The Anomaly: A Profile of a Lone Traveller

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” — Mahatma Gandhi

Those who live their lives pushing their personal limits are often looked at with awe and wonder as they risk rejection, discomfort, or plain bad luck in pursuit of the path of self discovery. They are often accepted and encouraged to explore the ideas and desires they believe might fulfill their unmitigated need for personal growth. Testing our comfort levels allows us to learn more about our Selves as a concept and lets us live life to the fullest. We are then able to find joy and fulfillment in some of the most surprising ways and from some of the most humble beginnings.

Meet a man who is known to his friends all over the world as Ferg. Named Adam George Burns at his birth and renamed Stephen Miller Ferguson by his adoptive parents, he is a teacher, a drug user, a sperm donor, an adoptee, a performer, a scholar, a writer, world traveller, and a participant in body rituals and modification. He is a man of many talents, interests and passions.

While interviewing Ferg (IAM:bizarroboy), I kept thinking about how brave he has been, how many chances he has taken and will inevitably take in his life, whether it be with his search for his birth parents, his travelling, his unique style of writing, or his body rituals. It is rare to come across a person who willingly faces good and bad situations with wide open arms. Instead of “prepare for the worst and expect the best,” Ferg seems to live by the adage “come what may.” The prize isn’t in the destination — the prize is in the journey — it’s about learning where people come from, who they are, and who they could be.

Ferg: The Anomaly

BME:

I’d like to start from the beginning, if I may. You’re very open with the fact that you’re adopted: you advertise your birth mother’s books on your IAM page, you’ve recently spoken at a conference in Melbourne about it; it seems to have affected a large part of your life, can you explain how?

FERG:

My journey into adoption started in Scotland in 1970 at seven days old. I traced my biological mother, Evelyn Robinson to Australia in 1991 and have been in close contact with her and my brothers and sisters and other family members ever since.

My adoptive parents let me in on the game reasonably early on in life but I was not supposed to tell anyone else of my alternative beginnings for fear of embarrassing them into an explanation. I played the game for a while but seeing no need to keep the information out of the public domain, I gave up and started telling people the truth about who I was and where I’d come from, as far as I knew it at the time. It was never an issue for me, it was a natural part of me and therefore was just another piece of information that friends always knew and never bothered with. I wasn’t ashamed of it — if anything, their fear made me more determined to find out who my biological mother really was.

According to some of the adoption literature out there, put two adopted boys in the same family together and they will both attempt to gain the acceptance and love of the adopted parents in polar opposite ways.

I was the one who excelled at everything he tried. School work was a breeze and I enjoyed the adulation I got for my work there. My brother, whom we picked up from an unfamiliar, crowded living room somewhere in Glasgow, Scotland when I was four years old, was the opposite. I was very academic; he was particularly inclined to working with his hands when he was growing up. Unfortunately that also included regularly stealing from family and strangers, breaking into cars and buildings and ended up with him being jailed for his part in an attempted armed robbery at nineteen years of age, under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Around the time of his sentencing, I was being lambasted by my adoptive parents for having already graduated from university with an Honours Degree in Business and Commerce and then choosing to further my education doing a Masters Degree in Clothing Studies and Textiles at a well-known Scottish textile college instead of getting “a real job.”

BME:

Now you’re an adult—a very well-rounded, experienced adult, at that. How much of that do you attribute to being adopted?

FERG:

It was obvious I didn’t fit a lot of my adoptive parents’ ideals very early on, and I still don’t. The difference being now is that I’m glad of that. I fought through and won my own battles for individuality. I often wonder if it was hard for them, trying to shape this new person in their own image and seeing it grow up and do the complete opposite. I could never understand why my life choices always seemed to cause them so much distress. From piercings and tattoos to travelling and studying.

It’s hard to tell what motivated me to get where I am today, to take the path I have taken. Was I subconsciously going in the opposite direction of everything my adoptive parents told me to do or be, from the advice to get a job in the local bank and settle down to “take out all that shit from your face and never, ever get a tattoo,” just because I feared losing even more of my core identity or was it my only true choice no matter what?

BME:

It’s nice to hear such honest words about the mixed feelings about being adopted. Where are you emotionally now with the situation?

FERG:

Adopted people are often told they are “special because they were chosen.” That’s bullshit to me. My adoptive parents didn’t know me or know anything about me. I was the baby that was available at the time and they grabbed their chance to be parents. It made no difference to them who I was or where I’d come from. They just wanted to be parents and any baby would do. The same with my brother, for whom they waited three years on a Glasgow City Council waiting list. He was as much chosen as you would choose which raindrop hits you during a typical Scottish day. I cringe when I hear that.

If I were to be brutally honest, and after my adoptive parents kept from me for years that Evelyn had been trying to contact me, while calling me deceitful and secretive for searching for her by myself, I could say the same about them as I do my brother. We’ve been growing further apart for a long time and this last six years while I’ve been living and working in Venezuela, South Korea, Japan and now Australia, things have been quite bad emotionally.

I had been looking for my father as well, and made my first contact with him in September 2000 through his lawyer. I had sent out a reasonably vague letter asking for some family history help to the three people in the USA that had exactly the same name as him and that were listed in the White Pages Directory. While the two other men of the same name politely sent back a reply informing me that they were not the person I was looking for and wishing me luck, I got a short and succinct lawyer’s letter from this guy. I believed then that I had found my biological father. In the conversation between me and lawyer that followed it was put to me, amongst other things that his client was extremely uneasy at having a paternity suit filed against him.

Since then, in my attempt to prove paternity, I’ve come up against what looks like a paranoid, guarded, scared, suspicious and dishonest man. We eventually had a DNA test done. My blood was sent to the USA and tested by some facility, suggested by him thousands of miles from where he lived (even though there was a testing lab in the building where he gave his blood) and it came back negative. As soon as he opened the letter that legally granted him the immunity he appeared to want, he wrote me and wished me well. He has since pulled down the shutters, locked the gates and employed the heavies to keep me at bay.

So I happily continue on my journey with Evelyn and the rest of the family; my adoptive parents have decided that they can only go so far. I will soldier on for a while, shaking the tree to see what falls for me and dealing with it as it happens. I’m still quite excited about the whole thing and see it as a wonderful opportunity for me to further my emotional growth and delve deeper into the human psyche.

Ferg and his biological mother in 1996.

BME:

You mentioned travelling— something that’s a huge part of your life, when did it all begin?

FERG:

I went abroad for the first time in 1982. I was a member of a local football team who went to a mini-tournament in the Netherlands. We were to play three teams from Tilburg and Eindhoven and I went with enthusiasm on the long bus journey with the rest of the team. I ended up missing the football game and going off on my own, exploring the shops, and watching people. I’ll never forget that feeling of standing there in the middle of the street on my own, eleven years old, and thinking “this is fucking amazing, I’m in a foreign country and can’t understand what’s going on but I’m here and I’m loving every second.” I think I was the only one who was more interested in the people, the places, the food, and the buildings rather than the football.

It was like electricity was flooding all my neurons at the same time, forcing me to take in all this new and exciting stimuli and all I could do was crave more and more of it. That trip awoke something deep inside me, a great fire-breathing travelling dragon. I stepped off that bus and into a new world, a world of things that I’d never experienced or seen before. That feeling has never left me and that’s why I spend most of my time travelling the world, seeing things and just being there. The earth-shattering banality of routine, doing the same thing over and over with the same people in the same place, just kills me from the inside out. Travelling gets me high.

BME:

You’ve travelled a lot— to the United States, Europe, South America, Asia… how do you decide where you want to go?

FERG:

I usually go where the mood takes me at the time. At least sixty percent of my travelling is spent visiting friends old and new, so that often dictates where I go. When I’m off on my own for a holiday then most of the time I try to pick somewhere totally new to me. How can you grow otherwise?

Relaxing in an Australian tropical rainforest.

BME:

Do you have any favorite places?

FERG:

It’s hard to answer that question. You change and evolve every time you go somewhere new. It adds so many things to your inner being and personality, how you deal with things and people, your experience base, that as soon as you move on to the next place you are a different person. I gained a lot of really positive things in Peru, maybe more so on the surface than many other places I’ve been, but that’s not to say that it affected me or changed me the most for the better. Many of these changes are subtle and they may only be exhibited later on somewhere down the road, almost by accident. You’ll find yourself doing something new and it’ll suddenly dawn on you where that behaviour came from. That’s when you know that life affects you on so many different levels and for me, travelling adds to me all the time, even when I’m not consciously aware of it. Staying where you are, doing the same thing over and over with the same people can never do that for you. I have never considered myself the “finished product” so why not embrace change if it is only for the better?

Peru initially taught me, and many other places have since validated this fact, that when you come across people who have nothing or very little in life, according to our Western values of material gain and money equaling success, they are more willing to share what they have with you than rich people are. I remember standing in Cuzco town square at the big markets there, full of beautiful Peruvian textiles, materials and food and listening as a teenage backpacker was haggling with one of the indigenous Peruvian women over the cost of some alpaca products. The backpacker was from England and she was trying to get the woman to reduce the price from about seven soles to six soles, which is approximately $.30 US. To the Peruvian woman is it important that she gets as much as she can for her products, especially as she sits out there on the ground all night, every night. Never mind the fact that the backpacker has probably spent thousands of pounds on her trip already. I feel sick to the pit of my stomach every time I see this level of tightness when it comes to money and it always comes from the richer side of the divide. I wonder if it ever crossed her mind to pay the woman full price and maybe buy her dinner at the same time? All too often I see richer people trying to get more money out of poorer people (see current Western trade pacts and G8 meetings for more obvious global examples) and it gets quite upsetting at times. I really have no time for stingy people.

Going to Venezuela was a real eye-opener for me and not just for the obvious benefit of seeing so many beautiful looking girls on a daily basis. They really have the highest ratio of good looking females I’ve ever seen, but of course that’s only if you like South American women. I’m a sucker for them.

But on the other hand, my time in Venezuela was a bit of a nightmare. So many negative things happened to me there that I couldn’t take any more after seven months. All my stuff was stolen and I was left with a pair of shoes, a shirt and a few books; my boss stole money from me; my landlady stole money from me; her sons stole stuff from my room; I got very, very sick to the point of shitting a lot of blood and throwing up while the city had no water for three days; I lost money at the bank; my debts were getting bigger and bigger; two guys were killed across from my apartment block while trying to kidnap a local family; I got mugged at knifepoint; I saw guys getting their car stolen at gunpoint; I almost got kicked out of the country for being there illegally and getting involved with the owners of a hotel and their cocaine habit, and then when I tried to finally leave the country was paralyzed by flash floods that killed 60,000 people and made another 200,000 homeless (and those are conservative estimates). At the airport after I was eventually allowed to leave, I was strip searched and threatened with jail if I was found to have been working illegally and/or carrying drugs. Three hours and five pairs of soiled underpants later they finally let me fly out.

And this cements my point from before: that on the surface things might look bad, but deep down your learning and coping systems are taking it all in, storing it and using it for any future similar experiences you might have. I learnt so much from my time there. It taught me lots of useful things for the big bad world out there that I would never have learned if I’d stayed at home.

I think the most humbling one was that basically all of my stuff was stolen, and apart from being an incredibly frustrating and annoying time for me, it was just stuff. I had developed unhealthy attachments to it, I had kid myself on that it meant so much to me and I was devastated that it had been taken by someone else. It taught me that I was putting too much value on my stuff, on my material things. Attachment is the road towards greed. A long time passed though before I was truly able to think like that, but it was an extremely worthwhile thing to learn. Possibly one of the most important things I’ve ever learned in my life. I see too many people with too much stuff and to be honest, this human craving for more and more material goods makes me quite ill.

Japan’s lax drug enforcement meant that shops were able to sell things that you couldn’t buy legally in most other countries around the world. Research chemicals and mushrooms were widely available which made for more than a few amazing incidents while I was living there for three years. My Salvia Sequences, Mushroom Madness and 5-MeO-DMT façade-busting journeys would have been a lot harder to come by if it hadn’t been for those enlightened people selling these wonderful “gifts” amongst other things. The salvia divinorum plant expanded my thinking and became the focal point for the large stomach tattoo I got before I left and moved to Australia.

Ferg (middle) at the top of the highest mountain in Venezuela: Pico Bolivar (5007m) in 1999.

BME:

Do you ever feel like stopping? Like you’re wearing yourself out?

FERG:

I never feel like stopping as part of the bigger picture. Every time I arrive somewhere new, the buzz I get is amazing. Finding my own way around, my own level to settle into these surroundings is an invigorating experience for me. I’m always looking at new places to visit and explore. With my situation as it is just now, there is no reason to stop. I love my life and it constantly energizes me to know that I can go to any country I want, basically whenever I want. Of course, not having children or a mortgage enables me to do this just now. If that part of my life changes then obviously it will have a major impact on my decisions, but at the present, I’m extremely happy without both.

There are times when you curse certain aspects of this lifestyle: for example, not being able to spend a lot of money on decent consumer goods like computers or stereo systems because you know you’re going to be leaving in twelve months time; spending money sending everything you have, packed in boxes, to your new destination. I’ve moved countries five times in the last six years, so the cost of moving soon mounts up. Always being a few steps behind when you can’t speak the local language and as a consequence of this, always having to rely on the goodwill of other people to help you do stuff, like open bank accounts and connect telephones etc — this gets me down occasionally. All things considered, the positives far outweigh the negatives and that is something that I don’t want to stop.

I don’t feel worn out as such. As long as you approach these things in the right way then even though they can be frustrating at times, they blend into the more colourful bigger picture as just something that you need to be able to deal with, but then you get to see and do weird and wonderful things in strange and exciting new places at the same time — it’s a balancing act.

Maybe I’ll stop travelling in the future, maybe not. It’s funny because I often hear people telling me “you’re too old to live like that” or “you’ll regret not settling down one day.” I find these concepts quite bizarre — like there is some secret rule book for life that tells you how and when you can do certain things and by what time! Or people who know me better than myself and can see into the future, giving me the benefit of their wisdom. These are usually the people that are unhappy with their own lives and when they see someone else clearly enjoying things, they feel the need to attack it and try to make it negative, instead of looking at how they can change their own situation for the better.


Ferg atop a volcano in Japan and with Cambodian mine victims.

BME:

So where are you now, and what are you doing?

FERG:

I'm currently living and teaching in Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory of Australia. It's the area of Australia where a lot of Aboriginal people live according to their cultural traditions. Many Australian people haven't even heard of it. It really is quite an amazing place to be.

I teach Primary kids, a composite class of Year 4/5. My class ranges in ability from not being able to recognize numbers or letters to being very competent readers and independent writers and everything in between. The local Aboriginal people up here are called Yolngu and their cultural traditions have primarily been oral ones.

It's doubly hard for these children because they not only have to learn new things like reading and writing, they also have to learn English through English, so we teachers have a specific methodology in teaching them the English language that is a little different to my usual English teaching abroad. My brave little students get my total respect. They are so smart and I enjoy interacting with them.

It's an extremely hard environment to live in sometimes but ultimately very rewarding. The countryside is truly beautiful and untouched in many places. I'm learning so much about Aboriginal culture, the people and about myself. Even though I feel a little bit disconnected at times, I know deep down I've chosen the right thing to do.

I've been working up here for the last six months and plan to stay here for another eighteen months, then maybe take some time off from working and head to India, Nepal and Tibet for a while to get up into the Himalayas for a year or so.

BME:

Earlier you mentioned how drugs have expanded your mind and changed the way you think. How so?

FERG:

I took a lot of drugs in my early 20s. Some would say far too much. Since leaving Scotland in 1999, I hadn’t really had that many experiences with them until I got to Japan.

In Japan I came across some things that truly have completely changed how I look at existence on a physical and philosophical level. I don’t think you can underestimate the profound, positive change plants and chemicals have had on my life.

I have no problems with people using drugs to enhance their time on this planet, even though the word “drugs” has so many negative connotations attached to it. Of course there are a lot of problems caused by people taking drugs but there are also lots of positive things that can come of experiencing consciousness in a completely different way to how most other people experience it.

We already have so many culturally sanctioned drugs that cause a litany of problems in society; nicotine, alcohol and over-prescribed anti-depressants being the obvious ones, that I find it offensive when these same people then tell me I can’t take a mind expanding mushroom and just lie back and watch the clouds for four hours, happy in the knowledge that life exists outside our three-dimensional construct. It’s such a ludicrous state of affairs that governments sell you the means (and collect the tax from) products that slowly kill you while giving you all sorts of horrendous health problems, costing the tax payer millions in health care each year and causing untold damage to the social fabric in our lives, but then ban things like mushrooms because they have no so-called medicinal benefit! It’s okay to eat the varieties for food but not the ones that open new worlds. Like cigarettes have any medicinal benefit?! It’s okay to poison yourself slowly and deprive your kids of a parent through premature smoking-related death but it’s not okay to expand your consciousness. People are putting their pre-pubescent children on anti-depressants for fuck’s sake. Wake up! What a fucking disgraceful state of affairs.

This type of mushroom isn't considered food.

BME:

Can you explain some of your drug experiences?

FERG:

My experiences with Salvia have me blacked out for ten minutes while I exist in another world. I never feel scared of it though, just more intrigued by the whole thing. Before I smoke it I know I’m going to black out but it excites me. Each time is completely different to the last one. One time, I felt like I had been given an exclusive look into a world that wasn’t my own. I was permitted to see it and know that it was accessible for me, should I show the necessary desire to venture forth again.

There doesn’t seem to be any teaching aspect to my journeys with Salvia so far, just a kind of observational slant. I go over and over them to see if there is something I should be taking from them, more than the voyeurism I have been through, but can’t find anything tangible yet. I enjoy the feeling of being almost scared by a drug experience — not in a physical way but in a mental way, strength of vision rather than weakness of breath. How will you know your own boundaries unless you actually go there?

With 5-MeO-DMT experiences, it’s more of a complete dissolution of reality. To exist with no physical form but to know that you are still existing — it was the most intense out-of-body experience I’ve ever had. You can find a summarized version in the BME scrapbook if you look close enough.

I had one experience where I felt like my head was being surrounded by needle-like probes, rapidly pushing through my skull and into the dark recesses of my mind. It was as though my body was deflating, my essence was being sucked from it. At the same time, swirling patterns of shades of blue were occupying my mind’s eye, just how I imagined the beginning of the Cosmos, that elusive primordial soup, to look like. I was being returned to that space and time. As the rest of my surroundings disappeared and ceased to register with what was left of my body without “me” in it, I could feel myself (the word “myself” here is used not to describe me — my body and who I am in relation to the rest of the visible, material world that we all exist and interact in — but what is behind all of that: the driving force, the pilot guiding us, the controller of our own personal astronaut suit; my essence, my soul, my spirit, whatever you want to call it) being assimilated into everything that exists outside of this 3D construct. I was being made one with the Cosmos and it was being made one with me. I could feel the sensation of traveling through space of some sort but without having any form; moving in all directions simultaneously but yet just merely being. I had no purpose, I had no shell, I had no direction, I had no vision, I just was.

It gave me a wonderfully enriching awareness to know this, to be shown this. You feel like you are not alone out there, that once you leave this tactile world, you are an indistinguishable part of everything. Your essence permeates places that you didn’t know existed or maybe didn’t believe existed. It’s hard not to believe that everything is connected, or can be connected by a force greater than us pathetic, mortal humans after you.

BME:

You’re a published author on BME as well, and you were even one of my competitors for the Internship position. You have a very unique way of telling stories. Why do you write like this (or is this question even answerable— much like asking an artist, “Why do you paint like this?”)? Where does your inspiration come from?

FERG:

I don’t have an inspiration when it comes to writing. Just like visiting new countries, trying new foods, meeting new people, experimenting with new drugs, attempting new body modification procedures — I like things that are different to what I’ve already done. It’s about growth. The writing falls into that category. I try different styles all the time, styles that morph out of nowhere really. I just sit down and start; it will quickly develop into something that I can run with or not.

It’s not to everyone’s taste, as I found out during the internship writing, although I was glad that my piece went to print as it was and unedited. I’ll take the good with the bad because I put a lot of effort into my writing to make it different and challenging. You can’t please all of the people all of the time and quite frankly, why would you want to?

BME:

Your drug and travelling experiences have allowed you to open your mind, teach you more about yourself, but you also push your body. When did your adventures with body modification begin?

FERG:

I didn’t properly start to get interested in BME until about 1998, but I got my nipples pierced in 1990 down in a nascent ‘Into You’ in London, had started stretching my lobes by the summer of ’98 and had both eyebrows, labret, nose and navel done and a few large tattoos by then too, so I was already part of my own wee body-mod community.

I’ve met so many wonderful people through BME and more so IAM and I can’t thank Shannon and the team enough for the time and effort they put into it. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have met at least ninety-five percent of the people I have through this Internet community if it hadn’t been for IAM. We really do owe it a lot. It made me laugh when people started complaining that they had to pay $20 a year to stay on here. Tight fuckers.


You may remember Ferg in the early days of IAM as a nudist. (Yes, he still takes requests for amusing naked picture challenges!)

BME:

You’ve now progressed past piercings and tattoos and entered into the extreme: lip sewing, bloodletting, and lots of scarification. What are your reasons for doing these things?

FERG:

That’s a tough one. Various reasons on many different levels.

The lip sewing was motivated by a photo I’d seen on BME. It spoke to me. I’ve always loved trying things that I’ve never done before so it was an easy transition to try that. As luck would have it, Satomi and Lukas Zpira happened to be in Tokyo at the same time as me, so I called them and we quickly organized a show that would incorporate it. It was much less painful than I had expected. The next day I did a photo shoot on the hotel roof for a Dutch photographer who was compiling a book on body modification and we did it again, but using larger gauge needles. This one was a bit uncomfortable as my lips were still tender from the night before and the needles much more sturdy. Overall though the pictures turned out really well: naked and sunset and sutures. I’ve kind of grown into body sewing from there with my eye sewing/face sewing and body sewing in the next show. Lip sewing is such an audience stimulator that it would be a shame to leave it out now.

Scarification is a beautifying thing. The pain dissolves when you’re in the right head space. I didn’t even feel Lukas do the majority of the deep cuts on my legs, while I had my lips sewn shut and he had sliced my forehead above both eyebrows to let the blood flow down my face. I was in a zone all to myself, looking out at the audience and being in it at the same time. Professional or improvement-driven scarification can indeed result in some quite spectacular designs.

I don’t however believe that an arm full of self-injuring scars, made to act as an alternative coping mechanism for some kind of trauma or emotional issue, falls into the same category as body or spiritual enhancement scarification. Not that they need to be covered up, but I think it is important to stress that there are differences in the reasons as to why people want to scar their bodies, each of them valid to that particular person. In my opinion, if you are frequently cutting your body or self-injuring yourself as a response to some kind of mental or emotional pain or difficulty, you should try and seek professional help immediately. Or ask someone to help you do that. And we as a society should be more open about this and encourage people to seek help, lest it be too late one day.

The blood letting came from a desire to push things a bit further and experiment with myself. It’s hard to describe the feeling of your own warm blood flowing down your face. Feelings of joy and peace spring to mind. Despite what some people believe, those feelings do not stem from any deeper psychological problems I have and they are not related to any self-harm issues. My performances are primarily that: performances. Done in part for myself but predominately for an audience, much the same way that bands get up on stage to showcase their musical ability or magicians their sleight of hand tricks.

As an audience it must be quite alarming to watch for some, in fact two people fainted at the show I did in Melbourne! I love the look of blood on white skin, so vibrant and alive. You know you’re really living then.

— Gillian Hyde (IAM:typealice)

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What follows is an essay by Ferg. He requested to tell his bloodletting experience in his own words, in his own style. What follows is the interpretation of the performance involving himself, Satomi and Lukas Zpira.

D and I were good friends. They shared a house, had done since they were born. They would always go travelling together. You could say they were more like blood brothers actually.

You could count on one hand how many times they had disagreed in the past. Previously D was burning to mark his journey through life and had met with some stern words from I about his plan. I usually prevailed in these confrontations but this was one of those rare times that D managed to come out on top. The heat was on, on for about 20 minutes. All the while I fought and fought to stop D but in the end he just shut up, burnt out from all the effort. The mark of a strong relationship will always be in the fore(arm)front of their minds.

D often recalled the very first argument in which he triumphed. It was 1994 and it happened in a large parking lot in downtown Los Angeles. D was about to do something that completely went against everything I was about. From 50m up in the air, on a tall, metal platform, D and I fought vigorously in front of many onlookers. With time running out D made a last gasp attempt to override I while assuring him that everything was going to be OK….and with I still complaining, he jumped. Gliding through the air, both of them fell silent as the wind rushed and adrenalin flowed. Three minutes later and it was all over, D was pumped and I was still moaning but they were both OK and that’s all that mattered. What are bungee jumps for after all.

The seed for this latest idea was planted a while back. These blood brothers had had to go with the flow, unexpectedly it has to be said, during a prior show they’d gone to. There was no disagreement that time but it had given D an idea. He knew that I would not be happy when it came up in conversation and all the points had already been discussed, but this time would be different. This was going to stretch I’s limits and for once he wasn’t looking forward to that.

9pm and they met with their fellow doers, L and S. These people were familiar to D and I and it was a pleasure to see them both again. To be honest D was their favourite but both of them still understood exactly where I was coming from. In fact, without I there would be no D, something that D would do well to remember on occasion.

Greetings were exchanged and some long hugs and kisses swept through the room. Events were discussed and marks were made. Procedural language, time limits set, music chosen, beers drunk then it was off through the curtain to a dark, dark place filled with many people. Tall people, short people, bespeckled people, fat people, thin people, people yet to be convinced, people about to faint but unaware of their fate. An interesting mix indeed. I was getting nervous and it was only after the implements of showtime were revealed to him did he really start to shit his pants.

Their night was to be Bold, Lush, Ominous, Outrageous, Disturbing, Loving, Expressive, Trusting, Titillating, Intriguing, Nerve-wracking, Gutsy.

This was the point where rationality took a back seat alongside I, and where D and everyone like him thrust themselves to the fore. I‘s principles were straightforward enough: enjoy yourself, stay safe, know your limits and stay well within them, don’t do anything too risky and if you really have to then always have a back-up plan should things go wrong. Pragmatic to the last, the old head. Life is precious, don’t do anything to jeopardize it. I asks “why?”

D was the fearless young tearaway: throwing himself into the unknown, adventurous, risky, dangerous, he pushed his limits all the time even if he knew it wasn’t always safe. Wanting to try new things, the youthful spirit. Life is also precious, squeeze every last drop of excitement out of it…even if it means risking the ultimate consequence. D asks “why not?”

A light came on and it shone directly down towards a large, white, cotton sheet. The many people stood silently together, watching, waiting. Some had cameras, some had video recorders, some had only their memory bank. D and I knelt down on the sheet and opposite a beautiful girl, S. She was there to play with D but she was aware of I’s misgivings. They were safe in her hands as she picked up her needle and began to sew lips shut. The many people stood, gawped and shuffled but were uniformly unruffled. Cameras clicked and flashes blinked and everyone waited in anticipation for the next part to enthrall them.

Standing upright and tall, thin and near-naked, there seemed very little time between the final knot and the first slice…..then the second slice. L had been lurking in the shadows off-stage and with zest and meaning he had cut into the atmosphere, and not just metaphorically. Again this was to the delight of D and as he revelled in the new openness. I waited calmly, equally soaked in thick, red discharge. The many people collectively stunned, let out a gasp and a cry. There were murmurings and heads shaking but they never lost their gaze, bless.

Legs buckled in the many people and one man found fate waiting for him on the concrete floor beside where he fell. Legs out front however stood firm as L weaved his metal magic with his trusty, slim friend. Backwards and forwards he went, over and over the same rut he cut. This made I extremely uneasy. The urge to recoil was strong and natural to him and it was in this arena that the fight would materialise. D felt like he was energized. With every cut he grew stronger and stronger. He knew the thoughts running through his friend’s mind right now but this was just the starter to a more explosive and challenging main course on its way.

10 all in,
5 on each limb,
S sexy and thin,
L cuts on a whim

The cut above the rest was dripping with gusto, let’s face it. The many people faced it but the view to the many people was obscured. As a spectacle, they were ready.
One was ready, one other was left praying that it wasn’t too late.

L glided off, stage left and for a moment things were static. Warm, wet liquid was oozing earthwards, music was meandering through space, attention was focused on this seemingly lonesome lad and I’m sure questions were being asked by the many people: “How come he didn’t squint as legs were cut open?”, “How come he stood motionless as a forehead was sliced twice?”, “How come he moved not an inch while lips were sewn shut?”

D was entranced by it all. I was cowering in the background in submissive pose. He wanted it to stop, now, before anything bad happened. It had gone far enough in his book, far too far. Who in their right mind gets their forehead sliced open? And their lips sewn shut? And their legs cut deeply until they…….L was back and with fire in his eyes, he wasn’t finished.

It was at this point that the true nature of conflict between D and I became apparent. What happened next put another one of the many people down, next to their fate for the night also, and thoroughly exacerbated the rift between the 2 friends. Arms out-stretched, dripping, alone with the many people and sharing his body with 4 cannulas. This was it, essentially what D had been waiting for and it was to be his newest triumph over I's stoic refusal to transcend boundaries. “Nosce te ipsum”, D whispered gently in an ear close to him and with that last push, he struggled in vein not to let the excitement of the whole scene overwhelm him.

I was locked in and forced to go with the flow….and what a flow it was. A veritable flow show.

The beers from before had done their job well. As an anti-coagulant and a social lubricant they had worked wonders. Even though the cannulas were thin and slim, they too were open to the many people. Liquid life was everywhere, the virginal sheet now embarrassed beyond the pale. It was all over the place. A rush. A push. The land that we stand on is ours. It has been before and it shall be again. Take what you want from life, don’t let life take it from you.
This was D’s motto.
I stood there like a towering Moai, stone-faced and rigid while D danced in splendid rapture.

The warm feeling that accompanies these times is a difficult one to explain to the I’s of this world. You may know them, or have experienced them before….or maybe you are one yourself. They don’t understand, can’t comprehend, the whys of these journeys. They package everything into rational and irrational, logical and illogical, sane and crazy. They appear not to be content with simplistic, Zen-like answers of “Because I wanted to”, “Because it felt nice”, “Why not?”, for them there needs to be some deeper connection to all things deviant or unbalanced.

If you met this D in the street and engaged him in conversation, looked him up and down, examined his academic record, tested his knowledge of worldly views, then you might find a potential son-in-law mothers would swoon over. Or maybe a well-balanced, down-to-earth educator. Or possibly even a ‘Mr Average’ face in the crowd of many people. You wouldn’t believe him if he told you of his inquisitive soul and its passion, its craving, its hunger. How he can’t stop it searching for new experiences or that he has no intention of even trying to. How each new living moment, one doing something completely different and unknown, only builds stronger his appreciation of life and everything in it. How time after time, both D and I are actually more intertwined than I would like to admit. As D marches onwards, sword in hand, reedy to tackle any foe, he sees himself reflected in I.

Round and round it went, dripping and dropping its message on the floor below. As it flowed and ran there was a thought that the fainting fate succumbed to by 2 of the many people, may yet claim a 3rd victim. With that in mind arms were raised and in doing so, instantly put a halt to any unstoppable opening. Control was there when it was needed but to tell you the truth, even though it was difficult to tell how much had found its way through the cannulas, the threat of fainting was far, far away. It looked fantastic, if you like the beautiful, vibrant colour of life, something synonymous with L’s work. It’s lovely working with him, he gives me energy.

With 2 people fainted and the rest left either licking their lips, shielding their eyes or disgustedly trying to work out what it is that drives this D to do such a thing, the man on the stage sat down, was unplugged and left to wonder, at himself and at the many people. He lost so much but yet he gained twofold in return.

To appreciate fully, life, you must partake in it, you must see it flow. The warmth of our inner workings, that substance that feeds us, protects us and keeps us alive is truly a wonderful thing.

Take it, taste it, feel it, experience it, for it will all turn cold one day and by that time it will be too late.

Bold
Lush
Ominous
Outrageous
Disturbing
Loving
Expressive
Trusting
Titillating
Intriguing
Nerve-wracking
Gutsy

PS - Desire and Instinct. They are in us all.

-ferg