right hands that hold your rings, right hands that form the delicate handles on drawers and cupboards. This left hand was a note card holder. It was attached by a spring to a plate. By pushing on the wrist the fingers raised up to insert the note. Did I mention the Hermes was the messenger?

Over the past month and a half I have had to take this position hundreds of times in front of the mirror on my bathroom door. Trying to get as close as I could to where everything should go. I gotten so good at it I no longer have to close the blinds when I do it.


Bang! The right hand is also a message holder. It should stand up on its fancy cuff of a table or something. There is a slit in the index finger where you can insert a note.


My mother made the porcelain head in the eighties when she was making porcelain dolls as a hobby. It's covered here to avoid staining. The left should contains fairy lights from the strand that was wrapped around the Angel I ripped the wings off of.

The right shoulder is filled with the ribbon from a cassette tape. I have always been a sound freak. I love all qualities of recording. I am not a snob in terms of what is good sound. I appreciate good sound quality when I get it. I appreciate rough sound quality when I get it. The Bang Olufsen System and The AM Radio In The Kitchen walk hand in hand through my aural landscape and I simply refuse to change this.

The tape in the shoulder celebrates the fine art of the MixTape. I am from the MixTape generation. We were the first to be able to reach out and push record. The first to fast forward and rewind. The first to splice and pause. The first to hear our own giggles and to erase them. The first to soundtrack our lives and Walk Man! It was the seed of all this creative chaos about us right now. Like the East Village, the Bastille, Bruxelles Centrum and Lisboa I feel very blessed to have seen it before its gentrification. I shan't mourn its evolution because I've moved on to CD's and am looking into Mashups and such.

The tape in the shoulder is actually the recording of my psychic reading conducted via telephone. So my voice is there and perhaps some of my story to be...


This picture already says what it needs to say. Did I mention that this is a self portrait?



This reminds me of all those cookery books which only show you the proper technique and hand positions of things you already know how to do.


et voila!

yeah, that's me....


The Fairy Cowboy always chooses his accessories last. Simply because he doesn't know how to accentuate himself if he doesn't know who he is. This time he has chosen a stunning Chakra belt buckle. Though not as well known as the others, this is is basically the Chakra that helps him hold him the center together as he tries to reconcile the extremes. When this Chakra is closed it is a very dire thing indeed: for if the center does not hold the whole outfit is ruined. The still point is lost in a whirling vortex of confusion and one quickly leaves "glamorous", passes quickly through "gloppy" and is quickly just plain "sloppy". The Fairy Cowboy knows that with his limited resources he must mind this and does do his best.


And of course there's the hat. But a hat is more than a hat. It's the way you wear it that decides who you are and what you want. Though it's something you see and sense it was summed up in the ™not nominated for an Oscar™ movie "Transamerica" :
"You know when you wear your cowboy hat if you wear it forward like that it means you're lookin' for trouble. If you wear it back like that it means you're not lookin' for trouble. If you wear it off to the side it means you're out to impress the ladies..."

After a great struggle with the God Epoxy, the Fairy Cowboy is wearing his hat slightly forward and off to the side. You may interpret this in anyway you wish. His hat doesn't exactly fit him though it does suit him. The Fairy Cowboy knows that this is to be expected.


Thanks for taking the tour! Unfortunately there is no gift shop, no café, not even a coat check... but stop by again soon and feel free to email me any comments, criticisms, witticisms and/or critiques at the link in my profile. Blue skies to you! Ronirokit!