Self Portrait Number 13:The "Replicas Word Salad" Edition

In the last two weeks I feel I have achieved a breakthrough in my drawing. It started when I started working on Self Portrait Number 12 and I put on Gary Numan's Replicas album.

Me and my friend, Jay, discovered Numan, I think in 1981 shortly after we had started reading Philip K. Dick. I'm not too sure of the timeline but we discovered Philip K. Dick shortly before he died in 1982.

We were drawn to Numan's music in part because his early albums have a science fiction theme. The self-titled Tubeway Army, the first full album by Numan and his band starts off, "Flow my tears, the new police song.." which is an obvious reference to Dick's 'Flow My Tears,' the Policeman Said.

The second album, Replicas, takes place in a future where humanity and technology are alternately at war with each other and loving each other and certain characters on the album are either humans attempting to become machines or machines emulating human traits.

While all science fiction is really a reflection and commentary on the era in which it was written, it is very interesting to compare Gary Numan's vision of Machmen, 'Friends,' the police, and humans and see how it compares to today.

In Numan's dystopia, there are electronic robots known as 'Friends' that seem to exist for humans to love, they have different faces but they are all programmed the same and at times, while listening to the album one is never sure if the character narrating the song is a 'Friend' or a human. Or if it is the opposite of what it claims to be and is simply confused in its thinking.

In the Machmen, the protagonist appears to be a human trying to fit in with machine culture, he starts out eager to please whoever or whatever he is singing the song:

"I'd give it all up for you, even become a number just for you. The strangest living boy you could ever wish to see. That's me."

But he cannot quite seem to be able to quit his humaness, first he grows to resent himself:

"then my mind turned on me with a vengeance I had never known, my own."

And later he turns on his new culture:

"I saw you behind the wall, I even heard you laugh at me, you disgust me tonight with your answer to something new, that's you."

Today we have our own version of 'Friends' we call smart phones and while I don't feel I have any level of intimacy with my smart phone, I will not share my phone with anybody who I do not have a level of intimacy with. If a stranger asks to borrow my phone, I cannot lend it to him and I even feel violated that he has asked.  Yet if it is someone I have a level of intimacy with, I don't even think twice about lend them my phone.

Very often, I wonder who I am when I look in the mirror.

I actually took the picture as an interesting self portrait to draw because of the weird way we have mirrors in our bathroom.  First of all, it is not easy to find a place in the bathroom where one can stand and have two faces reflected in both mirrors, so that was the first challenged.

Then, of course, starting the drawing process. I actually tried to start on this drawing a few weeks ago but only ended up making some rough sketches.  I am very satisfied in how this one eventually turned out.

It took me three or four drawing sessions to complete. I had almost completed it by the time it would have been due, which was Wednesday but I ended up finishing it up on Friday, not having any time or energy to work on Thursday. Overall, I like it.  Seeing them side by side for the first time, I do see where improvements could be made. Right now, I am adverse to even using a straight edge as I train my mind to draw what it sees, to the best of my ability.