The Currency of You
2017
Colored pencil on bristol
36 inches x 74 inches

I think this is the Currency of You. Where bones clash and your teeth grit. Where you become their commodity, held at knife point. Slave to them, who are slaves to the dollar, who revel in the exploitation. This world how it chokes you and how desperate you are to be free from their grip, their thorns, their stranglehold.
Everyone wants to know. To share and learn about you and share it more. And share the shiny things. The things that look bright. Your shimmer and sheen. How polished, how exquisite, how incredible. They force a three dimensional human into a one dimensional line. This is him, if a few words. One face, one fragment, but it’s what I’ve got to show you and what you’re going to see. They sell your life in a fraction of a second, start to end, everything to know. And you’re flattened and strung out. At their mercy. Their cutting tongues. Let’s sell you off in words. And deal in dollars of you. Suddenly you become their business for trade, the share they hold, and how they hold you mercilessly. They need you. And yet not nearly how you’d expect. You become their number. Tilling the field, making the profit, it’s written all over you. And when you become too washed out. When your image starts to fade and tatter. They throw you in the fire and the next in line takes your place. It’s standardized. It’s a constant surge. They watch you, they make sure you’re doing it right and remind you that you are just a body—just a crank turner—just a crop gatherer. Just like all the rest. It’s the double-edged sword held at your back. They force you into the size of their words to share you as if you are merely a few broken sentences and at the same time they refuse to value you with your limited human self.
And this is the world. Choking over money. Dying over gold. Crying out for sacrifice of the bronze baby. Don’t waste your time with anything else, just keep chasing the dollar until it’s time for you to die in hellfire. The obsession with that green. The perverted fascination with the highest ranking pieces of paper the government can promise you. It kills you and eats you. And the blood runs green. Grab your paper noose and help me tie it to the sky. This is a death sentence to the user. This is your greatest drug for overdosing.