looking back

"A philosophical definition has to capture everything and so can exclude nothing. But that finally means that there can be no historical direction art can take from this point on. For the past century, art has been drawing toward a philosophical self-consciousness and this has been tacitly understood to mean that artists must produce art that embodies the philosophical essence of art." Arthur C, Danto,"After the End of Art

YOU know? ive just re-read most of the little bit of writing i have posted here, which was not a lot--provided i only did it for a few months in 2008--and i must say that some of the writing was piercing into something interesting... i must confess that i am not quite certain of what that 'something' might be; but nonetheless, looking back, it feels as though i am searching for something. maybe it is a little bit of something that i have never seen before, within the images i like; or something i have not said, felt or experienced before; or maybe it is a yearning to connect with the journey i am currently on; nevertheless (or was it nonetheless?:-), i must admit, on some sense, i have yet to make that connection, in order to become self-aware within this abyss i am floating in: it, being an extension of my self-knowledge.

Was it Socrates who once said, " I am wise within my own ignorance," which in of itself it's a statement filled with inner wisdom and self knowledge, and in doing so he made manifest a new consciousness deep inside his being... am i doomed then, as an artist, to be constantly searching for something i will never find--a kind of wise ignorance? thus, realizing (now?) that that is the path to true wisdom? (if there ever was one?). In the perpetual labyrinth of the mind, thoughts can betray, unless one possess the kind of wisdom Socrates' ignorance was so fond of. Unlike Socrates, i am ignorant b/c i have come to feel with my mind and think with my heart, instead of the other way around. Socrates was wise because he realized his own ignorance and limitations and accepted them. If self-knowledge is the road to wisdom, (i hope) i am on it, identifying with each experience as i see my own pores and counting on the sublime beauty of the universe to guide my every step. In doing so, i hope to become enlightened.

In the mean time, however, i had been seeking, in the pleasure of the visual image--of the pictorial language fed to us by the images we consume--a palpable substance which i could not grasp. Each day, each moment of the day, i would allowed my self to become inundated by the eternal visual paradise, which is provided by our societies, our cultures, our sub-cultures, and our visual landscapes our laptops produce. I'd feed my hunger for images with the same force with which I sleep, walk, eat, run, exorcise, work, read, study, and listen to music. As if i were in search of seeing something I have never seen before; feeling something I have never felt before; and even saying something I have never said before; regardless, I was constantly plugged in to that which I do not have the brain capacity to even begin to understand. By doing so, paradoxically, i lost track of what i had my sight set on, of the goals i had envisioned in my future. I was seduced by the very images i seek to manipulate, enhance, re-imagine, translate, deconstruct, dissect, re-produce, mirror back, analyze, re-introduce, and comprehend.

Looking back, i had abandon this way of thinking, the way of thinking that only comes from looking at the world with tenacious curiosity, and a hungry for a slice of the unknown. It was not the same curiosity, however, I'd grown up with; it was a different curiosity, which had become medicated--the kind of curiosity which is the "cure and the cause." I had surrendered to the greedy hunger of my lust for the image, which caused a piece of me to be sequestered by itself within the walls of my own imagination: i had become un-inspired due to the saturation of images i ingested every day. I had also loss track of who and what i am, in a world where hardly anyone is a friend and the ones who say they are, have no compassion for you. By deviating from these personal and artistic goals, i drifted too far off the path i was fixated on, and almost destroyed that part of me, which is as ignorant and naive as a little boy; because of that ignorance, that part of me is wiser than Socrates. I know this now. It is that side of me, which pierced into that abyss and confronted its bottomless sides, willing to expose the light which will inevitably arise. The goodness in my being is stronger than any enticing image because it carries my talent within its fibers. It is in my nature to be................................................................

Tonight, after someone I just met took a look at this blog, which prompted me to re-visit it and see it with a brand new set of eyes, I realized that the hunger I had been feeding with images, what i have been searching for, that 'something,' is the ignorance within my wisdom; it is my desire to know my art and produce something great, something new the world has never seen, heard or felt before: because it is coming out of a pure state of lacking-- a place untouched by the gaze of the superfluous image. After drowning in the mundane and repetitive banality of today's images, I have risen from the ashes of their ordinary existence. I don't care how or why i lost track of that purposeful pursue, but what i do care about is that I have found it again and this year will be my year to let it shine through. This year marks the beginning of my liberation, the start of my conscious release of this suppressed abundance of ideas, and the unleashing of something the world has yet to see. Although i will always love images, no matter what, I have been freed from the relationship i have with them. In this liberation there is neither freedom nor entrapment because i have realized that within them i am not, but through them, i am...

FEED ME MORE BECAUSE I HAVE BECOME IMMUNIZED !