So this week I finally acquired a new printer and scanner. I knew another one was needed in order to start putting this art project together in some cohesive form, but I hadn't exactly been aggressive about finding one.
Just how passive I'd been became clear when I'd got the thing plugged in and realized I hadn't the foggiest idea what to do. All these drawings, photos, half finished texts attempting to say something about the place I live, all with the vaguest of themes - what to do with them? Especially when vagueness is the theme, pretty much.
It's an art project, not history. Well, it's supposed to be art. :p But it's definitely not history. That would be easy. This town is in love with its history, at least the parts (as per usual) written by the winners. Art is different, and making art about a place that's only fit to leave is not easy.
Working in an atmosphere of pervasive hopelessness is not easy, either.
In that light, my passive avoidance makes a little more sense.
The truth, according to Ms. Phantasmagoria
Had I wanted to document the ugliness and decay of a dying town, that would have been easy, too. But It's something else I'm after, and it's the thing so many others seem to overlook. It's also in the way they overlook it.
This town is weird, and not in a nice, cool, quirky way. Under its utterly boring surface of nowhere to go and nothing to do, its disorienting and discomforting nature permeates. Insanity breeds like the stray cats in my neighborhood. There is a darkness that underlies everything. Maybe it's the isolation. Maybe it's the barren flatness, the humidity, or maybe it's even toxic marsh gas, for all I know. These explanations are as good as any. It's a place where people have either crash-landed or never had the will to leave in the first place. The rest bide their time until they can get out, hopefully before they're drained of their life force and any self-confidence they ever had.
Underneath the crime, poverty, despair and the seamless insistence from city officials that everything is fine, just fine in our lovely town, thank-you-very-much, something else leaks out. Whatever it is, it's creepy as hell. And you aren't supposed to talk about it.
Which leads me where I am today, with a messy attempt to capture something unseen and hard to define, the "truth" of the place as I see it, which you aren't supposed to discuss and a good portion of the population is too miserable or insane to care. I could collect all this work into a book, write and design it to the best of my ability, make it as good and clever as I possibly can, and what I have at the end of the day is a book that even the local library wouldn't carry. :/
But then I must reconsider. This project is not a labor of love. It's a distraction from the hate. It's an attempt to make something of value where art has no value. It's mine alone, good or bad as it is. And if there is one thing this place trucks in, it is hopelessness. If I give in, I become like the others who've lost their will to care. There is already too much of that here. I don't want to go any further down that road.
There's nothing left to do but work.
* I know the photo at the top is unrelated to the post (except inasmuch as i made both of them) I thought of using a photo of a slug or palmetto bug to express my feelings, but that's just gross.
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