Snake 3 of 49

I’m still interested in trying to figure out the right (or original) way in which the snakes are made. I realize by now I want to have a record for myself of all the techniques I’ve been trying. Jim’s snake’s body is done in a slightly different way, and I do want a record of it. Since Jim’s snake is his, I decide to make another one like it for my own records. It’s a sin (artistically) to make myself an exact reproduction of his, so I vary the background to dark brown instead of dark blue. I had been feeling an intense need for browns, and several of us went in and split half kilos of two browns and a beige color of beads.

I’m visiting a Bulgarian family one evening, for a music rehearsal and jam, and work on this snake while we hang out. P__ sees it and we start talking. It’s a smok, I explain. She starts telling me about this kind of snake. “It’s accurate,” she says. “Smok’ bodies are tapered, whereas snakes have a more tubular body. Smoks have little fringy things on their tails, and they get mad at you, they hit you with it.” She described her father making a smok angry because it had come to lie next to a baby left in the field while everyone was reaping, and the father rolled the smok into a ball and threw it away from the baby. As they got in the cart to go home, the angry smok ran after the cart and hit her father. “It liked the baby,” P__ explains, “because it smelled the milk on the baby. Smoks like milk. They roll themselves into a ball to get stability and just flick their tail at you to hit you.” P__ takes the tail and flicks it at me to illustrate how it hits you.

I’m too intimidated to think about the head, so I decide to start a new snake body before I try this one’s head. I will later do several heads together.