January 11th, 2002 Puna Hawaii.
June 9th, 2009 Point Roberts, Washington
So can i
call the soul the non-linear processor of the mind? Do I want to say that that is all there is to it? Norman Mailer said it might span life times. Is that necessary? Of course that is just the linear trying to exert some meaning. Clare said language dictates how we perceive. It is a form of control over our minds. We are brainwashed through conventions of language. We are socialized through language. We define our identity through language. Mostly through spoken language. The other languages of the world that span cultures and species are still operative. They are the non-linear probably not very verbal languages. Some will call them the languages of emotion or desire. I call them the languages of connection. They may be from my soul or from my heart. They are my animal languages. They are my animistic languages. I can speak to stones. They are the language of connection. They are about my desire to know and be known. I am just learning in this season to speak these languages more directly. When they are spoken they are literal and then linear. Even though they are clearly non-linear in origin. I have trouble with the linear speakers. I fear that they will label me as a tease or even worse as a threat. I am not really going anywhere. I am here already. I am simply playing my soul. So the work about connections makes more sense. Work about puzzles fits. The work about language indirectly touches on core beliefs. The work about layers and significance including the most recent revelation that of course as one penetrates deeper and deeper one is likely to end up much of the time passing through meaning back into ooze or chaotic molten substructure, or even through to the other side which rather than being some new or future or heavenly plane is just the back alley that runs behind the room we just entered on the most current quest for meaning. There are all these short stories about these phenomenon. I am always sensitive to them. The elephant parable about perception of the world. The entering the rooms of mystery deeper and deeper until you find yourself back out on the street. The meaning of life being that there is no meaning of life. The story of pessimism being a luxury that wastes the precious resources that we all have to create a vibrant world society which perpetuates itself and wages peace and holds the mystery of the present moment at the center of it’s spiritual practices.If I succeed in writing a book about play, it will tell stories of intuition and serendipity, and present time. It will be fragments of a story about a world order that continually and playfully solves the most seemingly serious dilemmas of maintaining world peace. The wager is justice. A justice that isn’t fair but rather attends to the subtle differences of all organisms in a complex web, valuing the unfolding present moment. I think that some of the important instructions are about activities that impact least on our global resources and most on our purer quality of life. I think the stories I tell have to come from a level of storytelling excitement. There has to be room to fiddle with the outcome based on new threads that lend themselves to expression in the moment of telling. All these packages of found objects impacted by the creative machine of our commodities culture are stories about unraveling and savored memories. But are they about the present moment? They are only about something as they are playfully fitted together. Once they are fitted they are about the past again. They are about memory again. They are traces of something valuable that no longer exists. New constellations are unfolding. New relationships are being attended to and savored. Sometimes the old ones are holding an evocative power to fool us into believing that the past is more valuable than the present. This disservice is hard to address. All our acts of coveting objects of beauty for any other purpose than preservation of the delight they evoke is folly. I know this is true about the objects in the safe deposit box that are gold. There is no treasure greater than this breeze. Can my work communicate this? Or does my work have it’s own message that I keep trying to nudge toward this story.
It might be that I am saying something quite different to different people and I only think I am speaking about these metaphors against scarcity and aggression. That would be disappointing on several levels. Do I ever become the recognized artist? Would I have anything to say after I say this piece? Will the work successfully alter the consumptive processes in time? Am I willing to proceed knowing they won’t? Which treasure is my consciousness to the greater world community?
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