I Am Metal - I Am Metal (acrylic painting on board)

 

I’m a bit weird and don’t see my brain as a small ball of grey mush but a cornucopia of colours and myriads of mazes. If a surgeon removed the dura I hope a volcanic eruption of splendid colours would come spurting from my skull.

 

Sometimes I have to turn off my emotions and the cavern of colours and 68 floors of abstract shapes and in my brain have to be turned off. Just a small portion of my brain is working as I say to myself, “I am metal. I am metal.” Feelings are switched off, I’m a unfeeling robot and working as a machine. These days its often when I’m out jogging. I try to do 500 miles a year (or 10 miles/week) and sometimes I don’t want to go. I’m lying and bed and think to myself, “I Am Metal,” and I get out of a bed and go. When I’m jogging up a long hill like Crescent Road or Yes Tree Lane I make myself into a machine and think (and sometimes say) to myself, “I am metal - I am metal!” Feelings of fatigue won’t be processed as I have no feelings. Slowing to a walk won’t be implemented as I have no feelings. A metal generator down below is running me.

 

The first time I can recall turning my emotions off is at my grandparents funerals. I’d never known anyone of blood die before and can’t remember going to funerals before. Sitting in the pews I thought the emotion might be too much so through most of the service I imagined my brain turning into a metal machine of cogs, pulleys, taps, chains, pipes and dials, most feelings turned off.

 

I slit my wrist on a pane of glass in the front door once and was rushed up to hospital. Months later I was dreading having the stitches out. My gashed wrist was a dog’s dinner of a mash of a mess and still sore as I laid it on table for the doctor. As he picked at the stitches I started sweating and felt like I was going to vomit. “Let me know if you’re going to faint or throw up,” the doctor said. I said I’d be okay and told myself “I am metal. I am metal!”, turned off emotions and endured it vomit-free.

 

Here is an A4-size pit-stop painting (pit-stop meaning done quickly) representing my mind. Those flashes of metal you can see are sheets of steel to be called on when needed. That oblong bit in the middle shows where the floor of my mind has been excavated to reveal deep dense reserves of mighty metal that can get me through anything (except death.) I might hang this on my bedroom wall and glance at it before I leave the house to endure something I don't want to do and think you myself, I Am Metal. I Am Metal. I told you I was weird.