One and Three Chairs

and so it goes.........

Lack.

Where are you now, he says.  I stand on top of myself, I hear
myself answer.  I stand on myself like a hilltop and my life
is spread before me.  Does it surprise you, he asks.  I explain
that in our youth and for a long time after our youth we cannot
see our lives.  Because we are inside of that.  Because we can
see no shape to it, since we have nothing to compare it to.
We have not seen it grow and change because we are too close.
We don’t know the names of things that would bind them to us,
so we cannot feed on them.  One near the middle asks why not.
Because we don’t have the knack for eating what we are living.
Why is that? she asks.  Because we are too much in a hurry.

How do I find myself in these long stretches of glorydays and the nondescript hours?  I find myself lacking motion.  This thing within me is not so at peace and stirs chemicals and thoughts seeking some unbalanced equilibrium.  I am pulled forward by memory and drive and the momentum of almostfullyliving and yet, in wanting everything at once.

Irony.  I do not move.

I do not travel.  The desire to move is that which binds me in the house of infinite wait, and the gravity of gravity enters my consciousness.  I am held still by some numbness I cannot name.  I blame the medicine.  Easy.  Why can I still not shake this nothing?

Ordinarily I move.  I feel.  Lately I have felt so nearly numb that I cannot honestly remember the last time I felt strongly about something.  Anything.  Right now I want to cry, I cannot.  Strike something, break something.  I cannot.  I want to be held.  I won't.

                         And yet
                                                               here I sit

                                       in my chair

                                                 in this place that smells of ghosts.

and so it goes.........

Square One

It was to go backward, "to recreate art, to start from square one,"...beginning literally with squares and cubes.

and so it goes.........

Remembrance on a hilltop.

There is a world beyond these moments and the power of memory to document what is now past.  Life is a series of phases that meld together with perpetual forward motion and recollection.  This time upon us now—however much it may serve to mark the finality of things and the beginnings of others—is still yet another phase.  It is a transitional period, though far more distinct than those past; it is a shift from crawling and searching among others to walking, climbing, and discovering on one’s own.

I still cannot help but to mention the surge of gladness and warmth I feel when musing upon that which is now ahead.  There is a voyage before each one of us; I feel confident in this truth.  Growth knows no bounds; we begin as children—fledging things—and never emerge as fully grown beings.  The moment at which the forward and upward motion of life ceases is the peak that ought to never be reached.  We ought to never be wholly ripened but, rather, in an unbroken state of blossoming and ripening—to seek still more of ourselves, the infinite core ever-unfolding.  Memory is a weapon we wield as we fight for the years ahead to be our own.  Memory is a treasure that should not be lost.  Though today may symbolize the end of the days of our youth and the anxiousness to commence the life that awaits, the simplest of memories of times that gave even the subtlest stir in our hearts should not be dismissed.  Memory is also the thread intertwined with life—my own being no exception.

I have found the words of the American poet, Jack Gilbert, so very fitting for this moment.  “I stand on myself as a hilltop and my life is spread before me.”

and so it goes.........

(Non)stop motion.

Order must exist for there to ever be any consideration of flow.  It rests not in a state of stagnancy but of perpetual motion, mirroring the ever-stirring ideas within an individual. One must reconcile the desire for immediacy with the wait asked of them.  It would not make the least sense for life to be a stream of climaxes following one another, for then, after the initial few, all excitement and anticipation for the surge would fall away.  Subsequent moments of peakness would lose strength and meaning for the individual and life would become dull.

The strength of anticipation matches the magnitude of joy in the realization, so one is called to wait.  Time, however, should not see the artist in inactivity or immobility; they must be very much alive with continuous investment in the self and the work they ultimately generate.  The desire to create ought never to be suppressed in favor of the ease of surrender.  It takes courage to shake one’s head in answer to abandoning the craft and the life.

One must find a balance and solace in knowing such things.  There should be structure and form, but still always the freedom of thought in which the self moves without hindrance or doubt.  Self-assurance and organization of both space and time are the best tools to wield in the countless struggles of the artist.

Manage but do not micromanage time.  Do not compartmentalize ideas or space, or connections.  Find fitting systems.  Try your hands at many things; weigh most options.  Drink with eyes open.  Seek to never never never be a sponge.  Discover harmony.

and so it goes.........

Circularity.

Og hér ert þú, Glósóli.  And now you’re here, Glowing soul.  There is this thing at the core and a light tearing at my insides—and this is that which I call mine.  Above all things, know thyself.  Know thyself.  Life is a constant climb and struggle to hold the word “I”, while only even just beginning to wrap fingers around what all that means.  The artist is he who understands this clawing within him and embraces the process of releasing, remembering, and retaining all that he is.  Circulation of work must begin with the self, with the constant shifting, ever-growing body of thoughts and ideas suspended in the vessel.

To jump immediately into the public’s eye is suicide, as man is but a beginner in everything.  An amateur.  A fledgling.  He must first gather his wits about him and venture into that which makes him; he himself must discover the truths housed within the beautifully synchronized entanglement of chemicals and matter.  This sphere into which he enters in order to pursue requires much, asks more.  Solitude asks the very questions one can neither form nor answer.  But the artist ought to have no fear.

“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Everything changes in every single way it can, and that holds especially true to one’s perception of the core.  It is the self that remains untouched and consciousness that grows in fullness.  Gradually, eyes are open to that surging thing within and man might begin to suspect his strength— to know the power of his voice, the invincibility of his memory, and the beauty of his ideas.  Once some time has been spent in introspection, as he continues to blossom and ripen in understanding, the creator may take steps in direction of the world.

The world, though, does not want him to succeed.  It seeks to destroy him, for the man who stands alone—the artist, the thinking individual—does not belong in the world as it is but is a being from the world as it should be.  The trappings of reality, however, hold him to this earth and so he embarks on the constant battle to remain himself.  The interconnectivity of everything demands that he live and react with all else, and the clawing thing at his center begs him to display that which resides within.  He never is to give away any piece of himself nor tell his secret of being; he is only to show—to participate in the flow of life and not be consumed by the masses.  His branches stretch out to mankind, just as his roots extend in self-knowledge.  He offers that much more of humanity—and, in turn, comes to know its nature more clearly—in the act.  Art, anything to be called a creation not excepting the self, spreads humanity.

The ease of the travel, however, depends entirely on the notion of relational aesthetics, and this foundation rests on the principle that the audience is not an audience.  All are human beings.  Painstakingly, with each exchange of words and ideas—with each human relationship, the perfect form of humanity and the motion of the world come close to being understood.  The artists cannot compromise their work—or their core—for the sake of others.  They must present everything as it is, as they see it, and not as they think society perceives.  Truth, then, is never abandoned.  And the voice of humanity carries on.

But, with this invitation to “come and see”, criticism is welcomed.  And, in this, the artist must be resilient.  He should not edify walls around his supposed monument of beliefs, though; rather, his mind should serve as a filter and find the things that agree with the core and the thoughts that challenge him to seek still more and become that much more himself.  He must persist, accepting the constancy of change by allowing the words of others to enter his space.  His hands are the tools of change, his mind and core their master.  The beauty of ideas, so long as they are never abandoned, lies in their capacity to be shaped and grow into themselves.  They are as a cool block of marble, each thought-provoked chisel mark creating the eventual sculpture, which was always to be made.  Time.  It takes time.

The sculpture—the emerging ideas—is a product of connection and the precursor to networking.  Mankind is a vast sea of intertwining webs spanning continents and oceans.  Once this resource starts to be tapped into, the power of a single thought and its author is amplified. Individual people, as drops in the great bucket, may resound.  Collisions are not to be sought unless they spark some larger mechanism for conceptualizing humanity.  True, too much of a good thing is bad, but just enough of the terrible is desired.  Negativity leads to thirst, and failure to hunger.  Growth.

There ought to always be motion, though, with forward velocity.  Others should be sought and collected as precious treasure, for it is the brothers who help to uncover the hidden rooms within the vaults of the mind.  They help the artist to awaken the sleeping notyetformed ideas and give still another wealth:  memory.  Experience and exchanges excite newness and resonate with already existent thoughts.  From interactions with the rest of mankind, the artist is able to speak more clearly and more fully comprehend the words.  He might come to address humanity.

and so it goes.........

For now, contradiction.

When understanding creativity becomes a science, all contradictions vanish and new ones arise.  To place something so free-moving as art is to impose the rules of black and white to the world as we know it.  It seems quite so, however, that this was entirely the aim of the article.

Within every mind there dwells a vault of notyetgiven ideas and notyetformed thoughts--a mix of disagreement and simultaneous harmony, having all sprung from one core.  The world is indeed black and white but not in an either/or fashion but, rather, this and that all at once.   Reality stands as a constant movie reel of contradictions and mankind finds itself always correct some anticipated unbalance solely because of the belief in opposites.  Since A is A, everything that is not A is an opposite and a contradiction within that frame.  A and not A cannot exist in harmony; there is constant tension for resolve.  In the Janusian process everything remains unresolved.  Beautifully moot and melodious.

Juxtaposed, science and art seem to contradict one another in any mention of their connectivity.  Scientists are creators.

and so it goes.........