Language

We drift about from place to place checking out the scenery. I suppose the job of the artist, however broad and inclusive we stretch the name, is to express what it is like to be. If we shrink the category of inclusion to its basic definition; one who makes visual images for other people to look at. Through photography I try to do both. Make images and communicate what it is like to be. Frequently and often in frustration at failures in my artistic skills I resort to words. In the broad sense creative writing is art yet it is always about, never the thing itself. I went through a phase of making furniture influenced by art. If artists could tackle subjects with their work, if they could make art about things then why could I not make furniture about things. My work looked at all sorts; class, housing, mental illness, all the subjects that recur in my writing. More recently the kind of art I like has changed. The art I prefer now is of itself. The furniture I now make, even the artistic pieces are only of themselves. Earlier in the year whilst in a quandary of shame I thought of abandoning furniture. Theories, ideas, approaches to life I had been building for years turned out to be dead ends. I had backed a particularly self conscious horse. Virtually every idea or conception of myself had to be redrawn out. What I went through was as significant as a spiritual awakening. Reading up on first hand religious experiences revealed others whose self understanding had been profoundly disrupted. Yet my experience confirmed in as powerful a way as I could ever imagine something I had always hoped to believe yet never quite could. The stories we tell ourselves are just that. We are soul free. We are animals. The understanding of the self illusion clarified the separation of the threads that make up a person. Projection fascinates me. Only last week some malfunction convinced me of a horrendous parody of reality. Paranoid assumptions were blown away as soon as I was able to talk to others who helped me to see the reality construct I had built was without foundation. Philip K Dick wrote a simple sci fi book called Eye in the Sky. A group of people were knocked unconscious by some accident that plunged them in series through each of the groups world views. One persons world is akin to a totalitarian dystopia, another a prudish vault of catholic guilt. Outlook is all. The canvas of reality may be a common one but what we project on to it varies hugely. If your projections are too far out of sinc with other people it can stand out. I have met secret agents, super heroes, spiritual gurus even messiahs, all as real as my reality is to me. Perhaps the best we can do is to accept that ours may be a little soft around the edges too. That others views are as valid as our own.