Title: November 13th - 13:50
Medium: Super-8 film
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Resolution: 2880 x 2160
File Type: H.264 Codec / MP4.
Comments: How did I end up in Bhutan? It is kind of a funny story. A place I always wanted to visit as it is supposedly the happiest place on Earth with a carbon footprint that regenerates the planet! The king is ruling with Bitcoin and walks the streets amongst his people. It was said they once got rid of the "robots" aka stoplights just because it costed people their traffic controller jobs. A man for his people. A collector from my discord group suggested I come to Bhutan. I said, lets do it! and I was dead serious. This country requires an invitation by a local in order to get a visa to visit. Well my online friend hooked me up with his local friend who was also a travel guide and helped me get permission to enter the kingdom. It was a synchronistic call to come visit a special country with an orange dragon on its flag. The flight in is also precarious as you are inside a massive dome shaped mountain range, the pilots are extremely skilled. It was one big yes to a strange adventure to a Buddhist paradise of happy people. Rinzin was my guide and taught me stories and brought me to many sacred places. I made his portrait at the Punakha Dzong by the river. He told me stories about why there are so many Phalluses around the city. It represented a Lama named Drukpa Kunley. He who lived at the turn of the 16th century and who was popularly known as the “Divine Madman” Rinzin made me laugh with his sexualized jokes and shared with me Kunleys reproductive organ, is called the "Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom" as it unnerved demons and demonesses and he subdued them with his magic stick. It is also said that he is "perhaps the only saint in the religions of the world who is almost exclusively identified with phallus and its creative power." I had a great time with Rinzin and his funny dick jokes. He even took me to a special temple for fertility that many women from around the world visit to help them with their pregnancy. The stories of the Divine Madman are comical, yet also teach wise lessons in a strange unconventional Buddhist way. He fought many demons and struck them down with his Thunderbolt. Rinzin and I fed the ducks off the bridge that leads inside the Dzong and we ran into his long lost uncle. It was a trip! We carried on back to town to meet my online friend, Clinton, who manifested me to arrive in Bhutan. He moved there years ago with his wife and kids to teach at an elementary school with the children. We hoped in the van and the final stop for the night was a handmade paper mill! I love paper because its such an intimate process with pulp that becomes an instrument to scribe on. They used hemp leaves and flower to create viscerally embossed papers that are unique to anything I have ever seen before. I had no idea what I would use this paper for but I ended up buying out the shop of 100 different sheets for a future project, You just can't pass up an opportunity like this when you meet the people making the paper and the paper itself is art. The last time I was trigger happy buying paper was in Egypt a year prior when I visited a papyrus mill and was taught how they make paper out of the papyrus plant and instantly bought almost 800 sheets to send back to the US. That inevitably was used to create my Smoke and Mirrors Tarot Scrolls. And come to think of it, the paper I received in Bhutan ended up creating the Omega Arcana with artificial intelligent prints derived from Smoke and Mirrors. I love to travel the world and discover different types of paper, because each paper tells a story from where its from and transforms how it is utilized. Ultimately, to make art and tell a new story.
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