I am Here
Posted on December 12, 2009 - Filed Under About me, My Work
I am once again tinkering with maps, navigation and figuring out a precise mental GPS for my whereabouts.
This is a canvas, painted with plaster and stamped with metal letters. I painted it with sumi after it was dry, then sanded and scratched back some areas. Meanwhile, I painted and stamped art tissue, then collaged that onto the canvas. It seems to me to be some combination of Rome, the Cosmos, and Star Trek. That must be where I am.
As usual, I am in the middle of reading two or three books, one of which is Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day. This is a rich book of sparsity, of an economy of thought, movement and full repression of emotion. The lead character, Stevens, barely experiences his own life, so driven is he to serve. He is the head butler in an English manor, that is the entirety of who he is. Yet, this is what he says to one of his reports.
“Miss Kenton, if you are under the impression you have already at your age perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.”
He refers to her skills as a servant, but I prefer to cast that part out and forgive the fact that this sentence ends in a preposition which we know is just plain wrong, because there is a cord his words struck with me. This week I have not actually been stuck in the idea of myself or my children as perfected, but perhaps worse, defined.
“(insert name), if you are under the impression you have already at your age defined yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.” Being defined does not appeal to me. I want to be amorphous, fluid, at the ready to vanish into the background or fill with neon lights. I want to surprise and be surprised. All my efforts at making my life make sense, have order, have been actually the opposite of what makes it rich. A bit less on the surprise side would be okay with me, and as for the rest, I hope to gain an appreciation of chaos. Right now.
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This has to be a new favorite of mine, Jill…I wish I could reach in to my monitor and TOUCH this! It’s beautiful…