Synthesis: a stream of consciousness
During the ritual of transubstantiation in the Catholic faith (as far as I understand) a simple wafer stands in for the body of Jesus Christ. Or, more accurately for some, the wafer is the body of Christ passing into and becoming one with the receiving congregant. Occasionally, I assume, the bread and wine traditionally utilized for this role are still used. One hopes.
I wonder because Does it smack of a more robust sense of faith if a flavorless, mass produced wafer can transform into the savior’s spirit? One would, perhaps, assume that most messiahs of old would strongly prefer that their flesh and/or spirit be conjured and commemorated by handmade bread and aged wine. Something culled and transformed from simple earthly ingredients into satiating and inebriating agents by and for the members of a given community.
Although increasingly synthetic, mechanically processed, and refined ingredients tend to dominate the production of art “taken seriously” in our contemporary world, are they not transmuted in the most successful cases into equal measures of satiation and inebriation for a community? Maybe just down-home thoughtfulness.
I am nothing if not one prone to digression.
I make things. Things are the consequence, but somehow these things are composed of carefully chosen ingredients that have proven by trial and error to be reliable extensions of my body. It seems at times that my work is nothing more than just that; extensions of my body. Reaching out into the void for something. Reaching out into the past and future from the present like some phenomenon that astrophysicists have yet to elucidate. Or recognize.
Powerful and seductive resonance chambers have inspired folks throughout the centuries. Obviously these include stone and wood religious structures. But even naturally occurring caverns where ethereal whispers and echoed voices still our movements. We pause and secretly genuflect or shudder in the shifting tidal pools of our very own echoes. We cannot help it.
And so when I am really in it, pushing ink or paint or graphite around, I feel a serpentine sense of desperation. I need connection. I need to be integrated with the subject at hand. I need to hear and see myself there, in that tree trunk or model or scraped and pooled mess of paint on flat surface. I need to feel myself in the work to the degree that I am stripped to the core and synthesized with the matter at hand.
Is a need symbiotic with an intent? Needs, as we know, are often derided as illogical. Needs are quenched only by spells. Incantations. Rituals carried out. What is intent? Is it a need that has been given formal legitimacy by purpose? Is intent transubstantiated need?
Do I intend anything when I make things? That is what most folks want to know. But how is it conceivable that I could make anything without intent? Or DO anything without intent. That is the sign of ghost animating the meat and bone, is it not?
