There are probably ten open google docs with a few words to a couple paragraphs typed down. Inspiration, contemplation, stagnation, deletion. Cycles and cycles of enlightenment, tidbits of my one, small existence yearning to be released through word. Ultimately, unfulfilled: a jarring poetic stop-and-go that holds the same sentiment as reading Pessoa’s Book Of Disquiet, or the labyrinth in Borges’s Garden of Forking Paths. Chunks of insight, pulses of deeply, spiritually communicative and evocative prose, left for the ether..
Dreams and reality are blurred. One is never quite sure which carries a closer glimpse of existential liberation and enlightenment.
“I’ve never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life. My only real concern has been my inner life.”
― The Book of Disquiet
“This web of time – the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries – embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not.” Borges, Garden of Forking Paths
Pessoa’s dream existence is a poetic response -rather, another dimension- to Borge’s labyrinth. What does this mean for us, for art?..
“I am not sure that I exist actually, I am all the writers that I have read.” — Jorge Luis Borges
..we all have an intuition of the labyrinth. It’s the artist’s calling to make sense of it. Music, poetry, an experiential meal, signifying everything and nothing at all. All of us, together, as an osmosis of thought; story lines being constructed in the mid brain.
“To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.”
― The Book of Disquiet
The poetic irony from Pessoa to Borges becomes clear: the story is never finished. A labyrinth forever, even dreaming. Let’s make art about it.
Jean Langer Photography. https://www.jeanlanger.com/