#brickbrickbrick

I've been having a lot of issues with migraines recently, including one pretty scary instance that I've been feeling aftereffects of for weeks. It's sucked! And it's had me thinking about a lot of big existential feelings while not able to look at screens or read much or leave the house without collapsing afterwards.

I've also been trying to make art about it, especially as I've been improving and more able to do things, to varying degrees of success, and while I'm not totally happy with this one I do want to get into the intentionality of this piece. Buckle up!

I feel like the head wound is pretty self explanatory for migraines. I found the main image in a comic from free comic book day, but I loved how well the shape aligned with the brain behind it. Just really great flow, if not terribly subtle.

The text is what I actually started with, pulling from a big pile of phrases and sentence fragments my partner was collecting for his own collage projects. They stood out to me and fell into place on their own, speaking to me because of my feelings recently about feeling trapped and sluggish inside my home. The three lines at the bottom and "I forget" are pretty much that, but the final line about faith is featured because the biggest thing I've been feeling is this heavy fear, of these events repeating but especially about the theoretical effects of my own death.

The embellishments are really highlighting where I've been feeling pain and discomfort and the ways that migraines affect my body. The big two are eyes, featured through the repeated panels at the bottom, and hands, which are highlighted in the stabber and repeated with the panel at the top.

I always get light sensitive when I have migraines, but recently it's been particularly bad since it's lingered for so long and prevented me from looking at screens too much or really doing anything ever. I never noticed how many of my hobbies rely on sight! Thank fuck for the vtm game I'm in, and for our awesome hosts who were so accommodating when I came over to play in the dark lol.

I also get numbness in my fingers sometimes during my migraines, usually my hands and my mouth. I got this a few weeks ago, but ever since I've been incredibly aware of the way my hands feel, and it seems to get worse when I go to sleep. It's not quite painful, but it doesn't feel good!

Finally, the swirly guys reflect how my auras look. I was going to make them sharp and violent to match the motion of the stab, but I realized it was always a lot softer than that, like fractals or fire on paper, and I wanted to reflect that visual effect in the piece. It sucks, but it can be really beautiful!

Some final thoughts: I was trying to decide if I thought of myself as the stabber or the stabbee, and I couldn't decide. I think it's both. There's no real separation between my mind and my body, its just me and me. I guess that comes up in the title too, TRAITOR IN MY HEAD. My mind isn't the traitor, my brain isn't the traitor, it's my brain and my mind and my body all integrated together. Everything is connected, which kinda makes it scarier.

I was also thinking about the hands, and how stabbing the head only makes his hands hurt. He's only hurting himself, because they're the same being. Again, it's all connected, no mind/body or us/them. It's just me.