$2 For
Your Future
Interview
Amal Alhomsi with Caius
I met Caius at Canmore’s farmer’s market sitting on a skateboard with a sign next to him that read “2$ for your future.” What a deal, I thought to myself, If only God was that giving, so I borrowed a toonie from a friend and paid for my future. Caius shuffled his tarot deck while eyeing me up and down. The cards he drew were the King of Swords, The Lovers, and the Night of Swords. Each card was meant to represent a period in my life; my past, present, and future. “There is a sword in your past and one in your future… interesting.” Caius said to me. Unlike the Romans, I was never one to believe in star signs and augurs, but true to his Roman name, Caius swayed me by his predictions. He told me, “your past was governed by a tyranny that almost broke you,” – I must tell the reader, Caius is 14 years old – “The card of the lovers, however, is its opposite. Your present will be a time of freedom and passion, and your future, The Night of Swords, will be an emergence from that contradiction, a balance between self-control and self-indulgence.” Again, Caius is 14 years old. His readings froze me in place. It was as if Caius peeked into my mind’s mind and leafed through my subconscious. I asked him if I could sit with him to interview him, he nodded and took his journal out to list the million hobbies he has.
His full name is Caius Big Bull-blys, now a 15 year old, he is an illustrator, writer, and filmmaker. Caius studies philosophy, religion, political science, and literature. He loves to skateboard and is an aspiring guitarist. He abides by five key values: “which will often tie into a few of the same things; art, love, knowledge, belief, and time. Time as a function of existence in the universe, as movement, has kept me as mobile as I am. And all of the other core values will often tie into one main thing. And so I spend my life with those ideals in mind.” Caius speaks like a 30 year old rockstar from the 80s. This is him describing a page of art in his journal that I was intrigued by:
“My art is inspired by things I consumed when I was younger, 6-10 (ruby gloom, wizard of oz, TOOL cover art and music videos, indie horror games graffiti, giger etc.) and currently: HR giger, zdzisław beksiński, general punk culture, skateboard culture, graffiti, European street art. Dada/surrealism, old surgical/medical illustrations, Things of that nature. But my art will very rarely have a meaning, or at least a decipherable meaning, I often will create art just as the action of it. Break it down all you want but to me it’s just the function of art as movement, as the physicality of time in function. Art is a haven for me beyond all else and I will very rarely create with the hope of meaning, as much as I create and it applies meaning, and lightens me. I like to have a certain sense of humor as well in regards to my art, I think we are often so caught up in a work that the work itself becomes removed from the thought. Humor is a good buffer, it attracts attention back to the work artwork.”
I looked at Caius wanting to explain to him how throughout my 8 years at university I rarely met a peer who was able to construct sentences in the manner he did. “the physicality of time in function”! I have a masters in English literature, and yet I felt ridiculous standing in front of this kid. I tried to convince him that he is smarter than most of my generation, but he thought I was “trying to be nice.” I asked him about why he picked up Tarot:
“I was raised with a certain sense of spirituality, my mom had a deck of oracle cards which I had started using for myself at a pretty young age, and with that history in mind she gifted me a deck of “radiant and wise” tarot cards when I was 12 or 11, I’ve been using them ever since.”
It seemed like an injustice watching Caius sit on the side of the road. I wanted someone to discover him, to find him the way Johnny Cash was found. I asked him of what he thinks about the Bow Valley as a place to do art:
“I would love the bow valley to have back its kinda smallness, canmore will turn from a tourist town to a tourist city by the time I’m twenty and that f*cking sucks. I’d like to cement the little third places we have and keep Canmore as its own little town, because third places like the ones I get to experience here are few and far between anywhere else, and I’m working on that as an artist, to establish that more in places like Calgary, this big mass of corporations and media. I don’t want to even preserve things the way they are, I just don’t believe places like this should be so massively commodified. And yes, I know that sounds absurd because Canmore is a tourist town but I’m talking about what’s beneath that. That’s what I love. In regards to my art as a hope for a career, I don’t want to sell to galleries or become a well known artist as much as I want my illustration and my writings to bring people new concepts, to bring them together in conversation or knowledge or love. Art is art for me not a source of commerce. So I’m currently working on establishing my own magazine. Beyond that I hope to publish books, I have four on the go currently, some that I would love to publish and some that I hope never see the light of day, but that’s the nature of art I guess.”