Title: Manuscript Cartography by Exotic Settlers (original manuscript made into art)

On the Artwork

ON THE ARTWORK - Manuscript Cartography by Exotic Settlers

The splatter paint over the faded pencil asks about the depth of the viewer. The viewer who chooses to go further than the paint enters into the experimental cartographic space where the name for this piece derives. While the content of the writing is obscured by the splatter paint, to view past the paint engages the viewer in multiple art forms as they clash (overlap) and harmonize (reveal new patterns and phrasings).

The choice of blue and green represent the sky and earth, as they are defined by this peculiar impression of their “settlement,” on the page. The sky and earth being part of a “settlement” connotes an entire world being impressed over the original impression on the page (the writing).

While settlement is often perceived as a calculated and technical mark of progress, it is in this sense being re-defined as an improvised chaos of pure human expression through the spontaneous splatter onto the penciled words, which originated on the page independently of any painting idea.

The splatter paint, in effect, embodies the “settler,” and its multi-colored facet further emphasizes its exoticism against the subdued writing.

While both the writing and the paint are part of spontaneous, fully improvised art forms of pure expression, the piece asks to defy the viewer’s preconceived notions of settlers as plain and understood and more; asks who the viewer resonates with, the settler or immediately observable and colorful expression (paint) or the original impression on the page which requires a bit more effort to engage with (writing).

The themes embedded within the paint and the writing, however, are expressed equally spontaneously and share the same space, either harmoniously or not relative to the viewer’s opinion, which aims at not presupposing any superiority between expressions of origination and settlement.

Preamble

PREAMBLE

Exotic Settlers charts the journey of experiencing the naturally transformative process of ending a period of transitional residence, and beginning to live in one place exclusively.

Questions of home, travel and what is foreign are approached creatively through a lens adjusted through self-reflection on these themes, which led to my own "settlement" within, as I have become more permanently resident in a specific place.

The transitional effect lingers psychologically whereby there are character archetypes and features of personal experience, which fade away and leave only a bitter nostalgia in their place, striking as a whiplash wound. This sensation is frequently common to those who stand their ground.

The concepts of the "settler" and normative stereotypes of the "exotic" are placed in abstract, sometimes jarring contexts as to displace fixed notions about any respective moral judgment.

The experimental verse goes through a process of intensified critique on our historic way of life as North American settlers and focuses this critique especially at our notions of the "other."

By the end of the collection, there is neither strict closure nor resolve about a permanent sense of home, only a greater awareness of perspective as it lies sometimes firmly, but mostly without any grasp on any actual "thing" on a ground of experimental, flowing, spontaneous expressions in language.

truth, judgment or unknowns


where does truth lead?
as a leader,
human yet bold,
into final, grave judgment,
over Self,
with a pretense to deny, ruthlessly,
the Self-less marriage

to the racist, sexist and conservative religious wine,
intoxicating the West
with a throat climbing upwards
to vomit the female's Adam’s apple,
now so dry, shriveled with frost,
cracked and permanently wasted,
not a thought to re-cycle,
only the Mother (Mater/Matter) abuse

to forgive latent mind-readers
stating new thought dictionary entries
new with fresh ink over the staircase travelogue,
leading yet leaderless

wading in the warm bathwater
fresh and awash with the purest feeling,
drinking earth and swaying so slightly
atop family trees brushing neatly
along the skin touched pages
leafing soundly into a freed paradigm
lonesome with radical imagination

to resist the sufferer's cold throne and sleep
instead in the deadly fog of oblivion,
away from the driven masses
who prepare to wake
buried in another mold,
human and crushed

"it was plain to see that a return became impossible
to the few left,"

yet grieving for the smothered plight
pushing up through soil blackened with fire and anarchist seeds
spread like wild rabbit feces
over the plush psychic grams
smoothed softly over the nearby sea
audible, radio sanity

"morbidity patiently awaits youth,
so leave the planet sweetly,
surely and as meant,
originally
in the back log of creation"

who failed to swear an addiction to existence
over the creator's blue telephone,
hushing the musical light from beyond
into anonymity,
whose authoritarian drug was fixed by the word,
and now silent to the punch,
a subtle dream
slaking the thirst for lucidity in modern consciousness,
to say

"it is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society" said Krishnamurti

or

"I felt so much better, when I gave up hope" said I

and at the same time
the neo-classical home-wrecker bringing down the foundations
built under English literature,
a Greek so directly consumed with the truth
behind hopeless living,
as a greater calling
towards the being obscured deep within an honest man

surviving with dignity
in the polluted sweat beading like tears
off the face skewed drawings
in North America's Chinese heritage,
fighting openly
in public show
to peer inside the white window,
painted

blindfolded on psilocybin traces
greeting the mischief sun
before education's bleary eyed grave,
coursing through my blood
like the jet engine passing
beyond atmospheric pressure, and all suddenly,
lying, I am down,
never to resurrect

my body torn infinitely to the circumference,
pressing into waves with the breast of an antique wooden ship,
steering romantic in the warlord sunrise
boring whisky coals into the ocean floor
with corrosive corpses swept away
into the ashless and unsightly betrayal
falling endlessly down away from human belonging
feeding aspirations
to compost shit into plants that invigorate atriums watery air
flowing nightly

into the submissive snoring
issuing barely from the beat chest of the nude lover,
pregnant with an air of lustful potency,
fuming with awe for the grateful wink
into the round oceanic passage,
leading back into her graceful arms squeezing heart's blooming rust,
imperfect and trusting
a famous sentimental melody,
that creaked fantastic and dramatic
from childhood vocal chords

re-emerging throughout our traveling secret,
together always,
never-endless, infinite, boundless dissolution,
weeding butterfly revelations
from the poetic gardens
stringing up knowledge itself on arboreal instruments
claiming nerves remade tranquil by a mystery

feral in Love's sacred vibrations
talking mountains up to pointless endings,
unreasonable and without equal
the spontaneous beauty
simultaneity
breathing with regular organic sound

a healthy wave reaching sky's peopled shores,
wherein all are recognized within the womb,
unborn demigods to that awareness,
giving lush expressions to instantaneous action,
rousing impassioned need to flow with an artistic palette,
swimming above extinction in winter's unprepared lulls,
choking the urge to movement within,
a mental pride

singing zealous
while sad and diving earnestly
into depression's darkest ignorance
shadow's dust so remote
now only found in greed
sick corners within

the Southerly Global hate,
trading laws with resistance,
scheming out of natural dependence,
realizing childish humility and finally forgiving

the precious sources of Love,
kneeling before forests, swamps, wetlands, rains, fogs, winds, grasses, bushes, trees, soils, shores, stones, and all measure of fungal being in barefoot sleepers,
smiling at the unknown, unknowingly  

February 21, 2011
Chinatown Calgary

No comments:

Post a Comment