Elephant Shack

Sometimes I just make things without any rhyme or reason - make something out of nothing. Making something out of nothing is one of the best things an artist can do. If there is a reason to it than the reason may become apparent through the creative process - the finished work reveals the reason for its creation. This is the opposite of illustrating something. An illustration starts with an idea or a story or an object - a something of some kind - and gives visual representation to that something. "Elephant Shack" never revealed its reason, but it revealed a rhyme, a visual rhyme, and that visual rhyme is my friend, Steven Raspa's beard (former beard - he doesn't sport this style any longer).

We can see in this photo of Mr. Raspa that his beard is indeed very similar to the "neck" of the elephant in the collage above. I did not initially think of Raspa's beard when adding a photograph of a tapeworm to the top of a condemned shack and placing an elephant head on top of it. Only after all of these elements were assembled did I realize the likeness to Raspa's beard. I never thought of Raspa's beard as a parasite of any kind. It may have been a symbiotic attachment - I don't know, and that is none of my business. However, I thought that it was contained in a slinky, you know, the kind of spring toy:

Somethings come out of nothing like a strange beard grows an elephant from a plume of incense:

THE ELEPHANT

Behold the elephant bearing many dreams!
He farts profoundly and expands very greatly
Consciousness that floats like incense streams!
Like strings of pearls! Like jewels beheld innately!
Like harem girls spinning tales spoken ornately
Of a certain Sultan they served exclusively,
Who, arriving a little drunk, and only very lately,
Ad-libs an odd soliloquy spoken effusively,
"Death is but a mirage!" he states conclusively.
Tottering, his ivory tower trembles and it cracks
And across shimm'ring sands he stumbles elusively -
Like a drunken elephant covering up his tracks.
The fleeting visions of distant lands so strange to remember,
Like warming your hands by the glow of an incense ember.

(Sonnet IXX From the "99 Sonnets" by David Normal)