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01/05/2015

I try to make it a point to believe in only one irrational thing at a time. That’s not as easy as it sounds, what with my being a member of the one species of simian that casually buys into all sorts of inattentive deities, rumored monstrosities, undetermined sensory perceptions, incorporeal visits from long dead loved ones, kinky predations of little gray saucer men and any number of other eccentric concepts.
For a long time my one unprovable belief of choice has been the Multiverse – that notion of theoretical physicists about there being a gazillion different coexistent Earths with a gazillion other Kels running around doing a gazillion dissimilar things. It’s described with a lot of math that I’ll never understand, but the big brains who string together all those numbers seem to think (quantum mechanically speaking) that without the existence of alternate universes microchippy electronic stuff like iPads and MRI machines couldn’t possibly work - which is a whole lot more rationalization than Bigfoot ever gets - so I’ve elected to cherry-pick the theory’s wilder aspects and wholeheartedly embrace them, which explains the picture below:

Behold the PepperPod Mk 2! A rough-and-tumble workspace currently devoted to the making of Pepperpot Piper. It’s the second such studio in as many years and apparently just one of a countless many in spacetime - but only apparently - which makes my confidence in alternative Earths wane now and then, leading to long stretches of my life where I don’t believe anything at all, not even that I’m corporeally sitting in this chair, typing these words.
Each time thus far though my optimism for the Multiverse has eventually resurfaced from the rubbish tip of harebrained notions, rising up golden again in the light of unreason. Gleamy and seductive, it whispers, “There are many Kels. You are Legion,” inferring that in a boundless reality where all things are possible that someday I’ll leap between the interdimensional ‘branes… and there’ll be a knock on my door… and it’ll be me standing outside…
But not me… because this one’ll be cooler, sport an earring and wear Brioni.
He’ll hand me a pumpkin orange one-thousand dollar poker chip and say, “Take this to Vegas… put it on black.”  Then he’ll pull the door shut with a decisive slam.
Two seconds later there’ll be another knock on the door, and yet one more me, but tanned and taller. This one’ll have a jaunty grin and unscrupulous eyes and affect a pork pie hat.
He’ll say, “And let it ride!”

So… somewhere… that picture above is different.
Somewhere it’s a glass-walled atelier overlooking the sea on an island in the Seychelles.
Somewhere it’s a daubed cave wall.
Somewhere it’s a heap of smoking charcoal.
Right here and now it’s an easel box in a leaky garage. Considering some of the possible alternatives that’ll do just fine.

Kel

Pepperpot Piper is written & illustrated by Joseph Kelly
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