Our Unique Journey

Making one's way in life is often making it in the fog. We can't see what comes next; all we have to help us set our direction is what already we have seen and what we are seeing now.

From what we have seen of life we gather together our bearings. These consist of what we believe are patterns of action and consequence. When you see bird flocks fly across the sky, you know winter is coming. 

I have not gone over the photos I took on the trip to the Amalfi Coast last May. I've processed a few photos when browsing the folders in Aperture but I have not gone through every image. Most of what I've seen are forgettable images. They are more useful for recapturing the adventure but as art they fail miserably.

While taking the photographs I believed I was capturing something of what I was experiencing at the time. The images bring back the experience but without my memories the images themselves don't tell anything of the story. An artistic image is a moment plucked from the story line that somehow communicates a story, not always the same story, just by itself. When I put several photos together, the story emerges so maybe as a collection the images could work.

Yesterday I viewed two mini DV tapes on the new Sony field player. I found the interview with Sean about his views on women and relationships with women as moving as ever. I remember showing it to Francisco who commented on how frank Sean was in his answers. "What is woman?" I started out asking him. As though talking to himself he gave answers that seemed to come unedited directly from inside him. There was no acting here. Good actors could perhaps mimic this directness but that shoot made me want to make movies about real people but real people who are able to reveal their souls as openly as Sean did. 

I think a model or actor is good when he projects what the viewer feels are his private, intimate self. Intimacy touches us. In the course of our business or family lives there remains a part of us that is like a wound. During the day's busy with chores and external challenges we might forget we have this wound but at night or when we are finally alone with our own thoughts the wound reappears. Some of us have completely forgotten thee wounds until something touches that soothes the burning, aching pain of the wound. Then we remember that the wound has never stopped hurting; we just learned to put it away in our secret room. 

A relationship might staunch the pain for a while but the wound does not go away forever. The wound is our very soul. When we recognize it is our wound and decide to do something about it, we take risks that could make the dull ache sharp and more intense. Sometimes we feel better despite the greater pain. There is no question then in our minds about the wound's presence. Pain brings clarity and we prefer clarity to ignorance.

I want to create works to make us remember the primeval wounds our souls are. Fiction in words and/or images might be too big for me to tackle. I must find venues more suited to my resources. To find what only I uniquely can do is not settling for something smaller. Wounds are metaphysical realities, unlimited by the usual measures by which we judge everything else. 

To know my own wound and from that wound seek to connect other people to their own wounds is essential work. For me this is what spiritual has come to. This has nothing to do with gods or beliefs and everything to do with living above all the posturing drama and heedless craving.