I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought

August 3, 2026

Art Requires THIS Sort of Sacrifice?

There's a Japanese legend about a cursed flute. It makes its player a gifted musician, but the price of the flute's magic is blood sacrifices. Does all art require burnt offerings of some sort? Close to home, my Grave Mood Rings series essentially took as a sacrifice a close acquaintance of several decades who outright cancelled our connection over communication differences. Could something similar be happening with people who "ghost" fellow artists? We try to make connections in relation to our art, and sometimes those attempts create ghosts as if the art took a sacrifice. Making art fine-tunes one's frequency, so we are bound to encounter more and more ghosts as we focus beyond those at other frequencies. Thing is, people on other frequencies literally can't understand or even see us. It's like the ending of the first Silent Hill film — Rose is trying to call her husband, and his phone even rings, but he can't hear her voice through the static because she's on another plane of existence. When we lose friends or go off someone's radar, we might flip our interpretation and take it as a badge of honor, for it proves that our own frequency has risen beyond them. Consider a mountain metaphor — when you're standing on a mountaintop, you can see down to those who are lower than you, but from their angle they can't see where you're standing. Maybe they can sort of hear you calling down, but there will be a weird echo and they probably won't understand. It's nothing personal, even though it can feel totally personal.

So when someone ghosts us, can't we say to ourselves, "Another sacrifice to the art, and the art feeds and grows"? Just imagine a Japanese-style bulletin board of people's faces, with red streaks of paint crossing them off along the way. Nobody promised it would be pretty, right?

Speaking of ghosts, should we ourselves operate more as if we are spirits in this world, not expecting to be seen or understood but seeking to materialize our miracles to the wonderment and confusion of others? Why try to get caught up in the all-too-human popularity game when one's frequency is literally above all that? Granted, we require at least some amount of money to survive, and we surely wish for sets of eyes and ears to take in our work, but just think of the horror of appealing to the lowest common denominator! Let's focus on finding a refined, rarefied audience. As my magic teacher, the thrice-great Eugene Burger, suggested, "Always speak to the smartest person who might be in the audience."

Artists seem doomed to handle ruining blows. Just yesterday, I felt devastated after receiving a measly 45 cents on a $40 sale of a Tarot deck I created. So I had to employ that esoteric practice of seeing things in a new and truer way by flipping them upside down and backwards. That 45 cents can be viewed not as a defeat but as a personal victory. The 45 cents shows just how terrified the Archons are of artists, which proves how important art actually is. My art is so priceless that the printing company didn't even know how to begin paying me for it. The Archons want to obliterate art, to make artists doubt their worth and to give up trying, so this 45 cents is the perfect reminder never to give up and never to let them win. The number 45 recalls an old 45 record, which is a "single" ... so perhaps I'm symbolically being reminded that I'm a singularity?

Onward and upward, I'm Prof. Oddfellow.

#prof. oddfellow