Why I Became A Sherlockian

Photo from "The Dancing Men".

Holmes having the nerve to put a gun straight to the head of a murdering scumbag in this episode was very satisfying indeed. It takes a real abusive dirtbag for a deeply conscientious and pacifist person like Holmes to finally overcome a very strong moral instinct to preserve life, and gangsters certainly fit the bill, although there are worse then mere gangsters. I can think of some in Northern Ireland evil enough to deserve it after what they did to me when I was living over there, when I stood up to them- with me finally having to use the US Senate and Republic of Ireland's Justice Department to come down on them hard after years of abuse and infiltration of my resources, because the US State Department caved to their pressure and refused to help me. (Some of the culprits are in top government positions post-1998). I am thankful to this day for the Republic's and Michael Mcdowell's justice department being willing to corroborate all the evidence of IRA targeting to the US Senate on my behalf, as well as a Taoiseach who has no love for IRAryan nationalism. Because of the peace agreement, the Crown's hands were tied; the UK could not help me in any way other than provide legal aid, otherwise the peace agreement would break down quickly. So I had to strike the scumbags down from Washington and from Dublin.

It's a deep deep struggle to regain one's moral instincts after being plunged into the filth of hatred against one's will. Holmes as a character of fiction can volley back and forth between focused hatred and good conscience, which real human beings find much, much harder to do. Even now I have buttons of rage that would have me pulling back the hammer on a Walther in double time if I had to face those people again, or anyone whose complete lack of conscience I sniffed out by observing heartless and murderous tactics. And it only takes abuse by such people for those buttons to be put in place, and it takes a whole lot of love, compassion and nurturing for a long time for them to fade away.

If Holmes were a person, his innocence would have been kept in place by his intense natural curiosity and his childlike simple conscience which refuses to see shades of gray in understanding right and wrong. Nobody should lose the joy and pleasure of such a perspective. But that innocence attracts the attention of evil, inevitably, because those who choose to compromise that innate moral innocence can smell out kindness in others and go straight for attempting to convert the easy prey through abuse. As such, if Holmes had been real, he would have had a vicious learning curve of danger and exploitation which would have hardened his senses with hate, in order to protect his own innocence.

This is the whole essence of why I became a Sherlockian as a path to mental recovery after being reconned and smashed by Sinn Fein/IRA, and delivering them a much harder political blow that has disbanded their financial support network in the US and placed them under FBI censure. Not because Holmes to me is a symbolic hero, but because I understand his motive to protect his own decency, I share his anger at the compromise of character that leads to human iniquity and its desire to cause suffering and spread its nature, and I share his strengths that could easily cause me to act as a predator of predators. Holmes for me has been better than a councilor for PTSD, because we understand each other, and he stoically reminds me that I can pick up and go on, and be rid of my anger whenever I like.

I finished this graphite drawing of Jeremy Brett today.  "Jeremy Darling!" 19" x 24", graphite and Conte on Bristol.

Ventures into Sherlockian art

Since I last posted here six months ago I have been dreadfully ignoring my two standard blogs, mostly to build an enormous library of Jeremy Brett's photo history on Tumblr, now with the assistance of one of Jeremy's precious loved ones. (I never would have imagined I'd get from there to here, but I have, and it's folly not to know and believe in my heart that he is somehow involved.) I've also wasted my time venting my sociopolitical spleen spouting my opinions on Facebook, mostly because recovery from politically motivated trauma overseas is now starting to wind down.  But really I'd rather be nowhere else than in front of my easel making art, or making poetry, or writing, or picking up my guitar and practicing.

Graphite study of Jeremy Brett, September 2014

In the last year that I have acquired the courage to become a googlable entity regardless of visibility or criticism, it was mostly toward one singular purpose: to become fearless enough to re-embrace being an artist.  She's a strange muse.  She wants all the attention, but the vulnerability and focus she demands required building confidence about a lot of things.  Confidence about my past, confidence regarding mistakes, and successes; confidence in spite of my body, my gender, my hangups, my human faults.  Faith in my potential, faith in a future that I somehow still manage to possess.

"Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes", Nov. 3, 2014

Art is everything.  I have almost universally ceased in any judgment of any form of creativity in others; there is no such thing as 'critic', only 'journey', and suggestions to make it fulfilling.  The point of art is not product, but productivity.  Anything will do, any medium is good.  Anything that paints the walls of my cage with so much adventure and beauty that if I believe hard enough, and work hard enough, and love deeply enough, the painting becomes a doorway.  As a portrait artist, that doorway is being able to see into other souls, and become them.  The media becomes the method, graphite becomes Stanislavski, and the drawing, the painting, becomes a person.  Not a depiction, not an illustration, not a cartoon; if the eyes follow you around the room, then my methods in some ways might be a bit inflexible, and others not developed enough, but always breathing and alive.  That's the goal.  That's the point.

William Gillette, graphite study, 9x12, Dec. 2014

I adore traditional media.  I can feel something come to life under my hands, not in pixels, but in reality.  Feeling, touching, tangibility.

"William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes-a Color Interpretation" December 2014

The fact that it's almost always either Sherlock Holmes or Jeremy Brett is immaterial.  Holmes is my companion on a journey.  He's me.  As for Jeremy...well, there are times I suspect that he believes in me more often than I in myself, yet he has not stepped physical foot on this world in 19 years.  The irony of this observation is not lost on me.  Holmes' skepticism and desire to see through the stark clockwork of reality feeds my intellect and atheistic determination to reduce humanity to bare motive.  But having Jeremy in my life is going one step beyond clockwork and motive and human mechanism, to the power I possess in making the universe a magical place through embracing him.  Holmes is my mind.  Jeremy is my heart.  And to be honest, it's a journey I relish undertaking, every minute of every day, sometimes with exasperation, but never one regret.