Michael R. Jacobs Pre-Posthumous Publications

Michaelangelo @ Angelica's

(Dealing with Demonicas)

Spanning from late December 2005 till mid April 2006, I painted a tryptych mural. This was a room with three walls, and arch and a ceiling (each wall is approx. 8 X 10 feet) at Angelica's vegetarian restaurant and juicebar in Boone, NC. The night before I set those first brush strokes, a dream of Terence Mckenna in his botanical garden in Hawaii, languidly wandering into the distance, in peaceful contemplation of the Other Side, sparked the innitial creativity that propelled this adventure.

The mural no longer exists.

Who would have thought that New Life would be found in a vegetarian restaurant in Boone, North Carolina? I have fashioned as it were the cave at Angelica’s, secretly referred to as the A-hole, into a triptych gateway to a distinct number of worlds. ~~These are my modern hieroglyphs~~ This was my sandmandala....

Panel 1

The first panel depicts the creation of the mountain, in three parts.

(One)

The creation process:

A satyr has achieved mastery over the mystery on a self-fashioned bubble drum that causes reverberations that push the earthen mass upwards, rising in conformity with his resounding bubble break beats.

G(r)aciously the earth releases its stone tensions, as an effluvious vapor, effulgently manifesting (Two) the Mountain Spirit.

And finally, (Three) the created:

A temple stands like glass on an enigmatic hillside.

A shape-shifter lives there and has transformed himself into a lethargic turtle to check out what’s going on outside.

“Oh, just the creation of the mountain…” and he can return inside.

Placed in each corner, connecting the panels, are what I like to think of as faery tenements—crystalline blue tree structures that house the glowing orange light beings that sift to and fro, nestling in the morphing coral crevices.

Panel 2

The rising luminous orb taking to the sky in panel two cannot for the life of it remember whether it is sun or moon, whether it is reflecting or projecting. Its con-fusion takes form as psychic emanations spark from its luminous mass, evermore rising over the mountain ranges of an unearthly earth.

To the right of the waterfall a spacecraft has landed. It’s only temporary.

The entity collects bowlfuls of fuel from the waterfall’s force, to feed its navigational deity, who is graced by the company of a kantjil, whilst waiting for the ride to continue.

Their eventual departure leaves the architectural watermark that will eventually be built into a temple (to the right and up from the spacecraft) in honor of this ephemeral visitation.

Panel 3

The third and final panel depicts a character playing floral worlds into being on a strange keyboard with organ pipes that wick candle-flames.

At first I considered perhaps it was the music that propelled this vehicle onwards, thought-fueled, but it soon was made apparent that the vehicle was in fact a whole ‘nother brand of being, one who is perfectly content being used as a vehicle by the other—as long as it can eat as many of the little glowing dots that live in the faery tenements as it likes.

With these chimerical treats glowing in its belly like the fiber optic flutter of myriad butterfly wings, this being is endowed with the magical properties of flight.