Grapho is the one who created all the avatars for Burning Life. They really do fall into his domain of expertise: They are dark, textured, evocative of unconscious things. So, he has been spending a lot of time in-world lately. Now, there are some remarkable things to do with his prolonged presence. One is that no matter how often his name gets mentioned in all the note cards and no matter that his name appears on every single prim and inventory item, almost everyone he has encountered refuses to believe that he actually made these avatars. They all think that I (Alpha) made them. Or that I made them as Alpha. Whatever… In fact, when he tried to convince a group of people that he was the designer, all he got for his efforts was a “nice try, Grapho!“… !!! Don’t people look at prims anymore? It is how I do all my shopping – by looking at prims! So, what is going on here, I wonder?

Second thing that happens is something that I have actually written about before: Whenever Grapho makes an appearance the women come flocking in! This is the strangest thing and in fact tonight Bettina and I discussed this, how forthright women seem to be in showing their sexual interest – far more so than men, we both concluded. When I (Alpha) log in no one gives me a second glance – which is to be expected, since in the looks department I am really nothing to write home about. However, Amina and Xia who are both really good looking do not seem to fare much better either. (And do good looks really matter? Please read on!) Not so with Grapho: We have female customers making return visits to see the guy. It has happened more than once that I or one of the other girls got asked where he was? He hadn’t been around in a while? Did we know why?

But this in not the real reason as to why I am writing this post. At least not directly anyway… What has got me thinking here does not only have to do with Grapho but also with his t-shirt. He got this a while ago; it is just a crusty old freebie with horrible seams but nonetheless he totally loves it:

If you have a tendency to take yourself too seriously the text on this thing could very well insult you, or put you on the defensive I suppose…

And today Grapho did in fact have an encounter where he managed to put another person very much on the defensive – to the extent where things got somewhat out of hand. I saved the chatter and re-examined it carefully afterwards: Nothing that he actually “said” is even remotely offensive. Really it isn’t! So why did this happen? Could it be the t-shirt? Worn by a scowling, tall man, towering over the person he was talking with? Bettina also pointed at his long hair when I told her about the encounter later in the day. So maybe that too. And the hawk nose? The crooked face. Slanted small eyes. Grapho is becoming rather good looking. And furthermore he is slowly becoming good looking in a not-conventionally-good-looking sort of a way. He is very tall and thin and long limbed and bends over ever so slightly. Gangly, I guess the word is. So, not a run of the mill, cute baby faced, muscle packed dude but someone who may well be intimidating through his ugly-beautiful presence. And furthermore wearing a t-shirt which has a condescending sort of a message written all over it!

Had it been me, with my ears and tail, would the exchange have developed in the same way? But even more to the point, would I have expressed myself in quite the same way as Grapho did? During his very early days I had Grapho talk in a deliberately uncouth manner. It was a very clumsy act of trying to adopt a different persona. Nowadays I don’t do that any more. Grapho talks exactly like I do. Or so at least I think. But does he really? As I was reading the chatter I noticed a different tone. Very subtle, but it is there. More impatient. Again, nothing he said was upsetting in and of itself. But what he said – it comes out ever so slightly differently. A bit more akin to the t-shirt perhaps. Not even that. Very hard to explain… It is this hardly tangible difference which I have noticed in the alts of others but was not aware of where my own alts were concerned. But, nonetheless it is there… Almost impossible to pinpoint what it is and how exactly it manifests – but there.

Nick Yee has conducted a study which he calls The Proteus Effect. And what he proves is that avatar appearance affects behavior and all social interactions and emotional responses. Indeed, so powerful is the impact of appearance on behavior and communication that, according to Yee’s findings, the way an avatar looks does not only carry major significance while one is in “the game” itself, but in all subsequent physical/RL interactions between the interacting agents. I had a gut instinct that this was so long before I had ever heard of Yee’s paper. Reading it made me yelp out in joy since he was really proving a thing I had always known to be true.

Is this what happened with Grapho today? I am fairly certain that it is. What he said was not anything that would have provoked a hostile response. The way he looked and stood, compounded by the stupid rights t-shirt however could have done so and, I think, did…

I have been thinking about The Beatles. Small wonder, since I have been listening to them pretty much on a loop during my entire trip last week.

I seem to listen to music only when I am out on the street. Going back and forth from work, wandering around, shopping – that type of stuff. At home, for some weird reason, I forget to do so. So, I am not sure how much of a music connoisseur I really am. Hardly at all, I would say. And quite recently, I admitted that my love of The Beatles might in fact be in dubious taste in that they are somewhat “cute”. But, since I said that I have been wondering – are they really so cute after all?

First off, I am not too terribly into cute as far as my other musical favorites are concerned. My big, all time, number one fave are The Who, on whom I already wrote about quite a while ago. Now, them, I really do have on a 7/24 loop whenever I go out on the street! Right next down the line (as a very close follow up in fact) would be Queen. And what comes after them is anybody’s guess really and The Beatles are somewhere in there very close to the top.

It is only 3 of their albums that grab me, those being The White Album, Sgt. Peppers and Abbey Road. The earlier stuff, yes yes, very nice and all that but ultimately – yawn!!! And that is of course the time-line wherein the cutsey-putsey stuff, which is usually associated with the Beatles, resides. The later stuff, especially the things which they did when they all went solo? Again, sorry, I do not like any of that either: If anything, double-yawn!!! But these three albums… Yesss! Not every song on every album, mind you. Things like “While my guitar gently weeps” and “She’s leaving home” and “Something” I fast forward so fast you have absolutely no idea. In fact, I have compiled a playlist on my MP3 player where none of these more romantic ballady type things are even to be found – notable exceptions being “blackbird” and “Martha my dear”. And to give myself credit, I never cared for the romantic tunes even when I was 16. The ones I adore are the ones in which, over the course of the three albums, there unfolds the whackiest pantheon which I would dare to suggest has ever been imagined at any point in the 20th century:

Polythene Pam and Mean Mr. Mustard! The Sun King! Lovely Rita and Maxwell with his silver hammer! Rocky Raccoon and his fickle lady love whose “name was Magil, and she called herself Lil, but everyone knew her as Nancy”. Not to mention Gideon’s Bible and the gin reeking doctor who proceeds to lie on the table in the same song. Closely followed by the Piggies, big and small…

And of course Henry the Horse dances the waltz!

That strange negotiation which goes on on the flip side of Abbey Road:

You never give me your money
You only give me your funny paper
and in the middle of negotiations
you break down

I never give you my number
I only give you my situation
and in the middle of investigation
I break down

Out of college, money spent
See no future, pay no rent
All the money’s gone, nowhere to go
Any jobber got the sack
Monday morning, turning back
Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go
But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go

So familiar… Especially when a few songs later we come to that flashback-refrain:

I never give you my pillow
I only send you my invitation
And in the middle of the celebrations
I break down…

It seems like this has been said to me so many times. In so many different ways. When I was given invitations but was not asked to share a pillow and during the celebrations of which my host broke down… Oh dear…

And then of course, the trip songs: I have done my share and I know exactly what Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds or a Day in the Life are all about. And I love them! How could I not?

I read the news today oh, boy
Four thousand holes in blackburn, lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the albert hall

…

My father is the one who laid the groundwork of my private pantheon. I recently found a story book which he wrote and illustrated for me. It had been lost for many years and when it showed up on one of the upper shelves of my mother’s library I cried like a dog. In this story a bear marries a rabbit and they live happily ever after. The book actually starts with the happily ever after and my father takes me in meticulous detail through the everyday activities of the couple, how they go on vacation together, how when the bear gets sick at one point the rabbit nurses him back to health. How the bear has to take all the potted plants in their apartment to his office since his rabbit wife cannot resist eating them. I should probably scan it and post it here so that maybe people can understand why I seem to talk about my father so much.

I was torn out of that world, in which bears and rabbits live together happily ever after, the day when I entered the “grown-up” world, aka. grade school! I loathed it! And it is no exaggeration when I say that starting from age 7, I went through decades of solid loathing, indeed being revolted by “grown-up” life at every turn of the path. In all of its manifestations! A world devoid of people like my father, people that had the sort of imagination that makes magic happen. And I did not – and to this day do not believe that this horrifying “grown-up” world is ultimate, unassailable, irrefutable “reality”. The Beatles are one of the few solid rays of hope that I was/am correct in this assessment. The loopy world which they sang about. If there were people like them out there surely I would eventually meet them? And I did. A handful maybe, strewn over decades.

And then…

I got me a Second Life folks… ;-)

Xiamara finally got her wish and we (that is me and the tribe) toured the avantgarde fashion haunts of London all day today. All in the name of research of course. I mean how am I supposed to keep my strength up as 5 fashion designers if I am not to get the occasional whiff of inspiration then and again? Started out with Camden Lock, progressed to Spitalfields market and ended up oggling at £2500 a pop pret-a-porter garments by Chalayan… Needless to say I did not indulge there (no matter how horrifyingly tempting his things were); although admittedly, I did manage to pick up a few odds and ends on the market stalls – teee heee. I mean research is all very well and good in its place, but one also needs clothes to cover one’s derriere. (The closetfull at home doesn’t count in this instance at all – of course!)

All the while, as I was having a whale of a time snooping around (and I have to say that some of the stuff that I saw today is extraordinary: incredibly imaginative, beautiful and well made on top of it!), I was internally ruminating on another matter entirely. What has brought this on is an ongoing email conversation with Bettina Tizzy. Not that it is all too directly related; but through some weird associative process this has made me think about why I only like some people. Why do I pick them out of a crowd and take them into my affections? As opposed to the countless others whom I leave outside?

I am not a people person. I do not spontaneously love everybody. I may not be as hard a misanthrope as my mother, who basically did not want to have anything whatsoever to do with humanity, but on the other hand I am most certainly not Pollyanna either. So, the people that I like, that I love, come few and far between. And here would be the question: Why them? How do I pick them?

So, without further ado, here is the result of my daylong ponderings:

I believe that it happens quite suddenly and spontaneously and usually after a prolonged period of what can at best be termed as lukewarm tolerance. And it happens because they do or say something totally absurd and idiosyncratic. Usually something very funny. But always something that shows me that they are quite loopy in their imaginative processes. In Bettina’s case it happened when one fine day, in the midst of a “serious” conversation  – bingo! she turned herself into a beagle and jumped on a swing. Until then, that very moment, I had thought that she was a perfectly nice sort of an acquaintance to have. I certainly respected her for the work she was doing on the NPIRL blog. But strong affection? That happened when she became the beagle – who continued the serious conversation without a twitch of a whisker I might add… That is when I suddenly decided she was totally lovable.

In the case of Truthseeker it happened when we spent hours perched on his/her rooftop waiting for imaginary enemies to attack his/her home. That day set the groundwork for my affection for sure, what clinched the deal however was when all his/her worst fears did in fact materialize a few weeks later.

In wolfie’s case it was the day he came stomping over during my early days of residency at Klein and instructed me in first defense tactics in view of an imminent attack that we might be facing from the Residents over at Ober. That did it!

In the case of Hack it was the day he got totally bored at an avantgarde sound art event and rezzed a plane in full view of the assembled audience, promptly boarded the thing and flew outa the place without so much as a backwards glance. Now, that is what I call a meaningful exit! hhhhhh

And the same applies to people in RL also. I do not cultivate relationships. I don’t give a rat’s ass for social niceties. I do not pick people because they are (or might turn out to be) beneficial to me in some way. I am not even remotely interested in all those so-called interesting people. In how they look, how stylish they are, how cool, how this how that… And yes: Not even “talent” I value when it comes to bestowing my affections on someone! Seems that my affectionate antennae only prick themselves up when there is absurdity in the air.

Love the stuff! And Thank God (and Phil Rosen) for SL! The place is teeming with it after all!

…

Note:

Just had dinner, during which I realized an unforgivable omission and came running back to take care of it: The list above is obviously not limited to only 4 people in both lives! I may be a tough nut to crack, however I am not completely emotionally petrified either you know… So, to all you other loved ones out there who are not mentioned here: Please be assured that you must have done something totally off the wall as well to worm your way into my affections. Trouble is, I cannot seem to remember what exactly it was – which would be pretty much the only reason your name does not appear above. (Given how there are only 11.3 of you altogether!!! hhh)

There! Fixed that! Now all my loved ones are taken care of!

Recently I have made two things. And I am realizing that with both of them I am actually confronting fears or in the case of one of them, if not fear itself a very strong repulsion.

Jellyfish. I have loathed them for as long as I can remember. They have managed to totally sour up my childhood holidays by the sea. We used to have these huge deep blue ones along with the smaller white variety and basically whenever they were in evidence I would not go into the water. They never stung me or anything like that but I loathed them anyway. Later, in my twenties, I did some scuba stuff on the Aegis and once when I was underwater I even saw a shark. (He showed no interest in me whatsoever – Thank God!). And even the shark did not give me the same gut reaction that I got from the jellyfish. Of course I was scared witless, but I really did not have that revulsion. He was very beautiful and mixed in with my fear was also a huge admiration for his grace. And why am I saying “he” anyway? For all I know this was a girl-shark. But seemed very masculine somehow?

I have no idea why I made jellyfish at Syncretia when I built the lightbulb basin. Given how much I loathe them, I really shouldn’t have done so. When I started thinking about making things for avatars in Second Life a jellyfish outfit was one of the first things that I thought about doing. So, last week finally I made Alpho do one:

I do not know if this will help next time when I am about ready to jump into the sea and I see the monsters floating below me. Chances are very strong that I will still go “yukkkkkk” and run inland as fast as my legs will carry me. But, that said, I am kind of glad I made this.

…

The second thing is far more complicated to explain. I have been building the Annex and almost all of it is sunk into the sea. I really do love the underwater (although I have to admit that I haven’t gone scubaing in a very very long time). So, it would not be terribly surprising if I wanted to build an underwater sim for that reason alone. However, my real reason is that I find the lighting conditions underwater far superior to those above. The light in SL leaves much to be desired. For my personal use I almost always have sky presets enabled. I have a special one for when I am building and for all other times I use the Mescaline Tammas presets. But of course, I assume that the bulk of people who come to Syncretia have the regular sky settings. Even though I set a sim time and everything I am never completely satisfied with the result. And there the underwater lighting really comes to the rescue. In short the real reason is the ability to make usage of the light down there.

I could have created something wonderful and colorful like they have over at Blake Sea where we were last week testing the S+R scuba gear with wolfie. Instead I made this space which scares even me! And I built it for God’s sakes! How can I possibly be scared by something which I made myself? There is a carousel and I honestly do not want to hang out there – it totally gives me the creeps…

Why did I do this? And what is that place all about? If I want to get all high falutin’ and banal I can say that it is about life and death. Consciousness and the subconscious. Above and below. Eros and Tanathos. Bla bla bla bla… But, it is about none of these or all of them or something else entirely which I cannot even name properly. Something which resides deep in my unconscious mind and which scares me. Something I have no knowledge of whatsoever on a conscious level.

Now one of the things which I do when I am building is that I use things which others have made if I can possibly do so. I see no merit in entirely homemade endeavors in a metanomic system. If I can’t find it I make it and of course I make the basic structural bits, but most of the stuff that goes into the structure is acquired. I either purchase the things or I pick them up as freebies. This is of course a kind of three dimensional collage. Max Ernst and André Breton talk about the benefits of collage, “the chance encounter of two distant realities on an unsuitable level”, in releasing the images of the unconscious mind. And my guess is that something of the sort happens to me when I bring together the stuff I pick up on the freebie boards at NCI plaza and Yadni’s Junkyard. I wrote a paper about all this at one point and then even made a virtual flip-book out of the paper. (No one was too terribly impressed by the paper itself, I have to admit. In fact Roy sent me off with a colossal flea in my ear… hhh. So a flip-book as a final resting place for it is about right, I guess).

I had dug some very deep canyons and used a very dark ground texture for the deepest level of the terrain. So, the place has been dark almost from the day that I got the sim. But that has to do with the fact that underwater, as I remember it, is dark. Or rather a weird admixture of dark coming at you from the depths and light coming from above. But it is eerie as a space – underwater. And it seemed to me that creating a dark ocean floor and a lighter upper level would simulate that RL underwater feeling more or less accurately. Because I did want accuracy of sorts in that. But that is the groundwork. What happened after that is that I started picking up things. I found a strange sculpty horse as a freebie. The textures on it were pretty awful although the shape was really good. So, I blanked out the texture. Too harsh. So, I decreased the opacity. Too wish washy. So, I added glow. Suddenly I had a ghost horse. Hmmm… Suddenly I sunk it into the water to see how it would look against the dark ground. Looked pretty good. So, I duplicated it to see the increased effect. And one more and one more. Suddenly I had a herd of ghost horses galloping underwater. I had had no idea, no intention of doing this. I was going to do fish and stuff. I mean I still have a lot of fish down there, but now there is a herd of ghost horses as well.

Then, next thing, I send Amina off to the gnubie store to get kitted out a bit. She has no clothes to wear and although she does not really go anywhere she should still have something to wear, no? And alpha.tribe designers do not really wear their own designs except for experimental purposes. We have a house policy like that. So while she is there she sees this carousel. Picks it up, passes it onto me. I rezz it. I have no intention whatsoever of using it, I just want to see what it is. However, I happen to rezz it right next to the horses. Next thing the horses are on the carousel. And… I get really really scared by what I just did.

It is all like this, what is down there. How it came together. The horses are just one part. There is other stuff too. Of course, there is this synchronistic encounter theory as well, where you apparently bump into things which somehow end up being what you were looking for inadvertently.

So what is it about? Fear of something for sure. Death? There are objects directly related to death in another part of the sim. And the ghost horses are dead too in a way I suppose. But, I am not at all morbid. Hardly ever think about all that stuff. And also, I was talking to a friend of mine Natasha Vita-More, who is very involved in radical life extension research and while we were mulling about all this it emerged that I really have no interest in living forever. Or for much longer than what people normally do these days. Don’t get me wrong: I have no desire or intention to pop my clogs anytime soon, say within the next 4 – 5 decades – hhh. I do want to have a good innings and genetic predisposition on both sides of my parentage would indicate that this is probably likely to happen – unless shit happens, of course. But, if it does it does… So? I am probably about as much scared of death as the next person, but really no more than that. And plus – I firmly believe in reincarnation. They had a case here years ago with all these babies that started blabbing about a location 100s of kilometers away where they claimed to have wives and children. Turns out it it was all correct. And the babies had been conceived within hours if not minutes of the demise of a group of men who had died in a really bad car crash at a young age. Now, that is irrefutable evidence in my book…

Not death then but something. I seem to have spat out a conglomeration of objects which scare me to look at. So, again, as with the jellyfish I must be in the process of confronting something. Except I really have no idea what it might be? Or only a very vague inkling of some sort? And that unsettles me even more somehow?

…

Ah well, I am sure all will be revealed in due course. For now I have far more pleasant matters on my mind: Frigg Ragu gave me her collection of poses and these have got to be the best ones ever seen in SL! Oh and – Amina picked up a set of maracas which make you “manbo” (not mambo!) when you wear them. And, I have had my heart set on making a sailors outfit for the longest time. So, speaking of “the chance encounter of two distant realities on an unsuitable level”, I am frantically busy in photoshop right now making the “manbo sailor” outfit! I am sure it will be the hottest seller yet!

teeee heeee…

Something I was going to add the other night and then forgot to do. Or rather, I could have done so obviously, even after posting the thing but then chose not to after all. This seems significant enough for a separate entry: My alts.

I am at the point where I am feeling them as completely separate persons. They are standalone entities with different pre-occupations and thoughts. Which is very strange. They originated from some part of me, surely they are me? But, it is definitely not how this all feels, how the game is progressing here. And, funnily enough, meeting with them, hanging out with them, is proving to be yet another incentive to stay in SL. Perhaps maybe even the strongest one?

Grapho, I am in awe of. Xiamara, I do not like. And neither, for that matter, am I too overly fond of Amina. She looks a bit like Priscilla Presley (not at all my reason for not liking her, I should add). But she is this type of flaky, droopy, overly innocent seeming female, the kind who contrary to all appearances of flakiness gets everything done exactly in the way she intends it to. In short, the type for whom I really do not have much time for at all. Devious, the word is, I suppose? And it is these two, whom I do not like, that I should probably be taking a really good close look at since according to the laws of projection in them would be embedded my deepest personality flaws. So ingrained that I probably have a hard time recognizing them in myself and mirror them onto entities whom I do not like? So, how horrifying is that? But, in all likelihood still very true…

The one that I do like is Alpho. I even like the way she stands around with her goofy chubby girl AO animations and then bursts into that freebie female power walk – so purposeful! hhh… She is the only one that I have given my own shape to amongst my alts (although I have distributed quite a few of them to customers in the shop – but that is another story…). However, Alpho is a furry and so whenever she is not making clothes she is a wolf designed by Leben Schnabel or a panther designed by a really talented furry designer, whose name I cannot remember off the top of my head. But much as I like her, she is someone else entirely. In fact, if anything, her separateness I recognize more readily than all the others. And Grapho too. He intimidates the living daylights out of me I have to admit, but I do like him as well. And I very clearly see him as his own person. A stranger, in fact. The others are separate and yet not strangers. Grapho however, is a stranger whom I have yet get to know.

I guess, this is what it was like to play with dolls? When I was a kid? I really can’t remember. grrr… What it is definitely like is hanging out with my animals. Distinctly separate entities.

It is time to talk about alpha.tribe.

I am spending a lot of time working on the output – to the extent where sometimes I have a hard time falling asleep because there is some new thingy floating around in my head and I get up in the middle of the night and fire up photoshop to do things. Wander into the shop in the early hours of the morning and start rezzing prims. It is a full fledged obsession. And not only the work but all of it. Sometimes a few days go by and no one buys anything and I feel low: Instead of checking emails  (as one does), I first look at the transaction histories of the 5 avatars on their SL accounts pages when I get up in the morning. It isn’t about money obviously: I would need to be selling thousands of items to talk about any kind of a tangible income. And, of course, I do not. I make enough to cover my day to day SL expenses and a bit above that perhaps. Maybe, in time, it will be enough to cover the fee of the new homestead. Certainly not what I pay for Syncretia as well. Not anytime soon anyway… So, the obsession is about something else.

…

Bettina asked me the other day about Syncretia, that she was concerned that I was no longer so interested in “building”. I have been a multi tasker for as long as I can think; so no, I have not given up building. I will do that as well. But, the thing with Syncretia is that it is finished. And there really is no reason whatsoever for me to hang out there, to go back there even. The new sim, yes… Of course. I will be building that – eventually. It will take a couple of weeks, maybe 3 or 4, but probably not even that and then that too will be done, finished. I will be putting an alpha.tribe store there as well, I should add. I can do that, it is not educational land.

The thing about designing avatar apparel is that you can just keep on doing it, over and over and over again – infinitely. Each outfit is a novel design system which you need to tackle all over again, from scratch. And it is an imaginative process. So, on the one hand it calls all of my previous design know-how into question, but then you can use that design know-how to really take an imaginative leap of fancy. I am my own client in a way, I write my own brief and then I implement it through the 5 avatars. And while on the one hand one does need to pay a lot of attention to inherent design restrictions such as those odious avatar templates for instance, the total nightmare of getting one’s head around that little problem right there; on the other hand it is a truly liberating process. You need not worry about RL design issues such as “function” or “usability” or “specifications” or “legibility” (a very big one for the work of a graphic designer, this last one). You can play – really and truly. So, it is a designer’s paradise. No wonder I am so enthralled with it. And like I said, it is endless…

…

But is that it? It is quite a bit of it, true. I really am preoccupied with the creative process. But that is certainly not what makes me run and check my transaction pages every morning. What it is is that alpha.tribe is giving me a purpose. It is giving me the illusion of having a valid reason for carrying on my existence in SL. That I am needed somehow. The illusion that I have clients who look forward to my producing something new. It is, like I said, a huge illusion and of course I know that it is anything but true. No one needs me or particularly wants me or cares if I am around or not. But, when I click on the transactions page and see the names of avatars that have bought this or that, that have valued the stuff that I make enough to actually pay me for it, it gives me that illusion of being needed. And, I need that sense of purpose to carry on. To justify my continued existence in SL. To myself.

…

And no, even though it may sound like it, I am not sad. Just trying to formulate an explanation to an obsession, that’s all.

…

http://graphofullstop.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/scandal/

…

I took photographs of the outfit, Natural Things, v.01, which Grapho has designed, to upload onto Flickr today. And I noticed something quite bewildering: Grapho looks like my father. Well, not my father, as I knew him, obviously. But, as he was as a young man, to judge by the many photographs of his youth that I have seen over the years.

What is bewildering is that I did not notice this during all these past days where I have been Grapho in SL, sometimes 6-7 hours a day, hammering away at the outfit. Maybe I was too busy working , maybe it is the light in there – but the truth of the matter is that I only noticed it when I opened the photos in photoshop to crop them.

Grapho has been working on his appearance quite a bit of late, so we have been popping open the appearance editor every so often. Another thing is that in order to be able to design garments for women, Grapho also had to create a female shape to try them on. This latest manifestation of his is largely the result of my switching back and forth between the sexes, with that radio button down there, trying to create a truly androgynous avatar for the sole purpose of photographing some of the clothes with that. I thought it might be nice to have that ambiguous look for the unisex outfits, as this latest one has turned out to be.  Anyway, at some point in all of that experimentation I sort of liked what happened to Grapho and decided to save the shape as the new Grapho shape.

So, what resistant part of my psyche did not notice that what I had saved was actually a fairly close representation of my own father?

And it is also somehow significant that this all happened while I was switching back and forth between male and female, since the shape that I started out with was the default Alpha shape (who is a more or less plausible lookalike of me in RL). The one that I saved for Grapho was not the immediate mutation that SL gave me of course – that one was rather hideous. I continued to play with that for a very long time, switched back and forth between the sexes with that one as well, even saved some of the interim stages. But, when all is said and done, this male shape is a vastly mutated and transformed regeneration of Alpha. Generations away – but still.

And… my father did look like me.

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Once the alts start interacting within a parameter, such as a joint design venture, it really all starts to happen. No longer are they lost and disjointed entities wandering the grid but suddenly they are, in fact, the diverse parts of me. They now have to learn to live with one another, they have to make up some kind of a psychic Gestalt, whilst still retaining their identities. And what better opportunity than whilst they are engaged in design work, given that they are all parts of a designer to begin with?

One good example would be the actual shop itself: I initially designed it very much along my usual lines – dark shiny surfaces, sort of Syncretia stuff really… It is what comes naturally to me – or should I say the Alpha part of me? Who is, of course, the predominant partner here, the one very much in control. Stuck in her ways with all of that. Tenacious and obstinate!

So along comes Xia, and after hanging out there for a day or so, she starts putting down huge red flowers all over the place. Now, I, Alpha, have yet to put down a huge red flower anywhere – Real or Second Life! And yet… What are all those bright colored Asian shawls that I tirelessly buy and never ever wear, all in aid of then?

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Only Xia and I have been designing so far and we are in fact wearing our own outfits in the photo above. Furry and Grapho are still waiting for their turn. Furry’s output I am really looking forward to. I was intending to design full Furry avatars but I am now beginning to wonder about that. Working with sculpties, which full Furry avatars really do need, is unbelievably difficult and I have a horrible feeling that my building skills are nowhere near being up to that level. So, what I think Furry will do is design garments and attachments around other designer’s Furry avatars, such as the wolves of Leben Schnabel, and then put landmarks of the stores into the purchase box. At least initially, this is how I think it will have to go. And later we will see.

And Grapho? He is wearing more or less normal garb here but actually he has some strange ideas also. Such as designing a biological avatar.

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And Xia? Well, she is sticking to the floral theme, as you can see here. She has worked for almost a full week on this one and she has called it “Bonsoir Monsieur Labisse” – after a French surrealist painter whom my mother liked a great deal and who painted women not clad in flowers like Xia did with her skin here but the faces are similar somehow. Well my mother liked him – I, Alpha, cannot stand the guy’s paintings. And yet, here is Xia, paying tribute to a painter whom Alpha does not care for at all? How weird is that? But then (thankfully) she has another one in the works and this one she wants to base on Rousseau, who is a favorite of mine as well. So, again, if I am such a dark/shiny surfaces person how come I love Rousseau? Ah… But Rousseau is dark too isn’t he? Don’t let all of that foliage fool you for a nano second… And so, of course, is Labisse.

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So, one way or another I can see one undercurrent of me both in her and myself (Alpha) – but two very different ways in which it materializes. One is the one I already know, that I have worked with all of my life – “my style”, if you will. The other one is as yet unfamiliar to me. Highly so, in fact.

Yes, this is beginning to become a very bizarre journey indeed. And a good one too, I think.

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http://graphofullstop.wordpress.com/

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