Raphael

This is probably the most self-indulgent thing I've drawn since high school. I'm in a Mood today. I'm also sleep-deprived, stressed, and haven't eaten in like... 24 hours or something. Solution: draw juvenile self-indulgent shit.

Yeah, this is me. This is me as I would see myself as a character in my favourite movie, Wings of Desire or Der Himmel uber Berlin in the original German. In the movie, the angels often sit on a giant angel statue overlooking Berlin. This... uh... this is not an angel statue overlooking Berlin. This is my attempting to compensate for the fact that I cannot draw backgrounds and generally hate doing it. It's... y'know... like... a bridge... with an inexplicable Roman column on it... yeah... makes sense...

In my defense, I do feel that this actually is a pretty good self-portrait. I don't have wings or a halo but otherwise this really is how I dress and how I look.

Funny... I'm not even Christian, either. But to be fair, the angels in Wings of Desire are only vaguely and theoretically Christian, either. There's no interventionist God, the angels do not judge or condemn, they do not reference a sky-deity as a boss or parental figure and He/She/It is only barely a creator entity... These angels are something entirely different. They observe mankind, occasionally lend subtle influence to steer thought processes towards a more optimistic path, and every so often one of them decides to become mortal and live the remainder of his arbitrarily-assigned lifespan on earth with the rest of us jokers with no particularly special powers or influence. Because everyday experience, color, taste, warmth, hurt and comfort, frustration and joy, all of it... is such a miracle that it is worth living and embracing and rejoicing in, no matter its end, its status, its length... Life... is immense. And it is immensely perfect in all its faults.

Yeah, I see myself as an angel looking for the meaning of life in the feeling of soil in my hands and the color of army fatigues and the smell of the air in autumn and the taste of metal and everything that is existence, imagined and tangible and exquisite. Yeah, I see myself as a guardian and I follow the Storyteller like a religion and understand his purpose and his language.

This is absurdly self-indulgent. I'm not in a mood to care much right now.

(Oh, and before anyone assumes I'm naming deviations by picking angel names out of the bible... that is my real middle name. Ayup.)



We've come to bring you home
Haven't we, Cassiel?

To cast aside your loss and all your sadness
And shuffle off that mortal coil and mortal madness
For we're here to pick you up and bring you home
Aren't we, Cassiel?

It's a place where you did not belong
Where time itself was mad and far too strong
Where life leapt up laughing and hit you head on
and hurt you, didn't it hurt you, Cassiel?

While time outran you and trouble flew toward you,
and you were there to greet it,
weren't you, foolish Cassiel?

But here we are, we've come to call you home
and here you'll stay never more to stray
Where you can kick off your boots of clay
can't you, Cassiel?

For death and you did recklessly collide
and time ran out of you
and you ran out of time,
didn't you, Cassiel?

And all the clocks, in all the world
may this once just skip a beat in memory of you
but then again those damn clocks, they probably won't
will they, Cassiel?

One moment you are there and then strangely you are gone,
but on behalf of all of us here we are glad to have you home
Aren't we, dear Cassiel?

--"Cassiel's Song"
by Nick Cave