I once visited a zoo in an Eastern European nation (Bulgaria perhaps, or Romania). It was shortly after the fall of communism. One of the exhibits was a knackered, flea-bitten lion, sunk down on its front paws - a creature caught in the purgatorial moment before its own death; its expression dislocated from its surroundings; its skin draped over its ribcage in sagging folds, like a mangey blanket. It was either unable or unwilling to walk.
Of course, the lion was not wearing blue-tinted mirror shades. Nor was it holding a pint of beer, or sporting a cheap, gaudy ring. However, in all other regards the threadbare essence of that worn out big cat, unable to raise itself from the soiled concrete floor on its last legs, is embodied by Ethan Ralph in this photograph to an uncanny degree. It is as if Ralph saw the same lion that I did and, drawing upon hitherto undisclosed powers of mimicry, has chosen to assume its exhausted, beaten down aspect as a grim warning to others who might otherwise be tempted waddle along the same path that he did.
At this point Ralph might eloquently retort: "One day as lion, bitch! One day as a lion!" as he drifts into a mini-coma, while southern rock blares in the background as a placeholder for an actual livestream.
In my Bulgarian lion metaphor, Ralph is a house cat, born into captivity, already gone to seed long before he reached adulthood. The idea of him prowling the Serengeti is ludicrous.
When he was young he was a spectacle. People enjoyed watching him perform. They threw him unseasoned pieces of raw meat. He has grown into an anachronism, incoherently pleading his relevance to anyone within earshot - an embarrassment to himself and a nuisance to all others who cross his path. He is a punchline who outlived the joke, standing at the head of a line of people waiting to punch him.
The striking common thread connecting this recent string of self portraits isn't the air of death that surrounds Ralph - that should come as a surprise to no-one. It's the hopelessness. This is a man who knows the hole that he has dug for himself is to deep for him to ever escape. Behind the flailing rage is a man who has given up on himself. The kindest thing for Ralph, his wife and children, and for the world as a whole would be if quietly sharted himself from existence.
