“Behaviours could be changed, attitudes modified, mentalities transformed, but it was hard to have a dialogue with the somatic habits of infancy. How could an infant express himself before he had a self to express, or the words to express what he didn’t yet have? Only the dumb language of injury and illness was abundantly available. There was screaming of course, if it was allowed.” – Edward St. Aubyn, At Last
Excoriate (main component), 1992 by Tetman Callis (about 2 in. by about 4 in. by about 2 in.; mixed media–French tchotchke, hanging wire, dye transfer dye, acrylic)
“Neither a soul nor a personal identity was needed to precipitate a human life, just a cluster of habits clinging to the hollow concept of independent existence, like a crowd of grasping passengers sinking the lifeboat they imagined would save them. In the background was the ever-present opportunity to slip away into the glittering ocean of a true nature that was not personal either.” – Edward St. Aubyn, At Last
Crayons #30, 1996 by Tetman Callis, from The King of Crayons (about 4 in. by about 10 in.; crayon on cedar)
“Before they became masters of the universe, usurers were consigned to the seventh circle of Hell. Under a rain of fire, their perpetually restless hands were a punishment for hands that had made nothing useful or good in their lifetime, just exploited the labor of others.” – Edward St. Aubyn, At Last
Crayons #29, 1996 by Tetman Callis, from The King of Crayons (about 4 in. by about 10 in.; crayon on cedar)
“Forget heroin. Just try giving up irony, that deep down need to mean two things at once, to be in two places at once, not to be there for the catastrophe of a fixed meaning.” – Edward St. Aubyn, At Last
Billy Bob Sweet Thang, 1996 by Tetman Callis (about 18 in. x about 15 in.; mixed media–photograph, stickers, bullets, macaroni, plywood)
“Suicide wore the mask of self-rejection; but in reality nobody took their personality more seriously than the person who was planning to kill himself on its instructions. Nobody was more determined to stay in charge at any cost, to force the most mysterious aspect of life into their own imperious schedule.” – Edward St. Aubyn, At Last
NYC 1992, Exterior #4, from NYC Exteriors Series #1 (copyright by Tetman Callis)
“What is there to do with money except spend it when you’ve got it or be bitter about it when you haven’t? It’s a very limited commodity in which people invest the most extraordinary emotions.” – Edward St. Aubyn, At Last
NYC 1992, Exterior #3, from NYC Exteriors Series #1 (copyright by Tetman Callis)
“All sex was prostitution for both participants, not always in the commercial sense, but in the deeper etymological sense that they stood in for something else. The fact that this was sometimes done so effectively that there were weeks or months in which the object of desire and the person one happened to be in bed with seemed identical could not prevent the underlying model of desire from beginning to drift away, sooner or later, from its illusory home.” — Edward St. Aubyn, Mother’s Milk
NYC 1992, Exterior #2, from NYC Exteriors Series #1 (copyright by Tetman Callis)
“There should be a superhero called Whateverman. Not an action hero like Superman or Spiderman, but an inaction hero, a hero of resignation.” — Edward St. Aubyn, Mother’s Milk
NYC 1992, Exterior #1, from NYC Exteriors Series #1 (copyright by Tetman Callis)
“Would America be just like he’d imagined it? Along with the rest of the world, Robert had lived under a rain of American images most of his life. Perhaps the place had already been imagined for him and he wouldn’t be able to see anything at all.
“The first impression that came his way, while the plane was still on the ground at Heathrow, was a sense of hysterical softness. The flow of passengers up the aisle was blocked by a red-haired woman sagging at the knees under her own weight.
“‘I cannot go there. I cannot get in there,’ she panted. ‘Linda wants me to sit by the window, but I cannot fit in there.’
“‘Get in there, Linda,’ said the enormous father of the family.
“‘Dad!’ said Linda, whose size spoke for itself.
“That certainly seemed typical of something he had seen before in London’s tourist spots: a special kind of tender American obesity; not the hard-won fat of a gourmet, or the juggernaut body of a truck driver, but the apprehensive fat of people who had decided to become their own airbag systems in a dangerous world. What if their bus was hijacked by a psychopath who hadn’t brought any peanuts? Better have some now. If there was going to be a terrorist incident, why go hungry on top of everything else?
“Eventually, the Airbags dented themselves into their seats. Robert had never seen such vague faces, mere sketches on the immensity of their bodies. Even the father’s relatively protuberant features looked like the remnants of a melted candle. As she squeezed into her aisle seat, Mrs. Airbag turned to the long queue of obstructed passengers, a brown smudge of tiredness radiating from her faded hazel eyes.
“‘Thank you for your patience,’ she groaned.
“‘It’s sweet of her to thank us for something we haven’t given her,’ said Robert’s father. ‘Perhaps I should thank her for her agility.’
“Robert’s mother gave him a warning look. It turned out they were in the row behind the Airbags.
“‘You’re going to have to put the armrests down for takeoff,’ Linda’s father warned her.
“‘Mom and me are sharing these seats,’ giggled Linda. ‘Our tushes are expanding!’
“Robert peeped through the gap in the seats. He didn’t see how they were going to get the armrests down.
“After meeting the Airbags, Robert’s sense of softness spread everywhere. Even the hardness of some of the faces he saw on that warm and waxy arrival afternoon, in the flag-strewn mineral crevasses of mid-town Manhattan, looked to him like the embittered softness of betrayed children who had been told to expect everything. For those who were prepared to be consoled there was always something to eat; a pretzel stall, an ice-cream cart, a food-delivery service, a bowl of nuts on the counter, a snack machine down the corridor. He felt the pressure to drift into the mentality of grazing cattle, not just ordinary cattle but industrialized cattle, neither made to wait nor allowed to.” — Edward St. Aubyn, Mother’s Milk
NYC 1991, Exterior #5, from NYC Exteriors Series #1 (copyright by Tetman Callis)
“It’s important not to treat children too well–they won’t be able to compete in the real world. If you want your children to become television producers, for instance, or chief executives, it’s no use filling their little heads with ideas of trust and truth-telling and reliability. They’ll just end up being somebody’s secretary.” — Edward St. Aubyn, Mother’s Milk
NYC 1991, Exterior #4, from NYC Exteriors Series #1 (copyright by Tetman Callis)
“Looking after children can be a subtle way of giving up. They become the whole ones, the well ones, the postponement of happiness, the ones who won’t drink too much, give up, get divorced, become mentally ill. The part of oneself that’s fighting against decay and depression is transferred to guarding them from decay and depression. In the meantime one decays and gets depressed.” — Edward St. Aubyn, Mother’s Milk
NYC 1991, Exterior #3, from NYC Exteriors Series #1 (copyright by Tetman Callis)
“Most people wait for their parents to die with a mixture of tremendous sadness and plans for a new swimming pool.” — Edward St. Aubyn, Mother’s Milk
NYC 1991, Exterior #2, from NYC Exteriors Series #1 (copyright by Tetman Callis)
“In general babies live in a democracy of strangeness. Things happen for the first time all the time–what’s surprising is things happening again.” — Edward St. Aubyn, Mother’s Milk
NYC 1991, Exterior #1, from NYC Exteriors Series #1 (copyright by Tetman Callis)
“Once you got words you thought the world was everything that could be described, but it was also what couldn’t be described. In a way things were more prefect when you couldn’t describe anything.” — Edward St. Aubyn, Mother’s Milk
NYC 1990, Exterior #8, from NYC Exteriors Series #1 (copyright by Tetman Callis)
“Neither revenge nor forgiveness change what happened. They’re sideshows, of which forgiveness is the less attractive because it represents a collaboration with one’s persecutors.” – Edward St. Aubyn, Some Hope
NYC 1990, Exterior #7, from NYC Exteriors Series #1 (copyright by Tetman Callis)