I Can't Have Tea Late at Night Because of All the Ayes Ayes

By Skip Myers

Piece description from the artist

This painting explores the idea of insomnia, and its psychological effects. An interesting side effect of lack of sleep is the distortion, or ripples, in the stream of perceived reality. Deprive yourself of sleep long enough, and the world of dreams begins to seep into our world of being awake. Whether the cause of insomnia is internal or external, a lack of sleep can alter our perception and temporary understanding of time and space, and we can begin to question the certainty of our being and what we traditionally perceive as normal life experience.

The aye-aye is a nocturnal lemur from Madagascar with an unusually long middle finger. Some natives of Madagascar believe that aye-ayes are heralds of evil. The superstition surrounding the aye-aye is that if one should point its narrow middle finger at someone, they are condemned to death. It is also believed that aye-ayes sneak into houses through the thatched roofs and murder the sleeping occupants by using their middle finger to puncture the victim's aorta. Because of this some villagers will kill ayes-ayes on sight and hang up their corpses to ward of evil.

In this artwork the woman sits naked at the dining table, while floating up towards the chandelier on the ceiling as a group of curious aye-ayes ransack the house. The woman has given up, letting go of any semblance of control, accepting everything with an indifferent passivity, creating a symbiotic relationship with the inquisitive lemurs. The aye-ayes in the artwork are a manifestation of insomnia, the furry heralds of the inauspicious, with each passing moment the problem becoming larger, more out of control.