The Effects of Megan Diddie’s work my Imagination.

Megan Diddie’s work is speaking in tongues. There are no words at first, only the sounds of an open natural landscape, seemingly empty. Like Megan’s brush strokes, these sounds are soft and fine- a crackling from a growing fire, or the hisses of branches beating to the winds over exposed scalps. I have a small collection of her paintings hanging before me and I listen while I study her free-floating worlds. I feel I have become much smaller in space.

With my new sense of size I’ve put myself at the stomping feet of frenzied dancers who throw around their naked spotted bodies to a rhythm. I think I’m going to be trampled but I don’t fear the kicking forest of feet surrounding me. It’s what’s happening above me, the long ropes of hair lashing so violently that the effect is hypnotic and paralyzing. I die underneath a tribe of diseased women in a heat.

I am being eaten, feeling I am moving. Digesting foods like myself move against and over me. I am gently worked downward and the deep bass of distant gnawing slowly fades and my dark surroundings settle and all feels undisturbed. I pass through the bowels of my keeper for a million years. I remember every second, transforming over and over again into springs, bones, grasses and on, when suddenly the sensation of falling.

When I hit the ground I am without form but I feel the warmth of sunlight, and something towering has stood up over me. The sun’s rays are passing though its translucent body, she’s a woman. She gives me a brief look and I see death has woman’s form. She then turns and I stand up and watch her just blow away. The return of my body is her parting gift and with my new eyes I see where she has left me; I stand before a seated female Idol. She to is as tall as a sea cliff.

Her legs are open and there is a glowing blue flame between them. I move toward open fire without hesitation and the further into her shadow I go, the stronger her heat feels against my cheek. I am coming closer now. Her frame is made of bricks numbering over a thousand creating the curve of her breast and shoulders, narrowing to make a neck, and carefully stacking together to bring out the details of a face that looks up, mouth open. I am a few steps a way. Black smoke pores up past her lips. She is a furnace and I enter her, it’s so hot I can’t breath. For a moment I see blue fire but I then lose my sight. I then split at my seams and listen to my body crackle and finally burn to nothing. I am gone.

– Fred Velez