Hothead

Gettin' Worked Up

I was a anxious kid.

I was scared of looking stupid. I was an overthinker, you know? I was always getting in my own way.

So I slapped myself.

Idiot!

You can’t think when your ears are ringing.

Mom said I was a hothead.

I’m 39 now and run a little cooler. But when my hands don’t work I get frustrated. My imagination runs away from me and I talk to myself. I have intrusive thoughts. But I don’t cuss and feel bad because I’ve got new phrases now. Mantras I guess.

Laugh.

That’s one of ‘em.

Sounds simple but its good. I’ve got a youtube tab of Maria Bamford always ready. She does an impression of a coffee maker and it’s classic. Two minutes go by, maybe three, and I start feeling better.

We put up Safe Cave in the belly of an old building in the neighborhood. We made it dark so the projector sent trees and rockets and animals spinning across everybody. These were messages for my future self, but something about them felt universal. Anyway this passage was playing on the walls and Morgan’s music was building up a head of steam and I got overwhelmed. Some people cried and I still don’t know what to make of it.

Just hard to believe I guess.

I’m making Bub with my friend Todd. It’s a game about art and sickness and other things too. You follow your mom underground. You crawl into a cave where she’s waiting. She says there’s a big spider in her life and she’s gotta go squish it. She climbs into a rocket and you shine a flashlight after her but she’s already in the air and there’s nothing you can do about it cuz she’s getting smaller and smaller in the sky and you can feel the distance growing and growing.

Who’s the hothead now.

There’s some Italian words I can’t say yet, like tovagliolo. That's a napkin. You gotta ask for a napkin in this country, they don’t give you one like in the States. Toe-va-gli-olo. There’s olive oil on everything so you really do need a napkin. It’s become one of those jokes, like a tongue twister. Try to say napkin in Italian and we crack up.

That was my first job at this restaurant. Napkins. Roll up napkins. Collect napkins. Clean napkins. I did other things too but mostly napkins. I closed the place down and took a long stroll back to my Mom’s place. The air in Charleston, especially at night, is textural. Bugs, air conditioners, wind and creaky wood. You can feel the pressure of trillions of gallons of water moving around. Some nights I walked real slow and ran my hands over the wire hair on the tree trunks. In the back of Mom’s house, past the paintings and old books, I found her on the sofa, deep asleep.

She held my arm on the way up the stairs.

She used to yell so much we came up with a safeword. we could use it for a hard reset. I’m not gonna tell you what it was. But.

That’s how tense it could be.

It’s Thanksgiving day. I’m in a big chair. A young woman in an identical chair has her legs kicked out. I’m looking at all the knobs and levers but I can’t figure out how she did it. She points to a control behind my head with buttons.

She says, “I’ve had la sclerosi (MS) since I was twelve.”

Wow, I respond. I press a button and my chair goes whirrrr.

“Yes,” she says, “Since I was twelve.”

My legs are extended. I’m in the hospital getting medication. One of the nurses brings juice. In between sips of juice I’m reading Claire Keegan’s novel and I’m worried about our protagonist.

“Always it was the same… always they carried mechanically on without pause, to the next job at hand. What would life be like… if they were given time to think and reflect over things? Might their lives be different or much the same – or would they just lose the run of themselves?”

I look at a sleeping woman on the other side of me. There’s no shape to her, just piles of fabric. Lose the run of themselves. That’s really good. A nurse checks on her and she waves a white hand from the sheets.

The doctors ask a dressy older woman about her stomach problems. It’s an intimate conversation really but we’re all here for the same reason. Sometimes we make eye contact with each other. Exchange a word. But mostly we rest.

Back home Cassandra drags me off the couch. It’s bedtime and she puts things away and gives the rabbits their night time routine. She turns off the lights and locks the door. She roams the house and takes care of little things.

But I’m already asleep.

We wake up and stand around the coffeemaker. A flock of birds circles our neighborhood. We moved to this place on a hill and it’s the birds I love. It’s hard to get going but I know it’ll help me feel better, so I get ready. I start down the hill. It feels good to bounce a little between steps. I got Earth, Wind and Fire on the playlist.

Love will learn to sing your song, yeah

Oh yeah, love is written in the stone

I have no idea what this means. But I’m bouncing.

I see a sliver of water up ahead, it’s the river of course, my destination. Past the pastry shop, past the tour bus. Bounce. Over the cobblestones, through the crowd and through the arch. The traffic’s a puzzle but I push through.

It rained yesterday so the river’s high. I take off my headphones and all I hear is the rush of water. Thick water pouring over stone.

I can’t hear anything else.

Just the water.

So I pull my ears open and listen good.

*****************

Things on my Mind:

Mark Duplass has been working hard to replace things lost in the LA fires, like putting Nintendo Switches in kids hands who lost them, or chromebooks for students, or gift cards for groceries for families. Read more about his efforts and to see how you can help.

Graham Nickson passed- I pushed hard against Graham, my old teacher. Sometimes his words felt too much like HIM and I wanted to be ME. I wanted my independence and I figured I'd have enough time to boil it all down, then circle back with the clarity I was looking for. That was stupid because everything he taught was universal and open-ended. If you ever got clarity why would you continue to make art, to ask questions? I wish I’d told him how much he meant to me. Thanks for everything Graham, you were generous beyond belief.

Octopus Memories: Thanks to my good friends at French zine TK-41 for interviewing me about animation and process.

Jonsi is the guy from Sigur Ros. I’ve been listening to this track ‘Happiness’ on repeat. It’ll get you in the zone.

Music for Psychedelic Therapy is one of my favorite albums. Here’s an interview where Jon Hopkins talks about the making of the album. Of field recording in caves and playing sounds through the forest.

AnimateOpen panel: I’ll be talking with some cool artist / animators next week through AnimateOpen’s Accelerate Program. Hope I say something useful or true. Tune in to find out.

Lastly, we’re proud to say Noggin will be playing Slamdance. This is by far the biggest festival we’ve participated in and will be magnificent, I’m sure. I’m headed to LA to watch as much film as possible, and to learn, learn, learn. You can get tix at the link above for both the in person edition and the virtual.

Thankyou, my friends. Sending you love from Italy.

-Case

images in this newsletter-

a. Hero Worship, cut paper lightbox, pretty big sized, 2024.

b. and c. - footage from Safe Cave, our exhibition in Florence 2024.

d. Casting Out, etching and chine colle, small, 2025.

e. Chair, etching and drypoint and chine colle, medium size, 2024.

f. Iron Maiden, cut paper lightbox, medium size, 2024.

g. Case and Morgan in front of old plaques.