Dead December has come; late-year holiday jeer, slipped-up roads, smashed-up cars. But long before cars and college, holidays away from now, my brother Mike and I used to play games in the snow and on screen. Both of us January boys, we ran ’round our yellow garage, chasing Casey in waist high drifts just crusted enough to fall through. I can’t recall life before Mike or imagine life after– we’ve spent years in the back of Mom’s Chevrolet Celebrity, sharing carseats, spilled-drinks, the sick powder smell of wet-naps. We watched our dog get skunked and bathed with canned tomato juice; climbed trees and dug holes, rode trikes, then bikes, tired Mom with fights everlasting, gutted gear Dad brought home from the lab. These days, we spend most of our time honing creative practice, doing the best polygon pushing, pattern-bashing, heart-wrenching art we can. A friend slipped and loosed a name for us- the Brother Supremacy- homage, I’m sure, to our headstrong style and headlong confidence… (And probably recent synchronous haircuts, too.) We haven’t spent Halloween together in years, but I’m confident we will find time to be cowboys, commandos, pirates, drummers, and artists again. You can see what he’s doing here.
The first thing Poodus did was put my mom in the hospital… the lastest addition to the Brother Supremacy, born on a cold day, bringing sunlight and new life to tired arms and eyes. He spent years standing up to me and Mike and forging his own in a space already full of cruel and confident boys, developing thoughts, interests, and a calm patience that Mike and I never had. Like us, but better, he’s a many-talented, terribly flexible learner bent on realizing a vision, employing guitars, cameras, skateboards, and HTML in an effort to educate, communicate, and express.
Any mention of brothers and lifelong friends would be raw without Seth and Noah, first-class brains and best friends, might-as-well-be brothers who influenced me as much as I hope I did them. Contact is sparse- every few weeks or months we exchange thoughts and feelings. But once in a while we get to burn blazes into the night and tell stories of the lives we’ve spent since I stopped staying at their house every day.
Reading this, don’t get me wrong – the point is not nostalgia – it’s not about canning up any moment, it’s about the ongoing. See you in the future.
