pied midden : issue no. 43 : big mean daddy : thomas little

calling all rock grinders & tea makers

Thomas Little is a magician, an ink-maker, a poet, an amateur ink historian, a painter, a radio tinkerer, an inventor, a mold (slime, that is) whisperer, and, well, an activist who takes guns out of the violence-stream by melting them in sulphuric acid and alchemizing them into ink. 

This month marks his fourth contribution of pigment to Ground Bright: Fog of War, a three-part pigment kit (containing oak gall dust, tree gum from artist Deborah Gorr, and ferrous sulphate) to which Thomas contributed the ferrous sulphate, the bluish crystals that are the first stage of the gun dissolution process. The crystals react with the tannins in oak galls (which I collected on Kalapuya lands, colonially-known as Oregon), resulting in a pale grey liquid that slowly turns black as it oxidizes and embeds itself in the fibers of the paper that absorbs it. 

What follows is not an interview. It’s a conversation, and a long one at that. Probably only a small handful of people will read it in its entirety. If you’re one of them, you’re basking in the beam of our appreciation and gratitude right now. The conversation is long but spicy. It’s peppered with rich, startling imagery and confessions of terror, bewilderment and awe. It’s a thinly-veiled outline for a manifesto for us pigment people. But it’s relevant to more than just pigment people, as it turns over themes that are unavoidable for anyone whose creative path intersects and veers from a relationship with the machine.

Last thing: this interview reads best when read out loud. If you’re in the company of people you love — going for a long drive, keeping them company while they cook for you or do the dishes, or just hanging out — you might consider taking turns reading this beast to each other. 

*A note: all of the images in this newsletter are screen shots from Thomas Little’s Instagram feed, @a.rural.pen. In the interest of authenticity, I’m not gonna try to hide that, so not cover up the little dots or arrows or whatever. I’m also not going to credit them or explain them  — you’ll have to either intuit what’s pictured here, or better, go hang out on his feed. Oh but, this: those people with the guns are his family. 

conversation between thomas little and tilke elkins:

breaking Instagram’s fourth wall

WPP: Thomas, you and I have been collaborating for the past four years, through Wild Pigment Project, and we’re both artists who talk often about our collaborations with different beings. You collaborate with slime mold. We both collaborate with iron, and so on. But there's a collaborator that we never talk about, at least not publicly, and that is… Instagram. 

I'm seeing this conversation a kind of tearing down of the fourth wall and shining the spotlight at the platform that allows us to do so much — and also, has some ways that it acts on us that we don't often share about. 

TL:  It's funny, you know, I like to gloss over the idea of Instagram. It’s easy to forget that it's not so ‘transmitter receiver.’ It’s filters, money-making filters and algorithmic filters and content filters and all these other things. It's easy to ignore that sometimes. A lot of times it's really obviously annoying — and even, detrimental to things. Yeah. You know, it's a strange time we live in. The increased presence of the middle man. Things become more and more convoluted in this weird fractal way where every little micro cent can be extracted from a few words that I type. It’s constantly involuting and I love constant involution in a lot of ways, but not when it's impeding me or doesn't really serve what I want to make happen in my world. So yeah.That's a little touch on the medium, definitely. The medium is the message. The medium is Instagram. Let’s call the beast by its name.

WPP: Yes, Instagram. We're saying your name now and we know you can hear us because we see the ways that you listen.

Let’s dive right into that word, ‘impeding.’ Is there a concrete example of how you feel impeded by Instagram?

TL: Oh, sure. Well, you know, I feel like back a long time ago, it wasn't such a big deal. Maybe I didn't notice it. Or maybe it was because I hadn’t reached a certain level of, you know, followers or therefore attention from the machine-creature. But one example is: how do I reach out for help in a way that’s palatable for the machine? Like, you know: I have a bad tooth, I need to get my tooth fixed. I could do something direct like say, “I need help with my teeth.” But it's one of those things where you gotta learn this dance. You have to make it more interesting, more exciting, more different. You have to say, “My life isn’t ugly, it’s really pretty!”

I need help, but I have to employ all this artifice to make that happen. And in fact it’s gotten a lot harder to just say, “I’m selling this, this is for sale,” because it’s automatically “shadow-blocked” or whatever. So you gotta get creative. And it’s funny because I wonder, is this all in my head?? There is some level of reality to it, I know, but, is this side-stepping, like “I’m gonna use an @ instead of the letter A in my Patreon,” or these other weird little codes that you slip in thinking “I’m getting one up on “the thing” —  is that even real? Or is it some sort of superstitious behavior? Some sort of folk magic leaching in when you’re trying to sneak past the ever-seeing electric eye? 

That’s the sort of thing that gets caught in my head because sometimes I’ll put something up and being semi-direct and then I think, “Ok, maybe it missed me that time!” It’s one of those crazy-making things. It’s like the algorithm’s in my head. That’s something I think about a lot. Like, wouldn’t it be hilarious if we’re all just self-regulating our Instagram accounts through the certain languages we’re using? It’s insidious and frightening and I don’t like it very much, but at the same time, how else would I have even gotten where I am today without having this way to access people? And like, specifically in such a niche world as pigments, you know? There wouldn’t be a way. Even if there was a newsletter you could subscribe to, this wouldn't have the traction that we've got through Instagram.

WPP: Yeah, absolutely. You've just gone deep into the nadir of the spiral and then kind of shot out into the light, which is the tension that this collaboration is, I think. Talking about the blurring between intuition, magic, synchronicity and the ever-present total infiltration of the algorithm and the — let’s just say it, surveillance that is these systems. I'm not alone, you're not alone in observing that the ads that Instagram shows us are culled from references that are not always ones that we've even entered into a machine. Right? So, that’s not paranoia…of course, it LOOKS like paranoia, but it's actually fact. So, I mean, that's I guess the classic voice of paranoia. But it is —

TL:  It is fact. It’s confirmable by a third party.

WPP: It is fact. Exactly. And you and I are here and we can say that.

TL:  Yeah.

WPP: Yeah, exactly. So that is profound. The medium is the message. The message is intersecting with our own creative acts in such an intimate way that in order to maintain stability in that environment, we have to flex creatively in a way that is bizarre and is new to us, I think.

TL:  Yeah, it’s a weird adaptation. I’m doing this stylistic self-censorship — altering my words in order to accommodate this thing that I don’t really understand how it works or what its shape is. And then I think, if I ever move away from this I'm going to carry on this new style of interaction with me that has altered my method of communication. My writing style will change. And that's frightening.

I'd like to also say it's not like we all walked in blind into Instagram. We knew. We shook hands with the devil. So I don't want to sound like, oh, my God, Instagram, how could you? But I will also say that I feel like they amped up the censorship. I think. The filtration process has amped up in ways that are very opaque to me. 

WPP: Yes, that's right. We entered knowing that we were engaging certain context that was going to have compromises, but no one could have really anticipated that it would be at the place that it's at. 

I would like us shoot out into the light for a moment here, if we may. We shook hands with the devil for a reason. It’s true that we came to Instagram for self-expression and sharing our work, and in many cases making a living, but there's there's another thing which I know is huge for you and is huge for me, and that is: connecting and forming relationships. The deeply satisfying connections that we've been able to make with a pretty wide range of people all over the world is profound. 

I feel as though there's a fundamental earnestness and sincerity to people who work with pigments. I don't know if you if you would agree with that, but I think because of that, even in a platform that so many of us have a healthy dose of cynicism and suspicion about, we've been able to locate each other and cultivate not just lasting friendships but an interconnected, non-competitive respect and admiration for each other.

TL: When you find a group of people who love the same thing, their passion is earnest, you know? It’s a genuine thing. And that's what we’re responding to and reaching out about. Maybe the algorithm likes that, or maybe hasn't figured out yet how to capitalize on people being just generally exuberant about something? I'm not sure. I mean, it is funny when you think about what we do as pigment-makers in the platform of Instagram, because it is a photo driven platform. And we're especially optical creatures, optical makers. So it works very well for us.The color — it’s the thing, and it’s good. Poor perfume makers, you know? How are they connecting??

I used to use Instagram primarily as a writing platform. Because, while it lends itself to what we do as pigment makers, most of the pictures I make are a little bottle in my hand, or a stain on a piece of paper and that's not always the most interesting thing. So a lot of times I do feel compelled to give stories about it. What’s the history behind this substance and how does it relate to the human condition? How does it relate to my history? How does it relate to nature? All these things that are summed up in a bottle of ink or a smear of dirt. 

So, yeah, storytelling, that's important to me. My work — my dissolving of firearms and making pigments out of them —  that is my whole mission. That is the bottom line. Something that I find myself doing is asking, how can I reword what I'm doing yet again? Or how can I give some new niche detail this time when I feel the I should always be able to say with every post: “I’m still dissolving guns. I’m still making ink out of them.” Why do I have to keep making it exciting, making it interesting, when I feel that what I’m doing is still very important work? Why do I have to re-dress it up all the time? I mean, part of me enjoys that — I do like a challenge, and I do like exploring different avenues in one interesting area. That's sort of the nice thing about ink and pigments. There are so many stories that can be told, so many paths you can wander down. Which is probably why I like hanging out in this area so much, and I haven’t exhausted all its potential.

WPP: I think what you're saying about storytelling and voice is actually one of the strong elements that forms a sense of community and connection and shared friendship between people on Instagram. When I think of the people that I feel the most deeply connected to, they are people who have a writing voice and who spend some time on the writing that goes in their posts — their images are always accompanied by reflection and writing. And I think that while we're being influenced by the algorithm, we are also being deeply influenced by each other and the way that we express these shared ideas or the way we differ in how we hold them. But there's a sense of really listening to each other. The comments as a feature of this medium I think, are significant. I think that the way that we that we show that we're listening to each other almost instantly after we send these bits of writing out  — the feedback we get really magnifies the connectivity that we have. 

TL: Yes, it does. And maybe that even could be a bad thing, I would say. Because a lot of times like, you know, with the echo chamber effect. We’re in like this place where we have this sort of rarefied environment of what seems like all these people who are saying, “Wow! What you’re doing is so cool and so amazing!” There’s lots of positive energy that leads you to want to expand, and be huge. And I’ve definitely stepped into that a number of times and then realized, “Oh my god, you just have a few people who are really excited about what you’re doing! It’s not like the whole world is beating a path to your door.” Which, you know, is sort of humbling when you realize that. It's just another one of those funhouse mirror distortions. Of the whole whole cyber world.

WPP: Yeah. There's this illusion that you have a really, really potent audience that is right there. But actually it's just very, very small and niche and focused. 

TL: And widely dispersed. It all seems so immediate when you make a post and all these people are very into it. It’s the double-edged sword — it's both isolating in the sense that you're sort of retreating from your physical community, which is actually around you. Yeah, but also connective because you're finding people with similar interests and finding support in that system. But you’re pulling away from the support that’s right next to you. Like, you know, what am I going to do when we have a large solar storm that wipes out the internet?  I've been writing down the addresses of all my shops where I sell ink so I can still go there and say hey, remember me from before the internet died?! 

Because even though it does all this stuff for me, I want to try to get away from it. I want to be able to establish a physical community. I started through Instagram as a way to make these connections and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fully withdraw. In this age that we live in, I don’t know what that looks like anymore, which is, you know, a little scary for me. I grew up right around the time of the internet. So I still remember when we would talk and we'd have to have phone cards when we were going somewhere, and have answering machines, and those sort of things.

WPP: And maps!

TL: Maps, yeah. Oh and MapQuest! At the beginning, MapQuest was terrible. It was like, the best way to get lost. Anyway, it’s so funny, our dependance. Even as a hardcore DIYer like I think I am, I’m like, “You would probably just dissolve into a puddle of tears the minute your phone died.” It happened recently, actually. I was like, “Ok, my phone’s gone, what am I going to do?” And I thought, “Okay, I'm feeling the withdrawal symptoms.” I hated that. And I was like, “Why don't you just go and make ink?” And I did, and I was like, “Okay, this is right, okay, good. You saw the problem and you found the solution.” But at the moment of experiencing it I realized, “Right, right, this is a very delicate system, still.”

WPP: As you're describing it, I'm seeing it as a sort of graft that we're making between our social lives through Instagram and our future lives lived in the company of people who share our obscure passions. Instagram has definitely built my confidence, creatively. At the time I founded Wild Pigment Project, I hadn’t used social media. I had stayed away from it. I'd managed to avoid it until 2019 when I started the project. Honestly, Instagram has made me much better able to connect with other people, and I think I can say that there are many of us who have gained confidence in our work with pigments, and in our in our creative work in general through this platform. 

Physical books are an element of this ‘graft’ I’m describing. A number of us are starting to publish books — Heidi Gustafson’s Book of Earth and Caroline Ross’s Found and Ground: a Practical Guide to Making Your Own Foraged Paints both published this summer. 

There's also a longing to have more gatherings, more shared physical space between those of us who have really inspired each other. I do think we need this to be able to move to our next stage as a creative community, and I have several ideas in the works.  What can the next level of our relationships with each other become?

TL: I also shunned social media for a long time because it was really stupid. I was like, “Do I need to see a picture of people's lunches?” Or like, yay, there's another terrible snapshot of you in a pool and like, this is such a waste of information. I thought, this is a vast network, we can share so much. The only way I felt comfortable contributing to it was talking on a subject. It's not about my life. I mean, it is a little bit about my life in an offhanded manner every now and then. But I needed a mission, you know, I needed, like, a raison d’être for my social media presence. And I feel like this is also something that may speak to the larger pigment-making community — I feel like most of our pigment-making friends aren’t really the big social media lovers that populate the info-sphere. They’re people that like rocks and dirt and plants. And most of them have to have their hands dirty and don’t want to touch their phone. If they even have a phone.

So it's interesting — you know, maybe it’s bad! — to have brought these people out from making these beautiful pigments and getting their hands dirty to come onto Instagram. Did it corrupt them? But I think it is good because, you know, like we said, we're building the community, we're connecting to people. And that's a good thing. And at the same time as those people are living a natural dirty existence (I’m sorry, this is sounding terrible!)… you know, our colleagues, “Rock Grinders and Tea-Makers!” I remember saying that and it sounding so derogatory! 

WPP: But we don't we don't read it that way. We're honored by these titles. 

TL: Yeah, true. I think that having that mindset, having seen that there's a connection, it seems to me like, yes, the next logical step will be like, okay, you know, let's stay true to our colors, if you will, and create a, you know, gritty, in-person community. Let’s go back to that sense of community that a lot of these pigments were born out of. Let’s have a little cloister where we’re grinding verdigris. Let's have a little mud hole where we have a bonfire and crush up some red rocks. There’s a desire to want to return to that with our newly-made community.

WPP: Yeah, absolutely there is. As you're saying that I'm thinking about how deeply our work is connected to place and how much we talk about that. I mean, the mission statement for Wild Pigment Project is connecting artists to land through a passion for wild pigments. There’s a lot of talk about being local, and I believe in that, and there’s this other thing, which is the decentralization of the pigment community, which is completely dispersed and non-local.

Here’s the thing, though — I think our familiarity with material, with the language of soil and rocks and plants, which can be applied wherever we are, gives us an instant way to connect with each others’ local places. We can go right in to working with these materials wherever we are — they are, in a sense, our home. Which used to be true for all humanity, but really isn’t now that people neither understand where their materials come from nor use their hands to work those materials.

When I think about my own life… I was raised by travel-writer parents. And so from the age of six months, I was traveling. I was playing by myself in these places all over the world, and I remember the feeling of seeing the same weeds that grew out of the sidewalk cracks in Montreal where I crawled around growing in vacant lots in Hong Kong, or Melbourne, or a tiny town in France. I had a sense of being at home wherever I was when I was with plants and dirt and sand and waves. 

Realistically, all of us pigment people are not going to consolidate in one physical place. You’ve just moved from being a hermit monk to being a wandering monk, for example! You’re going to develop your mobile ink lab, and you’re going to be able to drive to different places, and that’s going to increase the likelihood that you’ll intersect with a group of pigment people physically. But in a sense, the material familiarity that we share draws us together in a similar “place.” These dusts we work with are microscopic archipelagos with a sensory language that we speak together.

I'm also semi-nomadic and bicoastal and have different times of being in different places. And that doesn't make me feel less connected to place. So I think I'm just I'm just blowing some some breeze into the idea that in order to be connected to place, you have to always be hyperlocal. I think that the only way that we're going to be able to really have that sense of physical, shared community is to have an openness to feeling at home in many different places with each other. 

TL: I think there's also a popular misconception that long time ago, people were hyperlocal  because they didn't have cars and highways. But people traveled widely. I've been listening to my friend's podcast, The Book On Fire, about the Dawn of Everything, that tome by David Graber, the guy who coined the phrase, “We are the 99%.” The book talks about how, in a way, modern humans are a lot less nomadic than older humans. Because now most people are too busy running around doing little things, trying to get ahead in this terrible capitalistic game. Sure. Okay, fine. Let's go to Cancun for a week. Right. Well, you know what? A long time ago, people were like, we're going to go to the mountains and stay there for six months, and then we're going to go to the ocean and you know, whatever. It was so much more liberating and free. 

WPP: Yeah, that's such an important point. The idea that in order to belong to a place (well really, to “own” land), you had to live there full-time is a colonial imperialist tool that was used to justify stealing Indigenous lands. “Oh, you’re nomadic, because you roam around, therefore you don’t actually live anywhere, therefore we can take all this land because it’s not yours.” Such an evil framing. An Indigenous friend told me that her people considered going from the plains to the coast to be like making a trip to the grocery store. 

TL: Yeah that all goes back to like the idea of borders and boundaries. And of course there are all sorts of different cultures, some that travel and some that have everything they need right where there are. I guess maybe we’re getting a little off topic.

WPP: We are and we aren’t. I think for me, as an artist who is often talking about hyperlocality, and having a community that isn't local, I’m looking at the ways that the everywhere/nowhere Instagram community finds resonance in our material experience. 

TL: Mm. I’m also thinking also about how Ground Bright has evolved this past year into a pigment subscription where all contributed pigments come from the waste stream — like my dissolved guns, or the copper scraps for the August pigment, or the Acid Mine Drainage pigment a while back. How these waste streams are everywhere and they’re all very similar, because of the homogenization of landscapes that are the result of constant expansion. Pigments that are everywhere humans are, and are all very similar. We can create our own traditions around that element of pigment making, through learning from each other. 

I’ve always been a little bit of an oddball in your project, which is funny since we have a lot of oddballs. Because my source is not really attainable from a special grove… you know, I have to go to pawnshops or whatever. So that way I don't quite have the same attachment to place. I mean, I do, just not necessarily related to my pigment process.

WPP: I think your sumac leaves connect you. 

TL: Yeah, that's right. True. Yeah.

WPP:  I am right now in Ogha Po’oge Owingeh (Santa Fe, NM) and I'm in this little house made of mud and I was looking at a plant outside by the door, a little sort of scraggly plant. And I thought, Oh, wow, that's I think that's sumac. And I thought of you and the way that you bundle your sumac leaves for tannins for your inks. That feeling of being, connected to you through a plant in a place that we've never been in together. 

Speaking of dirt, and place, even the guns — they’re made of iron, and as we’ve learned from Heidi [Gustafson] the iron can coming from ocher, since ochre can be turned into steel, and the steel can be made into guns. So maybe these guns were once ocher. 

TL: Yeah. And also, as I learned from Heidi, when you make a painting, that painting is made out of dirt, applied to canvas, which is you know, plant matter extracted from dirt, and then you put the canvas on your wall and your wall is made of dirt and all that stuff kind of falls back down and becomes dirt again. You know what I mean? I mean, this is the way I am connected to the earth. I'm turning to go back into the earth. Yeah. I'm on the other side of the process — I’m returning. And if it’s art on the way, that’s cool, that’s fun. But ultimately yeah, it’s all gonna go back into the dirt. Even if I didn't touch the gun, it's going to rust. But I can help it out a little bit, you know, move it forward. 

WPP: Yeah and create this medium of expression and communication while doing that, which is really which I just see as connection, connectivity, you know? 

TL: Yeah. And if the that process is informative of earth connections too, then that's just another layer. When I work with the slime mold it’s opening up this idea of primal intelligences that are a billion years old, you know what I mean? Or when I work with ink blots, part of your brain is automatically geared to bilaterally symmetrical objects because you were once an animal in the woods who needed to recognize things pretty fast. These are the things that the pigment can serve to enhance, en route to becoming dirt, until that wall falls down and your painting’s on it.

WPP: I think that the fact that those of us working with pigments are really interested in conversations with people who are not human — you know, slime mold people and dirt people and all these plant people — the fact that we have that is, as you know, important. You said your mission is to dissolve these guns. I think it's also to communicate with non-humans. 

TL: Even the non-human part of humans. Haha.

WPP: Exactly. And I think that that gives us a level of immunity. I could even venture to say there's there's a level of protection from or disinterest in the techno systems that we're leaning on. Yeah, we get this amazing human community from this service but we have another community and that is a non-human community. And you know if your phone were to die right now and my phone were to die, I think we would really grieve not being able to connect with our far-away people, but we'd find ourselves turning to the other-than-humans for interactive community, as well as the humans around us, and I think that's significant. 

TL: Yes. And also there's that other non-human element — artificial intelligence. I've played with it and I understand the controversy around it, of course. But it’s a sinister lure for me…because I'm fascinated by the idea of something like a synthetic imagination. And I mean, a lot of artists are up in arms about it. But I'm like, “How can you not be fascinated by this?” Things that humans created that can do stuff is just so interesting to me. I know it's totally the product of, oh, I hate to say evil, but it was a product of a lot of data mining by big corporations that make like lots of money on people's lives. And what it’s being trained to do is really crummy too. I mean, there’s some good things coming out of it, but it’s a sort of new non-human, too.

I don't want to mess with it anymore. I play with it a little bit, but I recognize the problems that are going on with it. And I don't like being associated with it. It’s entering the landscape, though. But, you wanna talk about job security? Sure, AI might be able to paint a picture and maybe one day a beautiful picture — I think some of the things it's making are pretty interesting —  but, you know, it's not going to be made out of like, the seashells I found at your grandma's house or whatever. It can't create the informed materialism of things. We have that connection. Until they make an android that goes out on the beach and starts gathering things and grinding them up and making the pigment and painting — then we’ll have something to worry about! Hahaha.

But yeah, I still feel like the material-informed image is powerful, more powerful than some spray of pixels that can be made in seconds. So yeah, just touching on that other creature.

WPP: Thank you for bringing up that creature. I am also fascinated. It's like being in utero with a being that's forming and watching the cellular structure come together. 

TL: It is uncanny and really quite fascinating. And, I don't know, maybe I shouldn’t talk about it too much because people will get mad about it, but it IS, it’s like watching a dreamworld evolve. 

WPP: It's a life form. 

TL: Yeah. And you're seeing all these ugly, weird little glitches like all these extra fingers or like this really messed up, you know, whatever. Yeah, you’re seeing it and it’s like the embryonic state of something. And it's terrifying, honestly. It's really terrifying. Beyond just the content of the images — the capability of things like that. And maybe that's why people hate it. I mean, that makes sense. Just to let you know, I’m not a fan boy of the AI. But the processes I think, are very interesting. But I'll stop now.

WPP: I think it's just so nuanced. It's not even about whether we like it or not. It's just fascinating to watch. I heard a philosopher talking recently about how this public panic about the dangers of AI destroying humanity is a very useful distraction designed to draw our attention away from the destruction and damage that AI is already causing, right now. Everybody’s freaking out about this new life form that may destroy human life on the planet, which has an element of terror to it, but also this beauty and fascination and so on. That is distracting us from what AI is, and has for quite a while been doing to us as far as privacy violations and racial biases and blatant techno-systems-wide racism and classism.. All the ways AI has been used to rob freedom. and rights that everyone has been getting used to. . So the distraction of the techno-geddon narrative is pulling us away from things that are already way more dangerous and more real than that which is just kind of a fantasy.

TL: We have rampant consumerism and that could destroy the planet with no help from AI whatsoever!

WPP: Yeah, exactly. 

TL: Yeah. And all that said, I am just as equally fascinated, more so actually, by the behavior of slime mold than I am about any sort of baloney drawing AI can make. Because this is the real, most interesting intelligence. This is like the old, old intelligence. It’s the ultimate algorithm. It’s adapted to where it’s like, “I can actually thrive between multiple mass extinctions, and I'm kind of this perfect entity. So screw you humans. I don’t care about your silly computer screens and all that.”

WPP: Thomas, the fact that you say that pretty regularly, is kind of a balm to many of us listening to you because it echoes a feeling that we have, based on our relationships with non-humans and with ancient rocks and mold and other beings. It gives us a confidence that I think is is probably going to be helpful going forward. It gives us a sort of existential trust or stability in a world that is shifting so much and where there are so many things that are really intimidating and devastating. The fact that we’ve had these collaborations with non-humans where we've actually received communication is bolstering for us. You feel that you’ve received communication from slime mold, right?

TL: Oh, yeah, I mean, it’s one of those divine messages that I feel I need to decode from here on out, for the rest of my life, you know? What did it mean? What happened? What’s happening?? And it’s true, there are going to be many instances in the coming times where we’re going to have to say, “You’re going to be my rock, because I need to get over the fact that the methane’s boiling away in the Arctic, or whatever. Yeah. Our connection to both earth and beauty is really important. That's the other thing. I think pigment people might be more ready to survive spiritually. 

WPP: Yeah. That's it. You said it. Survive spiritually. Which is really going to be important, as far as maintaining relationship with each other and with all beings. Being able to survive spiritually, whatever that means to each of us. I think it does mean being in equitable relationships with everyone, with all the life forms. Because then we're in a position to be helped. And as long as there's that dialog and a capacity that's outside of the human, all the human systems, I think that is a source of…maybe it’s an unconscious hope. We don’t even want to speak that that’s a hope, but maybe it is for some of us it is — not having to rely on humans to fix things, you know?

TL: Or maybe nothing’s —

WPP: Yeah! Nothing's broken. It's an experience that we're having. 

TL: Yeah, exactly. There’s a thing I like to talk about a million times over that’s related to that. I always get so excited about the moon turning red because of plant life on earth. This is something that's so beautiful to me.

WPP: Yeah, you mentioned that the other day when we talked, and I wanted to hear you talk much more about it. Can you just describe why that's happening?

TL: Sure. I mean, it’s been happening since there was free oxygen in the atmosphere. So, since the first cyano bacteria, the blue-green algae was growing and photosynthesizing. Once there was free oxygen — and the only way there can be free oxygen on a planet usually is because there's some sort of photosynthetic action going on, which means there needs to be life, because oxygen would just readily bond with most anything and then become inert. So yeah, the earth has plants and they're producing oxygen, and then the moon, orbiting the Earth, enters into what's known as the ‘magneto-tail,’ which is where the magnetic fields of the earth are blown into sort of like a tadpole shape by the solar winds. And the moon has to be a full moon for that to happen, because that is the positioning of the moon and the earth and the sun when you see a full moon — when the moon is full, it’s in the magneto-tail, and the solar wind is blowing oxygen atoms off the atmosphere, and going along that tail to the moon, where it’s collecting at the poles, and interacting with the iron on the moon, to turn it red.

WPP: Mm! Amazing!

TL: I know, it’s so amazing! It's like dipping the moon in an ink. It’s poetry, it’s science…And then I think — if I wanted to be teleological about it — what if the whole purpose of life is, okay, we’re going to do all this because we need the moon to blush a little bit before it spins off into space? Like, it’s done. We can all just go to hell. We’re supposed to evolve into these telepathic, perfectly androgynous, beautiful, UFO-traveling creatures or whatever…but maybe we’re just, you know, by-products that have bad teeth while the earth is fermenting oxygen for the moon to turn pink.

WPP: So good…. And so basically we're just like the sulfuric acid you use to dissolve your guns or the alum that fixes color to cloth, or whatever it is. We're just an agent. We're an alchemical substance that is creating the moon blush. Creating a painting.

TL: Exactly. And I've drawn this picture before, maybe you've seen it. If you look at the Earth, and its orbit, and you have the magneto-sphere around the earth with this magneto-tail, it creates this tadpole shape which of course looks like a bottle, and the bottle is over a fire, which is the sun, it's literally like an alembic of ink over a fire, and then the moon is turning pink so…it’s just so so good. It’s so cool.

WPP: Oh, yeah. There it is. You did it. Phenomenal. So freeing. You did it.

TL: Yeah. Yeah. Alright, everybody! Get your in your SUVs and go! 

WPP: Burn and burn!

Yeah. I love that so much. My version of that freedom from willful determination in all this is to think of the burgeoning human population as an exploding colony, an infestation. It's like watching tent caterpillars, or termites. It's not something that we're here to control. It's something that we're part of like like a firestorm or a hurricane. It's an event, a planetary event. When I frame it like that, it seems amazing to me that as a species we've created a kind of inner structure that can apply guilt to this event.

TL: Through Instagram!

WPP: Haha, yeah, there we go!

TL: Yes, it’s echoed in all those memes that are out there. Like, “Food grows out of ground so why do I have a credit score?” How did we reach this collective decision to destroy the planet and then complain about it at the same time? It's, like, the most horrible thing? What if we were all just like, yes, we're going to destroy the planet! This is it. We’re the Death Creatures. We are the ones that are going to cloak the world in sulfuric acid, and let’s just get behind that, let’s abandon the idea of trying to create this perfect little eco dome. Let's just go ahead and say screw it, we are the destroyers of worlds. The sooner we just get comfortable with that and go along with it, maybe there will be a little less depression, I don’t know? 

Um, it’s so weird though…because even as I say that jokingly, it’s not the case. We can’t — we don’t want to do that, because we have connections to things.

WPP: I’m very tempted to say that the people who are knowingly feeding these systems of destruction maybe don't feel all that connected! You know, thinking about the 1% and the decisions they make. Maybe they have the fantasy that they're the destroyer of worlds. In my heart of course I know all this is about nuanced layers of human relationships and histories and egos. But, you know, it's nice to think it can be reduced to a good story. 

TL: I don’t see how anyone — even in the 1% — would think that the processes that are in play should keep going on. I just can’t understand why they would think that. I mean, unless like you say, they’re just completely disconnected.

WPP: I think, actually, that there is a very real vehicle for this disconnection. And that is: space travel. The idea that space travel is the apogee of human civilization is a powerful mythology. This mythology has been craftily orchestrated and presented to the public since the 50s, and it has people convinced. I think it’s a grotesque sort of lie. Have you ever read about what happens to the human body when you go out into space? It’s totally sickening. Not something they say much about when talking up space programs. 

So it would seem that the top of the top of the 1% really believe that space is where it’s at, and whatever it takes to get there is worth it. I can understand if you believe that, then burning up Earth in order to get into space has some tiny piece of sense to it. 

TL:  Thinking again about humanity as being a colony of commensual..symbiotic organisms, we share things throughout our body…and comparing that to something like slime mold, which, in dire times, reverts to a reproduction process where it’s like, “Ok, there’s no more food, it’s getting dry, let’s go into dormant spores, and then when we hatch we can start reproducing.” Which creates a whole new behavior pattern. And part of that behavior pattern is that individuals within the colony sacrifice themselves to build the stalk that holds the spores. And that’s beautiful, it’s nature and stuff. But like, as this one little nucleus floating in the cytoplasm of humanity, I’m like, “Um, I don’t know if I want to be the guy that’s the sacrifice that’s going to hold up the 1% so they can blow off into space.”

WPP: But it feels like that. 

TL: It feels like that. And you know, I would be willing to sacrifice myself, but I’d like to have more autonomy deciding, you know, who gets to go up there? 

WPP: Haha, yeah, right. I can't even get that far. I think that the whole mission is completely bankrupt. I don't think life on Mars will ever be a life that I would want to participate in.

TL: I think it's going to happen. I don't think it's necessarily going to be people. It might be detritus from peoples’ spacecrafts. We might operate as some sort of agent to carry other things, like microbes, to Mars.

Yeah, I don’t think we are going to be the ones to, quote unquote, “contaminate” other worlds. But if you look at the macrocosm / microcosm thing, it's boring, in a way. Space exploration is boring.Yeah. And it's not just a human thing, you know? Mushroom spores are way out there. And even the earth painting the moon red… it’s not quite colonization, but it's influence. Yeah. I like to think, sure, we’re on this rock and we have gravity and we have air and we have to be here, but we aren’t soisolated from space, and space-as-earth-continuing.

Oo, I want to say something off the side here for a second. I found something in my news feed the other day. It was about the Marier spacecraft and the first televised image of of Mars. They were in such a hurry to get this picture up because it was a space race and everybody had to see it. But rather than actually do the digital processing, the scientists took strips of paper that had the ones and zeros printed out on it as pixels and they taped it to a wall, and then went to an art supply store —

WPP: What!?!! Oh my lord.

TL: …and got colored pastels — it was totally like earth pigments, they got reds, siennas, all these colors, and they colored it in. Mars colored by number! They colored it by number and they took a picture of it, and that was the first thing that people saw of Mars. And it was totally paper colored in and they were like, “This is what Mars looks like, real quick!”   

WPP: Oh, my. Wow. That's a gorgeous story. 

TL: You should see the picture, too. I think it’s really pretty. And it's such a fascinating thing…being a radio nerd, the idea of like taking these little beep beep beeps and translating them into the picture of a world is kind of really cool to me. 

Mars-by-numbers. I stole this one from the interwebs. ~ WPP

WPP: Thank you for that — it’s unforgettable. I love juxtaposing the image of the scientists coloring the blips to to create an image of Mars and the earth coloring the moon red. 

TL: Impersonating each other!

WPP: Right, Exactly. It's incredible what you're doing here, Thomas.

TL: It makes me think of that place — was it Abu Dhabi or Dubai? Where they were filling in islands to look like different continents of the world. Like a little tiny map of the world that’s built up, with a North America-looking place and a South America place and wow, all these things. And I was like, it's like the earth getting a tattoo of itself.

WPP: This is just such cosmic theater that you're performing here right now in this conversation, Thomas. It’s incredible. It's hinged in the material and it's just such poetry and world bending.

Thank you.

Bringing it back in, here, to Instagram, before we wrap up… you’re about to leave your own home planet of sorts, right? You’re in the process of moving out of your ink studio in North Carolina and into a mobile ink lab in a van. Instagram played an important role in this shift for you, when you asked the community if we would support you if you did some crowd funding for the lab, and then an angel artist said she wanted to honor all you’ve contributed to the community by giving you the funds to buy the van right away.

To me that’s evidence of this ‘graft’ I’m talking about between IG and our lives. Now that you’re about to be mobile, the chances of us crossing paths is much higher! 

TL: To use the slime mold idea again, we create a network and networks share resources, right? That resource can be information, or even financial. Even just people who are willing to carry my ink — this little business that I have. It’s a little bit hard to get mad at Instagram when I think about how I would have nothing going on with my ink if I weren’t able to connect there.

WPP: Yeah. Same. Here we are!

TL: (laughs) It’s like, ‘Big Mean Daddy.’ Big Mean Daddy comes home and treats you kinda disrespectful and makes you do chores but at the end of the day, Big Mean Daddy brought home cornbread.

WPP: Big Mean Daddy. 

TL: It’s a complicated relationship. It’s not going to be a perfect thing. Everything has limits. Anything that’s going to provide free resources is not going to remain for long in the state it was in when it began. There’s going to be regulation. There’s going to be middle men. It’s going to corrupt and involute. Involute. I’ll try not to be moral in my language. Involute, but also, become more extractive. I mean, that’s just the way it goes. Maybe we’re still getting in on the early part of it and we’re getting some good stuff out of it. Or maybe we’re not early, and maybe some other thing is the newness now, like TikTok or Twitch or those other things.

WPP: I think what’s new for us as humans, in the big picture, is not a particular platform but the thing we were talking about early on in this conversation — the inside-our-brains technology. The tiny infiltration that’s happening. What is this new infiltration and how much freedom is it taking? That’s the real Big Mean Daddy. And I think that you're right when you say that we're sort of early in on that and we have benefited right up to the edge of that. And maybe there's a tipping point, but that's why paying as much attention to what’s going on as we can is crucial. You have a different relationship with Big Mean Daddy if you can psychoanalyze him. That’s what the power of our human community is — to see and know, as much as we can, what compromises are being made. Which is, you know… this conversation. Not to say that you and I have have a total clear vision right into the core of this, but we're just trying to look at it from multiple sides and multiple angles and see how much is it acting on us. And how much can we liberate from it and and steal from it, basically take from it? 

TL: Yeah. And I, you know, I've done my time. I think I can exit now. I’ve gotten in, I’ve made the connections — maybe I can get out. There’s that idea, anyway. And you know, I say that now, but I’m sure that as soon as I get off the phone, I’m going to look at IG and see if there were any likes or messages or whatever. But that’s just a habit I have to learn how to break. That might be easier when I’m on the road, and I’m in Wyoming and there’s no cell phone…

WPP: I mean, I think we have to break it together because the addiction — if we're going to call it that —  the addiction, the compulsion, the longing, the need is not is not really for the screen. It's for each other. So if we're to move away from it, we have to plot that move together. 

TL:  Yeah, it's true. And, you know, we need to be around each other and see each other, warts and all. That’s sort of terrifying to me. I mean, people are going to see me, and I’m going to be  smoking rolled cigarets and, you know, probably picking my nose without knowing that I’m picking my nose and like, whatever! They’ll be like, “Oh wow, Thomas is really a slob!” Maybe. Or maybe they’ll be like, “Finally, another slob! Yay!”

WPP: Yeah, well, I'll be there. I'll be there with you on that one. I can say that, as a fellow slob.

I'm glad you're mentioning this because when we first talked about doing an interview about Instagram, one of the big themes was the fourth wall — the theatrics inherent in the platform and the ways we can hide through it, presenting only the self we want people to see. The way you put it was, “The fun and comfort of the fourth wall!”

Instagram’s fourth wall has given us a lot of comfort, really, because not only is it difficult to share your true, authentic self in a platform of any kind, but Instagram actually doesn't want you to. So, you know, we've been able to really be comfortable and have fun while also hiding. 

TL: I mean, this is not a new thing, definitely not for me. When I was a kid in high school I was really bullied a lot. I was way at the bottom level of the ecosystem. Here I go again, using hierarchical terms to describe nature. I don't want to do that. But you get the idea. But — I totally loved drama. I would go on stage and I would act, and sing, and I would make a fool of myself, and that’s kind of exactly what I’m doing on Instagram. It’s the same thing. It’s performative. A lot of people throw that word around — especially when it comes to political actions, with a negative context, but I’m like, you know, everything is kind of performative. We’re artists. Or, we’re not artists — we’re doing mating dances. We’re doing rain dances. We’re doing things that really have no practical purpose besides having faith in something happening. 

It’s important for me to know, though, that I’m not just creating this vanity sphere. I think there's a healthy way to obtain your self-worth, and that way is by having this semi-permeable membrane, that you can nurture something outside yourself that you have good faith that it'll be a good thing, and then release it. Am I making sense?

WPP: I think what you're saying is landing for me as a sense of humility towards what Instagram has given us: these containers, these spheres in which to craft a context that is outward reaching and not inward spinning. Because we’re not doing it around the cults of our personalities — we’re doing it for our larger visions for the world and each other. And when we think of leaving Instagram, either literally or just partially spiritually, we’re thinking about bringing all the ways we’ve been formed by this experience with us. I think of your mobile ink lab holding that world as you travel. I know that you’ll create that space in your van, just as you’ve created the the little grid of images and writing that is your Instagram feed. 

TL: Of course the relationship with the fourth wall has gone on forever. Like when the Bronte sisters wrote under male pseudonyms, for example, and so were given really good, positive feedback. That sort of thing. The fourth wall’s always been here. It’s the mask we wear, in order to get our point across. Everything's behind a mask. Yeah. 

I like to talk about poignant artifice — it’s the idea of something that’s fake, but it’s done with such love and tenderness that you can connect with it. It’s the opposite of the ‘uncanny valley effect’ where it’s like, okay, that’s so perfect but I’m really weirded out by it. Whereas the poignant artifice thing is like, “Aw, I know you’re not real but you’re so cute, I can relate to you more!” And that is part of the whole act.

WPP: Artifice that’s sincere because it’s formed with the intent to communicate, can communicate perhaps better than the authentic could.

TL: Yeah, it’s not there to fool. It’s inviting the other person to willingly and trustingly suspend disbelief, you know? 

WPP: Yeah. In order to receive to better receive. 

TL: Yeah. You’re tenderizing them with your ridiculousness. Versus like something that's so slick and polished, you're like, okay, that's too good, I don't trust that. And that is my whole medicine show / carnival man view. You need to have that, “Oh, I'm going to trick you!” part. This is all part of the show. Letting them know and bringing them into your world. That is an act of trust on both sides, and that is what really brings home the point that you’re trying to convey. I think I do that on Instagram? I can get a little funky crusty. Not everything's super slick. I do take staged photographs, but it's not like I have like one of those fancy lighting rigs or anything like that. I'm not going to hide the dirt, the dust that may have accumulated on a bottle. Because that's important. It's street cred. It's authenticity. 

WPP: It's the little notches and cracks that that signal that this is real while also being artifice. It’s the balance, the place where wonder and awe can happen. You can trust the fake more because it's not saying it isn't fake. 

TL: And this touches a little bit back on the trend about Instagram, and what we were talking about earlier — you know, if I have a tooth ache I'm going to make this beautiful piece of art and like, sell it. That is me forcing myself into this level of inauthenticity where I know I have to do this to make this happen. But I think in the next post I would say, “Yeah, I have a really bad tooth ache.”

WPP: Yeah, you do do that kind of thing, and that’s what makes what you share so compelling. Because people looking in can see you as both a magician and a human. And — the fact that you share all the secrets behind your tricks…You give people the awe and the wonder, but then you also generously share your knowledge. 

TL: I mean, that is the wonder to me! I’m like, “That’s so cool! And that’s just like, turmeric and alcohol??” Or this is just dirt — it’s nothing, and it’s magic.

WPP: It’s just nothing, yeah. That is the magic.

TL: I hate it when I see people on Instagram and I'm following them and I'm looking at their posts and everything's beautiful and perfect and all that. And I'm like, “Wow, that's really cool!” And then like, one day it's like, “Well, I'm bankrupt emotionally and spiritually. I just, you know, broke up with my boyfriend, my mother hates me and I’m done.” And I'm like, “Oh, my God, what happened?” It’s so traumatic. I thought everything was so good! So it’s nice to pepper things with reality. Be like, yeah, I’m late on my payment again. It’s just good for your mental health. 

It’s funny because this whole thing is one of those double-edged swords where I have this place to percolate my ideas and ask, what if I could, like, you know, make a living making ink? That seems really impractical, and I can fool myself into thinking like, I can, I can do it. And I’ve believed my lies so much that it’s happened! It's experimental, but sometimes I think that experiment can get out of hand where you’ve created something that's just not sustainable. And you can collapse under your feet any minute. That's a pitfall, and there's no support system under you when that happens. It's so very American. “Oh, yeah, go chase your dreams, do all that stuff. We’re not going to tell you that when you fall, you’re going to be so screwed.” There's no underpinning to that. There’s no safe space. Fly or die, you know.

I’ve got this van now, and there’s all this #vanlife stuff. They’re like, “It’s really amazing, we’re in the Grand Tetons, or on the coast of Maine! And all that. And then you look at the dates and see that it was in 2015 and then you find the article, “Why my marriage collapsed because I'm going back and forth across the country.”

WPP: Yeah, right. Well, I mean, I don't know, maybe this is too optimistic to say, but I do feel as though those collapse stories happen when you’re solo, when you’re out there alone and you're competing to be the best. You want to be at the top. You want to have the coolest #vanlife of them all. That's when you fall hard. That’s why I want us to tend to the non-competitiveness that so many of us nourish. I want us to support each other. I want us to be there to pick up the slack for each other. I want us to learn more and more about how to do that and how to trust that. 

TL: I think the other thing in our favor, as we’ve said here in a bunch of different ways, is that we're connected to the material world.  

WPP: Yeah. It’s really big.

TL: And the whole influencer culture is you’re peddling nothing but thin air — there’s nothing there. And you’re like, “Wow, this is so easy!” but the thing is, yeah, it’s easy — anyone can do it — but the next thing you know, people are super over-saturated, and you’re like, “Wow, I can’t believe I sunk my whole life savings into this!” There’s just no quick way to just live freely. I hate to say that — it’d be great if there was. 

It’s the work you choose that matters — the restraints you choose. And we’ve chosen to restrain ourselves with..dirt. The processes. And that’s something we can reach out and touch. That’s something we can use, that’s something we can give, that’s something we can receive. You can’t have a swap meet and say, “Oh, I have a blog,” and then hear, “Cool, can I have a piece of your blog?” 

So I think we have that going for us.

WPP: Yeah, very much. Yup. We're part of a we're part of a circle. Like the moon.

TL:  Like the moon. And the plants. And on the full moons the plants conspire to paint the moon red.

WPP: Yes. So good.

All right. I think we're both saturated here. Great conversation. Thank you!

I will send you some things and we can maybe publish by the end of the week. 

TL: Excellent. I will try and do my best to look it over. I have less than two weeks now to get out of the office and I'm way behind. And I'm really wishing I had a physical community to help me out here. 

WPP: To show up.

TL: Yeah, that is one great failings of Instagram. When it’s time to move the boxes, it’s like, “Heart, emoji!” “Sending vibes!”

WPP: Oh god. Too many vibes. Should we try and rally and get some people down there? Do you want that? Would you really want them if they showed up?

TL:  Um, no. I mean…no. No, because ultimately it'll turn into a gabfest and nothing’ll get done, or they’ll need to be guided in, or they’ll show up and in five minutes they’ll say, “Man, I’m hungry!”

WPP: That’s the problem. Emojis don’t have to be given snacks.

TL: Yeah that’s true! I don't want to deal with your biological processes — I only want your digital attention!

WPP: Yeah. Or your strong arms. 

TL: Right! Your machine-like arms. (laughs) Oh, man, I don't know. Maybe I amgoing to go become a tech bro, AI dude. I’ll have all these artificial intelligence followers. They’ll be like (robot voice),”Really neat post you did, Thomas!” Who knows, maybe most of my followers are robots. I always wonder that.

WPP: I'm not a robot. 

TL: Okay, I get to be seen. 

(end interview)

July, 2023

scoot us some dirt

Did this interview move you? Draw out something you’ve been trying to put into words? Irritate you? Delight you? Does Big Mean Daddy get the best of you? What’s your relationship with artifice vs. authenticity? 

Thomas and I would really love to hear your feedback. If you don’t feel like typing, you could make us a little voice memo and share your thoughts that way. To reach us, just hit “reply” to this email, or write to us at info@wildpigmentproject.org.

Stay Skeptical,

<3 Tilke