Swifaut

Alt text: An anthro firefighter on the left kneels before a fire creature (fox) reaching out toward him from a passageway to the right. They look at each other. There are firefighters behind to the left, separated from the foreground by debris. Smoke above. (The firefighter and fire-fox are the same character.)

This is a post about a few things. At first I wanted it to be about love, then about individual and collective struggle. But any one of those descriptions would reduce it unfairly, so, this is a post about Swifaut :)

Swifaut’s character, more outgoing than his human identity, is a buff, semi-demonic fox guy. (He likes dragons.) The fox could refer to playfulness, contrasting with his outwardly distanced demeanor. From the get-go, he expressed a flexibility about the design, wanting to explore, not feeling 100% settled in it (though he likes the long tail and spikes.)

Hobby-wise, Swifaut balances athleticism with diligent piano practice, while running a business and working hard to have a good impact on the world as an individual person. This includes his voluntary participation as a firefighter, for which he was in active training around the time of our conversations. He cares for all living beings and tries to avoid harm. This high level of investment comes along with a tendency for anxiety - personal losses and more had already caused difficulties in the past that he had found his own way through. Nonetheless, Swifaut’s  introspection had produced a persistent awareness of lacking connection to others: Loneliness, of a kind that made it hard to feel fully understood by anyone, even by his closest friends. I could empathise with that last part.

The cards drawn for the Tarot reading were the Two of Cups, the Three of Discs and the Nine of Swords - titled, Love, The Works, and Cruelty in the Thoth Tarot I use.  The first shows a Lotus fountain with fishes over a pleasant sea, overfilling two chalices. The middle card shows a grey, spectral, tetrahedral Pyramid from above, a wheel under each of its three corners, shaping the ground below it into out-going dunes. The last card shows red-dripping swords in front of a troubled background in sickening colours, arranged like prison-bars pointing down. Swifaut described these in detail and with some interesting observations - specifically the nine of swords called up the memory of the folk tale of Bluebeard.  To make a very brief summary, Bluebeard is an old wealthy man who marries a young woman and leaves her in his castle with all the keys, prohibiting her from going into the basement, where she ends up finding the brutalized bodies of his former wives. (A blood-dripping prison-basement of bad breakups was an image of Love far removed from what we were looking for!)

In the following discussion, we noticed a distinction between the Venusian (pleasure, passiveness) and the Marsian (strength, war). Swifaut is a Romantic in the sense that he loves the world. He is dedicated. But the pursuit of a thing that resists acquisition would be an unfulfillable yearning,  a bit like running from one‘s own shadow. Cruelty is Mars in Gemini, Gemini is the Lovers/Brothers (I have been writing on another post for Ryke in which I discuss the Lovers.) Ultimately, Love is always everywhere - it’s our perspective on it that limits our participation in it. This essential point was actually pretty hard to reach for me amid all my talk about elements and the Unconscious, but Swifaut was very patient, and nonetheless honest when there were statements on which he disagreed. In fact, I never presented it in one piece, but only reached a more complete idea with the help of this article by Mark Vernon, which Swifaut and me enjoyed discussing after the commission was already finished: https://aeon.co/essays/in-the-beginning-there-was-love-we-can-move-with-its-power

At first, however, I wrote about nature. Swifaut shared experiences about Canyoning - so he was well familiar. Something about it felt off to me, as if I had chosen something that was too trite and general. My second idea was to dig into his firefighting more.

Why would someone risk their life for others? When I asked Swifaut, the reasons were numerous - his father had been one, it’s physical, and it gives him security to think that in case of emergencies with family and friends, he would know what to do. It also became his focus during a time when he needed confidence, social interaction, and a feeling of efficacy and purpose. He was interested in continuing his training.

He made sure to let me know that he wanted no heroism, and he kept me to that promise. For one thing, details matter. When facing fire, the nozzle absolutely must be between the team lead and the fire. I only learned this after my first composition attempt, in which Swifaut strides into the fire in a guarded posture, carrying forth his axe with a martial attitude - too heroic for sure. The face in the background was fun for showing something of the mostly obscured character design, but didn’t translate into the final composition. The thumbnail for that was a more graphic and flat arrangement, but I chose to space the actors and elements out more for the final piece to give room to a feeling of hesitation, which ended up dominating over the aggression appropriately.

On a symbological level, fire can consume and destroy. To Jung, complexes are fires. They are not merely ideas but little personalities, which is why they are addressed as entities in some magical practices - here I paraphrase Regardie. That is why the term possession is sometimes used. I would speculate further that, to an extent,  these personalities may be similar to the Daimones, messengers through which the higher causes (Gods) communicate to us. I do not claim any real knowledge of the topic, but it at least inspired me to show Swifaut twice on the canvas as both the firefighter and the fire. 

Soul symbology often has to do with vessels, such as houses. By putting out fires in actual houses, Swifaut puts out the fires in his soul. But this top-down approach had not fully stopped his loneliness. He himself expressed the idea of needing to “face” something several times. What if, in a dreamstate, the hole in the world reached out of the shadows, wrapped in the shape of a creature, and spoke to you? What would it say, and what would you do if there was truth to it? Would you run from it? Would you kill it, for it to come back another day? Is that a way to treat a guest? Who knows if my symbology was a good idea. But pausing and observing and engaging with the pain, sitting with it rather than eliminating it, felt like a correct response to both of us.

I performed the poses for reference, so I will briefly mention them. While the firefighters’ is about carefulness, acting out the entity itself felt a little Gollum-esque.  The animality of it changed the proportions from fully anthro to semiferal. 

As for the rest, a teammate (as appropriate to the practice) carries the axe now. Generally, the others are at a distance and behind some debris. They all remain close to the hose to not get lost. Lastly, the smoke ceiling. For one, it forces bipedal creatures into a more animal-like or simply uncomfortable position, below its surface. Additionally, it blends things over into one another, which increases the nightmarish qualities of it - and when you consider how surprisingly dangerous it is, it really does appear evil. Burning buildings have rules to them, they remind me of mazes.

Last paragraph, I swear. As an artist it is easy to be insular and contemplative. I find it ironic that I get to emphatically represent someone whose basic attitude to life is so much more urgent than mine, in good part because of his experiences. It makes me wonder if I am too sheltered.  Even though I try to be somewhat involved in my environment, the activity of others that is made visible is a reminder of its limitation. Though my art may currently be focused on individual struggle, I want to keep an eye on the collective issues that individual stories point me at: Packmates Mutual Aid has been the motivating factor behind this. Thus far it’s been based on Jonathan Vair Duncan’s Discord community. Check them out here: https://steadfast-wheel-377.notion.site/Packmates-Mutual-Aid-13a1a5332b364145875cadcc085ef3e7

Now that I got that off my chest, how about some porn :) (Actually, no more porn - directly on Patreon- because Mastercard etc. Here's my new Subscribestar for that: https://subscribestar.adult/theotormon  ) < Will make a proper announcement soon!