The Sad Trap of Gravity

I have been in my head since Thursday night…

This withdrawal from the world has seen both positive and negative effects. Walking through a shopping center yesterday, my eyes fixed in front of me, the crowds of people felt like droplets on the water. Rippling into me and seemingly through me. I was the boat and my distraction parted this sea of people and left a only a deaf wake of detached confusion and the necessity to ask people that spoke to me to repeat themselves. Part exhaustion and part awe, I decided to steer myself back to the safe oasis of my apartment to let the cosmic dust in my brain settle and to let the noise out with some paint and some sleep.

The opening of Parallel Universe went so well that, I think, that is where the awe came in. About 20 people showed up and one piece (Rock Monster) sold in the first 15 minutes with 2 others under heavy consideration. Either everybody I know is being really nice or I produced something good. I hope it’s both. It felt amazing to have people come and see my work and it also kind of sucked my soul out of me in a way. That sounds terrible, I know, but I don’t mean it in a bad way. I just mean that talking about ‘my process’ and trying to explain how my head works is very challenging and I felt torn…I wanted to make the work more meaningful to everybody by explaining why it exists but I wasn’t able to convey how I really feel and what I really wanted to say. I guess this is the cliche where I suggest that one should let the art do the talking and see what it means to them….

Sure, there are similarities between the rock and the graffiti. Most of them aren’t all that subtle so it doesn’t take much to see. It’s the invisible strings between each pair that tells the real story though. Hanging “Heard Not Seen” next to “Through Me” was a conscious choice…juxtaposing the raw and free ability to surrender to your feelings and the moment next to the reserved and almost fearful image of somebody not prepared to see the truth is a lot like the battle most people fight with themselves every day. How much should I risk? How much should I restrain? Do I need to be quiet and polite here or can I let my thoughts and feeling free?  It is exactly that balance (or attempt to achieve it) in my own life that made this work possible…Getting into that story for each of these would have come across as both pretentious and little preachy and also would have made me vulnerable in way that I wasn’t expecting. It was the hope that people could read this in the work and the fear that they wouldn’t that was hardest for me. But again, that’s no big surprise….it’s the human condition to hope to be truly understood that is responsible for the greatest learnings and stories, I think.

So, long story short, there are still some pieces available for sale. They are each one of a kind. I am hopeful that I can sell enough to break even or, better yet, afford the next exhibition. The process of assembling something from pieces of and parts of me is challenging in a way that I love and I am hopeful that I will get to do it again. If one of these diptychs moves you, call Herr Ainberger and ask him to save it for you.

All of these fragments and realizations have been hitting me in waves. I swirl around in my head for a while and then come up for air only to get sucked back under…the emails are piling up, my house still isn’t clean and all i can seem to do is escape into a Lonely Planet about the Mekong Delta or some oil paints I bought yesterday. Art therapy and prep for an upcoming adventure, I suppose, but something about it is making me feel a little distorted. I think it’s the Sisyphus Syndrome that I speak of frequently…every dream I achieve sees me rolling down a hill into a pile of more. A pile of dreams…that sounds nice, right? It is. It is definitely nice but it also takes work and attention and constant tending. Like a little garden, this field of dreams is my life and my future. I need to pull the weeds, train the roses, water and feed the seeds so that some of them can grow up and bloom. Maybe it’s my middle-American roots, but I put a lot of stock in the cycle of the harvest and the seasons…My little show in Kufstein was an early and unexpected harvest and I guess I didn’t have ‘room in the silo’ for the bounty so it caught me a little off guard.

My temporary withdrawal from the world is just that…temporary. Even the act of writing this here post is part of the medicine that’s pumping fresh air into my lungs and pulling me back up. Gravity and the heavy nature of even the best things in our lives is unavoidable. Sometimes its better to let yourself fall all the way down before you try to stand back up.

As a tribute to gravity and also as a celebration of the role that ‘leaps of faith’ have in my life, I am going to share something with you. I can’t say that this is true for everybody, but for me, I can say that I find myself on top of the hill every time I let go and jump. Gravity be dammed…at least until I achieve my next dream and find myself rolling back down…