Monday, October 22, 2007

I just did a video journal entry for the first time in a long while. I’ve been shooting here and there, capturing season changes, herds of wild horses, landscapes, and the odd sunset of staggering beauty; but I haven’t been talking to the camera much. To a large degree I’ve been gone, lost… inside myself.

It began a few months back… all of a sudden I became tired with this idea of blog entries and video postings. I had set out on a journey to find myself and capture a film, but instead, I was finding myself chained to a laptop, wanting (and feeling pressured) to relay experiences as they unfolded in real-time. I was losing control of my original intentions: to slow down and connect to something real.

I think now I can honestly say that sometimes, when you find yourself getting off track, it can be helpful to almost leave the track altogether for a while. Get lost, so that you can get found.

As my friend arrived for her visit, she brought with her a tremendous amount of energy from, what is for me, a far off paradigm. As we first began to speak, I felt as if I was not simply speaking to a friend, but wrestling with another world, and another aspect of myself.

I am well aware that regardless of how far off the beaten path I may travel, I will most likely never be able to shake off the ways of seeing/being from whence I came. In this sense I feel somehow as though I am becoming of two worlds, one foot in each paradigm, unable to ever again be completely in either reality.

I don’t know if this makes sense, but you were wondering where I was…

The conversation I had on that first night brought me back while also showing me where I was. It made me realize how I had been intentionally losing myself, and it made me eager to head back home, out onto the road.

Now that I’m returning to the process it’s different, I’m not so concerned with relaying experiences, developing and capturing audiences, or ‘producing’ art that can be quantified and hung on a wall. I’m somehow freer than before, and not feeling the same pressures of a world almost two-years behind me, and in that, I’m somehow left in a place to enjoy and make something that’s maybe somehow more pure.

The work will come: the finished film and photographic works, the quantifiable evidence, the measurement of success, perhaps the proof of what I’m out here doing (to be honest, at times, I have little idea; it being a matter of faith and process). Maybe in time what will emerge are some of the answers to my (perhaps our) many questions…

It will all come… in time.

peace,
d

“Ah, if only the hand of man could create such works of art, such holy, essential images untainted by will or vanity. But it was not that way. Other images were created: pretty, delightful things, made with great mastery, the joy of art lovers, the ornament of churches and town halls–beautiful things certainly, but not sacred, not true images of the soul. He knew many such works, not only by Niklaus and other masters– works that, in spite of their delicacy and craftsmanship, were nothing but playthings. To his shame and sorrow he had already felt that in his own heart, had felt in his hands how an artist can put such pretty things in the world, out of delight in his own skill, out of ambition and dissipation.

When he realized this for the first time, he grew deathly sad, Ah, it was not worth being an artist in order to make little angel figures and similar frivolities, no matter how beautiful. Perhaps the others, the artisans, the burghers, those calm, satisfied souls might find it worthwhile, but not he. To him, art and craftsmanship were worthless unless they burned like the sun and had the power of storms. He had no use for anything that brought only comfort pleasantness, only small joys. He was searching for other things.

-Herman Hesse: “Narcissus and Goldmund”