Hi world.

How’s it going?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the work that goes into being a decent human lately.

So, this is about you, and me, and what it means to be an endless creation in an ephemeral world.

BACKBONES OF LIFE

One of the coolest college classes I have ever taken was a study of contemporary art that introduced me to concepts and creators that I still think about all of the time. We looked at Ana Mendieta, Basquiat, Barbara Kruger, and so many more brilliant artists. Yet throughout each medium, each piece, each human, there remained two central concepts that I can recall. Palimpsest and ephemerality. Looking at them now, I see they are holding each other’s hands. And more so, I see that they are not just the backbones of creative work, but of life too.

ENDLESS CREATION

Let me explain.

I’ll start with palimpsest because I hadn’t known what it meant before that class and it recently came up in a book I’m reading, inspiring this post. If you also don’t know, a palimpsest essentially refers to anything that has been scrubbed clean for a new use, but that still displays remnants of what was first there. Kind of like how a chalkboard never seems to be able to be completely erased. You can always see bits and pieces of yesterday’s equations underneath today’s. That’s how I think of it anyway. 

Probably because that’s also how I think of myself. On my bedroom mirror, in tiny lettering at the very top, I have the words “endless creation” written. I’m not typically one for mirror affirmations or post-it note messages, but I do love this one. A lot. It reminds me that I am my own responsibility, my own art project, my own creation. And that that work is never-ending.

I think that growing up, we tend to assume that we grow a whole lot as kids and teenagers, but that we will have things mostly figured out by the time that we become adults. Maybe because this makes the scary world feel a little safer, or maybe because adults can be really good at faking it, but that is what I remember. Obviously, it was a sham, a charade. And, well, thank god. I wouldn’t want to be complete at nineteen. Or thirty. Or seventy. I want to be an endless creation, one that I get to work on every day. I don’t know why we try to act like it’s not this way, why we put on an air of perfection around children, because as far as I’m concerned the thought of hitting an end point is a hell of a lot scarier than the thought of being a little messy and a little unsure about some things. Most things. Landing in a state of stagnancy about anything doesn’t seem quite human. 

PALIMPSEST

We are meant to be palimpsests. Our bodies change and our lives change and everything changes, but underneath, there will always be remnants of the past. Of who we were and what we did and how we felt. That’s the good stuff. That’s the proof-that-you-have-lived-stuff. Scars, phrases, the way that you laugh. Sometimes I think that my laugh is a combination of the laughs of every person I have ever loved. They say you cannot dream of a face you have not seen. Maybe it’s like that.

Which is really cool, I think. Mostly because we are taught to hide our pasts, to not talk about them too much, or let them show through too early when meeting new people. We are taught to scrub the chalkboard of our lives until it is practically a tabula rasa, so as not to have too much, oh, what do we call it, baggage? And why? The heavier the baggage, the stronger you are. Why hide that? Why hide the art that you invariably are? It won’t be the same tomorrow.

EPHEMERALITY

Which is the sister-concept of today: ephemerality. Besides being a gorgeous word, it’s also just a gorgeous truth. The whole idea of being a messy work of art is that it isn’t constant. It isn’t something that you ever finish, per say. You are your own never-ending labor of love. Maybe it could end if everything would just slow down and settle for a minute, but it won’t ever do that because we live in an ephemeral world. Meaning, we are constantly adapting to new situations feelings and whatnot because most things, all things, are fleeting. You know this. It’s the basic premise of life. But it’s also the basic premise of why our development is never-ending. Even when we experience a moment of bliss and satisfaction where it seems that we have figured everything out, that moment is already going away from us. It’s an ephemeral illusion of being done, which we never truly are. I suppose my point is that that is something to celebrate, not lament.

So, cheers to being a chaotic being.

Love, m.

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