MURAL IDEAS! From the inside of a young business mind comes a strange sensation. A small thought, a moment of awareness, an epiphany, separates the individual’s mind and eyes from his body sending the top of his head reeling! This surreal decapitation was one of my favorite street art images for two reasons. The first being technically it is a very easy image to create which allowed me to move around the city quickly installing the “heads in half” where ever I pleased, but any idiot with a marker can do that. The second and far more important reason being that the message the image conveys, in my opinion, is an extremely important one. 

The symbol was inspired by a short story called “On having No head” in which a traveler on a spiritual retreat set out into the wilderness to meditate in complete isolation. On his travels the wanderer came across a magnificent waterfall but discovered that with no one else around to share the experience, the moment became nearly indescribable. The best analogy the man could come up with later was that the experience was like having no head. In my version of the parable I’m trying to explain that even though we are trapped in our metaphorical business suits and metropolitan routines, and that it might take something more extreme than a waterfall, I believe we can still achieve such moments of realization. There is no external violence being intentionally depicted here, this surreal decapitation comes from the insides of our own minds! 

As well as a street art throw up, I’ve used this story in many different aspects of my work. The image has appeared in my comic books, fashion designs and animations. Iconic images play an important role in a lot of the “HEY APATHY!” and this symbolic situation has become one of the staples in my urban  mythology. I still remember one day on the streets when a bunch of teenagers passed by the drawing the said something along the lines of “If you see little comic book speed lines appear on you face beware—you finished!”

This piece of graffiti street art actually beat the ads for over 2 weeks! For some reason the commercial poster brigades kept going around my psychic talisman. There might be hope for us yet...