“There's a starman waiting in the skyHe'd like to come and meet usBut he thinks he'd blow our minds”Starman, David Bowie
The idea of writing some kind of story about The Strangers has been bouncing around in my head for a little while now. This idea was planted in my head by artist/author/musician, Simon Stålenhag. I wrote about this idea in some detail in a previous post, so I won’t go into detail about it here. It’s possible that the story could be combined with my coloring book idea or it could become a separate project altogether. I’m content to just figure all of this out as I go at the moment.
What I have to share with all of you this month are bits and pieces of a story that I’ve written down in my journal. I’ll pair this with images that could accompany the text somehow if I were to actually publish this in some form. I’m including the dates of these journal entries for anyone who is curious. The text is reprinted more or less verbatim. I’ve added additional comments below each bit of story. The story text is presented in red.
Here we go…..
7/26/2024
“When they first ‘arrived/appeared’, they were barely noticeable. Small. No larger than a ‘medium sized bird’ (sea gull?). They blended in with their surroundings. They hid themselves in the branches of trees mostly in forests at first. Hikers and campers would stumble upon them. This is how they were discovered initially. Those who spotted them would try to ‘capture’ them with a photo or video but they weren’t quick enough. They’d disappear before they could even reach for their phone. There were reports, blog posts, social media ‘buzz’ about them. These stories were often dismissed by skeptics in much the same way bigfoot or flying saucer stories were dismissed. Eventually, though, reports of sightings/encounters with these ‘Strangers’ became more widespread. There were sightings in different parts of the world. It wasn’t until reported sightings started happening in more urban settings that the skepticism began to diminish. Still, no photography or video evidence. This is where I come in….”
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| Leafy Stranger 11x14 Inches Marker and pencil on paper September, 2024 |
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| Leafy Stranger (Detail) 11x14 Inches Marker and pencil on paper September, 2024 |
In this book, I’m imagining that I’d “play the role” of an artist/illustrator who is taking descriptions of these beings/things from other eyewitnesses and creating drawings/artwork based on these descriptions. My own encounters with these things also will come into play. Since photographic and video evidence seems impossible to obtain, my artwork will serve as a document of these things.
7/28/2024 (Sunday)
“Strangely, almost all who encountered these Strangers often also report hearing a kind of ‘ambient music’. As with any attempts to take pictures or record video, attempts to capture the sound these things appeared to make have all failed.”
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| Robot Stranger 11x14 Inches Marker and pencil on paper September, 2024 |
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| Robot Stranger (Detail) 11x14 Inches Marker and pencil on paper September, 2024 |
8/1/2024 (Thursday)
“My first ‘encounters’ with the Strangers happened all the way back in the late 1990’s. I was living in Houston, TX at the time. I was on a weekend camping trip with some of my students (I was a middle school art teacher. I was asked to help chaperone this trip). I don’t recall the exact location of the campground. This fact isn’t important. What is important is that we were far away from the big city.
One night, we went on a short hike to the top of a hill that overlooked a lake. We watched alligators swimming. There were trees on the hill at the top where we were as well as down by at the base of the hill near the edge of the lake. That’s when I thought I heard the music. It was very faint. I thought at first it was a radio from a nearby campsite at first. Then I saw movement in one of the trees down by the lake. The encounter was fleeting. It was so quick that I questioned whether I saw it in the first place. All I saw was a ‘form’ hidden among the branches and leaves. It had one ‘eye’ and two ‘antennae’. Then it was gone. Then I saw one in the water… A one eyed alligator with ‘antennae’ just above the water’s surface. Then it, too, was gone. It wasn’t until very recently that I realized that my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me all those years ago.”
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| New Bug 7 28 2024 (Work in progress) Digital image created with the Sketchbook app |
I actually did go camping with a group of middle schoolers when I taught in Texas back in the mid to late 1990’s. We went on a hike that took us to a hill overlooking a lake with alligators swimming around in it. We tossed marshmallows down to them which they gobbled up eagerly.
8/30/2024 Friday
“There was a ‘buzz’ among my students as they drew their pictures. They had completed their clay projects (many of them had anyway) and they were drawing in their sketchbooks for the remainder of class. At the risk of sounding inattentive, I wasn’t really tuned in to what they were saying (I haden’t been sleeping well the previous couple of nights. I was feeling like a zombie as I made it through my day. I probably should have called in sick). Did I mention they were first graders?
Anyhoo…
The following week, I noticed a similar ‘chatter’ among a different group of first graders. Like the students in the other class, this group was drawing in their sketchbooks after a clay lesson. Like the previous week, I didn’t really pick up on what they were chattering about.
It wasn’t until I was checking through their sketchbooks later in the week that I began to pick up on what the excitement was all about.
There were ‘figures/characters’ in many of their sketchbooks. It’s not uncommon for similar imagery to appear in the artwork of my students. Characters from their favorite TV shows or movies. Imagery from video games they enjoy playing. The same sort of thing happened when I was their age. These things in their sketchbooks were different, though. I’d not seen them before.
They had one eye and antennae and a circle with a star-like shape on the chest. Their legs (if you could call them that) looked like their antennae only they were longer. These were the common details, but other details varied from drawing to drawing. These things were not things that I’ve seen in any of their art before! I assumed, at first, that these things were from some new game that the kids were playing, but …. There was something oddly familiar about them to me.
At some point, curiosity got the better of me so I began asking my students about what these things were. They told me that these things were spotted out on the playground ‘hiding’ among the trees that lined the perimeter.”
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| The Stranger (Primitive Sketch 21) coloring page Digital image created with the Sketchbook app |
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| The Stranger (Primitive Sketch 21) Digital image created with the Sketchbook app |
The artwork of my students often becomes a gateway into their worlds. It’s true what I mentioned about imagery from games, movies and TV shows showing up in their artwork! I know way more about Minecraft than the average 54 year old knows simply because I’ve had many conversations about the game with my students over the years because of drawings that they’ve created with imagery from the game in it somewhere. Other life experiences …… flag imagery showed up regularly in the artwork of my students after the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001. This imagery would appear regardless of what the lesson may have been. I had a student create a drawing of a fish for an ocean themed art project. The fish had an American flag design on its body.
9/25/2024 10:24am (Wednesday)
“What are these things? Where do they come from? Why are they here? These are three questions I’d like to know the answers to. Sometimes I suspect that they are creatures of some kind. The way they seem to blend in with nature leads me to believe this. Hiding among the trees and other vegetation in forests/wooded areas. Swimming in bodies of water big and small. Other versions of these things have left me wondering if they’re robotic in nature. If this is the case, who or what created them? The larger ones have a more ‘vehicular’ look about them. Are they UFO’s? If so, who or what is inside of them? What might they look like? Perhaps they beings look like the vehicles themselves (Kind of like the aliens from the Tom Cruise remake of The War of the Worlds).”
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| The Stranger (Primitive Sketch 1) Color Digital image created with the Procreate app |
I've gone back and forth in my mind about what these things are as I explained in the journal excerpt above. Maybe I'm okay with a little uncertainty.
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