Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Four short stanzas about being feeling puzzled.


Four short stanzas about being feeling puzzled.

1. I love those vibrant periods of time when we realise how new everything can feel either after waking up before your alarm clock rings, after reading a book, or when you're visiting a city for the first time. It's a feeling as if you're looking for something, which is not to say you feel like you've lost anything, but it's as if you realise that people have left enough clues to make you realise that there's something there to discover. It could be above your head, around a corner, or somewhere buried deep in your own memories, even if it never really happened, even if you couldn't have possibly been there to witness it.

2. In some places in the world, there are people that make things but don't use any materials, but it does take up space. In this space other people feel like they have a stake in this place. They co-create rules and some people are known for showing up on time consistently, but even with varying degrees from creating to enjoying they all agree that it's theirs collectively. 

3. I want to be one of those people that will never feel like they're working. I don't think I believe in work, but then again I don't think I have figured out how to not worry about it, so that will take some work, some goals and some work. I think that there are times when I know working will do something for me, so I do that work, but the other kinds of work, the work that binds you to something monotonously detached, when you could be challenging yourself, fosters a despicable ennui.

4. Who am I making art for? Is it for the technicians whose expertise is legitimised by my curiosity of the possibilities within their studios? Is it for my friends who do me so many favors and offer so many gifts that I am trying in vain to pay them all back? Is it for myself who like all other artists, uses art to construct the kind of reality that helps me understand the world? Or is it for the people I'd like to meet, who see things that I myself didn't realise was within the work? Well, maybe that last one was for me as well.

I just finished reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, I liked the writing style a lot, and it has me thinking about how we deal with the unknown and sometimes embrace it and how writers have an interesting way of describing the powers that be. This was really interesting to read after Lanark, there's not a lot of similarities, but I do enjoy the fact that I had bad eczema when I was reading about dragonskin hide in Lanark and then after I hurt my shoulder which created a dull pain, while I was reading about Toru Okada having being stabbed in the shoulder.

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