We Chat With American Explorer, Writer and Artist Marcher Arrant

When it comes to Marcher Arrant, the journey is more important than the destination. A space in-between that he has come to call his own. A lifelong searcher and traveler, Marcher has devoted his life to exploring, writing, art and the pursuit of knowledge in all its forms.
Unlike most travelers, who like to get there fast, quickly hoping from destination to destination, Marcher likes to get there slow – Taking his time to immerse himself in the journey, learn its lessons and explore his surroundings, using his vehicle of choice, his feet. Existing as a digitally connected vagabond. Sharing his writings, photos and art with those who choose to follow him for the journey.

Visually, Marcher is most well known for his single-line Flag Bearer character, which he leaves in public places as he travels, with varied and ever changing musings appearing on it’s flag. Acting as a (semi)permanent marker of his movements and inner thoughts. Marcher also writes detailed trip diaries, along with thoughts and musings; which he shares online and also collects into self-published zines.

Growing up with a turbulent home life, Marcher gained initial exposure to creativity and community through skateboarding. Then, in his twenties; went on to explore esoteric Christianity, Zen Buddhism and formal study before finding meaning through the writings and thoughts of Nietzsche. It was in his 30s that Marcher began to explore, walk, write, create and share his works in a focused fashion – Gaining fans all over the world.
Indeed, for Marcher, walking and exploring are his meditation, his zen, his joy and it is through existing in the liminal space of constant motion that has allowed him to create and become the person he is today.

Wanting to get to know him better, we sent Marcher some questions to answer over email.
Take a journey into his world below…

Getting Acquainted

Name + D.O.B?

I feel kinda silly about it but I keep my name and birthday a secret.
It feels silly because I am 42 and I don’t think the cops are out to get some guy walking around and doing graffiti on objects nobody cares about hahaha.
There could be negative consequences though if I revealed my identity so I would want to think about what those might be before I did. It would be a lot to think about so I just stay anonymous so I don’t have to think about it.

City, State and Country you currently call home?

Columbus, Ohio, USA

City, State and Country you’re from?

Columbus, Ohio, USA

Please describe some memories – such as art, writing, music, comics, friendships, adventures, study, romance, politics, work, crime, religion… anything really – from the stages of your life noted below:

* Your childhood:

One meaning of my name, March is a piece of land in between 2 countries which is not owned by either of them. It is a liminal place, a no man’s land.
A marcher is someone who inhabits this kind of place.
I’ve always existed metaphorically between worlds.
And to walk is to be between places.

My childhood was a weird mix of chaos and stability.
The first 5 years of my life my parents were heroin addicts.
Most of my memories of this time are traumatic.
There were intense fights between my parents where my sister and I had to go to the neighbours’ house. The cops would come by sometimes.
My mom went to rehab for 8 months at one point.
She says I changed after that, said I seemed angry with her from then on.

We lived in the hood of course.
The first day of first grade was cancelled because someone got shot and killed on the school grounds the day before.
I remember feeling like a minority at my school because it was mostly black people and I’m white.
I remember being aware of the other white kids, knowing who each of them were, there were like 10.

This period of my life was deeply unsettling because of the chaos around my parents’ drug use.

One good memory I have was my sister and I sitting on a bed and throwing bologna on the ceiling and us thinking it was the funniest thing ever.

My parents divorced when I was 5.
They both got clean.

My mom, sister and I then moved to the outskirts of a nice suburb in a duplex where we would live for the next 10 years.
These were the good old days.
Life was stable and healthy.
My mom got a good job as a secretary for Johnson and Johnson. It was a very proud moment because they chose her over a lot of other candidates.
She bought a blue pickup truck.
She met my step dad at an AA meeting.
He is a great guy and has done a lot for me. He and one of his daughters moved in and we had a really nice life.

A photo by Marcher – Taken on one of his many walks.

I guess technically we were lower-class at the time because we got a box of free food once a month and also got free lunch at school. But I felt like we were rich. We had a TV and always had food to eat.
We would have pizza once a week and that was always so fun and festive.
We would drive to Florida for spring break.

My stepdad was a badass biker with long hair and tuff as hell and ripped. He had a Harley and my mom ended up getting one too, a Softail.
My mom joined a motorcycle club, Woman in the Wind.
I loved this time period.

My stepdad was a highschool dropout but he became a car salesman and gave us all a great life. We even got a trampoline which was mindblowing to me and so much fun.
Any sanity I have I contribute it to this 10-year period of stability and peace.

It’s these different lives as a kid that make me say I am a marcher, someone existing in between places.
I started off in poverty and chaos. Then moved to a nice suburb and had security.
But I lived in one of the poorer sections of the nice suburb.
I went to school with lots of rich people but never felt I fit in with them. Yet I was also more privileged than the people I went to first grade with.
I was raised by heroin addicts but it was the best upbringing you could have…

My parents are really nice. I actually feel super lucky about my upbringing. I was never abused. And my parents got their shit together eventually and gave me a great life.
It’s like I was a privileged underprivileged person, or an underprivileged privileged person.
A Marcher, one who inhabits a land in-between two lands.
A person who walks in between lands

* Your teenage years:

The teenage years were great living with my mom, sister, step sister, and step dad.
I saw my dad every other weekend.
My dad was doing great at this time too.
He is a Mechanic and was slowly but surely getting his life together.

I am amazed by my parents and eternally grateful to them.
I don’t know how they turned their lives around.
I would not have done as well as they did.

At 10 years old I found the first love of my life, Skateboarding. I was obsessed.
It’s all I did and thought about.
I realize now how compulsive it was. I clung to it as some kind of coping mechanism to deal with the issues I got from my upbringing.
It was nice having one focus and putting everything into that.
Skateboarding was my drug. I never had to think of what to do, every bit of free time, I skated.
Even in the brutal Ohio winters I would skate. I had multiple places to skate if it was raining or snowing. I had rubber covers to put over my shoes in the rain and even on school days I would walk over an hour in the rain to a parking garage to skate.
I loved skating and was very dedicated to it.

What I didn’t realize though was that what I loved even more was walking, exploring, being out on the town.
I realize now that skateboarding was just an excuse to do this. My friends and I would walk hours and hours to find skate spots and to go to famous skate spots.
What I loved was setting out on an all-day trip with friends or alone.
By the time we would arrive at the spot we were too tired to skate. There was always a sad feeling arriving at the spot.
What I loved was the trip there, making jokes along the way, meeting random people, doing pranks or random acts of petty crime, exploring construction sites, exploring some drainage tunnel we came across, doing graffiti, breaking a window, stealing something from a store, smoking weed in some bush, doing skate tricks in spots we found along the way.
I loved nothing more than waking up early on a Saturday and meeting up with friends and walking to a destination that was going to take all day to get to.

The 10 years of stability and peace ended when I was 15.
My mom and stepdad had a baby, my beautiful brother who I love a lot. The peace didn’t end because of my brother but because after my mom had my brother she relapsed.
I think this fucked me up more than her using when I was a kid. I always thought my parents would be sober for ever and that the dark days were behind us.
It was extra hard this time because I was fully cognizant. It was disturbing to see my mom nodding out all the time and talking in a dopey way.
It was so depressing because she had a baby to take care of too.
I felt so ashamed and guilty somehow towards my stepdad that he had to deal with my mom.
He never relapsed even to this day.
This was the beginning of an insanely dark time.

Also, my step dad got good car salesman job in North Carolina and my family decided to move there. Since I was 16 my family let me move in with my grandma who lived in the same suburb in Columbus.
I didn’t want to move to a new state and say goodbye to all my friends.
I also didn’t want to stay with my mom and the chaos of her drug use.
I felt bad moving in with my grandma, it felt like I was abandoning my family.

It was a dramatic change moving in with my grandma.
My grandma is an incredible person who I could write a book about. She was from one of the poorest places in America, in Appalachia. She grew up incredibly poor. But she did well in school and took advantage of scholarships that were made available to try and help people in Appalachia since it was the poorest region.
She eventually got a PHD in Psychology and started her own practice which was very successful.
Her husband, my step grandpa was an engineer and also had a PHD. They had a really nice house in a really nice neighbourhood.
It was so different living there.
It was another example of how I always felt I was living in between places.

* Your 20s:

This was a hard time for me.

I graduated from high school and continued to live with my grandma until I was in my early 20’s.
I was lost because around 20 I realized that I did not love skateboarding anymore and that there was no way I was going to become pro like I had dreamed.
I had invested everything into that dream.
It was incredibly painful to let go of skateboarding because it was my entire identity.
I started smoking a lot of weed and it made me incredibly depressed.

In the midst of this hard time, we got a call at 3am at my grandma’s house.
My grandma came into my room crying and frantic saying “Kelli’s dead, Kelli’s dead.”
My 18 year old sister, my only full blood sibling, had died in a drunk driving accident.
My family has never recovered from this.
My mom went even deeper into her drug use.

I moved in with my family in Charlotte.
That was a hard year. My mom was nodding out all the time.
I’ve never seen anything so dark.
Anytime I went to talk to her she was passed out. More times than I could remember I would go into her room and she would be nodded out with a bowl of Cherry Garcia ice-cream spilled all over her.
If she wasn’t in that position then she was on the toilet hunched over asleep.
This happened so much that it was just normal, what I expected each time I had to walk into her room because she would not answer me.

I ended up going back to my grandma’s place because I was full of rage and it wasn’t doing anyone any good.
Getting off the bus in Columbus I was approached by a guy in a hand sewn tunic and a long beard. His aesthetic was artful.
He was homeless but there was something to him, he wasn’t crazy or a drug addict, you could tell he had an organizing principle to his life, that he had discipline and was living the way he was for a reason and not because he had to.
He had pamphlets that he gave me and he spoke to me about Jesus.
I was not raised religious at all. I never had been to church and had never had any interest in Christianity. But this guy seemed interesting so it made me look into the literature he gave me.
I was very into anarchism and punk.
I was always intrigued by squatting and dumpster diving and living in a different way.
It was these proclivities that made me give this guy a chance and to read his pamphlets. I was amazed by what I read. They were full of quotes from the bible which showed how radical Jesus was. I had no idea.
From what I read Jesus was basically an Anarchist. He didn’t give a fuck about society. Him and his disciples travelled around homeless preaching love.
They didn’t care about money.
They believed in something great and lived it all out.
I loved that.

I already believed in anarchism and when I saw that Jesus was essentially an anarchist, I then believed that he really had tapped into the truth in a profound way.
I ended up believing that the bible was the word of God because of this and I got really into a very extreme form of Christianity.

The guy who gave me the pamphlet was part of a group called by the media as ‘The Brethren’, ‘The Garbage Eaters’, or the ‘Jim Roberts Group’.
They are considered a cult.
It makes me sound like I am indoctrinated by them to say that they are not a cult.
To me they are the most authentic Christians (and religious people in general) that I have ever met.
Or, to put it another way, they are an extremist cult, just as Jesus and the Apostles were.
The Brethren lived just like the early church.
They travelled around spreading the word and lived homeless and with no money.
They “took no thought for their life and sought first the kingdom of god.”
I met and talked with members of The Brethren many times and became an extremist Christian and almost joined them.
I sold everything I had and gave it to the poor. I got rid of everything I had ever owned and started a new life. I got obsessed with the bible because I thought it was the word of God.
I read the entire Bible in like 3 months. I became obsessed. I thought that if I did not figure out the right meaning of the bible and do what it said that I would burn in hell for eternity.
I really believed others would too and I lived like that.
I became obsessed with understanding the correct interpretation of the bible. I debated other Christians constantly and thought they were all corrupted.
I became insufferable.
My family saw what was happening.

My aunt was a forest firefighter in Reno, Nevada. She asked if I would come for the summer to take care of her animals when she went off on fires.
I didn’t realize it at the time but I think my family planned this on purpose to get me away from talking with The Brethren.
I went and stayed with my aunt in Reno for 3 months.
My aunt paid me and I had a lot of free time to study Christianity.
I spend a lot of time online on Christian message boards debating and learning from other Christians. Every day was a nightmare because I was constantly thinking about hell. I believed in the Bible and was trying to find the right interpretation so I didn’t go to hell.
This issue of interpretation would become the foundation of everything for me and the underlying philosophy of my art and life.
As a fanatical believer I could not find a solid truth, a solid interpretation to the Bible.
This would become a lasting theme in my life.

When one reads Socrates, you get the sense that his questioning was a smart-ass way to deconstruct other people’s beliefs. His questioning seemed ironic or cynical. The result was always to show that the other person’s beliefs were not well thought out.
I went through the same process but my questions were authentic. I wanted to believe. I was desperate to know the Christian truth and live it.
I was sympathetic.
My questions were not cynical or meant to destroy, I just wanted to know I knew the truth and was doing right.
My questions came from insecurity, always thinking I did not have the right understanding. I questioned with the intensity of someone who imagined he would burn in hell. It’s all I thought about.
I debated people online all day every day.
Every time I had worked out all the contradictions and thought I had figured out the right interpretation a new person would come along and destroy the “home” I had found and once again I was scared I was going to burn in hell forever.
I went mad…

I started to become cynical, not from wanting to destroy but from an innocent and naïve desire to believe.
I began losing faith in the idea of a solid truth.
I began to want to get away from Christianity because I had become ill thinking about me and everyone burning in hell.
You can’t just leave fundamentalism though. There is too much fear involved.

I unconsciously and consciously began a many years’ process of gradually exiting Christianity.
My path out was to slowly get into more and more liberal forms of Christianity.
I studied a lot of the mythical tradition.
I got into Thomas Merton.
The person I owe the most too for helping me exit though was Alan Watts.
He is largely known as a sort of hippie interpreter of Eastern spiritualty. But he is actually really well versed in Christianity and was actually an Episcopal priest. He has a few books that are solely about Christianity.
His perspective and his light-heartedness are what enabled me to exit Christianity and lose my fear of hell and fundamentalism.

I still believed in the idea of a solid truth and was searching for it.
I ended up getting really into Zen Buddhism.
The reason for this was because of its emphasis on meditation as a way to the truth. Because of my issues with interpretation and the endlessness of that I liked the idea of experiencing the truth outside of words.
I moved into a Zen Monastery in the Bay area and thought I would spend the rest of my life as a monk. I spent a year at the Monastery.
It was an incredibly hard and also healing time for me.
I have a deep love for Zen. But my problems with interpretation followed me there too. How did I know if the experiences I was having in meditation were the same ones the teachers spoke of.
Again, my questions came not from a desire to disprove but a desire to believe.
They came from an insecurity that I always have the wrong perspective.

I had lost faith in Christianity and now Buddhism.
The next solution to find the truth was with reason and science.
I went to university to study religion and philosophy from an objective and scientific perspective. I did a Bachelor’s Degree in traditional eastern art, focusing on meditative practices which combined art, contemplation, the body and philosophy such as Calligraphy, Tai Chi, Ikebana, Yoga and forms of sitting meditation.
I graduated and went right into a Master’s Degree program in Religious Studies (The scientific, objective study of religion, as opposed to theology which is the study of religion from the perspective of religion as a believer.)
I got married while I was going to school.
My wife was going to school at UC Boulder, studying humanities. She had a class on Nietzsche by the famous Nietzsche scholar Adrian Del Caro. She told me that she thought I would like Nietzsche.
I had heard the name but knew nothing about him. I began to read him and fell in love.
This love and study of Nietzsche was compounded because I began my first year of grad school. The university I went to had a major radical left leaning. There was a major focus on postmodern thought, critical theory, queer theory etc.
Much of this thought is based in Nietzsche and I spent the two years essentially studying Nietzsche.
It was the first time in a long time that I truly believed and was passionate about something. He was the first person I ever read that dealt with the issue of interpretation that I had been having for so many years.
He diagnosed and dealt with the issue of Nihilism which I had been struggling with.
He was exciting and rebellious.
It was almost 20 years ago that I first read Nietzsche, and I am as passionate about his thought as I was when I first found it. His thought is the only one which has stayed with me consistently through the years. And it is largely his thought that is the basis for my art and life project.
For Nietzsche life was about using the materials of your life, the good and the bad, and tying it together into a coherent whole and art.
Marcher Arrant is my attempt at this.
I spent my whole life walking around, being lost, searching but not finding.
I could be sad about this. But I chose to see it as a good thing, make the searching itself into a life affirming art.

* Your 30s:

My ex-wife loves to travel. She has been to 50 countries and speaks French, Spanish and Italian fluently.
When we were in our early 20’s we went on a trip around France and Italy. That was my first time abroad and I loved it so much.

When I graduated from grad-school when I was around 27 my ex wanted to move to Paris. I was so down.
We enrolled in school for the easy visa and went for it. We thought it would be for a year and it ended up being 10 years and was the most life changing event in both our lives.
We did all kinds of jobs.
I got a job as an English teacher and nanny.
She worked at a bagel shop. She started a dog walking business.
She is a badass entrepreneur. She ended up starting her own personal fitness company.

We broke up after 2 years of being in Paris…

I did my first month long walk which was from Paris to Spain.
I was walking in the Pyreness mountains talking to her.
I got a notification on my phone saying I had crossed into Spain. I had made it!
It was bitter sweet thought because on this phone call my wife told me that she was leaving me.
She said we I get back to Paris she will be moved out.
It was surreal.

We didn’t talk for like 4 months after that which was perfect having a clean break like that. All the feelings had died down and when we finally talked, we were both in a good place and were so happy to talk.
We continued to be good friends and hang out and to this day she is one of the people in my life that I know will aways be there, we have an unbreakable bond.

I did a lot of walks in Paris.
Paris was the first city that I walked the entire length of every street in the city. That was monumental for me.
I spent 5 years exploring the catacombs every weekend.

I nannied for the same family the entire time I was there and became very close with them.

About 5 months after I broke up with my wife, I went to a punk show at a legendary squat in Paris called the Miroiterie.
I met the smartest, cutest and sweetest girl of all time at that show, a girl named Giorgia from Italy. We spent a magical night together and would spend every day together for the next 5 years and end up moving to Barcelona for her to do a PHD in linguistics.
I did many walks in Barcelona and Spain.
Things fell apart with us eventually but I don’t think either of us regret it, we played a huge role in each other’s lives.
It is so intense to move to a new country with someone you love, it’s nice to go through that together.

* Your 40s so far?

After Giorgia I have been lost but am hopefully finding my way.

I spent a year squatting in Barcelona and 3 months living in a tunnel. I lost my main job in Barcelona because the family I was teaching moved to Germany.
I broke up with my girlfriend.

I had been living illegally in Spain for 5 years and was sick of that stress.
I moved back to the states.

I started drinking again after 4 years sober.

I stayed with family and friends and walked a lot.
I walked from Georgia to Main.
I made many zines and started to make a lot of art.

I have been very lost since being back in the states…

6 Months ago, I went on a 3-month trip back in Europe.
I went to Portugal for the first time and walked the entire length of Portugal.
I met the love of my life on that walk. I met her in the south of Portugal and she met up with me two other times as I walked north. We spent 3 beautiful days in Porto and solidified our love.
My mission now is to be with her.

It has been a year since we have seen each other.
We are working and saving and trying to figure out how to be together.
I would love to move to Portugal and probably will. But I am also trying to get my girlfriend to come out here since she has never been and I want to give her that adventure of living in another country.

Personal motto(s)?

“Keep On.”

What role did toys play in your childhood?

For 10 years, from the age of 10 to 20 skateboarding was my main thing.
It’s funny to think of it in that way but a skateboard is a kids toy really. It’s a shame how I took it so seriously and killed the fun of it for me.
In interviews with pros, you always hear people talking about keeping it fun.
I wish I would have done that.

Reading and listening to your interviews, there is an apparent change in your general approach to life. From saying how you would most likely die young and poor, to now talking about growing old and becoming concerned about long term things…

* Can you explain and elaborate on this change?

That is a really good question and it goes to the heart of the main dilemma that I am dealing with in my life right now.
Basically, I did not die young like I thought I would and now I have decisions to make.
I am going through a major midlife crisis right now.

When I was young I was full of energy and idealism and a kind of courage that comes with being young and having the rest of my life ahead of me.
Now that I am older, deterioration and death is closer at hand and more real.
I am at a major crossroads.
Should I stay true to my earlier philosophy and say fuck it and go for broke?
Or should I start ‘getting my shit together’ and start preparing for my future and my death.

I would not be so concerned had I not been an alcoholic for the past 20 years and abused myself so much.
Not only have I drunk so much but I have gone all out in every way, led a crazy unstable life, not ate or slept enough, just have gone all out.
I’m feeling worn out as hell mentally and physically.
I don’t feel right.
I’ve been lucky as hell in terms of my health so far, but I’m scared as hell my luck is about to run out.
I have no money or insurance.

I went through my 30’s carefree as hell, it felt like my teens. Age is just a number hahaha! But 40 years old fucked with me, got me stressed.
It has come to the point of reaping what I have sewn with my reckless lifestyle and I don’t have the courage I had when I was younger.

Your question is incredibly poignant for me at this time, my main issue.
I still don’t know what road I will take.
I am torn.

* Where do you ideally see yourself in 20 years?

There is a strong impulse in me to get healthy, physically, emotionally and financially.
It is incredibly difficult though because I have a lifetime of trauma, addictions and bad ways of thinking to overcome.
It would be something incredible if I could face those challenges and overcome them.

I have a really awesome girlfriend and I want to make a good healthy life with her and I think we can do it together.
I would like to be with her in 20 years with a house somewhere in Europe and writing books and doing walks and art and living from my passions and being healthy and happy.

2 found glass bottles, hand-painted by Marcher.

Graff, Art, Exploring and Writing Questions

When and why did you first become interested in graffiti, exploring, writing, art and everything creative?
… and any pivotal creative moments / influences?

I became interested in graffiti when I was in 6th grade.
There was graffiti in my suburb and it really stood out and I always wondered about it. All the graffiti had BSA written next to it. I started skating with an older guy and I had a feeling he knew what it was all about so I asked him.
It turned out he was in BSA!
He took me out to rack and paint and taught me the basics of the culture and that began my interest in it.
I became a major fan of the culture and dabbled but skateboarding was my main interest.

When I was 25 or so I got a graff magazine and in it was a section on Kids DAC/4DC. His stuff was so different and spoke to me so much and he became my biggest influence not just in graff but in life.
I loved how much emotion his work conveyed and the autobiographical things he would write next to his pieces.
He was a hardcore traveller and I loved that so much too.
I tore out the pages of his stuff from the magazine and made a collage of it and put it on my wall.
It was evident that he dealt with hard things in life and addictions and I resonated with that so much. But even though he dealt with so much pain and issues he was out travelling around and living life and that touched me. His work became a symbol for me to keep on and live life despite my problems, to use my problems and create with them.
I ended up tattooing his characters on me to always be inspired by him.

If you had to explain your creative endeavours to some recently crash-landed aliens…
What would you tell them?

For most of my life I was searching for the ‘truth’, the right way, some final destination.
I never could find that.
Instead of giving up I decided to make art about the search.
This helps me not despair, to turn something difficult into something positive.
All my life I told people my story and they always said it was amazing that I was still alive, that I made it this far.

I don’t have any skills or talents, but I decided that my skill was simply to keep on, keep walking.
That is the skill of my family, we endure.

It’s a funny thing but I have always been incredibly proud of my parents being heroin addicts.
Heroin is a deadly drug and not many people survive it.
My parents had the most scary addiction and they survived it. They made it through the scariest and most difficult places.
Our family walks through the darkest places and keeps on, that’s our skill.

Who are some of your favourite graffiti writers and explorers?
…and what is it about their works that so inspire and move you?

There are so many graffiti writers and explorers I love so much. I could write a book just on that subject. I am first and foremost a fan. I’m a hero worshiper. I love that about myself actually even though I cringe sometimes at my fanboydom.
Graff and exploring, to me it’s about being enchanted.
Somehow after 42 years I’ve managed to still believe, to still be enchanted.

As I said before Kids is my favourite graffiti writer – One of my other favourite writers is Curve TGE. He is the one that encouraged and got me into actually doing graffiti and art.
He is incredibly inspiring because he has been painting for like 30 years and has continued to grow and experiment. After so many years of doing art, you still feel that he is having fun and going new places with it.
He is always experimenting and isn’t scared to try new things. And he is humble as hell and always paying tribute to his influences.

I love the people in the crew I am in, Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
Before I even knew those guys Mpeach and Alamo were two of my favourite writers.
Impeach is just so damn creative and stylish and has put in so much work for a really long time.

I love bombers like JA and MQ and Trane from France.
It’s so impressive when people go all out like that to such an insane level.

Faipe TGE is a writer who I’m just blown away by his style and how much funk and movement are in his pieces.

Gkae is one of my favourites too, he is good at every part of the game and has gone harder than maybe anyway ever, it’s insane.

So many explorers blow my mind.
As far as explorers, sooooo many.

My homies Amleht Malay and Access Denied are absolute fucking fanatics. And they do it purely for the love and don’t give a fuck about social media.
They could be the most famous explorers in the world if they exploited their adventures. It is insane the places they have explored.
My homie Poz from France is the same exact way.
These are the kinds of people that explore places that nobody has ever been before.

In your 2021 interview with the Angel and Z Podcast you speak about a comic you wanted to do…
How’s that all coming along man?

I have so many books I want to write and pieces of art I want to make.
Walking gets in the way though.

I have such a hard time staying in place.
Walking is a high for me.
I will try to settle down and work things, work on my life, and then a mischievous thought comes into my mind to set off for a trip.
My mind is very good at giving me excuses why I should leave!

I am getting to the point though were I think I can convince myself to stay in place and work.
That would be a fun new adventure doing new things. I’ve gone and walked a million times.
The new adventure would be to write a book!

Sometime soon I am going to take a year and work on writing!
I am looking forward to that!
I just need to resist that high of immediate gratification that comes with saying fuck it and going off on an adventure.

The comic I spoke of is still one of the main projects I want to work on.
I have written down a lot of ideas for that project. I want it to be a sort of biography mixed with fiction too and a super hero thing to it too.

We know you have hung out with Australian vandal and explorer Tubby…

* How did you two come to connect?

I’ve had some great times with Tubby, I love that guy!
When I was walking from Georgia to Maine I walked somewhat near where he was living so he came and walked with me for a few days on that walk.

One of my favourite memories with him was when we were walking the tracks and we could not find a place to sleep. For the longest time there was no place to set up camp. Finally, to the left there was this spot that opened up that was so perfect!
There was this island area that had a bridge going to it.
It was on someone’s property which wasn’t ideal but the spot was so nice, it was like a campspot. There were kinda tables and benches.
The grass was nice and short.
It was so ideal!

* Care to share some tales of your time together?

Another time we had together was crossing this huge bridge on the tracks.
It was incredibly long and very high up!
It’s always scary crossing those types of bridges because if a train comes you are fucked. We decided to go for it and as we got 3 quarters of the way through a work truck came!
It was no problem since those trucks can stop easy but it was scary because it very well could have been a train.
The workers were really nice and didn’t call the cops. They told us not to walk the tracks because they have had to clean up dead bodies before.

If people wanted to check out your art, work with you, or buy some of your wares – Where should they visit and how should they get in touch?

Instagram is the best way, @marcher.arrant

I have a website too which is themarcherarrant.com

My email is marcherarrant@gmail.com.

Odds and Ends

If you could live in any place, during any historical era – Where and when would that be?
…and why would you choose that time and place?

My name Marcher Arrant is a variation on Knight Errant.
I am in love with the medieval period in Europe of knights going on quests!
Honestly though, I don’t think I would be tough enough to exist in those times hahaha.

Who was your first crush?
…and why were you so infatuated with them?

A girl named Rachel in Elementary school.
She had dark hair and dark eyes and had something sweet and gentle about her.
Still to this day that is my type and my girlfriend is exactly that and I am so in love!

What does “God” mean to you?

God is the mystery of existence for me.

Does sex change everything?

It does for me hahaha.

Sex has always been something intense for me. It never became something trivial for me, each person has had an impact on me even if it didn’t go anywhere in the long-term.

What are the top 3 items you own?
… and what is it about each of them that you so love?
[Please include photos or drawings of them!]

My bag, sleeping bag and tent!

They give me so much comfort and give me sense of security and protection!