Travis Adams Irish

I’d rather not bore you with the typical biography. I was born…I got older and uglier. My most significant struggles have had to do with occasional battles against madness, and the diligence that it takes to remain grounded in a sometimes shockingly callous society. At age nineteen, I ventured out into the world; a troubled young man with obsessive-compulsive habits, a wrath of god temper, and a skewed sense of judgment, completely devoid of objectivity. It goes without saying that the world had to give me a fairly rough beating to help me find my more humble roots. At age twenty-one, I broke both of my hands within six months due to outbursts of anger. It wasn’t until I became estranged from my family that this temper began to subside. During that same time in my life, I liked to binge drink, and sometimes found myself in odd situations. I left a party one night…forgetting that I was still wearing a toga. At another party, I sat down on a fish tank that belonged to someone with whom I wasn’t personally acquainted. Another night I found myself driving at 110 miles an hour on the highway at 1:30 am, screaming, “There are no [insert expletive here] cops in this town!” I can literally watch the joker sticking his head out the window in a scene from the film The Dark Knight, and say, “I remember what that feels like.” While these are not shining staples in my history, I did promise you honesty, and that is what I have delivered. The story does take a turn for the better, as I discovered a means to let go of my teenage fears and anger, replacing them with strength and a more moderate outlook on life. This period could be considered my renaissance; a time when I reinvented myself on multiple levels, and sought constant improvement. This is also when I became less of a tyrant, and developed a sense of empathy and justice. I suppose this is why I am able to write the protagonist and antagonist with ease, though I dare not ask which better suits my abilities. As for my writing, I have spent many late nights bleeding my pain into thousands of pages. Sometimes the pen is almost an extension of the veins in your arms, and you simply inject every horrifying, lonely moment into that otherwise blank, white background. You then find yourself reading an editorial review which states that your work was disturbing and cruel, and have to ask yourself if it was that bad…when you experienced it in real life. Although there are some dark shadows in my past, they are not beyond repair, and I feel fortunate that people are willing to give me the opportunity to entertain them. I suppose that for an artist there is nothing greater than knowing that your work hit the mark – except perhaps, that it changed the life of some poor soul. If that can happen, even one time, then all of those hundreds of hours at the keyboard were well worth the effort. Best, -Irish.