Monkey Gone to Heaven

Thanks Martin, I wanted to do something different. I guess we often think of emotions as primarily being expressed through our face, but the face can also be a mask – we paint it, modify it and distort it to hide what we’re really feeling. This was all done in one exposure and I wanted to both open and conceal my face.

I find the idea of a scale for happiness odd too. I might be happy about the chocolate cake I’m eating now, but unhappy about something that happened in my childhood, so I find it hard to use a numerical scale to define it. That’s why I chose 5, it’s statistically in middle. My partner is a psychologist working at Melbourne University in mental health research and tells me that the average percentile expression for happiness is around 70, just a touch higher.

The Pixies song came up because I saw a poster announcing their upcoming concert, and I thought of this song because it starts with man at 5, below the devil and god. Happiness I think can be pretty much determined by how much control we have over things and how we see ourselves in relation to other powers.

Thanks Lisa, I’ve always been transmute, it’s my user name and the original one I started with. When did you change yours? ;)

Thanks Aglaia, how exciting is it? The 20th anniversary of Doolittle. I have it on vinyl.

Thanks Manda

Thanks Nicole. Are you going to go?

Traction!

Thanks Ilmari

Thanks Catherine