Thoughts likes bees: A lesson on the procrastination of death.
By Hayden Nickel
How can I put off death? This is the ultimate question to which Thoughts Like Bees
is the answer.
The percentage of people having suicidal thoughts is highest in the age group
eighteen to twenty-five1; I am twenty-two. I have had suicidal thoughts since the age of
fifteen, and in November of 2015 I held the instruments to make an attempt on my own life
at twenty-one. I did not follow through; so, I procrastinated death. Much like
procrastinating homework or deadlines. I just did something else instead. In this case I did
Klonopin and a nap. It got me through the dip in my mood long enough to survive.
This is a performance about not dying; it’s about staying alive because it is worth every
sting to see the small things, the good things. This is a project exploring telling stories with
my brush and my mouth, which maps my anxiety onto mundane every day acts of
procrastination. I’m going to be making lots of hand gestures and saying a ton of words
about my almost suicide: the before, during, and after.
Contextual Background
“Sometimes in the morning I think we’re gunna[sic] win.” I think about this line from
Holly Hughe’s performance of a monologue from her incredible collection Clit Notes almost
every day. I think about
the war she is talking
about a lot because I
have to go to it too. Show
up for the war against
Picture 1
21people
who don’t lick the genitalia people expect them to, or want them to, or whatever. I
also think of the war I fight with myself against the anxiety and the depression. Against the,
“I wish I were dead.” Some mornings I do think I’m gunna win. Others I fight a little harder.
(Or a lottle harder.) Every day I put on my uniform. Every day I laugh. The day I don’t laugh
is the day I don’t win the war. Losing battles is sort of what procrastination is all about, but
the war is what matters. I am still amazed that Holly Hughes herself is the person who
encouraged me to perform. I’m grateful that she pushed me to do it. She helped me hone
my raw, green, speaking and words into a real monologue.
Tig Nataro did a stand up special with Louis CK about her breast cancer diagnosis,
which she received the day of the show. “Comedy is tragedy plus time...” she says as she
opens and then proceeds to skip time while staying funny. She even calls out someone in
the audience making sad sighs. Thoughts like Bees the original essay was written four days
after I almost committed suicide. She says at the beginning that she just can’t talk about her
normal stand up routine, that those jokes just don’t feel right after she got this horrible
news. I felt the same way, I couldn’t write anything else because it wasn’t right. Normally I
would’ve written about masturbation or BDSM or about how horrible fundamentalist
Christians are. In both cases the work acts as a way to dull down the experience into
something manageable. A sense of humor can go a long way.
I had heard about Erin Markey, but Holly
told me to give her work on YouTube another
look. Her series Just A Little Something is a
collection of short bits that have seemingly
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no 3relation to each other, other than the fact they are short and done on a laptop camera.
Short monologues and sketches about ranch dressing and cellars. I became quickly
obsessed and started to make my own. This helped me to stop being so precious with all of
my work. Getting a lot of short things done, and fast, really helped me develop my
monologue. I call my short videos I’m A Little Anxious. Erin does things like sing to Britney
Spears songs, and it helped me get weirder in my own work. The crescent rolls came out of
my short procrastination videos. “I’m gunna make some bread, maybe I will eat it with
something that’s not bread. I probably won’t.” is a direct quote from when I was making the
delicious little buddies in the moment. Erin Markey inspired me to talk to myself, and let
my hair down a little.
Paintings inspirations
Andy Warhol, Vincent Van Gogh, Jim Cogswell, and Robert Platt have influenced my
painting practice in profound ways. Andy Warhol’s illustrations of shoes impact my digital
style, and Vincent Van Gogh’s flowers inspired me to paint in the first place. Jim Cogswell
has impacted my technique and color sense, and Robert Platt has inspired the style in
which I currently paint.
It feels as though painting has always been a part of me, and I don’t think I could’ve
lasted the year without including it in some
capacity. The ultimate form of the many small
paintings is the best fit I believe. The early digital
prints of self-portraits and bees are heavily
4influenced
by Andy Warhol’s shoe illustrations for
Picture 3
Vogue Magazine in the 50’s.
I often refer to Warhol and Van Gogh5 as my art fathers.
Their work is the catalyst for my interest in becoming an
artist. I have to give them a shout out because before that I
wanted to be a dentist, which, is disgusting.
Picture 4
Methodology
So, this is how I’ve arrived at a monologue, performed in front of what seemed like a
million people, about my absolute darkest time, alongside the paintings, videos, and
illustrations which helped me through the whole mess.
I wish I could say it was simple, but I spun my tires throughout the first three months of
IP. The question I wanted to ask kept changing, and so did the subject. What does it mean to
draw a self-portrait and replace the eyes with bees? Or to illustrate a pin up girl holding the
severed hands of a man? The nausea from the anxiety of not stumbling upon answers
started to drive me forward toward something that made sense. Illustrating myself
throwing up and gagging while nearly doing it in my studio was more compelling than what
I’d done been trying to force in the first place.
Joseph Koeckler visited my studio just as I had started to entertain the idea of making
this mess of things into a performance. He told me that the most important components of
my work, and what made it tolerable, was the juxtaposition of humor and trauma. He said
that the way I use humor to separate myself from the traumatic things that have happened
to me is compelling. I have been keeping that in mind the whole way through.
In early November I took a pause because I almost took my own life due to my
pervasive anxiety and depression. Immediately upon coming back to reality from my turgid
spiral I began writing a text. An essay titled Thoughts Like Bees, which delineated my brush
with death. I started to clearly grasp that this project was going to be about me and about
mental health. I read this text aloud in critique, and it was compelling. So, Professor Holly
Hughes convinced me to do a performance. I was reluctant, but I started turning the piece
into a script.
All the while I am still hanging onto illustrating and painting. I am forcing things
together to try to make them relate to my performance, and in early January Professor
Heidi Kumao and Graduate Instructor Carolyn Clayton told me, “You do not have to paint.
You will still be a painter when this is done.” I cried and put the large canvases I was trying
to force into my project away.
At the same time I started recording short videos when I was procrastinating. Not
everything was worth saving, but a few bits involving crescent rolls and mold started
working their way into my monologue. I ranted about the mold on my kitchen counter, and
how cleaning is a way to procrastinate while still being productive. I spoke at length about
the goodness of crescent rolls. I stared for a long time into the camera while laying on the
floor before saying “I’m cold.” and immediately turning it off. These short videos were
practice for speaking and performing, but they mostly served as an aid in my
procrastination. The process put off my project, but at the same time giving me material for
it unintentionally. Every action after the November Incident has been a procrastination of
death, and an act of appreciation for life.
Procrastination is an art form. The art of feeling time acutely while trying to pass it at
the same time. The art of knowing there are important things to be done but reorganizing
my massive post card collection instead. Making a list of all the things in my apartment that
bare an owl while trying to push out of a fear of what is to come. Slowing my brain down
enough to feel that time is real and passing, and that everything that needs to be done in
that time is doable is what procrastination is about. A million small battles that eventually
lead to a bigger win. Breaking down time into bite size pieces that aren’t as scary as a long
loping span of time full of possibilities. Activities that prevent me from checking my ex’s
social media accounts. And activities that make me feel better after I inevitably do that
exact thing. Procrastination is a paradox that doesn’t always help out future me, but
sometimes I get lucky.
This is when the “razor painting” 6came into the workflow. I
finished it for a painting final in my upper level painting class the
previous semester. It outshined me, and I guess that is more than I
could ask for from an eight by ten inch little oil painting of a pink
bic razor. I ignored it for as long as I could, but then I bought
thirty small canvases and started painting color fields and
collaging my pill paraphernalia onto them. My colleagues and
professors responded to them well, so I created a collage of
bruise-y and bloody paintings to accompany the razor. Thirtynine total paintings that represent the bruises on my psyche that
Picture 5
can’t be seen. The deep wounds from abusive words and depressive episodes. Painting is
what keeps me grounded, and creating sick little ones was delightful and a couple of them
make me physically sick to look at in a good way.
In Hamlet by William Shakespeare they do not open with Ophelia’s suicide, or the
madness of Hamlet. They begin with something dark but also incredible. I’ve tried to hook
my audience in much the same way. Get them invested in me as a character in this story I’m
telling before dropping the heaviness over them. Even when I do speak up about wanting to
kill myself I try to wick away their empathetic injury with humor. I want them to see the
darkness while living in the light.
Creative Work
On the first night the house lights got turned on accidentally by another performer
five minutes into my piece, and it didn’t phase me. I walked out onto that stage, and saw the
one hundred people in the audience, and felt electrified. It felt right, as though I’d known
this way and these words my whole life. “Here’s a portrait of me, what if I took out my
eyes?” got the laughs I thought it might, and girls with hands were properly appreciated as
one of the reasons I’m glad to be alive. People cheered as I shoved whole crescent rolls in
my mouth. It is the most magic I have ever experienced as a creator. I am proud to have
made this work, and can’t wait to do more.
The paintings hung on a gallery wall while I screamed “NO” and fell to my knees across
the street. My grandfather preferred them to my confessions of depression and gayness. I
am proud of them for representing me in the form of “I am a painter.” I found out that I am
many things, and more complex than I had initially thought I was as an artist.
On April 20th I picked up my footage from the performance, and the next iteration is
releasing it to the internet to make me wildly popular. At least that’s the ideal scenario. I
want to keep performing and painting. I don’t want to loose the momentum that has built
up to this point over the course of the year. It is all very exciting, and it started with
illustrations of women holding severed hands and throwing up bees.
Conclusion
Thoughts like bees: acrylic and oil on canvas; anxiety, depression, and humor on
performer. Thirty-nine small canvases varying from four by four inches to eight by ten
inches. Oil paint. Acrylic paint. Hours and hours of crafting a script. My body. My brain. This
performance and installation of paintings is the final force of my Integrative Project. This
iteration is the final product because it speaks the loudest and with the most compelling
voice. The first thing I said when I introduced myself at the beginning of the adventure was,
“I want to tell stories.” The performance is the story, and the paintings are the artifacts of
that story. I can stand on my own, but it is what I make that makes sense of me.
Like bruises are to physical injuries these paintings are to my mental injuries. They are
small and inspired by the colors of bruises and blood. They stemmed from the razor
painting, which brings the abstract color fields to mean something more than their color.
They serve me as a way of showing off the affects of a mind being constantly stung. What
does it mean to get relief or catharsis from painting a bruise, or a wound? I think it puts me
at peace to have something physical to show for the bee stings on my brain. Nothing swells
up or gets blotchy, there’s no reaction or mark and so I make one. Oddly enough I can live
with it once it is out there. It is the keeping it in that is dangerous.
1
2
According to the Center for Disease Control Suicide Facts at a Glance 2015
Picture 1: Still from reading of Monologue from Clit Notes https://vimeo.com/10922961
Picture 2: Still from Erin Markey’s series Just a Little Something
Picture 3: Andy Warhol Illustration circa 1950
5 Picture 4: Branches of an Almond Tree in Blossom 2 by Vincent Van Gogh
6 Picture 5: Razor by Hayden Nickel December 2015
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Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. Hamlet. New York: Chelsea House, 1990. Print.
Hughes, Holly. Clit Notes: A Sapphic Sampler. New York: Grove, 1996.
Print.
Markey, Erin. "Wishbone Chunky Blue Cheese Commercial Audition:
Erin Markey." YouTube. YouTube, 03 May 2014. Web. 23 Apr.
2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuss519ZrV8>.
"Suicide: Facts at a Glance." PsycEXTRA Dataset (n.d.): n. pag.
Cdc.gov. Center For Disease Control. Web.
<http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/suicide-datasheeta.pdf>.
Notaro, Tig. Live Louis CK Show. Performance. 2012.