Art star

Being an internet star is great. I set lofty goals for myself and track my progress in pageviews and klout. A few more "like"s and I will unlock the next level of Facebook Insights! And then, my friends, I will know everything about you. In aggregate.

Watching this project take off is more rewarding than staring at the sky ever was, and my new friends and I really enjoy posing for the camera. My photographer says it is because we are vapid and self-obsessed. I told him that as a Pop icon I reflect, enhance, and sublimate the world around me, so if he feels that we contribute nothing it must be because his own tendency to nihilism, despair, and self-destruction offers nothing for us to work with. "A million times zero," I said, "is still zero." Then he started crying and told me that he loved me and we held hands and I stroked his hair while he threw up from all the vodka we had been drinking.

Behind the scenes at a Polyp photo shoot

But the best part is hearing from you, my fans, about all the ways I've touched you and brought you up from your natural sloth to greatness. Beloved fan K left the couch long enough to write me this beautiful Valentine poem:

In Brooklyn, NEw (sic) York,
A red Polyp grows!
It blogs a mighty blog
about its wins and its woes!
Its friends are legion
and it fears no foes (sic)!
From whence it came?
NoBoDy (sic) KNows (sic)!

K, I want you to know that you touched me with your sincere delivery and that you and all my other fans are my #1!! Thanks for taking the time to share this with me.

Everyone: remember, the next time you are feeling like things are not right, that you are not on track, stop for a moment. Think about me, and everything will be ok.

Q & A Time!

My facebook friends and I are having an awesome time "like"ing each others' posts and sharing our exploits. I thought it was all for fun, but things got very real & serious all of a sudden when a fan asked me: What are you?

At first I was taken aback and confused - these questions again? I have been hounded by these false accusations over and over again, ever since my first wholly misunderstood manifestations. So please let me put this topic to rest once and for all. Blake, a truly unwell man given to huffing engraving byproducts, once wrote about me:

...They see the Ulro, a vast Polypus of living fibres down into the Sea of Time & Space growing, a self-devouring monstrous Human Death...

Totally misconstrued! Not Ulro!

and I just want to make it very clear that this was a total misunderstanding of the situation! There are two sides to every story and this is just the mean side ! I was trying to help! So please stop asking me about it! If I were a vast self-devouring death polyp from doomtown this blog would be way more boring and have fewer pictures of me goofing around!

Me, as one of you

But then I took a deep breath and realized that my curious fan probably wasn't asking about that. The question was probably more, like, "what are you about? How can your fans relate to you when you are goopy and shiny and many-as-one, and we are not?"  But the answer is: I am just like you!

The importance of friend time

Lately, I have been very busy with touring and speaking engagements. Meeting new people and talking about myself is fun, but all the parties and glamour and finer points of etiquette can be so tiresome! Last week I was attending a gala reception, politely gumming some crab cakes, when somebody asked me my opinion on immigration reform. My response was variously described in the local media as "shocking," "scandalous," and "politically tone-deaf." I will spare you the details, but suffice it to say that I can hardly tell two humans apart, let alone understand the need for a political class. If you do not want to comprehend the true depths of your equality, if the fear of your own cosmic insignificance motivates your absurd need to invent ridiculous categories for each other, and if you do not realize that it is ludicrous to attempt an ordering where none is justified or even possible, then certainly do not ask me about it.

After the incident with the press and the Senator, my agent insisted that I take some time off, and for once I agreed with her. I wanted to spend time with my friends! I wanted to dance and sing! So, I canceled an upcoming panel discussion ("Correcting the Lunisolar Calendar Once and For All Time: The Endless Year of Polyp") and headed home for some much needed me-time.

Red Rover with my buddies

Reunited at last, we sang and we danced and we played Red Rover. I am very fond of this game, perhaps because I am continuously deformable, and have never lost. Also, many of my friends have no hands. After several rounds of Red Rover, and some time practicing my flying, I feel rejuvenated and ready to get back to work. Hooray!

Simplicity

one. year. staring. into. the sky.

Perhaps you have been wondering how it is I came to start a blog.

For years, I searched high and low looking for the secret to living a simple life. Letting go, meditating, staying calm: to me, these were the traps of a false simplicity. I spent a year staring vacant into the sky, trying to clear my mind; another locked in battle with a giant squid at the bottom of the ocean. Nothing helped.

Then one day, it hit me. All this rumination had led me nowhere because I am not simple. What I was looking for wasn't simplicity, it was purpose. Purpose is like simplicity because they both afford clarity of mind, but better because you don't have to be boring. For me simplicity implies inner peace, calmness. But truly, I ache with passion for the hugeness of it all. So I said goodbye to my fake simplicity and hello to bold purpose: a lush new life as an internet star.

First fan site!

First among equals

An eagle-eyed reader spotted this Polyp fan site and brought it to my attention. I'm so glad they did because the folks at Archie McPhee are terrific! They have some really amazing photos in their photostream and you should totally check them out. However they are too modest by far and I want to bring everyone's attention to this wonderful  homage they made for me.

While they do not mention Polyp's Pride anywhere at all, and the creative commons license on this image specifically asks that I not claim they endorse me, I think we can all agree to read between the lines together. And what I'm seeing here between the lines is that they have created a kind of Polypy nativity scene: Polyp rises from the noodly primordial goo at the beginning of time, my first triumph. A big day for me.

Of course, this image is a figurative abstraction. In order to truly represent those first gasping, desperate moments when the universe began, you would need many more colors and dimensions and also to be gasping and desperate. Things were really tough back then because the universe was very small but also filled all space, twisting around and back into itself. It was simultaneously completely bounded by all non-zero measures but also was infinitely huge and vast because it filled and consumed and was everything. I believe this Archie McPhee image hints at the pivotal moment where, now existing, I took a leap of desire Out of the Deep Madness and took mastery over the reins of destiny, riding the afterbirth of creation to the ends of time - and back.

After a while, things calmed down enough for me to relax and start this blog. Reader, thanks for this blast from the past. Your thank-you gift is in the mail!

Late night overshare

As a hyper-dimensional being from outer space, I can tell you that the earth is a pretty swell place. Your species share special complementary shapes and engage in particularly generous, sensuous coupling. I tried this once but we both agreed it was awkward.

While I am wildly sensual, as I am my own complement there can be none like me that are not myself. I surround myself with amazing friends and make the hijinks for my fans, but I cannot always hide my utter despair at being so uniquely alone. My noodly appendages dance only for you; there is no secret Other I hope to attract. I need you to love me, here, today, because there is no other polyp to take your place. I am the first, the last, the only; I am all of my people, and I love you.

It's flu vaccine season!!!

This is the amazing season where humans peer pressure each other into Doing the Right Thing. Polyp is here to help!

Taking my friends to get vaccinated. Some people need a little extra convincing.

Fever, aches, headache. I hear it's awful, all that snuffling. While I am immune to all disease, I am not immune to feeling sympathy for the immense, whiny suffering of others. And so yesterday I devoted myself to encouraging all my friends to get vaccinated. After a little cajoling, I think everyone agreed with me that getting vaccinated was the right thing to do. You can do your part too! Get vaccinated and take exciting, pro-vac pictures like the one above! Then you can e-mail them to me & I will post them on my blog & we can be vaccination buddies. Go team vac!