The drawing and poem below come from all the way back in 2017 …

I made a ghost of you
We hang out all the time
He’s everything that makes you you …
According to my mind

Still lingering in a corner on a number of older art pieces, like the markings of a child trapped in liminal space, is the strange moniker “lurm.”

I retired this moniker years ago but the ghost of this ghost has echoed awhile as it continues to fade.

This “nickname” I guess you could call it came my way during a heavy time where my artistry and intelligence had been muffled, disembodied, and sidelined into an almost cartoonish caricature of myself. One that was soft enough and whimsical enough to never command authority or center stage.

It sure would be more convenient for many if my ethos were more decorative rather than piercing; more cutesy rather than demanding of action.

But that’s just not really who I am or who I ever was.

For a time “lurm” functioned as a sort of escape pod from a narrowminded social infrastructure that judged and limited my artistic expression. But that escape pod became its own prison.

My playfulness reduced to childish naivety; my levity in the face of pain reduced to a fairy-like disposition held by someone nobody needed to take seriously.

That name “lurm” was never a real person; just a ghost that made a lot of people more comfortable to avoid the gravity of what someone forced into my position would be required to endure.

It’s not that that era has ended so much as that it was only ever a little play, running on little stages while real life went on without being attended to in the way that was necessary.

So that’s why I say “no more” rather than “the end.”

What never began in the first place doesn’t really need to end, now does it?

Take care,

Adrien