A SHORT GUIDE TO DEMONS I
artist statement
UNDERSTANDING A DEMON’S NATURE
I. TEMPTATION + TRICKERY
Demons prepare their food for as long as they see fit. In order to wring an unsuspecting victim out like a wet towel, it must make one world a miserable reality. It creates this world stripped of misery, another world, as if there can be any other. In a victim’s desperation, that becomes an illusion of choice, or a trap. What one must understand when face-to-face with a demon’s lure, is that to the beast, the victim is an ant in a farm or a fish on a hook.
Having had so many meals, they are well acquainted with what humans need and want. Demons take that knowledge to their advantage quite swiftly. They plant seeds of ideas into their victim’s heads, which grow into the real world. However, the desire that first drew the demon forward can never be fulfilled. Demons know better than to eat their prey at first sight. They could end it all, but that wouldn’t be a filling meal. Food like desire should be thoroughly marinated and grilled, or fermented into fine wines and savored.
II. GAMES
As much as a demon can tempt and lure, it is reminded the fun ends when its stomach cannot growl any louder. These creatures have a certain proclivity to games, or more specifically a sickening ecstasy when it comes to the idea of achieving victory. A very powerful demon, fattened with many egos and vices, may choose to gamble with the source of its own power. These beasts are greedy by nature, and simply cannot help themselves. In order to understand this, one must understand that demons know human nature, not demon nature. They have studied it since the beginning of humankind, but as humankind knows, it is a much more difficult task to study the self.
Typically, in a demon’s own thick blanket of trickery and deception, it has also deceived itself into a hubristic state. While demons have the powers to create and destroy like gods, it is a farce. Really, they are any other hungry animal, albeit a very intelligent one. What it has lied to itself about is the fact that it was never at the top of the food chain, nor nature itself. Even with gods, there is always something much older and much stronger: the forces that drive all living beings to eat.
