There was one swirling eye. Antennae sprung from its head. It was the demonic geometry of how Nate saw himself. Nate's other self-portrait was of a joker marching down a bumblebee's back. In Nate's sketch, the joker is a smiling, carefree trickster with a bulging belly.
Bumblebees stand for mathematical order, unpredictability, anger, fear, and creative abundance.
They are the lovers of flowers, alchemists of sweet potions. And they sting. Bees are encoded to sleep underground all winter and fly in straight beelines back to their hives. The deeper I looked, the more I realized that Nate had found the perfect symbol, the bee with the fool, to illustrate his internal shift. The first few notes are spectacular, but it sort of goes downhill from there.