Q: So Bry, did you google “elephants” to do this?
Toward the last two dozen items, I did, to round it up to match the 118 elements. But I’d been squirreling away elephant references since forever. The bulk of it existed years before I saw my first browser.
I want to mention off the bat the 5x4 print is slightly different content-wise than the 4x3 and the 3x2. When I first saw the shot on the home page with the girl with the 4x3 in her room, I thought about entry #67, which is Batir the Talking Elephant. On the 5x4 print, one of Batir’s word balloons says “penis” because that’s one of the words in Kazakh that’s in Batir’s vocabulary. Probably that’s what all the little boys standing around his cage or enclosure or whatever taught him to say. Anyway, I left it on the 5x4, but changed it on the 4x3 and the 3x3 to “eat.” Childhood innocence and wonder is hit on enough in this world. It’s important to maintain as long as you can these days, so that the adult has something to aspire to again. As in vision, awe, wonder. I didn’t want to be part of the general assault on childhood these days.
Q: You start out at the top with Loxodonts and Oliphants. What’s that about?
Some researchers and elephant enthusiasts have proposed these terms to distinguish the species of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) from that of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus). Loxodont means shallow ridges between the molars. Oliphant comes from old Greek for ivory. Fortunately there are other ways to tell loxodonts from oliphants than by going up and looking at their teeth.
Q: What’s with the 11th elephant?
Try the accent on the first syllable, not the second. And make the e soft.
Q: E-le-venth. E-le… El-eventh. Ow.
Same for the 111th. I know. But try coming up with 118 anything.
Q: How did you come up with the categories?
Cousins are recent contemporaries related to elephants by DNA. Eccentrics are various elephant anomalies that have been documented to some extent. Captives are largely the ways we’ve tried to make money off them. Places speaks for itself. Namesake is things people have associated with elephants for one reason or another. Noble, which like Transition, is found on the Table of the Elements, is just some remarkable people or elephants… I feel like I’m explaining things anyone would be happier to figure out on their own.
Q: The Rogue category is sad.
It is, except for Groucho.
Q: The Desperation category I guess speaks for itself.
It was the middle of the at night and I was getting down to the wire, sitting there at my drawing table, babbling, ele-fonts, elve-ephants, effluence…
Q: Any of these you find people get stuck on?
Well, we added a rubric, which should help. If you do get stuck or have questions, send me an email care of the site and I’ll get back to you. But let’s see. Snuffleupagus is one. It’s under Non-Existent because for years on Sesame Street only the kids could see him, not the adults, who believed he didn’t exist. The show changed that, to not reinforce issues of abuse kids might be experiencing but that adults didn’t believe. But I think that’s in the rubric now.
Also, Piglet being chased by the Heffalump; he appears elsewhere as well, in three other places. Should have been more.
But do email me if you notice something you want to know more about.
Q: Anything else?
I used to have under Captives, an entry for Transport. It was of an old VW bus seen from the front, with its front doors open, and with the tire mounted under the windshield. Nog noted that if you do that and stand out in front from twenty feet away and look at it, it looks sort of like an elephant. No one ever got that at all in the print drafts. Just before going to press, it occurred to me, to my absolute astonishment, I’d not in all these years thought to include Elephant Garlic, though I’ve known about elephant garlic since forever and I’d had certain brain cells working on elephants 24/7. So I substituted. On my tombstone, I can see it, Blind Spot for Elephant Garlic.
Q: In the rubrics pages, there’s a link to a jpg. file people can just download and print out tiles on their office color printer, and tape it together. Are you’re sure you want to just give this away?
I know, it’s a little goofy maybe. But Nog* and I agreed once it’s important we share experiences of art more, all of us, as a culture—look at them together and talk about them together, not just monetize them and miser away the experience. Or else send each other YouTube links all the time and forget what it is we just looked at. Art, literature, music, and mathematics are the Krazy Glue that holds the culture together and move it forward. Things we contemplate together change how we are together. Artists aren’t here or shouldn’t be here primarily to make money but to contribute to what Robert Hyde in Common as Air calls the cultural commons.
Mostly though, I’m grateful I had an excuse to sit down and make myself draw lots of little elephants.
And yeah, if you wanted to buy one of these, that would be great.
Q: Thank you, Bry.*
Thank you.
