RECYCLE – DON’T THROW, PASS IT AROUND LIKE VD.
“The damaged loves the damaged.” -Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
from the desk of
Writz.
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elcome to the very first release of Brain Damage Zine. The
beginning of a great and dark relationship between our world and mainstream society. We are a collective of artists and writers that aim to displease with our views of the little things in life through our selected weapon of choice, our art mediums. Intriguing, disturbing or borderline insane work that you may deem each creator Brain Damaged, be it in a beautiful or in a fucked up way. Either way, it is bound to stir you up. Please enjoy (or not) this month’s theme “Love Sick” as each talented contributor gives you their interpretation of the world’s most beloved subject , “Love”. Enjoy.
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A Feast of Roses
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Blaire
Angel Eyes
By: Sybonay Gamino Now, I believe they are looking
Love is on sale today. Love will cure anything from sweaty palms to the crazed insomniac , moping for company. This is the age where everyone fills their bottomless selfish hearts with mechanical love. This matrix culture has created a machine that is built to be the next best human soul mate, Cyborg A. The creators of these machines figured that if people get off on the obvious, then provide them with the obvious. The machines have adapted well to the way of life. The formula to their success lies in showing its costumer a serene side of life. They start by learning about what your perspective of sadness looks like and turn it into something that they can work on, improving with subtle changes overtime. They are a new form of therapy for mankind, yet there now roams a new breed of sickness.
for the origins of love and death, as if the two are related to each other. The suicide rate is high in every city they are distributed in. People are becoming unusually vulnerable when in contact with the machine. Humans reject the idea that they are alive, and go through a series of traumatic test.
Last week a human man incinerated families in a crowded park, and we accept these confused trials as of time of change. I walk among the machines and help them look at death as
I’d like to say I’m creating a new life science for the era. a new beginning.
I walk alone, lost. I come to find that touch no longer fills me with joy or The machines created new love anything reasonable of momentary from observational speech. They learn to satisfaction. Loneliness brings me understand and accept contradictions they something I can never find with an will find when hearing a human emphasize individual, peace of mind. the importance of their existence, after they display a spectrum of emotions that fits its organic companion.
My mind is its own solace, so I must do my very best to keep my walls chained and up high to hide my city of secrets. The darkness soaks through my veins. I walk the cold streets looking and hunting for misery, waiting for loneliness to strike the next victim. I don’t have interest in most things...in regular routines.
I’m buying my time, holding back until I meet the next one. I’m running out of dead end bars. I have my own agenda, to show them how hollow we all can be. Control has always been my area of expertise, without it I’d lose all the power I believe I have over life. I once made a foolish mistake of sharing pleasures with a man who slowly took the essence of life away from me. I was too blind to see it right away-this stranger was my enemy. He was just like me, so I killed him. He showed me how to live and mask my problems. How to play with wise mind fucks. My eyes tingled with this new recognition of me, of him inside of me. I could feel his cries of pain making me stronger. I felt breathless. I found my solution as I looked at his skinned body with his heart beating for some seconds longer.
I go around looking for different methods to test on my new victims. I assume there is constant torment living inside us all, maybe this translates to connection with the soul? To keep searching for windows to release our essence. Regardless of the answer I walk around searching for torment to come into being. I
am a mechanical parasite built on fear. I will never taste the end, but will help those I can come close it.
About the writer: Sybonay is a creative writer from Los Angeles and a former staff of a local blog called “Exploding Buffalo”. She enjoys board games and loves animals, especially Pitbulls. Taming fire starter.
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RAFAEL CHAMAGUA Article by: Eva Rivera
Angel City Brewery in Down Town Los Angeles is where I
had the opportunity to meet Rafael Chamagua, along with his vision for “Brain Damage” and views on what he thought it meant to be “love sick.” He gave me the impression that he was a deep thinker and it showed in not only his sketch concept of the front page but in the way he described love itself. Chamagua then proceeded to ask a few of us to write down what we thought it meant to be “love sick,” and that is when it hit me. This was his process; this was how he would create our very first cover. By gathering everyone’s views he would create one piece that would express everything we shared.
“..I appreciate whatever people do whether it’s in the concept or technique.” Not everyone can gather different views and form them into one cohesive piece, but Chamagua manages that and more. Born in El Salvador and raised in Los Angeles, Chamagua thanks his five year old self for choosing the path of an artist. Without any specific reason to why he started he says that “it just comes out, I don’t know.” Chamagua’s work is both simple and complicated, when asked what his idea process is he said “I think for a long ass time about shit, so long that I forget. Then, when I
COLOR ME BAD…
remember I have to scramble the night before to put some shit together, under pressure and shit,” a process which usually involves either a special lady named Mary Jane or beer. Chamagua says he isn’t experienced enough in art to have a favorite type but enjoys the work of both Katsuhiro Otomo and Akira Logo for a band
Toriyama who are both Japanese manga artists. Along with the work of his friends he thinks that all art “is what it is, and I appreciate whatever people do whether it’s in the concept or technique.” Art has given Chamagua the opportunity to meet brilliant and talented people, the occasional asshole and led him to places in the world he could have never imagined. Chamagua had
the privilege of being a part of a cultural exchange with a youth organization called “Justice by Uniting in Creative Energy” or J.U.I.C.E. based in Los Angeles and the youth organization Rap-Present in Stuttgart, Germany. JUICE is a non-profit hip hop and arts program for unprivileged youth who are into the arts but don’t have the means to be educated. For Chamagua, the journey has just begun. He hopes the journey will lead him to a home in the woods, with a dog by his side where he can continue his work.
Rafael Chamagua in his natural habitat.
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Broken Kingdom
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Man Eater
In the spring of 2003, I was
experimenting with illicit substances and writing on walls with disdain for authority and my own wellbeing. Nothing really mattered back then. The days were long and the nights were longer with nothing to occupy time except tomfoolery, drugs, and stuff. We would go from house to house of kids whose parents were so caught up with their own lives that they had no time to properly supervise us. A good friend and I were sitting on the curb, wasting away the day with the nonsense that we had grown to love. I had copped a sack of crack cocaine and some weed from an Asian kid who always had really good drugs. As we were babbling on about whatever mindless shit was going on with us at the time, I noticed her; I had always noticed her. Her milky pale skin, soft looking lips and stunning eyes were enough to catch anyone’s attention. She lived just a few houses down from me. I would see her in passing and fantasize about her but I was always too much of a pussy to approach her. She was the kind of girl who liked the fast life and the
intrigue she left always lingered in my mind for longer than it should have. She was walking towards us and with every step she took I rehearsed what I would say to her in my mind. My friend wanted to fuck her. I was too modest at the time to admit that I wanted to fuck her too. I decided to invite her to hang out with us. We went to this spot behind my house that cousin had made it into an outdoor lounge area and that’s where we first smoked crack together. That was a crucial moment for us. There is something about the intimacy of drugs that have a tendency to bring people closer together.
“….taking turns snorting meth in the restroom of a Burger King …. “ I love you” she said with no hesitation We went into my room and chilled for a while. I think she and my friend were messing around underneath my sheets but I couldn’t tell. We exchanged numbers and we slowly started becoming closer. A month or two had passed by with lots of drunken and drugged out moments between us. We developed a friendship the likes of which I never thought possible. I had grown to love to her but of course, I had to suppress such feelings because I didn’t want be rejected. Luckily the drugs were numbing my feelings towards her so I didn’t make a fuss over it. We did a lot together. We would just hang out at parks or go on weird adventures. She had a presence that would just radiate through anyone in a crowded room. No matter how hard I tried to focus on something or someone else, she always
caught my eye. Then, as we were taking turns snorting meth in the restroom of a Burger King in a sketchy part of Downtown Los Angeles, she walks out of the restroom and sits down. She sat directly across from me and our eyes locked. “ I love you” she said
with no hesitation and a little bit of white dust around her nostril. The chemicals rushing through my bloodstream were catching up with the emotions rushing through mind. I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say much. I finally heard what I wanted to hear for so long and I had no
fucking clue how to respond to it. I told her I felt the same way but I just couldn’t say it. I had spent so long trying to convince myself that I didn’t love her that part of me thought that was true. She understood and we went about our day. Later on, went back to my house and that’s where I finally confessed my love for her, the love that I had been trying to hide away for so long. The intensity of falling in love and being on drugs made time and everything else disintegrate around me. Things were perfect for a few months but my addiction to drugs became more and more of a deciding factor in day-to-day life. The drug habit escalated to the point where we would go on pharmaceutical runs in order to supply the drug cook and receive dope as compensation. It took a while but the effects of the drugs we were doing took its toll on me mentality. I became angry and hostile for no good reason. I was
an asshole to her and the people
around me. Instead of wanting to go out, I would opt out to stay home and get high. I wouldn’t want to leave. It was a cycle of bad feelings and chemical dependency. She stopped being as into the drugs as I was. She started going out with her friends and I would just stay at my house waiting for her to come back. At first she would come back but after a
few times she wouldn’t. Paranoia
and depression gripped me tight. I wasn’t able to communicate my feelings and the only one I could show was anger. Sometime during the summer of 2005 we had gone with my mom to a dentist appointment in Tijuana, Mexico. We were barely talking to each other and the resentment between us was at an alltime high. She had gone only as a favor to my mom. In the waiting room of the dentist office is where she told me that she was seeing her ex-boyfriend and spending the nights at his house when she said she was going out with her friends. And of course, I had that pathetic “how could you do this to me” mentality. Needless to say it was a very fucked up ride back home. My heart was
shattered
and I had to sit there with the girl who broke it at the wheel and my mom in the passenger seat. When we got back, she drove to my house since we took my mom’s car. It was raining so I walked her home. I gave her one
last kiss
that solidified the end. After I went to sit back down on the curb where our story first began and no sooner did I see her driving off in her own car to wherever she had to go. It took a while but I came to terms with how bad I let things get. I drifted around in a state of penance for a few months. After a handful of binges and empty relationships I took hold of myself and put the pieces back together. I finally gave up that ghost and come to terms about the mess I made. I’d be lying if I said I was
her but we are completely over her but
we are strangers to each other now despite the fact we spent so much time together. I not only lost the girl I loved, I also lost my best friend. But it needed to happen that way, I was emotionally immature and doing things far beyond my element. It was a rude awakening to say the least.
Illustrations by: Kristine Arismendy
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FEBRUARY 24, 2014 - Friday
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E V E N T S
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SCENE PIZZA PUNX FEB 23 Brodenhiem House 1067 4th ST. SANTA ROSA, CA
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MANIC RELAPSE – VOL 2 OAKLAND DAY 1 – ELLIS MILE HIGH CLUB 21+ FEB 21 – 7PM 3629 MARTIN LUTHER KING JR WAY, OAKLAND DAY 2 – WORLD RAGE CTR ALL AGES FEB 22 – EARLY SHOW 2PM 911 35TH ST., OAKLAND
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E V E N T S Join the fight against cancer & support the REBEL ALLIANCE movement! MARCH 8- 7PM JARDINES DE SENOR FISH 1936 E. 7TH ST. LA APRIL 11 ALPINE VILLAGE833 W TORRANCE BLVD. #104, TORRANCE MORE EVENT UPDATES AT
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CONTRIBUTORS ARTICLES WRITZ Eva Rivera Blog: www.workedupsotextual.blogspot.com Alex Starski Sybonay Gamino Art Esquibel Twitter: @ArtEsquibel ART Lekit Shop: http://society6.com/Lekit Website: www.artbylekit.com Leka Im Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/shop/pixelbloodbath Website: www.pixelbloodbath.wix.com/home Skramble Instagram: xmegagemx Rafael Chamagua Blog: www.bookofwrath.blogspot.com Manuel Gonzalez Ali Hernandez Sound Cloud: Sound Fauna www.BrainDamageZine.wix.com/home BrainDamageZine@gmail.com
@BrainDamageZ BrainDamageZine