Giles O'Dell
If You Want It

It was Spring when I made this. I found myself, by some mysterious stroke of divine humor, in the basement of a huge old house which is owned by a land trust and managed by an anarchist collective. I was trying to wrangle hundreds of photographs into something that is
cohesive, something that can cut through layer upon layer of artificially implanted self-defeating cynicism… an attitude that once was useful in resisting a false mass-media image of happy plastic perfection, but which in recent years has turned into a toxic self-fulfilling prophecy, poisoning the wild potential of the present moment.

At first I thought I was going to make a realistic virtual replica of downtown Olympia, but then I heard the subtle subversive whisper of the ghost of Dr. Seuss on a warm spring wind. That’s what pushed me from representing things the way they generally appear to be to representing things the way they really are, when you get down to it: bizarre, teeming with lascivious mischief, reveling in the midst of a sex-trance where humor and freakiness get it on with wild abandon. This is exactly what this place looks like to me. A place where fun reigns because the people there create it instead of looking for it elsewhere. A place where innocence isn’t mistaken for naivete, but is (at last) correctly recognized as the wellspring of a new kind of nastiness. Bad motherfuckers, arise! Where you are is where it’s at. Don’t let your foolish eyes deceive you. The world is a verdant, lusty garden waiting to respond to the song of your own desires spoken aloud. If you want it, then just say so.

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About Giles O'dell

Animator, truckdriver, cartoonist, and internationally unknown lo-fi punk hip-hop legend, Giles O’Dell is patiently building a bridge by which the kids can travel to the one soulful source of the many sacred disrespected arts. View his work on his website, www.zoonbats.com.