that mirage, or that intuition... (and one more bell...)

"... the experience must be repeated, lived again, to be of any value; and so one must always start again...the same holds true, for example, for the intuition that is the origin of many poems. somebody says, more or less, "i felt as if the order of the world had been revealed to me" or else "i understood the language of the birds" or "the veil that is normally between us and reality was rent" (which is also the theme in fairy tales). these are, indubitably, facts, of course, experiences (you can treat them as lies, but they happen, nonetheless) - an experience of that kind can take on various forms, but the result is always the same. it has happened ever since man first appeared on earth, and you can find hundreds of examples in mystic, philosophical or purely literary texts. you could object that such an experience is a mirage, but what makes such a mirage possible, and why could it not have meaning, even as a mirage?

that mirage, or that intuition, revelation or dream, sets an order against disorder, a fullness against the void, and wonder, enthusiasm, hope against disgust. is it possible to believe that man's obsession with order in so many different fields could be totally devoid of sense? and do we not have the duty, or at least the right, to listen to that very deep, irresistible nostalgia within ourselves, as if it really said something important and true? is it not narrow minded to refuse to believe in the enigma that attracts and enlightens us? is it more equitable to believe only in skeletons, ruins? let us remain faithful to our immediate experience, rather than be eager to listen to whatever may contradict it from the outside.

... start from uncertainty. take nothing for granted, for is not all that is established paralysed? uncertainty is the motor, shadow the source. i walk because i have nowhere to stay, i speak because i don't know, to prove that i am still alive. stammering, i have not been struck down yet...if i breathe it is because i still don't know...

text: philippe jaccottet, seedtime (a great big giant huge thanks to woolgathersome for directing me to jaccottet for which i am most greatfull). image, of course, an anonymous RPPC of a bell ringer in what appears to be a relatively isolated place - "i ring because my ears are hungry, and while i know this bell, i find something different in the ringing each time i pull this string..."

unsystematic searching...

..."that was the plan. but then as you walk along, you find things. i think that's the advantage of walking. it's just one of the reasons why i do that a lot. you find things by the wayside or you buy a brochure written by a local historian, which is in a tiny museum somewhere, which you would never find in london. and in that you find odd details which lead you somewhere else, and so it's a form of unsystematic serching, which of course for an academic is far from orthodoxy, because we're meant to do things systematically.

but i never like doing things systematically. not even my ph.d. research was done systematically. it was always done in a random, haphazard fashion. and the more i got on, the more i felt that, really one can find something only in that way in which, say, a dog runs through a field. if you look at a dog following his nose, he traverses a patch of land in a completely unplottable manner. and he invariably finds what he's looking for. i think that, as i've always had dogs, i've learned from them how to do this. [audience laughter] and so you then have a small amount of material, and you accumulate things, and it grows; one thing takes you to another, and you make something out of these haphazardly assembled materials. and, as they have been assembled in this random fashion, you have to strain your imagination in order to create a connection between the two things. if you look for things that are like the things that you have looked for before, then, obviously, they'll connect up. but they'll only connect up in an obvious sort of way, which actually isn't, in terms of writing, something new, very productive. so you have to take heterogeneous materials in order to get your mind to do something that it hasn't been done before. that's how i thought about it. then, of course, curiosity gets the better of you"...

from an interview with w.g. sebald from 'the emergence of memory', 2007. i'm grateful to the recommender of this book to me, because of how sebald talks about inspiration, and here about the gathering of material before the writing starts. this kind of wandering that allows one to find connections in things discovered in a much more random way - as though these objects come to you, rather than you to them; seems opposed to the precise nature of writing, and in the interview sebald says the writing is the worst part, the least fun, while the research and gathering is the good part.

his path is guided by intuition, and reminds me a little of what i wrote about a few months ago regarding the photo of the toy trains and a sculpture for my last show, and how the photograph worked on me even after i had stopped 'thinking' about it. for sebald it is the city streets, small museums, etc. for me it is continually the flea markets, because i tend to respond to old things; but inspiration always feels stronger when it sneaks up on you than when it bonks you over the head.

i've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand...

i've been thinking a lot about how certain images remain in your unconscious mind and kind of work on you over time unknowingly. the one thing blogging has done for me is that there is an automatic record of the date of discovery for every image i post.

i don't go back and look at older postings or images much, in fact revisiting things in cyberspace is almost never. i don't have the empty minded flipping of pages experiences in this space as i do with the bulging books in my studio filled with cut out findings, held in place with tape. with the books it's not so much a process of seeking as wandering through images that are familiar, but which i'm still struggling to understand why they attracted me in the first place. they contain images i've gathered over a longer period of time and on a less consistent basis. with the blog, i simply roll towards certain things in a just awakened state, where inspirational fodder for a morning gets replaced the next morning...

the blog as a set of images is much like my conscious brain, with each image fading a bit as i add a new one (strange that these digital photos now live as though they were actual photographs fading with age...).

last night i was working on finishing up a piece that i've been working on the past 6 months or so (it will be part of my show that opens saturday). during its making, things hover conversationally as i build: watts towers, tramp art, molecule models, bruno taut's alpine architecture, terragni's ideas towards the danteum, the paintings of kupka. these, and other things i've already forgotten, bubble to the surface out of the process of thinking and making; but as always, there are things that go into a work, that i really i hadn't thought about or consciously noticed as an inspirational presence. last night, i went into my studio to take a picture of all the parts lying on the floor. it actually wasn't until i looked at the window on my digital camera to take a picture, that i saw the space of my studio as a flattened image, and i remembered this snapshot of toy trains that i posted on airforms a year or so ago.

i had posted it in relation to the paintings of alfred jensen, and strangely enough suggested then that the arrangement could be or might be 'a score' (this entire work was birthed from a 12 page classical music score, and could still also be read as one). the interesting thing is not only might that the train photo have unconsciously suggested the structural form which is so clearly present in the piece, as much as i originally connected the train forms in the photo to images in a painting (jensen's). this responding to a sculptural work in a photograph and connecting it to images in a painting, suggests a deeper relationship between the painted and sculpted things i make.

it is rare when a single image or simple object can become a model of the connectedness of all things that one makes, as well suggesting a connectedness among all things one responds to in the world. the train photo and the photo of these objects on the studio floor reveal to me a kind of intuitive focus - being able to work while both knowing and unknowing at the same time - and in some ways the trains show me more because it's difficult to see one's own works in a light of such distance and clarity.

the other interesting thing is that the train photo is taken at an odd angle, where the images of things lying flat on a table, are read as cascading and related to pictorial rather than actual gravity. when i started these piles of wood i imagined they would be on the floor, a series of minor architectures for humble thoughts. eventually, i decided to string them together, suggesting more of their internal musical and narrative structure. to allow them to not only suggest architecture but to also construct architecture with them. the final work will not reflect the train images as they were in life, but as they are in the reading of a photograph.

inspiration is such a strange thing. an image or object tends to work hardest on me when i've seemingly forgotten all about it. conscious replication is of little interest, as it tends to deny a source the ability to reveal deeper truths beyond it. for me, it's about planting seeds and allowing them to grow within you unnoticed, until they bubble to the surface in these relatively surprising ways. i don't try to direct these things so much as i let them continually jab my insides in tiny and seemingly unimportant ways - never really noticing they've had their way with me until i finish a piece and realize it didn't exactly come from where i thought it did.

when benjamin wrote that for book collectors "ownership is the most intimate relationship one can have with objects. not that they come alive in him, but it is he who lives in them.” i think he's both right and wrong, for there are many things we do enter and live inside of, but there are also certain things that enter us - and while they are sometimes slumbering inside us unnoticed, there are times that they do come alive. in many cases we might not remember they are in us, but they are continually working their quiet magic in wonderfully mysterious ways. once in awhile, a moment decides to let you in on this little secret, and you see what you have done, and you realize that you are not so much the guide, as much as the guided.