Miles Johnston
The Committee
I don't always know when they are coming. I don't hear them scuttling down the hallway. The hallways in my brain don’t creek or groan. Everyone wears soft socks. Who needs shoes? We’re not going out. The only place they're going is nowhere because wherever I go they are going. And I am going nowhere. They have my body. They will stretch into my arms and into my legs like I'm some sort of human snow suit. They worry. They are here to defend me. They weren't there when the first damage occurred, and so now they feel overprotective. I don't fault them for being absent. They didn't exist. I hadn’t invented them yet. But there were others. Real-life others. The others who could have helped but didn't. I’ve gutted myself of them and filled myself with these new housemates. They weren't there to build a pillow fort with me in the living room when I was six. They didn't cover my cold legs with a blanket. They weren't there to stop the fingers and the hands and the eyes that found me early and wouldn't let go. But they’re here, just a little late. They take on the sentinel role. There is one of them who can't speak. Not yet. And she never will. But the others are active. They creep in and out of me like teenagers on a Friday night. I am the house with the window that they carefully crack open. I am packed with so much trouble that they struggle to believe I’ll make it. When they speak of me to others they shake their heads and wring their hands and wonder if I'll even survive. I certainly have made every effort to break up this committee. If I go, they go. It's like a fantasy inside of a nightmare that dies. Even the most brilliant dream can't survive. The air in my lungs is all they have. And they are worried. I have no idea what they are thinking. They look at me. I can feel that. But I don't know what they do or when they do it. Only when it's done. Then I come back and find that things are erased. Conversations full of curse words. Thoughts left out to rot. And for a period of time I was not in charge. Because even the least likely of them doesn't want to die. The only one who wants to die is me. And clearly I’m no longer in charge. So now they are the family who home invaded my head. I hear their voices down the hallway, but I’m never invited. I got kicked out long before they showed up. It’s better than the silence. At least the voices are festive. They argue over me. They snap at strangers. They love me more than I do. They are my team. My psychosis. My fan club. My committee.
The Gap
Make it clean. No mess. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to ponder. Empty your mind. That's clean. Life was clean. At the beginning. It split me in half, but there wasn't a mess. It happened. No one noticed. I don't like to talk about it. There are side effects of course. Consequences. That's what life did to me with this clean cut right down the middle. This way I can be shared. I'm in two. I am double. I can be awake or asleep. One eye open and one eye closed. But will one ever be in charge of the other? I really don't know because I’m not in charge of anything. It's possible that one eye has built a bank account. Or set up a to-do list. Maybe the other picked the apps for our phone. Maybe it does the self touch. I don't know. I'm the lefty, but are we also right-handed? Maybe the other half goes to movies at night. I could go to every usher until I find one who recognizes all of me. He’ll tilt his head because everything's on the opposite side. Like a selfie. Coffee or tea? Maybe we have things in common. Maybe we like the same things. Maybe my song is their favorite song. I wonder if I'll find out once I'm dead. I assume we'll both die at the same time but…. maybe? Maybe one of us will live a long life while the other one gets cancer. Breast cancer. Brain cancer. Maybe one of us will get sick in the head. Mentally ill. Will develop a disorder. We'll find her disconnected. We'll get lost in heavy thoughts that weigh us down like putting lead in our shoes. We’ll need to see a therapist. A psychiatrist. A judge. We'll take pills. We'll get shocked. They'll lock us up for good. Will the other one come to see us? Will we have to put their name on a list for visitors? I don't know. Maybe they know. I wish I could ask them, but we never seem to be in the same place at the same time. Like Superman and Clark Kent. Or Cain and Abel. Now there's a possibility. Maybe one of us will kill the other. Why not? Because if one of us dies does the other one inherit everything? Do we get to be both halves? Left and right? It's tempting, but I think I like living in two. I just wish the gap between us wasn’t so silent and wide.
Magnets
Every time I come to this kitchen, I forget why I'm here. I'm beginning to think these gaps are having a cumulative effect on me. It's like grinding your gears. Riding the clutch. I'm starting to think that I'm doing damage to myself. I walk into the room without shoes or socks, and I look at the refrigerator. I see the reminders of the things I haven’t done. I should take my car to the service center. I should need money for my adopted a Nepalese child. I want to end the fight against abortion. There are magnets holding these things up. And there's one magnet that's unemployed. Maybe that's the magnet for me. Maybe I'm supposed to be pinned to the refrigerator door. But what would I be reminding myself to do? Exist. That's the answer. To be. Because that's something I don't think I'm doing these days. That's the damage. I'm killing my soul. I'm starting to disappear. I can’t change the gears. And the car will freeze. And the engine will seize. And we will be stuck on the side of a highway with the traffic zooming by us so close to our bodies. There’s nothing I can do. I walk into the kitchen and I can't remember why I'm there. I'm standing on the side of the road, and I don't know what I don’t know. I might find myself at the bottom of a swimming pool or peering over a snowy mountain on skis. There are a million things that you could tell me I will do. Maybe I should eat grapes and spit the seeds into a cup. Maybe I should clean the toaster oven. Or put the dishes away. Make a meatloaf? Maybe I should just fall down on the floor. It’s linoleum. I could crack my head open and the answers might spill out. And just before I lose consciousness maybe I'll see the answer swimming in my blood. It might tell me what to do. And in the last moments before I'm gone, I will know how to fix the car or what to eat when I come in to the kitchen. I might even remember the name of the child I adopted in Nepal because that's a memory I would very much love to keep alive.
Freedom to
Fly
Coming from the doctors while standing on the corner of two dead streets, I noticed something that sounded like a bird chirping. When I looked around, I realized it was coming from the crosswalk. More specifically a little yellow box next to the button that you press in order to get the light to change from red to white. I had never noticed this before. But of course! The blind. They would need to know when the light had changed. Otherwise they might be mangled or flattened. Or maybe they would just be too scared to ever leave the curb. I don’t need it. The doctor never declared me blind, but maybe if the sidewalks could move. That might be better for me. But we're not at that point yet. No moving sidewalks. No floating cars. I will be getting wheels soon. The doctor said it won't take long. That's why I decided to walk home today. It's a considerable walk but in case it's my last I wanted to really enjoy it. That's why I was drawn to the chirping. I started thinking about everything that would be new to me once I was bound to a wheelchair. I looked at the weeds growing out of the cement. How long had it taken them to do this? How strong do they have to be? How many weeds had not made it and died trying? I looked up to walk forward but I noticed it seemed I was walking the opposite direction of everyone else. Apparently I lived where they didn't. Or they worked where I didn’t. Could they see my bad news? The worst news. I didn't feel like the luckiest man alive. I felt lousy. And every one of their faces that passed me seemed uninterested. Or maybe they were glad it wasn't them. Regardless. It was my last walk, and I was going to finish it no matter what. It didn't matter how many of them tried to slow me with their indifference. I am the prodigal son. I will return, but there will be no party. No. I live by myself, so I will have a chance to see myself crumble. I think of the pans that I will no longer need for frying. I hated cleaning them anyway. And I think of the bird feeder on my balcony. Bird seed gets expensive when you have as many birds as I do. I find myself filling it almost everyday. Now it will eventually empty and stay that way and the birds will have nothing to eat. I don't care to be honest. I'm sure I'll eventually be sick with jealousy of their wings and their endless freedom to fly.
Watching
When I was a little girl, I was plain. I didn’t know it. I was just living my life the way they let me. I went to school. I did my work. I had friends. I played volleyball. We went to the ocean in the summer. We went skiing in the winter. Thanksgivings we went with family. Christmases we went with family. We attended church on Easter. Life was plain. Sometimes I went to bed and I didn’t know I was sleeping. Then when I woke up, I didn’t realize I was awake. The difference between the two was hardly noticeable. When I was asleep, I might have dreamt, but I didn’t remember my dreams. When I was waiting to fall asleep, I could go hours without looking at the clock and still I could guess the time right on the dot. I guess it was a talent. I never know if I’m telling time while I’m sleeping or awake, but either way I’m always accurate. To be honest, I was proud of this. It wasn’t something I ever told anyone else, but it brought I smile to my face. Being right. Maybe my life wasn’t all plain. This ability of mine was bizarre, but it was singular. Exotic. There were other examples of my accuracy. I rarely found anything surprising. I could quietly predict people’s responses to almost any question or topic. I could read their moods. I saw their meltdowns and tantrums coming before they ever happened, and I knew just how long someone might laugh at a terrible joke. I think because I could fade into the background meant that I was a spy. I could swing a mental camera over my shoulder and document everything I see. This gave me the freedom to feel. I wanted to interrupt the world I was watching. I can have the impact of the invisible woman. I could wear costumes. Put on false beards. Pose naked. These were things that no one would have guessed that I would do. There was another world of ticking clocks that could follow me. People who fell in love with me because I could be beautiful. I could be sexy. I could be dangerous. And that's just what I did. I became dangerous with my body. Because the body I’ve decided to wear now is a body I created the way a sculptor hacks out of a block of stone. Now being awake or asleep is much better than it ever used to be. Because now I got to take up space and time with only the very best parts of me.
Love
Jumble
The story in your head is written on cellophane. Clear plastic. The story is scribbled with a shaky hand. The transparent pages pile up. Page 234 blends with page 16. And all the words are jumbled. You are jumbled. It is a violent rendering. It is a deceitful act. It is betrayal. It is passion. It is someone's twisted will that takes the pages and turns them this way and that way so that a p looks like a d or a q looks like a b. All the words become foreign words and sometimes they become gibberish. It is your relentless task to keep the story straight. To keep reading the story. To keep mouthing the story. Because at some point the story became you. You became the jumble. And the story happened because it happened to you. No one was watching. That's how the story got to be such a mess. People who were supposed to protect you and your story went missing. Sometimes you would be reading a line that made sense until it got to a point where it stopped making sense, but who could you tell? Who could grab your hand and stop you if you were left alone? You had to make it make sense. But it didn't. So you kept it inside of you. You jammed the slippery pages into your head. And soon your head was filled with a story that was out of order. The words would sometimes come out of your mouth and they wouldn't make sense. And you had to make decisions based on the plot of the story, but the plot of the story was without a doubt a mess. Oh, my love, you told me your story. You told it as clearly as you could, and luckily I was there to fill in the gaps. Because I am a writer. I am a reader, and I'm used to stories that don't make sense. Together we were able to sort it out. But I can’t erase the words that go in and the words that go out without making sense. So what can we do? Well I know what you have done. You have reached inside of me. You have borrowed my story. Borrowed my eyes. You have given me the one thing that is the only thing you know how to give. You've scooped out your middle and you've handed it to me. Because it doesn't matter. The story doesn't matter when it comes to your heart. Your heart doesn't care about a story. It just wants to beat. And it wants to find a partner. And so it does. It finds a partner. And you will tell the story with the heartbeats because sometimes the story can become a song. And they don't have to have lyrics. You can just bang on the drum. And the story gets told. And that's what I'm listening for. I'm listening for your drum. Even when you may wander, I’m listening. It may take you far away. Maybe because you can't feel, you are disappearing from me but I can hear the drum. You have made it something for me to hear. And that's when I'll find you. And if I find you mumbling a story that doesn't make sense, I'll turn the story into a song. And we'll sing it together. And for some reason it doesn't always matter that the song doesn't make sense. It's the melody. It's the rhythm. It's the beat. It's the two of us singing together. That's what will make sense. That's love. That's the love that makes the story come together.
Author: Derek Letsch
Artist: Miles Johnston
Miles Johnson Bio
I was born in the UK in 1993. I spent the first few years of my early childhood living in Brunei, Borneo, something that I am sure had a major effect on me. The totally different environment gave me the intuition early on that there is no true ‘normal’. In hindsight I have always been interested in anything that helps to transform my perception of the mundane. From mathematics, physics, philosophy, art, I always wanted to see the world around me as if for the first time. I have always felt a sense of the sublime, terrifying, awe inspiring strangeness of being.
The rest of my school years were in Hampshire, England. After getting involved in art forums as a young teenager and participating and learning for 5 years, I moved to Sweden to study at the Swedish Academy of Realist Art at the age of 18. Now I work part-time as an instructor at the same school whilst working on developing my own body of work. Over the past couple of years my work has found an audience online and started to be exhibited internationally, culminating in my first solo show in New York at Last Rites Gallery in 2018.
I work primarily in graphite and oils, using the human form as a vehicle to attempt to process the intensity and profound strangeness of the collective human experience. The distortions and transformations my subjects undergo serve to represent the experience of our internal state during crucial moments in our lives. Instead of focusing on literal representations of the world, I depict the surreal and abstract qualities of our subjectivity with the goal of creating works with a deep emotional resonance.
I have a strong sense that art makes the world a better place, and I am giving all I can to be of service in this way. My work means whatever it means to you.