lainformacion.com - Medio Oficial de los Premios Bitacoras 2009
When an angel accidentally falls and drowns in the sea, its desperately flapping wings send out vibrations that cause a harmonic fluctuation that coincides with the sound of a suppressed cry, announcing an ocean storm. Think not the feathers washed up on the shore a natural event.
An observer places himself before a painting (standing or sitting -more often standing). The general viewing distance is between four to ten feet. It is a distance. The painting is over there, physically outside of the body of the observer. The painting is usually framed. The frame defines the physical limits of the canvas. The whole canvas may be seen or a part may be the focus of the vision of the viewer. The space between the canvas and the viewer is geometrized air. It is air of a contained visual volume. It is air outside of the observer. Our viewer, by and large, fixes himself in a static position and just looks at the work, from a distance. He is in communion with the painting yet standing three or four arm lengths away. Rarely does the painting give off an odour. The observer can take in the paining with his eyes; he does not breathe in it.
When the observer totally connects with the painting, all actual distances disappear. Thought illuminates the air between –thought that has no surface. That is, a dense void locks itself into the physicality of what has been painted on the surface of the canvas. A coexistence takes place. In a way, thought, which is dematerialized, acts with a materialized thought, translated on the canvas through the application of pigment. A materialized thought meets pure thought (a thought without a substance). The result is revelation.
The observer’s thought has moved from his body and crossed the space between his eyes and the canvas. This act has sucked up the space separating the subject and the object, so to speak. The dematerialized thought left the body of the observer an made the physical space disappear by its flight outward, a flight of no substance collapsing space in its wake.
An angel’s fall is a sad event and difficult to observe. Usually it is brought on by the collision of angels in flight, especially during the winter time when snow fills the air. When angels glide they send out sounds that, at best, reach the pitch of a whisper. Sometimes they are struck blind. In their fall they lose their neutralness. During the fall they enclose their bodies with their wings. The snowflakes make the feathers iridescent. The more fortunate ones appear as grey apparitions. In the white night, their contours become vague.
The reader of a book usually reads in a sitting position (but sometimes reads standing or reclining). In any case the words on the page are no more than twelve inches away. The distance between the reader and page is considerably smaller than the distance between the observer and the painting. Also, the time spent before a painting is considerably less than the time spent in reading a book. While the subject/object matter in a painting is in front of one in a single frame, a book presents a text usually over many pages, that is, through many passages. The book is closer physically; it is held in the hands and fingers turn the pages. Hence, there is a more tactile and direct connection with the body. Paintings are rarely held and even more rarely felt with the fingers. A considerable compression of space takes place with the book. A span of time is passed in reading a book. The thought of the reader is required to pass more time with the object “book” and the duration of thought is extended. A book is less aloof and is more intimate, while a painting keeps distance. A book’s scope is vaster, not necessarily better, just longer in its duration.
The text of a book acts both as transmitter and translator; it is not of the same consequence as the pigment of a paining. The pigment has an instantaneousness, the text delays. Books take time and give time. In reading, our thought is stretched into the kinetics of the book, and the thread is the actual printed text. In literature, words can be erased- a process of elimination. In painting, things can be painted over or painted out. Painting is a stoic art; the number of colours is limited, in literature there are thousands of words. Unlimited text is constantly coming up into focus and as rapidly disappearing out of focus. Text is vulnerable, pigment is adhering…there. Text is close to thought. Painting embeds thought, literature embanks it. With text is necessary that we speak. We can read a passage aloud or we can read it silently. Breath is necessary for both acts. When we read silently, we speak internally, with a sound in which the volume has been reduced to barely audible. Inner reading has taken the materialized text from out there and has brought it in to co-habit the same space as internal thought without substance.
During a certain season in Texas, at dusk, some tree trunks seem to be phosphorescent; they give off a dull, crystalline light. Upon close scrutiny, it is found that the trunks of the trees are completely covered with discarded shells that once were the outer bodies of certain insects. The startling fact is that the shell is intact; the form is exactly as it was when its original inhabitant was inside, with one difference. The inside has left, leaving the outer form, which looks like an x-ray, producing the luminous effect. Suddenly we hear a chorus of sound coming from the dark leaves above. It is the sound of the insects hidden in the tree in their new metaphysical form. What is strange about the phenomenon is that we can see the insects’ shell forms clinging to the tree, these empty shells a form that life has abandoned. While we fix our eyes on these apparitions, we hear the sound of the insect in its new form hidden in the trees. We can hear it but we cannot see it. In a way, the sound we hear is a soul sound.
Art, be it painting, literature or architecture, is the remaining shell of thought. Actual thought is of no substance. We cannot actually see thought, we can only see its remains. Thought manifests itself by its shucking or shedding of itself; it is beyond its confinement.
Usually we sleep lying down, with our eyes closed- closed to the outside. In sleep we see with our eyes closed. We see inside our thoughts, our dreams. During those moments of sleep, we are completely enclosed, totally private. When we are awake and we imagine something, even though the imagination is internal, it seeks its externalization. The sound of our dreams has fewer decibels. The sound of dreams, like the dreams themselves, can be strange. When awake we are able to captures fragments of the images in our dreams, but we almost never can capture the sound of or dreams.
In our journey from painting through literature a then within the body we have crossed over from an open external to a closed internal. While awake we are unaware of the inside of our body. When we observe anatomical drawings, models, etc, we seem to be a voyeur. It is fascinating and makes some sense, but we never can make the direct connection to our own internal organs and parts. For most of our lives, our own internalization, that is, the physical parts that have weight inside, are in fact, weightless. Internal pain is internal pain, perhaps connected to an organ, but the pain does not reveal to us the organ’s shape or weight.
For all intents and purposes, our inside is to us weightless, as weightless as a thought which has no substance. The illusionary, internal voided space is like the internal space of our brain, with the sensations given off by our hearts. In our excitement of creation, the mind and heart begin to fill, we feel the filling internally, the feeling is pure sense. We are filled within and we are thrilled. We are filled with thought that escapes from us. We have been filled with breath.
John Hejduk
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