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Description
"Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats" (Diane Arbus)

Joseph Merrick (1862-1890) was an aristocrat, on the purest sense of the word, the way ancient greeks meant it and also the way Diane Arbus does on that quote: The best among men.

He felt the death of his mother as the worst tragedy he ever suffered, worse than his own condition, because he lost the only person that loved him and cared for him. The only one who saw the person hiding behind those horrible deformities.

He kept a childlike, innocent vision of the world, despite all the humiliation and abuse he had to endure. His manners were always polite and sweet.

When I saw the David Lynch film about him as a kid (I probably was about 8 or 9) I cried and cried. I was obsessed. I wanted him to be my friend. I made a clay figure of him because I felt so identified with him. And I still do.

He had so much love to give, but no one wanted to take it. But it wasn't his fault. He said on a poem:

"Tis true my form is something odd.
But blaming me is blaming God;
Could I create myself anew,
I would not fail in pleasing you.
If I could reach from pole to pole,
Or grasp the ocean with a span,
I would be measured by the soul,
The mind's the standard of the man."

On the film, his death is depicted as a result of him trying to sleep "as a human being". The size of his head was so big he had to sleep in a sitting position. As he tried to lie down on his bed, the weight of his head stopped him from breathing and he died from asphyxia.

Tools: Pentel Brush on regular Xerox paper.

Description
"Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats" (Diane Arbus)

Joseph Merrick (1862-1890) was an aristocrat, on the purest sense of the word, the way ancient greeks meant it and also the way Diane Arbus does on that quote: The best among men.

He felt the death of his mother as the worst tragedy he ever suffered, worse than his own condition, because he lost the only person that loved him and cared for him. The only one who saw the person hiding behind those horrible deformities.

He kept a childlike, innocent vision of the world, despite all the humiliation and abuse he had to endure. His manners were always polite and sweet.

When I saw the David Lynch film about him as a kid (I probably was about 8 or 9) I cried and cried. I was obsessed. I wanted him to be my friend. I made a clay figure of him because I felt so identified with him. And I still do.

He had so much love to give, but no one wanted to take it. But it wasn't his fault. He said on a poem:

"Tis true my form is something odd.
But blaming me is blaming God;
Could I create myself anew,
I would not fail in pleasing you.
If I could reach from pole to pole,
Or grasp the ocean with a span,
I would be measured by the soul,
The mind's the standard of the man."

On the film, his death is depicted as a result of him trying to sleep "as a human being". The size of his head was so big he had to sleep in a sitting position. As he tried to lie down on his bed, the weight of his head stopped him from breathing and he died from asphyxia.

Tools: Pentel Brush on regular Xerox paper.