Lassitude and Longitude

hope is a word for the weak and resigned…

Often, I hear people discussing their ‘hopes’ in a fashion I find eerily similar to how we speak of the departed; they speak from a source of sentimentality, blind optimism, habituated reverence, and spiritual angst. Hope accomplishes nothing; it is an empty wish without an agent and/or agency. It acts like an anesthetic or an analgesic for those who fear and refuse to confront reality – those who refuse to take action or assert themselves. Hope is a vacation-land where the weak and resigned seek refuge; a retirement home for those who have ended or surrendered their wills, passions, and pursuits, settling to live vicariously through the lives and stories of others (those who don’t require hope)… Hope is what we cling to when we lack experience and or knowledge, it is a sort of celebrated ignorance. Like religion for people in prison, hope is all that’s left for the disenfranchised and dispassionately bereft.

Truth is a slippery substance, a serum, an antidote for inexplicability. Our quest for ‘truth’ is an awkward improvisation, a futile lunge to catch a falling knife. Lies, like ligaments conjoin our implausible past with our impossible presence and unforeseeable future, providing us with a point of articulation; a protrusion, an arm that allows us leverage and reach so that we may grasp not what’s true, but what’s real.

What is true…? me, you, tomorrow, these words, this single sheet of paper? Rene Descartes proved incontrovertibly that we do [in fact] exist and that our existence is the only ‘truth’ man will ever possess. With this, we were able to find the self to be evident and a priori, but remain unavenged by truth in the pursuit of purpose, i.e. the God concept.

What we can know is greatly limited and governed by our senses of perception. The way we navigate through our lives and plot our passage across this suggested plane of linear progression is not contingent upon what’s true. Rather, it is contingent upon what we perceive – that which is real.

Memory is neither to be trusted or disinherited. Like a dank forest floor quietly consuming the sodden refuse of last year’s legacy, our memories, in time, will turn to fodder; sifting beneath the surface to sustain another season’s strife. Memory is impermanent and unenduring. Its factualness is replete with inconsistency and tendency to convolute and omit certain details seen as superfluous to some, fundamental to others.

At the age of seven, when I viewed my uncle’s body, dead in his coffin, did I really touch his hand the way I recall or did I, instead, pinch the back of my own imagining the waxy turgor and unresponsive weight of death – thereby eliding the truth? I tell you, I’m can’t be sure. What little I am able to exhume from my recollection is neither fact or fiction to, but what I know as real – what I remember.

I have forgotten most of my life. I have misplaced the firm details and demographics of my past. Like a Degas or Renoir, the loose impressions of the life I’ve left behind are mosaics of inference and incompleteness, broken lines and unfinished brushstrokes implicating a past, a presence, or something real to be realized.

When I gaze into the well of recollection I never see a true reflection of myself. Instead, a distorted, dappled image of fluidity upon the surface of something I have never been able to touch or understand. Realizing this, I cannot help but sometimes wonder if, in fact, those undulations and bent images are the truth and that everything else, still and fixed is a great fiction or foreplay to what’s really true or yet to be told.

I do not refuse the existence of truth. I believe in in axioms and maxims and deductions arrived at through reason. I believe that man can know himself, his own existence and a great deal of the natural world, but what I argue about now is the integrity of memories, the truths by which we conduct ourselves; the construction of morality and the convention/s of society; ideas of right and wrong.

As constant observers we bear witness and more often than not (false witness) to our own lives and the lives of others. We forge fictive memories of indelible delusions to which we conform and covet, thus consummating the co-dependant union between ‘truth’ and truth seeker. What is so important about truth is if says nothing about what is real or how you felt at any given moment in your past?

What’s so important about truth if it only scratches a surface – if it only conveys logistics like a police report? The more precise question is, do you know what’s true, could you ever know the truth, your truth? And, if so, could you protect that memory from the deceptive tendency that reassigns recollection to the acquiescent realms of repudiation where narratives are rewritten as fictions or fairytales.

If a writer can use metaphor to finish a unfinished circle and thereby apprehend their meaning, their fleeting existence, then they have, indeed, achieved victory over those who kept journals, notebooks, and even recordings, but have yet to extract the spirit or substance from their life.

What impresses me is narrative, and not just any; narrative that denotes a frequency of humanness so profound it pounds in your ears and eyes, forcing you not to fawn over facts, but to cower with quiet consternation for the presence of its humanity.

With every entropic tick of the clock there is a face blurring over in ambiguity in the audience of my recollection. One day, I will forget what I remember, all of it. I will forget the street name of my family’s first house (McArthur) and the color of its inner walls (English apple). I will forget the sound that my mother’s wallet made when hitching shut…(snick), but I will never forget how I felt.

As artists we owe nothing to the truth and everything to our emotions.

Being a photographer, I have a few friends and fellow colleagues that are photographers as well. We often discuss the politics of image, as well as photographers and photographer’s works that happen to catch our attention. Rarely do we echo one another’s viewpoints and when this happens, an email war of attitude and opinion ensues…

Recently, my Parisienne-American photo friend (Walter) emailed me a link to a photographer’s bio that had made an impression upon him. In the email he provided me with a link to this particular photojournalist’s bio and that’s where this exchange begins.

Here’s the link – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jalpeyrie

(my reply after viewing the link)

So I actually read this bio three times and just didn’t glean anything I found interesting…. I kept asking myself…. what is the purpose or intention of this particular essay. It was effusive and redundant – seemed like a name dropping campaign dispatched by a photojournalist who can’t quite quench his thirst for fame with the by-lines he receives in the many (important and renowned) publications he cites?

All to often I find myself saying….(WHO CARES?) but you must understand where I stand on language and communication in general. Very rarely are people ever saying anything – discourse and conversation to me, is just a reheated casserole of trite leftovers. Personally, I’d rather starve to death and stab out my ear-drums before having to suffer another chorus of common sense.

I did however find this little bit interesting – “The photojournalist cannot lie, what he sees, he photographs, later to bring it back to his world to be shown and appreciated.” What a foolish young man…to think that first of all there is such a thing as truth or lies to begin with, let alone that a human being can ever recollect or re-present an event with even a scintilla of objectivity.

Photography is a lie beginning with it’s design…its view of the world in monocular? And second….when a subject is chosen and a frame is placed over a world that exists without a frame….something always gets left out/edited/cropped/omitted. The very nature of photography places a value and assigns a significance to its pictured (chosen) subjects, and all that is subsequently omitted becomes less significant, hence a bias is born.

Truth – ha truth…. truth be told, I can’t stand photojournalists – they need to just admit what they are and retire their anthem of amelioration. They’re thrill junkies, voyeurs, watchers, warmongers, ‘whores for war’. They are the peasant class’s paparazzi; they pick on the sick, suffering, and subordinate because they’re easy targets. They’re perhaps the most overtly vain and narcissistic creatures that inhabit god’s green earth – for them, exiting this world without being a part of history/history-making scares them beyond death itself. However, if they knew anything of history (the history of news photography and its impact/affect/s on its readership and society at large) they’d know they are fighting gravity and inevitably doomed to fail.

The truth is… they do know, but continue to practice under a doctrine of false logic and foolish beliefs that photographs of others pain and suffering can induce sympathy or affect change. At best, we (as viewers of news images) might whence or grimace and feel a fraction of fortune that its not our sorry asses being slaughtered in the streets. The photojournalist knows this apathy and indifference above and beyond all – for it is the photojournalist who passively stands-by (not intervening) while such ‘crimes against humanity’ are carried out, but yet they expect their audience to react differently….

No.. we experience the same frissons of excitement and arousal that they did while standing-by. We gorge on the grotesque and then move on (we are all vampires of the visual) photojournalists and their audiences alike. At best… they are merchants of misfortune and the macabre who serve our insatiable need to spy on the suffering of those less fortunate than ourselves.

They not only want to possess and collect bits and pieces of history’s archive and the collective social conscious – they want the kudos that comes with saying they authored it. They think news is war, starving Africans, civil unrest, etc. What they don’t know is that everything is news – even their own pathetic vicariously invested lives.

-p

(Walter’s reply)

Gee… what a bleak vision of things and motives… The point to me is that he left his safe routine life and actually went out to do something with it. Search for truth, find himself, see the world, whatever, that’s more than most people even dream of. Yeah, the guy is not a good writer and he probably doesn’t understand why he’s doing what but like you say, so what?

The problem with photojournalism nowadays is that we’re already seen the crying mothers, the starving kids, the dead bodies, the killing and we’re all “used” to it. Nobody gives a crap anyway. As long as Me is OK, to hell with the rest of it. I’ve lived here a while and I see a weird trend in this culture. What used to be individualism, think for yourself, has now turned into “my interests” before anything else. I hear Republicans say “America first” whereas it should be the people first.

The rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, the middle-class that used to be the strength of this country, frankly idiotic. People seem more interested in gossip than issues. Anyway, I always salute those who try, even if they’re off or if they fail.

Walter

(My reply)

I think, in the eyes of most, my opinions and personal beliefs/philosophies resonate with cynicism and may appear bleak for that reason. But just like you, I have arrived at certain understandings by way of experience and reason. One thing that I have come to understand is that good and bad do not exist. So, in that sense you could say I’m amoral – but make no mistake, I’m still very aware of conventional morality; how to act in accordance with and relate to its constructs (they are far from alien to me).

What enriches my life and gives me hope (and I shudder at calling it hope because hope is dumb). So, instead, I should say what gives me satisfaction in this life is questioning; deconstructing and exposing hypocrisies of human existence and tearing at the fabric of a false human ideals. This may seem nihilistic and anarchical (and perhaps it is), but I assure you that it is only he who is willing to confront his true identity, who can reach any sort of actualization in this life.

It is he who masquerades as an altruist and heir to a constructed god’s false fortunes (the reward for a life devoted to ignorance abnegation) that delays the evolution of mankind and condemns his own fate – it is he who poisons the well and sedates us with superstitious yarns and fables of selfless acts. You could throw away most of what human beings believe in or wish believe about themselves and nothing real would be lost (nothing about man’s basic nature would change).

Such grandiose personifications of man exist only in theory, suspended in the duplicitous web of human belief – they are evidenced nowhere in reality. There is the surface…comprised of fictions, facades, performances, deceit, camouflage, subterfuge, and abstraction. Then there is simply what is…that which exists without representation, that which needs no hyperbole or dramatic distortion. It is man’s pathetic and futile quest for meaning that has condemned him to a life of denial and evasion – a life spent worshiping image.

Image (if we consider image to be the manifestation of language and consciousness) is the nexus of this conundrum – image is perhaps the most deceptive of all human contrivances, it lures us into its trap by pandering to our vanity and possessive nature. It ensnares us with its descriptiveness and accuracy, image leads us to believe that accuracy is tantamount to truth, and that truth can be made tangible, that truth exists at all…

We invented the trap and we are now stuck within its snare – it’s poetic justice, very much like the Hellenic version of Narcissus, but in our version we don’t realize that mirrored image is simply a reflection upon the water’s surface. No… we dive in head first and drown in our own self interest. And, self interest…. hedonism… what is wrong with that?

I’m directly asking you this question? It’s almost as if you suppose without really questioning that man should live for men and that living to fulfill one’s own desires is in some way deplorable? It’s almost as if you assume that man is capable of doing anything without his own interest being the incentive for whatever action or decision he takes. This leads me to believe that you, yourself, believe in altruism. Me, I’m an egoist so this is very hard for me to reconcile or relate with in any fashion.

To me, it is obvious that the selfless act is the white elephant of intellectual and ethical mythology – in order to maintain this idea we compromise and sacrifice more than what the idea alone is worth. Altruism can only exist in anonymity, the charitable party’s identity must never be known to anyone, but this only satisfies part of the equation, for we cannot guarantee that this philanthropist isn’t swimming in self praise and basking in the perceived reward that comes with being ’selfless’…. yea, it’s a big problem.

Photojournalists aren’t out to stop hunger or the spread of HIV, they’re surely not taking on mortar fire or embedded with rebel forces to put an end to war (not even the images of Brady and Sullivan, Eddie Adams or Phillip Jones Griffiths could slow the rate of slaughter in the wars to which they belonged). PJ’s are not there for the money, hell we both know that, but they are there for the acclaim, for the thrill, for any reason that might make them feel good that is only know to them – or else they wouldn’t be there.

But the last thing on this earth they’re there for – is to affect change. Change just so happens to be the anthem and respectable reply for why one whores for war. I don’t have an issue with what ppl do; I have an issue with lies and misrepresentation, with pretenders. I, as well, salute those who try for betterment and amelioration, but also brandish a grimace beneath the brim of that salute for their cause is still one of self interest and the perceived reward that follows ‘the success of their mission’. But even terrorists and serial-killers have standards and benchmarks by which they measure their success.

Sure, being a Christian and a countryman [an American] is deemed ‘good’ while terrorism and murder are ‘bad’ – but this is neither here nor there because at the end of the day, my good friend… there is someone’s loss, pain, and suffering in all that we gain, no matter what side of ‘right’ or ‘good’ we fight for. And beneath that there is only the self that motivates us, even in our missions of mutual consent to fool one another that we do what we do for anyone else BUT ourselves. Accepting this, knowing this actually makes me feel good – it’s revelational, I know that must be hard for you to believe, but admitting hope, altruism, and objectivity is a hoax and looking sternly at what is real actually gives me reason to believe that something better can exist beyond the lies and denial.

-p

I recently began writing a personal essay/article on love after suffering through some random television ad that briefly referenced ‘love’ and everyone’s inborn ability to give and receive love (probably a hair replacement or cat food commercial?)

It occurred to me that love is often presumed to be an inherent attribute of all human beings – how funny it seemed that this belief/notion is rarely (if ever) questioned or challenged. Even more interesting to me was why I, myself, never challenged this notion that all human beings are equally capable of love.

I thought about what love is, sans its musical accompaniment and drug induced nirvana (dopamine) , and it occurred to me that love is wholly about action, deliberateness, and discipline. It is entirely the product of one’s decisions and intent, but more importantly love requires us to resign what most consider, our irrational and selfish desires; our autonomy.

Love requires us to deny ourselves under a mutual contributional agreement to a ‘perceived’ greater good. Parenthetically, I realized that love was yet another fabrication and social construct – an identity that is alien to us considering who and what we are in absence of constructed social ideals and adherence to those ideals.

Stripped of its soundtrack and poetic flourishes love is a performance, a ritual, a routine of discipline, submission and obedience above all, (often times, blind and begrudging obedience for most human behavior [conformity] is born of fear and flight from judgment and criticism). Regardless, love occurred to me as just another role to which we assign ourselves or take on out of necessity or circumstantial obligation – much like a job.

As well, it occurred to me that love could also be considered an aspiration (a goal) for some, primarily of those who covet the assigned values and subsequent rewards of ‘being in love’ or being a ‘lover’ and the significance/value of those titles/attributes, as they are commonly perceived in our society. After all, what human could survive or succeed without love…? (Interesting  how Maslow never made mention of this in his hierarchy.)

I recalled how, when I was a child, I aspired to be a famous basketball player but after years of try-outs, training camps, practices, and riding the pine I was forced to abandon my aspiration of becoming an NBA legend and face-up to an impassable reality… which was…. being a great ball player meant having more than a big heart and big hopes, it required a breadth of skills, a repertoire of talent – that which I just did not possess.

From this I eventually came to the conclusion that love is no different – that this role which requires great skill… LOVE… is one that some of us are capable of and others are not – that the notion of equality when it comes to love is as much a myth as anyone believing that we are all equally capable of becoming great pianists, painters, poets, or master chess players.

This, simply, is not true. I realized that no matter how much or how many of us say we want to love or be ‘in love’ only a marginal number of are capable of such a feat; a feat I believe is far more strenuous and demanding than what is required of any intellectual or athelete. Love is above all the most difficult task we have ever assigned to ourselves – it requires people to be something else… something that we are not in love with…. ourselves.

I suppose with that parking lot photo (which was shot through
the glass window of my hotel room) I was confronting the symmetry
and banality of a life without a view – the constancy of yellow lines
indicating the ‘parked’ status of something stationary… I was full of
fear and sorrow, self-loathing and loss. To me, the photo was about
construction and complacency – about the way we build walls…
Unremarkable walls, walls that could easily be destroyed or scaled,
and how we literally park ourselves outside of those walls (most, for
the entirety of our lives) gazing at obstruction as if it were a scenic
view or vista, some sight to behold, something sublime. But, the only
thing sublime in the view is the lack thereof, the imposition of our
own confinement, self-incarceration….

Violence predates morality. In order for us to clearly understand how violce ‘functions’ we must subvert the symbolic and obfuscatory moral order and contemplate violence from an amoral vantage point/perspective.

This may sound funny coming from me, but…

this image, for me, is very spiritual…
It’s as if the woman in the paper-bag colored coat
is summonsing a celestial force – an inversion of the genie
in the bottle myth, if you will. To me, she is not
the product of theories; ‘big bang’ or biology.

Rather, she is the punctum of all creation…and with each
gesture of her arm outstretched, birds and boardwalk pour
from her wind rippled cuff. I like to imagine that her bag
possesses magical powers, not unlike mary-poppins when
she pulled the most inconceivable items from her purse.

And, like a weight used to keep important papers from
scattering in a wind, her stance and gate are solid and absolute.
To her right, further down on the boardwalk, a once patriotically
painted trash receptacle stands faded and anchored in the
illusion of this accidental allegory. This image reminds me that
god (the god concept) is real, but no less a construct than man himself.

Morality should never serve as the custodian of thought or dictate the direction of one’s thinking.

The marketplace of meaning is governed by the autocracy of morality whose lordship is based solely upon blind piety and superstition.