The story of the Secret Tablet begins with a cup of coffee.
A few years back, two strange characters appeared in a light green food trailer across the street from the party house I was living at. It was in that trailer that I first tasted coffee. I had drank coffee before, out of drip machines and such, but never anything close to what they were making. Damn good coffee. It wasn’t just the bean juice that was amazing, it was also the way they treated people. Kind, nurturing, curious, and vigilant. There was always a minor revolution of thought coming from their minds or the patrons they had cultivated.
After getting closer to the pair I learned of their hidden obsession… conspiracies. We talked ourselves into outer space and each coffee cup was an anchor in time to a worm hole of thought. The word “conspiracy” means to breathe together, to share focus, time, attention, and in our case coffee. It is remarkable how the simple act of drinking coffee in the morning with friends can lead to conversations that alter how you think about everything that follows in the day. Feeling accomplished by talking is a sort of paradise for me. But in the matter of a few days the oasis is coming to an end. Braxton and Natasha decided to move back to Washington to expand their business in a brick and mortar. Blast. I told them that I would love to make a piece of art to commemorate their time in Austin and a few days later they slipped me a crumbled up piece of paper.
Remember, every conspiracy is a black hole. The closer you get, the more you get pulled in. I spent about one to two nights for every item on the list they gave me. Diving deep into a youtube deep web hypnotism of paranoia, zealousness, and potentials. For each conspiracy, I created a symbol set of meaning. For each conspiracy, I found leagues of people that had dedicated their lives to seeking truth as well as absurdity, breathing together to the point of breathlessness. An asthmatic spectrum of sane to insane. My mind would ache with the thirst for what seemed almost true yet incomplete. What I did make actual from this practice of borderline neurosis is this piece of art. Also, after a few months of diving deep into conspiracies I came out with a profound appreciation for the Sun. So… much… jibber jabber and displaced focus. The Sun seemed to make more and more sense. The impact of the sun, vivid with realness, a powerful battery in the expanse of everything Earth. This all may be a holograph, but in the here and now the sun gets it all going on.
Thanks for visiting my town Beware Coffee, I will always remember the times we shared.
Much Love,
Chris Dock