Maskless meetup of infected monkeys caused the Living Comic Book to mutate into the first Inhabited Moment. What was once a collection of thoughts tattooed on the remains of a dead tree became a tribe: the Datura Children.

Photography by Vanessa

The Fourth Mutation

The Underground Freak Market in May of 2021 was probably the catalyst for the Fourth Mutation. It was by far my most successful art stall up until that point, and I’d finally grown the balls to engage with the public instead of getting lost in some book or drawing until some irritating muggle insisted on coercing me out of my trance to give me money.

Having recently learned to navigate cyberspace with the proficiency of the average modern eight-year-old, I decided to make an Instagram account - my first foray into social media. At this point, I realised that my project was now a brand, and I needed to give it a name. I decided to call it Datura Child, after my first comic book. The emails I sent out to the mailing list had evolved from showing new designs and taking requests for future ones into something more personal. Since the manifesto had encouraged people to be more open and vulnerable, I felt I needed to do the same, and my emails started to include confessions about my own anxieties and flaws I had always kept hidden. Instead of trying to create the illusion of being a legitimate business run by an established artist, I was transparent about the fear and confusion I felt pursuing this path, as well as my astonishment that it was working out. Though this was scary for me, it paid off in the end, and played a big part in making Datura Child into something more than a clothing label.

I had been making vague plans to do a Datura Child photoshoot at the Fort Ballance war bunkers for a little while at that point, and eventually settled on doing it the weekend after the Freak Markets. It was originally going to be a relatively small outing, with my friend Vanessa offering her services as a photographer, and Living Pages Kelda, Harry, Georgia, and Nathan offering up their carcasses as models.

When I got home from the Freak Markets that day, I had a message from someone who had bought some art from me. Her name was Emily, and I had no clue who she was, since I was such a fucking social butterfly that day. She had just finished reading Behaviour, and said that she resonated strongly with both the comic and whatever it was we talked about that day. We exchanged a few messages and it became clear that she was aligned with my vision, so, on a whim, I invited her to the photoshoot to witness the first simulation of The Living Comic Book. She agreed to come along, and, with a pulse of senseless inspiration, I sent out an open invitation - with the manifesto attached - to the entire mailing list. The next day I was trying to organise rides to Fort Ballance for around fifteen people.

This was pretty stressful for me - I’d never organised anything like this before and had no idea how to go about it. I figured the only way I could summon the motivation to battle through this mundane task was to treat it as an extension of the art project: A manifestation of The Living Comic Book, and a test to find out whether the manifesto was something real or the ramblings of a delusional narcissist.

So I tried to arrange the rides so that each car was filled with strangers, giving them vague directions to their meeting points with instructions to look out for other Living Pages. I told the drivers to be lax about arriving on time in order to facilitate dialogue between Pages (A tradition that has, unfortunately, far outlived its usefulness). 

Waiting for my ride on the morning of the shoot was like a slow-motion panic attack - if the car rides were tense and awkward then my whole project made no sense and I’d just massively inconvenienced a big group of people who were trying to do me a favour. I looked through my studio (or ‘garage’, to use the French) for any leftover booze to help quell my anxiety, but the only mind-altering substance I could find was a bag of magic mushrooms. About half-an-hour later, I was struck with one of those life-changing moments of psychedelic insight, sort of like when Francis Crick discovered the double-helix: Munching shrooms is not an effective remedy for an anxiety attack.

Nardia, my ride for the day, must have felt my tension through the ether, and arrived with a Kingfisher strong for me. We decided to drive past the Newtown library, where one group of Living Pages would hopefully be gathered. The sight sedated me somewhat: Kelda was just picking up Nathan, Ryan, and a third passenger I could only assume to be my petri dish, Emily. There was no Harry, but it turned out he was a few minutes late. Maybe he was trying to one-up my social experiment by being even later than the driver. Or maybe he was just on a massive comedown. Whatever the case, the sight of four confused and giddy Living Pages gathered together outside a public library was enough art to make me feel all good about things.

We managed to find and pick up the two goth kids, Marcel and Ruby (those two can be spotted from a mile away) and arrived at Fort Ballance roughly on time, where the Datura Brothers Matt and Harrison were waiting with their friend, Zach. I was elated to witness the other Pages and Hosts arrive, talking to each other like old friends, but my anxiety returned when I got a message from Vanessa: In my confusion, I forgot to tell her she didn’t need to pick up the goths anymore, and she was running almost an hour late as a result. Someone else trying to one up my experiment. I explained the situation to the Living Pages present, worried that they’d all stand there staring at me waiting for instructions. But they all accepted my fuck up, and within half-an-hour, some Pages had found and blown up an inflatable raft and we were all crammed in together talking about dreams.

Miraculously, it all ended up going to plan. Vanessa controlled the chaos with steeze under pressure, taking photos that were better than I could have hoped while the Datura Children scrambled around spray painting walls, playing hockey with oars and soccer balls, and blaspheming moonstruck through the tunnels. We took mushrooms and drank beer, but overall the event was surprisingly wholesome for one built upon a foundation of nightmares and alienation. This was the Fourth Mutation: What was once a collection of thoughts tattooed on the remains of a dead tree was now a tribe. As we parted ways that night, people were asking me when the next one would be. I knew they didn’t mean the next photoshoot and started planning the Inhabited Moment.

Before the Fourth Mutation, I was Datura Child, and the Living Comic Book was my ambitiously experimental vision, made possible by all the Living Pages crazy enough to join me. Now, we are the Datura Children, of which I am only one. What it means to be a Datura Child is almost impossible to explain to muggles. The best I can do is tell you to take the concept of a Flower Child and add hallucinogenic poison. Or maybe give a Demon Child a little love and understanding. Or take an Indigo Child to a gang pad to score.  I like to think of us as a tribe. Many insist that it’s a cult - I find this funny so I roll with it. I’ve also heard it be referred to as a collective, a movement, a collaboration, a network, and a microcommunity. This is an ouroboric return to the First Mutation, which has been referred to as a comic book, a zine, an art book, and a graphic novel. I guess it’s just an art project that got bigger than me. Whatever the case, there’s no turning back now. Life is more sublime and terrifying than ever, but at least it finally makes sense.

The Inhabited Moment

Photos by Vanessa

Photos by Wilko

Photos by Emily

It all started with the big bang. Then like thirteen billion or so years later there was the Inhabited Moment.

For a while, everything was going to plan. Until it very much wasn't. Kind of an occupational hazard when the task is trying to situate twenty or so luminously creative yet highly neurodivergent alien/monkey hybrids in a particular point in time and space. Just when I thought I had everything arranged, my phone - in a rare and very inconvenient display of empathy - decided no more, and self-terminated, never to be switched on again, for no discernable reason besides to take mercy on me and my techophobia. Oh well. Up to the Gods from here.

A series of signs with the Datura LizardFish painted on them were hung from trees to guide the Datura Children through the thickets and into the Hole - probably an abandoned world war 2 bomb shelter - which was illuminated with candles and various light sources. While we waited for the rest of the Tribe, Astrid was introduced to the wholesomely sinister activities of the Tribe, and several new myths and fables were dreamed up, most of which culminated in Zeus turning into a swan and raping the protagonist. Because that's just the way things go. Another symptom of the big bang. For some of the Datura Children, Life Started Dancing.

The next few carloads were only about 40 minutes late (thanks for the most part to my communication breakdown) and we were soon joined by the Dirt Child and the Serpent Dream, who brought with them house paint for Homoaphotica to start his mural while Vanessa set about wrangling Inhabited Moments. The wall soon took on the form of some kind of landscape - wait, no, an eel... A dragon.... God's penis - No, not a horse you fuckwit: Strike one for Crazy Dave, and probably about strike seven for the Datura Child, who in a costly lack of judgement the previous night invited one of God's prototypes, a fellow no one calls Cool Calm Collected Dave, who managed to piss off the whole Tribe within about five minutes of arriving. Homoaphotica recovered with steeze under pressure, and Creepy Dave busied himself making everyone uncomfortable. Sorry about that. Call it a social experiment.

We were then joined by some kind of pirate, a group of strangers who were guided by the signs into the hole (and were surprisingly boring for folk willing to follow a series of cryptic arrows painted on wood through the bush and into a small, black concrete crevice), and our resident one-armed polymath Wilko, who I can only assume is an incredibly talented Yu-Gi-Oh master since the fucker seems to be good at everything else (one-armed photos to come). Then it was a meeting between Sad Moon and Serpent Dream, the new project: Some kind of audio visual Datura Child production, perhaps. The Datura Child tale, told by Sad Moon and Serpent Dream... Sounds appropriate, no? Perhaps this is the Fifth Mutation. Perhaps this is - Nope, Chaotic Dave started a fire and smoked out the underground, and we're evacuated out into the mainstream war bunkers on the surface world to receive transmissions from the stars.

So then it was most of us going our separate ways, something about a party - fuck it, Life's Still Dancing - and that's Homoaphotica, Maharba Nayr, and Datura Child off for a ride with the Mad Moon, who played a fun game of almost-bumper cars with other motorists, getting just close enough nose-to-tail for the tendrils of energy to say hello, but not quite close enough to form an atomic bond - oh, see you next time H.Photica and Nayr - all the way to the party, all fun and games until --SKULL-- into the back of a truck, actually, still fun and games then, what with Life Still Dancing, until a visit from the boys in blue, and that's the Sad Moon up and off to the station, and me lost phoneless and boardless in the city.

I found my way to the station to wait for Rad Moon to get released, but with Life Still Dancing and no clear time frame from Mr. Piggy, I found my way into the Saturday night human river, dazed and flowing under the refractions of telescope bright nights, then found on Courtenay Place by my workmate Hugh, who gave my Inhabited Corpse to Human Host Maddy as a gift. After a Heineken and a pep talk, I was released back into the wild, spinning myself into clarity, without any real direction besides the offer of beer at Minibar, greeted by Human Host Harry: 'Where have you just come from Slash?' And at that point, all there is to do is laugh, and pray to [name redacted] that this was all just a strange and wonderful datura hallucination, and I'll simply wake up in the psych ward in a few days and not have to deal with any of the consequences.

Nodus Tollens to you all. The big bang continues xoxo

ᛞᚨᛏᚢᚱᚨᚲᚺᛁᛚᛞ.ᚲᛟᛗ/ᛉᛟᛖᛏᛁᚲ-ᚷᛖᛟᛗᛖᛏᚱᚤ