An unfinished excerpt from a work in progress…
So many moments, rooted deeply in association, pepper the path to a horizon that stretches beyond our visual perception, beyond our limited awareness, to the point where their creation is born of pure thought. These associations, these triggers, come to me daily.They appear in the form of music, "American Top 40" episodes, a "favorites playlist," and random encounters with elevators or passing cars. Lyrically and sonically, they represent the soundtrack of my life. The vinyl albums I so passionately sought and bought over the course of the year following Linda's death. The reason for doing so later being recognized as a mid-life crisis blended into a coping mechanism, a means of grasping at and desperately clinging not only to my past but to my present now. In her absence, as my life moves forward without while still influenced by her and all that was left behind, inseparable matter and thought.
My home and surroundings, too, are replete with personal history. A fountain pen, a lighter, menus, a newborn's hospital wrist strap, my mother's, Linda's, Jennifer's, and my own childhood handprints—my history, their history, our shared history, inherently influencing my own to this very moment. Set props from scenes within the narrative of experience, their significance defined by recollection.
The act of writing longhand, long abandoned decades ago, is a reminiscence. My penmanship capsized and sank in the keys, a casualty of the technological revolution. The artifact of its degeneration is consciously and embarrassingly visible whenever I hand-address an envelope. The return of my previously innate and natural ability to guide a pen, flowing fluidly across a page, pausing only as long as the thought preceding its resurgence, signals a return to a lost form of art. Even the fine pattern of a graph paper page, digital in this incarnation, remains a historical comfort zone. This paper tablet, a half-truth in description, becomes the artistic canvas and the stage upon which I might manifest a balanced narrative of this chaotic and complex life story.
Perceptions are defined by the storyteller when the author and the character are one. Yet individual reflections distort truths, and views from fixed angles prove to be subjectively incomplete. Why? Is life literally what you make it? Are we complicit in the loss and pain we might claim to endure? What defines and shapes remorse, passion, regret, drive, and deceit? Are they external influences or internal creations?
An event is unrelated to how we bring our own feelings into play—into "the play" that we each write as we live with emotion, controlled or not. We choose to invoke or relinquish perspective and control while living within imaginary walls we blindly accept, ignoring the all-too-familiar handwriting on the wall—or on the graph paper, for that matter.