The origination of my conception of the Goober Dimension began as a way to process an episode of psychosis I experienced as a young adult. At the time I didn’t have the words to unpack the intense feelings I was experiencing or the ability to comprehend the squishiness of the reality I was being confronted with. Trying to come to a better understanding during this state of mania, paranoia, and confusion I began to draw and paint. It was a way to not only let out the onslaught of manic ideas I was forming, but eventually it became a way to cope. I started to refer to the drawings I was conjuring and the wormlike entity that I felt was following me as Goobers. The act of this naming helped me establish a difference between the realities I was encountering, and made light of and poked fun at deeply unsettling experiences I was going through.
As time has come to pass I’ve come to find that through a more pluralistic understanding of things, my perception of reality is not so well defined and things are not black and white. The fuzzy gray bits that hang in a state of mysterious liminality are still what is most intriguing to me. Artistic research has allowed for me an alternate understanding of these things in a way that sciences will just always fail to match. I am proposing the concept of the Goober Dimension as not simply just an exercise in world building, but as an alternative lens one can use to see life through. The Goober Dimension is a transparent slime over our reality. This way of seeing is surreal, animistic, and intimate in its nature. It reveals the intrinsic weirdness of things. It treats often overlooked everyday moments with care and empathy. It locates the extraordinary in the ordinary. It reanimates the unseen and unloved. If you are willing to take the plunge you can encounter it yourself.
Goobers are elusive and transmutable entities often found lurking in the in between and in the everyday. Goobers have no hierarchies. Goobers are indifferent. A Goober could be your friend, could hate your guts, or could care less. A Goober can be a floater in your eye. A Goober can live next to the crumpled up receipt in your pocket. A Ganzfeld hallucination or a daydream under the clouds might reveal itself to you in the form of a Goober. Look inside a haystack and you will find a Goober. Look inside yourself and you might find that there is a Goober in your skull pulling the strings.