The world needs another manifesto anyway

Is an action less pure without an idea, or vice versa? Does it matter whether a pattern of movements initiates a thought, or the thought propagates the movement? On their own they are arguably insignificant – either meaningless or incommunicable. I imagine a symbiotic process, where the two build upon each other in succession to completion, instead of the realization of one exclusively through the other; not a chicken and an egg but a right foot and a left. Beliefs are constantly updated, and we act accordingly. Meaning is as much of a construct of anything else; it’s a method of parsing what we experience into something that can be known. There’s both a construction of significance and a destruction of the same in my process of creation – my original idea may become obsolete when another becomes more relevant as I work. It’s a cycle that can become confounded quickly, and remnants of past beliefs may shine through at any point. Mistakes are memories of a thought dismissed and therefore valuable – to cover them is to be dishonest to a past manifestation of yourself. I specifics are hard to pin down exactly for this reason – once something is concrete it is in the realm of a mistake or misunderstanding, and need to be revised (although that pushes the concrete towards an artifact of a former thought). I do not know if this in itself is a paradox or not – ambiguousness as a source of stability.
Setting aside for a moment what is rapidly approaching a fiendish quandary, there must be a reason I put myself in a position that lends itself to such obtuseness. I don’t view what I create as one thing to be understood, but instead as an idea and an illustration of that idea, which can each be considered individually or how they relate to each other. Finding connections between points 1 and B are what I strive for, although I do not always define what these two points are, and if there are other points to be found within my creation, all the better. I am not obsessed with the act of producing artwork, but it is a default I often revert to (compelled, if we are to stick to a syntactic theme). I revisit specific motions of the pen or brush or mind often, but not always to the same end point, maybe even to no endpoint – there is no way of knowing until it has begun. It’s an act of faith in that I must trust that something of worth will come – eventually, some day, from what is done.



David Byrne also connects points A and 2 in his illustrations to his 2006 book Arboretum.












While I think my creative process is mostly an exercise in definition and relation and that it’s reflective of my (incomplete) comprehension of the world, I still strongly believe in the separation of art and “real life.” I recall reading, I believe in something as unassuming as a webcomic, art defined as something done not for the survival of the self or species (boiled down to the basics, eating and fucking). The example was with cave people, when these two functions were very identifiable. The ritual of both of these has obviously taken a complicated turn, and where the line between necessity and excess is blurred. If a line is drawn between the two the essentials become more palpable, in the sense that light cannot exist without darkness or good without evil (if you believe in such things). Instead of contemplating existential dilemmas in a real world situation, art becomes a platform for exploring them without true repercussions but still the promise of true benefit. I’m currently inclined to pursue a career in art therapy for these reasons. The separation between art and life, even if it is potentially illusory, can lead to insights and thoughts that in a non-creative environment may be crippling or unapproachable. Art’s importance and beauty is rendered in part by its frivolity and uncertainty.