1-5-18 Small fires
The drawing – Small Fires shows the ambiguous nature of fire, functional, pleasurable, but often destructive. (The drawing was inspired by a dream I had in which I was in a kitchen surrounded by small fires that I needed to put out.) The composition is full of drama, and despite the title, I'm not sure that the piece is only about fire. All of the crises the individuals are engaged in beg for a solution, but the combined composition suggests that this is ongoing. When one fire is put out another will take its place, one problem soon to be replaced by something else. The characters don’t pay much attention to the other fires. They are struggling with their own problems and their neighbors are not seen. They are distracted or just enjoying their own activity. All of these activities with fire are contained within their own space, even though they are in close proximity to other people who could see the problem and need for action as it is occurring. We often think that we are too far away from others to see or help, but this composition suggests otherwise – that we exist together but are oblivious to the other and even if the problems are seen and resolved there will be others occurring and this is ongoing. One might say – this is how things are and I will just stay in my world, take care of my situation and relax when it is not my turn
A lot of my work aims to show what is known but not acknowledged in our behavior, our relationships, and the structures that determine our being. And because we refuse to acknowledge certain obvious facts of our existence, and we take them for granted, then it is necessary to be shocked into seeing them and that is why my work often takes the surrealistic path it does.
We must, of course, be willing to engage, be willing to see things anew. One can always say the images are odd, strange, surrealistic, but can they go further in their communication to show something truthfully, or expose what is no longer seen or acknowledged - a habitual kind of behavior? It takes a viewer who wants to play the game, who wants to ask questions about how the images reveal something personal about themselves. Even I, the one who supposedly creates the images, must ask these questions as it seems they come from a deeper level than my conditioned conscious self.
The larger issue that is much harder to speak about and gets little play in expression or conversation is the feeling that I cannot take this reality and the presence that I feel within it for what it has been thought to be. What we are and what we are living as, and within, doesn’t seem true to me as described, as accepted, as taken for granted. All of the problems that humanity is creating for itself and for the planet seem to be terrible mistakes caused by delusions of reality, misunderstanding of our true nature. Is it only wishful thinking, a desire to escape reality, that I can say that this world may be other than what we say it is? I am not saying that human suffering is a delusion that should be ignored, but I am saying that we are not solving many of the problems that humankind faces because we are not willing or able to see our true cosmic nature and our true psychological position.
In the changefulness of the world, as we perceive it, there is the delusion of a fixed position. We are confused about the difference between continuous change and time. Continuous change and the images of past and future are not the same. Change occurs continuously in the present.
What is the importance of this distinction? We are image making creatures (in thought, in memory, in projection) that live in a world that is not an image, but an actuality of relationship. Memories and projections of the future are images that occur in the psyche in order to have continuity of experience in a world that is in constant flux, always in the process of new relationship.
We then take this reality of images that exists in our psyche to be more important than the ever-new movement of relationship. We are constantly constructing a psychological world that doesn’t exist in actuality, in truth, in totality. The actual, the totality of relationships, exists outside of our ability to know it, to comprehend it. As we must live within it, and therefore must navigate it, the system of thought constructs a logical equivalent to it by selecting what seems important to focus on and store in memory. I think all of this is beyond a person’s conscious control. There is no one determined to make this happen, let alone to be aware in the moment that it is happening. The structure of thought is pre-programmed and for some reason, we think we are in charge of the process, when it may be that we (ourselves, our worldview, memories, identity) are created by the process.
Does this observation change awareness and as a result, relationship?
1-5-18
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