It’s not often I feel I’m getting somewhere in the world, the world outside, the world outside of me. But sometimes, once in a blue moon if you will, fate conspires to offer a helping hand, word spreads, people of influence take tentative steps to make contact.
Now, from what I’ve gathered from the worldly wise first impressions count, I’m not one for appearance, in certain circumstances I can appreciate the crossover of fashion an the arts, and yes on rare occasions the two will merge and mate and spore new ideas and forms beyond the mere means of their craft, but for the majority of my life I have worn what I own until it’s too tattered for utilitarian use. I can appreciate the surface of others, their beauty, their stance, their style, however I have never been a slave to the mirror, or rather not unless concerns for my health take precedence.
Beyond mere appearance is the word and the interpretation of any exchange in communication. There are times when language spills forth and ideas flow between minds like a river from a lake, and others when the faucet barely leaks a drip of emotion or ideology.
If you feel only any level you have mastered social protocol, to some degree can control your personal destiny within the abstraction of acceptable behaviour and the scope of the "cultural norm", then perhaps you are ready to sell yourself to the highest bidder, or rather your talent, your product, your individual slant on life and the perspective it can provide for those around you and the world at large.
I have intermittently found myself entering this arena, this dimension of the human veneer, of society’s methodology of contact and progressive exchange. My past successes have been as bitter sweet as my failures to comply and conform, to mould myself into something other than what I am, to compromise, to adapt to the secularism of a corporation or an influential individual.
I have worked for others, briefly I might add, in every form of employment under the sun. The truth is I am not a salesman, a baker, a kitchen assistant, an office clerk, a market researcher, a web designer, a tool of some other’s sole purpose to build personal wealth and aggregate power in order to escape the vicious cycle that is the material world and capitalism at large.
Yet recently I have witnessed, listened to and read words from others who appreciate what I do and why I do it. A French woman’s invitation to an exhibition in Paris, a few offers for online interviews with art magazines and the like, fans, friends, entrepreneurs, dealers, all gently circling the perimeter of my world. Something outside of my mind is happening.
Just as I had come to terms with my own social evolution, a time of change, a time for greater exchange with society, something more than my imagination, my hosting provider announces they are making cutbacks, and with little warning killed my site for 72 hours as they performed their technical jiggery pokery. Who knows what I have missed in that time, my godhead disconnected from the electronic ether, my representation in the virtual world impotent and laid waste as server administrators pick over the flesh and bones of my electronic diary cum gallery cum shop of curiosities.
It’s been strange, returning to the solace of my mind, wholly isolated from the world, working and working and ever so briefly sleeping when the mood takes me. Yet however intrusive fate may be it has indeed taught a solid lesson in truth, I need you, I need all of you, I didn’t before, when all I needed was my mind and my partner Christina, and my art, but now I realize I have to step out into the ‘real world’.
I will attempt to finish the tenth of the Indoor Street Art series by the New Year, after which i will be reworking some of the pieces as large scale paintings, although I have many plans for new ideas, some of which have come to me in this enforced solace from life’s electronica.
I’m glad to be back again, and I’m glad you’re here too, because you’re everyone who I am not and without you I would be a lesser being.
P.S:- Yes I’m still working on my latest piece ‘Bill and Ben’ – it’s sucking the life out of me but despite the lack of sleep and food and sanity I will get this finished soon – well worth the wait.
Nowadays we have the internet. It’s so convenient for us to know people faraway. The world is changing. I am also very glad to have visited your blog, read the words you’ve written here, and share your thoughts
Fate can either lead you to the zenith of glory or can bring you lifelong misery. Just as you said, sometimes when the fate is on, ideas flow out of mind like a river. Earlier I never believed on my fate or luck, I thought it’s all our effort and hard work but now even I believe that fate has full control over our life and we are nothing without it.