Mason Terra: Portrait of a Youth in a Renaissance Apocalypse
What is good is what is bad and vice versa. The body of this text is suited with a Rollie and carried in a Fiskar hearse, son. Lemme tell you about the aches, pains, and the effervescent hurts of a deterred generation drinking detergent from a Super Squirter. Faces flat up against a flat screen viewing phenomena just waiting on one last thing until they ask Steve: Can we get a clue? Hey, Mason, what about you? What’s music and art and jiu-jitsu gotta do with the heart of the struggles that we’re just trying to get through? Is there a W in the thousand L’s? Is there a heaven in the hell of war? It’s an art, we’re told, a Confucian Zen in a book of battle by Sun-Tzu. Terra, Mason: Earth-Builder; can you tell us what you’re gonna do?
T: We just came back from art class.
M: We did.
T: I found out you do theater—or, rather, you did theater.
M: Right.
T: That's on top of the music and the art that you do.
M: Right.
T: And in a li'l bit you got to go to...
M: To Brazilian jiu jitsu.
T: So you kind of do it all, huh?
M: A little bit. I like being creative. Y'know, any way that I can express myself, it's fun for me. People don't really think jujitsu as like a form of creativity, but it's martial arts. So martial...arts, y'know what I mean? So it's all the same for me.
T: That's what I would call like a Renaissance Man attitude or a Renaissance Person, rather, y'know? A Jack or Jane of all trades. You think of like DaVinci: he was an inventor, but he was an artist and he was awesome at both of those things. That kind of person, they're called luminaries.
M: I've never heard that term.
T: I think that's what they're called. Don't quote me on that. I mean, I'm going to quote me on that, but it's all up to interpretation. How's your day been going?
M: Um, I've been alright, I've been alright. Going through something. I don't know what's up, but, y'know...going to therapy and handling it. Going to the gym, y'know, trying to deal with it, so...
T: I think...I think a lot of people got some stuff to handle...
M: Of course.
T: But I'm super happy that you're handling it.
M: Well, I hope I am! I'm doing the best I can.
T: It's necessary. Dude, it's been a tough time. I can't even—it just seems to be the underlying theme and if you don't get on it, you're not going to get over it, y'know?
M: Yeah. It's not going to go away on its own. You got to...you've got to do something about it.
T: Enough "alright" days, you're going to end up having a good day.
M: Yeah, yeah. That's the way I think about it. I mean, not every day is going to be "God" day. It's not.
T: Quick look at your pages: you've split it up. Your art page. Your music page.
M: Right.
T: Looking at your art page, the latest things I've been seeing: you've been putting your art on shirts and I've seen you in class wear shirts like that Thrasher shirt. That was yours, right?
M: No, that was actually a shirt that Thrasher made, but it looks like something I would make. I had to get that. Y'know, I think everything that I wear, everything that I buy—it needs to speak to me. Like, I can't fuckin' wear trash bullshit. I know this just looks like brown, but the fit and the fabric and the cloth, y'know; everything I wear, it's on purpose.
T: I want to get into that, too, because, I think as we move forward with this discussion, I want to reveal to the people who read this that while you're not the first, you're certainly far from the last. I think people are going to be getting cooler and cooler with their own style and representation, but we'll dig into that as the time comes. What's the latest thing you've been working on?
M: Well, I'm currently working on a piece that, actually, I started in the classroom that we were just in. I went there Saturday night around, like, 11 o'clock at night. There's no one there so I just, like, take my shirt off, put music on and I just go crazy. I can't make anything with my shirt on. And I don't like to wear shoes either, but there's broken glass and shit so I can't wear no shoes but if I could, I would. But I was just going crazy; I'm in my own world. I made this...this painting. It's pretty big. I'd say like 3' x 1-1/2'. It's an important piece for me right now. It's in the works, but it's definitely signifying a change in my life that's happening right now. So it's weird; it's a weird piece. It's unusual. It's surreal. But I'm working on that as far as art.
T: What's the medium?
M: For the medium, I'm using spray paints, acrylics
T: And that's stuff you have in your possession—not from the school?
M: Yeah, everything I use. Well, I found, like, a pack of silica beads...like you know the ones you find in beef jerky. I kept tripping on it and I was like, "what the fuck." So I just grabbed it and I put it on the canvas and I, like, squirted some paint on it. So that's on there.
T: Nice texture work, huh?
M: Yeah, yeah, get some beads in there. That's what I have so far.
T: It sounds like it's going to really come alive. I can't wait to see how that culminates and how that comments on what you're going through.
M: A lot of the art I make is like—the way I think of it: it's like another limb of me, like, I ripped my limb off and it's on a piece of fucking work. It's like "Me" y'know what I mean? It's everything I do.
T: Excellent. And music?
M: Music: I'm currently working on a loop kit. It's going to have approximately 30 loops on it.
T: Is that what you just completed: The Red Eyes, Black Dragon?
M: Well, that's the one that's coming up. So I did a little trailer for it, but it's still in the works, in the mixing and mastering process. I have some loops on my laptop that I got to mix and master and transfer over.
T: The artwork you created for that, that is artwork you created, too, right?
M: Yeah. I used assets from Google that I stole, too.
T: I mean, the depiction is from a Yu-Gi-Oh card, but you made it look like a PlayStation 2 game cover or 1, rather. I like that. Would you like to comment on how you connect with that particular way you're putting that out with that art.
M: Well, I especially love old video game graphics; low-poly like early Spyro.
T: Oh yeah, like Tomb Raider.
M: Yeah. Like, like...Geck?
T: Gex.
M: Gex, yeah. That game is fire...the cover art for that. I just absolutely love the super surreal, kind of untextured, early 3D graphics. I don't know why but I'm just so obsessed with it.
T: It's weird how that is becoming a phenomenon. As we move forward, it feels like in 2010, we hit the mirror and now we're coming back. 10 years after that, now we're back in the 2000s and we're celebrating what was super nostalgic to us as kids. I don't know if every generation does it that exact same way, but I think with the access to the editing and art resources that we have nowadays, people have been more expressive about it than ever.
M: Oh, they're going crazy with it. The first thing that comes to my mind is Trippie Redd's new album Trip at Knight—the whole rollout of that album. I think it kind of sheds light on kind of what I'm doing. He has the 3D Gameboy graphic visuals for all the songs and the songs themselves are extremely synth-y and upbeat; they sound like they're from video games. He's making video game references. So, like, it's just so good; it's such a good time for shit like that. For everyone that used to listen to music kind of like that and watch things like that, we're all grown up and we still like it.
T: We're kind of arriving at this paradigm shift, like this singularity of influence, where newer things are reminiscent of older things and they're just transformed to become even bigger celebrations of that medium than they were ever even intended to be. Let me ask you this: do you feel like while that is a good thing, that this we've hit this like singularity, let's call it, it's also representative of this flattening of the human experience? Where, as artists, we're benefited from this access to all these things through online media or whatever, the Internet for people that aren't expressive like us, it kind of crushes their journeys because they don't have the journey to do anything. They're not expressing anything. So, a normal consumer is just like "I can have this, I can have that" and there's no experience to it.
M: I see what you mean. Like everything's just kind of brought to them.
T: Yeah. They can access anything and there's no special meaning in reaching that and attaining that any more, y'know? It's just handed on a platter and—
M: Through marketing.
T: I see something detrimental to it, but I also think it poses a particularly good jumping point for what —
M: Yeah, I was just going to say that
T: We might be able to find people finding more unique ways of exploring local artists or ones that represent them in a very specific way. I think that time is coming and it's evident in all of these ways and it's a way that our generation has had to cope with a lot of backlash, too, for the Internet, y'know?
M: Yeah, I agree. I think it's a good reference point. Y'know, it's easily consumable. It's right there. Everything is kind of like made for TikTok nowadays, right? A minute and a half, little snippets and people just replay and replay them. I think that's a lot of the reason why albums like Donda that are super bloated with like 20+ five minute songs. They get a lot of backlash, but, dude, he's doing what he wants, y'know what I mean? People are taking a reference point and taking popular phenomena like drill drums and these orchestral sounding melodies and they're making them their own. I think that's kind of what mainstream should serve as. They serve as another palette. A reference point where people can take that and make it their own.
T: It's like a loop kit almost for the imagination.
M: Right. It's something that you can take and just use to your liking however you want. And you got to be creative enough to, y'know, portray what you're thinking of, but it definitely is a little bit difficult.
T: Where does your art take you?
M: Where does it take me?
T: Whether it's music or illustrative.
M: It makes me feel like a God, like, the music makes me feel like a God. It just makes me feel like I can eat buildings and shit, especially the music. The painting is more of, like, me kind of not being able to handle my own emotions. My art is kind of selfish. I can't really, y'know, deal with my own emotions. So my selfish ass puts it on a canvas for everyone else to deal with. It's a little selfish, but it's the only way that I kind of know—I mean, sometimes I can articulate it in words and through music and rapping, but for the most part it's just like a form of therapy. It puts me in a super concentrated mode and I get very manic and emotional and I just let it go. I just let it go its own way.
T: Were you always like this?
M: Um, kind of. I always was drawing, y'know, it wasn't always abstract. I feel like this abstract thing came a little later in life as I matured. But I have always drawn dinosaurs and I used to draw a lot of dinosaurs, which is where my archeology love came from, which is what I used to major in. But, y'know, drawing—my dad used to draw. He was pretty good and I wanted to draw like him. When he would draw, like, SpongeBob, I was like, "I need to do this." And it was fun. I liked how I could just make whatever I wanted in real life and I could see it and other people could see it. I like the fact that other people could see it.
T: You possess what was just imagined, the intangible.
M: It's unfathomable that that can be an actual thing that happens.
T: It's powerful. It can say something, too. It has a message without speaking.
M: Right. Exactly. And y'know, I've always drawn, I've always loved music, playing Rock Band with my parents, my family; we had the whole band. I learned guitar and I kind of quit that. I would be in the plays and sing. So I was always doing some form of art. And when I got into middle school, especially, like, eighth grade, I got into, y'know, deejaying and producing; I loved Martin Garrix and Skrillex and all those guys with their fucking awesome bass drops. That's kind of where, like the "God" sound comes from, like where it just makes me feel euphoric. Yeah, it's...it's awesome. I was like twelve, thirteen and I wanted to go to raves. It's like I need to go to them. I wanted to be on stage with the turntables. We're kind of hearing that sound now through artists like Trippie Redd and Playboi Carti where that kind of synth-y and superheavy drops with the bass is like coming alive, y'know? I always want to make kind of that electronic music and when I heard you can actually do that in your room, I was like, "lemme see, lemme try this."
T: So would you say that was one of, maybe, a few moments where you realized that art and music was a pursuit for your career?
M: Definitely not. It never occurred to me that I could do it as a career. I always thought artists never made money. I always thought music people were just kind of industry plants and if you didn't have the right connections, your cousin or your uncle had a studio or was a part of a record label, then you weren't going to make it. Because I know a lot of people that have done music for a long time and they're good and talented and they just never got the light of day. So, yeah, y'know, it intimidated me for the longest time, but I just don't give a fuck anymore. There's nothing in this world that makes me more happy than making, so why would I do anything else? Plumbers don't go to school to be fuckin' chemists. Albert Einstein didn't go to school for culinary. He fucking went for what he liked. So why would I wait? As far as I know I'm only here for one time.
T: That's it.
M: I'm not really in it for the money. I don't care if I'm the richest person in the world. I hope I can live, y'know? At least I know my parents will be behind me on this. They've been a great support. At least I know I have that. But of course, I want to make my own living.
T: I think we're in the middle of a great creative time. It's like a New Renaissance. It's something that you might have seen back then. It's something you probably saw in the sixties where creativity was moving forward, especially with the technology that was given at that time. You see preconceptions of doing what's going to make you a lot of money start to dissolve. Not just for you, but for society. Do you see a generation finding out that money is hard to access? To become wealthy is incredibly hard, so why try? We should just do what we enjoy doing.
M: Yeah, I think there are a lot of people that are like that, but I don't know if it's the people that I'm kind of surrounded by or the groups I'm in, but I see that slowly fizzling away, but not at the rate of people that are like, "if they can do it, I can do it," which is kind of a poisonous mentality. It's dangerous. People that are like, "oh, well, he can make shirts, I can make shirts," but they're making shitty ass shirts and they keep going and going. No one's buying these shirts. They're putting money and money in, y'know? I mean, like, I think we're at a time where we have all these beautiful tools to make and create whatever you want and you see new people coming up on the map every single day. I think it's good and bad at the same time. Like, how many motherfuckers do y'know that were in the Renaissance period that are not Beethoven or whatever? We don't know about them. With a lot of opportunities comes a lot of people who fail and that's, I think, a lot of where the fear comes from. If you really want it, just keep going. You'll find a way to make money.
T: Do you know Johannes Gutenberg? He invented the printing press, the European one. There was a Chinese one, but it was made hundreds of years earlier and their language is obviously made up of unique characters. So where they have ten thousand different things, we only need twenty six easy ones. Well, anyways, Johannes died broke and without fame entirely. He saw an opportunity to go to the biggest money makers in the day—the Catholic Church—and make them a uniform bible which was something they were looking for. Monks would spend their entire lives and they would write a couple and it could be different from the next person. Johannes Gutenberg makes the printing press and he gets sued for it. People want to know about what he's making and he won't let them know about it. He eventually releases; he makes his own shop, gets the Bible going. His partner sues him; he dies penniless. But thousands of Bibles were able to be printed and thousands of print shops opened up right after he died. Ironically, the invention of the printing press led to the spread of knowledge that eventually created schisms in the Catholic Church, founding the Protestant Reformation, which brought people to America to live freely and with their version.
M: Right.
T: So how does that make you feel? Can you say anything about how that relates to our time? Do you see any parallels?
M: For sure. I think a lot of people see that as a “W” but that's just a complete “L” to me, y'know what I mean? This dude...this dude worked hard and obviously, he made this to make a living and—
T: Be an innovator so he could make a couple bucks and be famous.
M: Exactly.
T: He did neither. The irony is on both sides, for the Catholic Church and for Gutenberg: they both took big, fat fucking L's.
M: It's crazy. Like, I hope that—y'know, of course, every artist wants that. Well, I can't speak for everyone, but for me, at least, I hope that my art kind of serves as the base point, like when we were talking earlier, for people to recreate. We have the Trippie Redds, but we have the people like the Lucy Fers and the Sofaygos and the Yeet and all of these artists that a lot of people don't know about that kind of made their own reiteration of the sound, still being a bit unique, but fitting in the genre which I hope is what my art and my music eventually evolve to. That's the dream. I want people to look at my art and my path and say, like, "OK, I can do this; I have kind of a similar thinking. I want to do this too." I hope that's what it serves, but I hope that I can at least live, y'know what I mean? The kind of validity of this idea breaks down really quick for me, because eventually it just goes to like, "what's the meaning of life? Do you want to live happy with money or do you want to influence the world?'' It fucks me up a little bit, but I don't know. I don't do it for the money. Of course I want to live, but I want people to enjoy the art and I want people to enjoy the music and I hope that it's more—like, I hope people study it. I hope people use this, but who knows?
T: I like you because I believe that if there were more people like you—and I think you do it even better than me. If there are more people like you who were interested in self-expression, unique qualities, things that aren't repetitive in life, we would have a thriving middle class of artists where everyone gets their special little place and their names and they may be not the biggest, but they're not going to be broke either. They're going to have their own little shop on their own website and they're able to make a couple bucks and they just live their life off that and they transcend what is considered the American dream. They live in an insecure way and what's more rewarding than to risk it and win?
M: I think that is like the utopia where everyone does what they love and can live: that's the utopia. I think nowadays it's hard to have the energy and the time to do what you want. I think a lot of the things that these big companies do is very distracting and soaks up a lot of time for people and—
T: And steals consumers from a more personal experience.
M: Of course.
T: They'll sell you, me, those people; they'll sell us all as long as they can sell us on the one thing that they made.
M: Exactly. I think these companies that have these massive fuckin’ monopolies, it just makes it impossible. This gets kind of political, but I don't know what the fuck to do. I just...I just throw shit on a canvas and that's buttons, so...
T: I'm telling you, that's the path. And as money becomes more scarce and the wealthier becomes more wealthy and the impoverished become more impoverished...it's going to end up just boiling down to "well, are you fucking cool?" Y'know, are you, at least, cool? You don't have to be rich. You can just be chill, y'know what I mean? That opens up the door for a more art-oriented society because there will be nothing left for us. What's so funny to me: you know about NFTs, right?
M: Right. I've heard.
T: People are buying little drawings and they have a value of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It reminds me of a bustling Tenochtitlan market where—
M: Yeah, like in the subway!
T: Yeah, where people aren't even using money. Like, we're bartering with this little relic or something, y'know?
M: It's so weird. It's like a breakdown of the gold standard. We went from gold which has value and then we go to money which has a value but really it doesn't.
T: It's invented.
M: Yeah, we give it value.
T: I have a couple of bucks in my pocket like yeah these can't even keep me warm. I can't even put this on me.
M: No. Yeah, it doesn't do anything. Gold you can, like, make armor and shit.
T: And you can make electrical components. That's incredibly important.
M: Right. And we go from gold to money to nothing having value. Ones and zeros now have value and it's honestly the greatest fuck you to these big companies that I've ever seen and to the government and to the big guys that abuse the money and the inflation rates and all that.
T: I think about this often because I think about it in terms of the path of my life. There's no one alive to this day beside people who immigrate that knows what it means to pioneer a new life. There's no one alive from the 1800s that had to literally get up and go somewhere else entirely where there's no security, there's no safety, there's not even a bank so all your fucking money doesn't mean shit; like, you just have to go and live and experience life your own way. People have been getting sold on this, "this is the way." It's the greatest marketing strategy I ever saw. It's sickening, but people have been sold on this lifestyle and there's no one alive to this day that even knows how to challenge that for the most part. Obviously, there are exceptions. The majority—and I mean, 99.9% of people are living in a relic that I think is going to evaporate into dust any second now. They're going to have to, at least, come to grips with the infinite possibilities you have when life is purposeless. It's freeing. I think the art community is going to flourish. Other people are just going to have to get hip with it. Eventually, our time is going to come. We're going to rise up like absolute champions of this time. I tried to tell someone at my restaurant when I was working the other day that I'm going to talk to this dude in my class. I'm gonna to talk to him about the future and how to utilize technology and what our thoughts were. They wouldn't even let me finish the sentence. They interrupt me and try to say "technology is so bad; no one knows how to do anything without it." I'm like, "I'm trying to talk about...he's an artist."
M: It's the old heads. They don't know shit.
T: You can't even do art anymore without them going, "oh well, I mean, what are you going to do?" It's like, "what do you mean 'what are you going to do?' You're painting. They've been doing that for thousands of years." Are you kidding me?
M: Since the cavemen.
T: People are so stuck in this mindset they got sold on that they don't even let you finish a sentence anymore. I mean, they're old so when their time is on the end...and I feel bad that things are disorienting and new for them—they aren't going to experience something that I think might be kind of dope.
M: Yeah, beautiful.
T: Beautiful in one sense. Kind of dismal in another sense. They left us with this shite—
M: Y'know, "idea of the best American life."
T: Yeah, like, "nice try." That will be discarded like that *snap* and they won't be around to see what the New Renaissance is like.
M: Right. And they advocate for this kind of life and it's like, "well, look at the percentage of people who are in the corporate world and in the job world: 80% of them hate their fucking job."
T: Hate their jobs. Therefore, they hate their life.
M: They're miserable.
T: And that's a life of no fulfillment.
M: Yeah, they're going to die miserable. There's nothing you can do. My dad, he's always telling me, like, "damn, I wish I started..." Like, a new business opened up right near me. it's a building where you literally just go there and you fucking destroy shit. He's like, "damn, if I would have thought of that, I would have done that ten years ago." He always tells me these ideas and I know he's older but people don't realize you can start now. You can retrain.
T: It's so hard and it's so tough when you're sold on this "safety matters." But you might not even be alive tomorrow. Shit is so amorphous right now that you can come out and be on the top of your own mountain any day you want to be. It's going to change. It's not a mountain. It's a wave; you might as well be surfing that tsunami.
M: And there's more. There's more coming on the way.
T: It just comes in and we're just so gifted because no one believes that is our age that social media and connectivity, the way we do it now, is melting our personal skills or our personalities. For the people that know their purpose or know what it can be used for, then that is the ultimate. That's the master key.
M: Yeah, it's the tool. People are just so easily sucked into tech talk and Snapchat and Ins tagram and it's sad, but honestly, I don't fucking care, y'know what I mean? I don't care. I care about Mason Terra. I think like a lot of people had that like idea of this American life with kids, you work your 9 to 5, and you have your wife and you fucking go home, she makes you dinner; I think that was kind of squashed when the pandemic hit, and at least for me, it kind of was a slap in the fucking nuts. I was going to school studying archeology and I was like, "I'm going to become a scientist, I'm going to go to Utah. It's gonna be fun. I'm going to dig up fucking bones." Then all of a sudden, like, the whole world shut down and it's like, dude, if that can fucking happen, I don't know, it made me feel like anything can fucking happen. What am I doing? I need to do what I love. I think a lot of my family members realized that, too, who do have that 9 to 5 job and who maybe like it, but, y'know, they wanted to be a cook or they wanted to open up a family business. It's kind been like, "hey, motherfucker, this isn't just the only way that you can live." Maybe you sacrifice a few things, but if you really love something and this—I truly believe in this—if you really love something, you would sacrifice anything. I would die for my fucking art. I do not care. It's like the only thing I want. Right now, it is the only thing I want and I hope it stays like that in the future. But, the fact that that the pandemic hit, it was like, "holy fuck, I could die tomorrow. What am I doing? I'm wasting my life."
T: Those with their own sovereign purpose—as in there's no one else at the top dictating, you're at the very top of your life dictating exactly how your life is going to be lived—those with that kind of purpose, they're going to know how to adapt. They're not going to be in a bind because someone else is in a bind that puppeteers their livelihood. You can't stop. Like you said, "you'll die for it." You can't stop no matter what the adversity is and if that ain't living, I don't know. Then you might as well just kill me now. If I'm living wrong, fucking kill me because I feel better than ever. Let's transition here. What do you think is humankind's greatest invention or discovery?
M: Well, that's kind of a loaded question, but I think Language. I did study anthropology, so you obviously observe bones and how things live. Every animal lives different and—
T: It's weird how in bones, you can tell what kind of lifestyle that person lived.
M: It tells a lot.
T: It's in our fucking bones. Our lives are in our skeleton.
M: Exactly. There's this long, heated debate about whether humans are carnivores or herbivores or omnivores or insectivores, because it's like, "oh, look at the teeth like, y'know, these carnivores have sharp teeth; we have sharp teeth" and, "oh, but we also are meant to eat plants because we have molars to grind the plants." It's like, dude, our mouths are not meant to eat anymore. We just eat because we need to live. Our mouths have evolved to talk, y'know, which people forget. Our mouths look the way they are so we can communicate. The fact that I can emit a certain kind of pattern of frequencies to you and you understand what the fuck I'm saying and something happens in your head; it doesn't really make sense to me.
T: Words are like magic spells. And when you hear these words in your ears, it's like I'm inside and you can see what I'm seeing out from behind your eyes or you're seeing out from my eyes. That's called magic.
M: If I say the word "dinosaur", a picture of a dinosaur will come up in your head.
T: What do you see? I'll tell you what I see.
M: A Brachiosaurus.
T: Me too, bro. Long neck, baby. Yeah, that's what I think of too. What kind of magical beasts they are: we've never seen any of them physically and there's nothing really quite like it, y'know? Like, there's no enormous animals like that besides a giraffe or an elephant.
M: Yeah, it's crazy.
T: It makes me think. Rene Descartes: “I think therefore I am…” That's what he said. Cogito ergo sum. An Irish philosopher named George Berkeley—he said to be is to be perceived, as in, it's more than just we think therefore we are. That thing, that chair over there is only there because I'm perceiving it in this tennis court is here and these are just collections of ideas we're perceiving. That means we're breaking it down. We're parsing it out. "That's for sitting. We call that a chair." The nature of language. In the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger said that it's even further than that and that reality is the collection beyond just our anthropocentric understanding; that the real reality is off center from just us. It's actually our relationship between these things we are handling. It's called Umgang. Our real life is in the flux of our relationship to things. We're not actually existing. We can think, but we're not thinking. We don't know how to think until we recognize and we can't recognize until we know what that means to us and with all these things we share this unitary reality. We're as much of a tool to a tool as a tool is to us.
M: A chair isn't a chair unless someone's sitting in it.
T: Exactly. What do you think? For artists, especially nowadays, ones that want to get their art out there, what is the tool of social media to us?
M: It's a difficult tool to use and it's kind of stressful, honestly. That is the biggest problem for me. I have no problem making the beats or making the art, but it's getting it out there and using these tools. It's a beautiful tool, but it's—
T: It's a whole 'nother brush and it's a canvas.
M: You got to master it. The way I think of things, I have kind of an addictive personality where if I have to get into something, I've got to fucking get into it 100%. If I am going to, like, play Pokemon GO, I got to find out all this shit and all the news, y'know? So it's like, "fuck." It's another thing that I got to get into and it doesn't happen right away. It happens gradually and you learn by mistakes and what works for you. But it's a good tool if used well.
T: What's unique I find about it, and I think you could attest to this, social media is actually only that which exists based on every other human interacting with it. Social media is just a bunch of humans and it is just a service and it is all these things all at the same time. It's a whole new canvas that I think we're still just scratching the surface. Or maybe perhaps we're in the middle of it. We're in the middle of the Renaissance right now. We're deep in it. People teach classes. I took a class here about my social media impact and it wasn't even until our 3D art class where I was like, "I'm gonna start posting all my art and taking a bite out of this." Do you sell your art?
M: I do, yeah. I sell all my art. You can buy it from me if you just DM me but I hope to sell prints in the future. It's just difficult, y'know, finding good printing companies. But, yeah, all my art's for sale.
T: Y'know we could probably go to the art department and find an art student who would get involved in that process. We're lucky enough to be at a place like this and, at the very least, we can keep constant communication with them, too. Have you sold some art?
M: I have, yeah. I had my art in a gallery in New Bedford that was owned by my cousin and it had not all my paintings, but almost all my paintings and also a lot of drawings like alcohol marker drawings and sketches on cardboard and pretty much everything. I put a lot of it up to display and people would go in and pick their piece. I sold a few, like five or six pieces. It's exciting.
T: That's a "W".
M: It was crazy for me. Still doesn't really feel real that people went and saw my pieces.
T: And you think that's going to be a path that you'll continue?
M: Selling my artwork? Oh, of course, of course. I want people to have it. If my art can make someone think or feel or do something, bro, it's yours.
T: I'd love a piece.
M: Of course. If you'd like one, let me know.
T: I definitely will. Let's end it like this, dude. We talked a lot about how life is right now. We talked about what it could be: best case scenario. Let's say the worst case scenario: zombie apocalypse starts tomorrow. What are you doing?
M: Oh fuck. Freaking out first.
T: I know that's what I'd do.
M: Yeah, y'know, probably be like, "OK, fuck!" First thing I think of is weapons, food, go right into the CVS, the Market Basket, steal some fuckin' food.
T: I don't even know if I have the strength to do that. I probably just fucking jump in front of the train.
M: Really?
T: Yeah. That kind of is like a hell on earth and I would rather just take a big long nap.
M: Yeah.
T: Or I would fuckin' become a savage.
M: Who knows? I hope I would. I would fuckin' kill those fuckers, y'know, get some weapon, anything and fight them.
T: After that, if you have the defense, the security, the energy, the warmth, the shelter; all these covetous things that people have built their entire lives around...I mean, you'd imagine a lot of that kind of stuff gets freed up. Maybe you just have the sickest life you ever had.
M: Facts! No one to a fucking mess with you.
T: You just live extremely well after that. Man, is it sad or is it or is it real to really consider an apocalypse might be a happy situation for some?
M: Y'know, I think a lot of people would be happy about it, but I think the majority of people would be fucking horrified and melt kind of like how—dude, a virus with flu-like symptoms and the whole world went fucking bonkers. So how do you think it would be with the zombie apocalypse? It just makes you think like these motherfuckers aren't ready, bro.
T: And the ones that are ready are probably sick fucks. They're either incredibly wealthy or extremely paranoid or both. Is it the apocalypse right now? Are we in one or are we in a renaissance? And what is the difference?
M: I think, um, I think we're in a mini-apocalypse. Yeah. I think motherfuckers are metaphorically dying every single day. They go to college—
T: And physically dying, too.
M: Oh sure, sure, yeah. But people are just getting sucked into evil and depressions and all of that. It's sad. But also, it is a renaissance where people are able to market themselves and create this image of themselves and be creative and sell whatever they want. I think it goes both ways. It's sad that people are getting sucked in every day through social media and jobs and committing to careers. I don't think it's as much as people were when my parents were kids, but it's still present. A little mini-apocalypse.
T: It's the platform for rebirth, I suppose. The reckoning, y'know?
M: And I hope that people that attempt when they really want something, they'll keep going. Like, I've done a million things. I used to run a YouTube channel where I played video games and I streamed. I used to be into fish tanks and I wanted to have a fish tank store. We all go through things, at least for me. My dad and I are the same way: we love our hobbies and stick to them. My dad did motocross and stuff. Maybe that's just me, but, you'll know. If it's something that you are going to do for the rest of your life, I feel like you know, like, it'll hit you, y'know what I mean?
T: If it's Ragnarok, the Vikings are going to be Vikings. Artists are going to be artists if this is the way it's going to be.
M: I've gone through a million hobbies and I don't think about anything as much as I do now. I wake up every single fucking day: "what am I going to do? What piece can I create? What am I doing?" I might wake up: "how can I do this? How do I do this?" It's honestly kind of fucking miserable. I kill myself every single day. I have a piece...It's kind of a controversial piece, but it's one of my favorites. It's a black outline monkey and over it, it says in red drippy ink...
T: "I like to kill myself."
M: "I like to kill myself." A lot of people didn't like it. They said, "oh, Mason, are you going to kill yourself? Are you depressed?" And it's like, dude, I've been killing myself like every single day.
T: I knew what you meant by it. I actually just saw that today.
M: Good, good. Cool. Yeah, but like, you can get sucked in y'know? Some days it's like "fuck, I've been doing this all day and I'm torturing myself," but for what? This isn't a race. I get...I get super obsessive and compulsive about things and I kill myself and that's "I kill myself in a bad way," but I can also kill myself in a good way where I fucking grind out paintings and I'm loving it and I do nothing but paint and make music all day or I go to the gym and I'm torturing myself or I go to the jiujitsu gym and people are fuckin' choking me out and it's the best thing. It's the best thing.
T: What people don't realize is that we're dying every day. Are you gonna die doing something you love or are you going to just be dead?
M: One of my favorite quotes—it's a meme, but it stood out to me. It's like, "you only live once: you either kill yourself or you get killed." You know that Vine? I fuckin' love that video.
T: I'm afraid I don't know that one.
M: It's a good one, though. "You only got one life: you either kill yourself or get killed." Then he, like, fuckin' skateboards away and falls or some shit. I forget it, but...
Saturnine sorrows in the world of tomorrow, the dominion of what’s promised but we only really borrow. Time and place, a three-dimensional space. Erase what you see and replace with what ought to be. An individual’s indomitable will, so resilient and fluid, almost impossible to sever. What’s ripped off will regrow. Forever more, there’s art to be shown. There’s music to be listened. Forget the rituals. Christen thyself in thine own creation. Life’s not a prison. ‘Tis a celebration!
