Art and Self Contemplation
Contemplation seems to be mans worst problem, right behind the other fifty million. I think I have a problem. I think I’m slacking on my works and its hurting me creatively. I spend a little bit of time in the darkroom these days than when I started. Namely my job hinders me, being on a different schedule as my girl friend hinders me. I’m not use to doing things in the photographic arts so slowly. It’s rather depressing when I think on it in more fanciful notion. I have started looking at my negatives more closely once a print is made and think to myself that 98% of them are utter shit. Maybe one or two or worth the effort in making master prints of. The rest can be burned, wouldn’t matter. I don’t know if I need to just get outside and shoot the ever loving shit out of a few rolls or look at what I have done and really look at it closely and decide a direction I want to take or feel I should take. I have so many ideas that there seem to just be too many to make up my mind with. Maybe I should have some of my negative scanned, maybe not, I don’t honestly know. I am in a predicament.
I’m also slightly scatter-brained at the moment. Can’t remember things, and those I can’t don’t me shit in the end. I have become offensive and rather blunt and insensitive towards my love, and I feel like she feels dejected by me, and that isn’t in any way no matter how you look at it a good thing. It’s almost as though I am creating a larger rift between us and as if the Pacific Ocean wasn’t already large enough in that sense. She once told me she felt like we were losing it. I would almost agree with her now, now that I think upon it. Maybe it isn’t the same as it was before. But puppy love should have its end point. I suppose I blame my financial standing and funds at the moments. I’m sure we have all been in that place before. Wanting to shower a woman with gift and affection and being unable to do so. A rather irking sensation in my mind.
Sometimes I lay in my bed at night with the side table lamp on, when I told her I have went to bed and she thinks I’m sleeping; I’m slowly contemplating our future ahead or the lack of one. Everything can be looked at logically, but love. Art can be and certainly is for me a logical process with given rules and breaking of certain ones. Love on the other hand, not so much. I know she’s going to read this, she always does, that’s one thing I know for a fact, and more likely than not I will get yelled out. But then again sometimes you have to just put yourself out there, and say what needs to be said. Now what to do about my art. God forbid one would want to know what the most logical step should be and cant see passed their short comings.
Tomorrow is a new day, a new time and a new direction. For some. As for me, that’s yet to be seen.
2 comments:
I hope you are well Thomas. A part of me shudders at the thought of a trans-pacific relationship, the strain of two time zones, two continents, seems quite a difficult task to overcome. I have to admit, the first thing that struck me about your post was the desire to shower your love with gifts. I guess materialism for me is a very poor idol for love. I'm being presumptuous when I assume that you meant material things of course (with which to shower her) but that was the sense that I got.
Not that it's my place to say, but no-thing will take the place of a person's love, no trinket will stand in for the warm beat of living flesh and tension of muscle. This is why, I believe, long distance relationships are so difficult: they most often depend upon the promise of eventual closeness.
The internet is a wonderful thing because it reveals our capacity to adapt to a complete deconstruction of self, whilst simultaneously revealing how ill-equipped we are to handle such a psychological shock. We have the tools to fall in love through digital means, but rarely the tools to stay in love through digital means.
I'm convinced the only way one can overcome this is to express yourself, if through gifts, by ways detached from the physical. The arts are a wonderful mechanism for such expression: instead of a locket, write her a poem; instead of a bracelet, paint her a picture. You get the idea.
That's my unrequested two cents, at least.
Hope it turns out well for you~
Adoniram, I appreciate your words, they do indeed resonate well within my head. I thank you for the long sentences you write and your astute observations. Equivically so, does man need to seperate himself from machine and machine from man in these technological entwining times. Indeed it is hard with such a long distance, yet as I look back on previous loves lost I cant help but think to myself that this is indeed, much better, the lack of closeness is a henderence, but indeed that thought of final closeness does keep one steady, Aesop's (sp)tortise and the hare allusion to say the least. Best not to rush ones judgement and contemplate upon the matter at hand, though be it love or not, still contemplation is needed I think. Sometimes I wonder though, especially with my art towards her, does she see it just as a gift or just something to tyde her over till I can make it across the big blue pond. I'm sure you understand what I am getting at.
I suppose with the shower of gifts, its not so much the materialization of it all, hell she loves anything given in love, thats just the kind of person I was blessed with, more of an metaphor in the showering of gifts as in showering her with happiness as she has showered me.
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