1. “Remembering”
My life is a series of remembering and forgetting.
When I remember, it occurs almost astonishingly; like the moon rediscovering its dark side hidden from the sun. Suddenly and ever briefly, life makes sense again.
The discovery, be it a fresh relationship, passion, or social circle, are aligning experiences that touch upon the remembered. They elicit a craving for an innate truth to be reflected in the world.
The discovery demands servitude to its beauty, attention to the new—relationship, passion, social circle—that we forget other parts of ourselves.
Enamoured by beauty, we love the object of attention and eclipse into silhouettes.
We lose nuance, diversity, and crevices of our own complexity.
We become more of what we love and less of what we are.
We remember and forget.
2. “Flash-bang”
My love for writing unfurled the way a secret pleasure would, achingly slow and then all at once.
I would come home from school, a weariness set upon me, and transpose myself instantly into a world of abstract intangibles whose laws were determined by the lines of my pen, whose clarity reflected in the brightness on my paper.
For many years, my passion for writing was dumbed down. I felt that if I spoke honestly about wanting to be a writer, or more simply to love to write, I would be cast aside into a group of romanticists and that somehow it would make me untrustworthy to the other boys.
The other boys would heave and sigh at the idea of having to sit still and drool the point of a pen between the lines. The other boys wanted to fight in the mud. They wanted to chase girls. They wanted to be tough.
So, instead, I would hide my notebooks, and for stretches of years that appear like droughts, I would stop writing altogether.
✧ ✧ ✧
A thing that irks me about myself is how easily I seem affected by others.
Be it good or bad, energy spent with another seems to mix in me like ink and water, one contaminating the other until I’m left unsure if I am ink or water and have instead become a mixture of the two.
How much can we know about ourselves?
How many of our own sides lay hidden the way the moon’s orbs lay buried beneath shadowed darkness?
3. “At any moment”
At any moment, indeed, any moment— life can slide out from beneath our feet the way shadows slip across wooden floors on sunny days. Then and only then, it flashes in us like a photograph, mixing emotion and remembrance into recollection.
It can come from the twirl of a leaf helicoptering to soil-wet ground, in the eyes of a stranger, in the smell of a place, in the way she dances, in the way he laughs.
All of it, grainy.
Sifted moments, trickling like sand, lost the instant it passes from sight.
We become like the Knight of Cups.
A rider on a mission.
A bringer of ideas, novelties and opportunities.
A person of amiability and high principle.
A dreamer.
The dreamer, attracted by idealism, also carries the opportunity for a false promise, fraud and trickery to take advantage of its dazzling disposition.
Indeed, the Knight Of Cups, despite good intentions, can be led astray.
Terrence Malick’s film, ‘Knight of Cups’ has remained imprinted on my psyche since first experiencing it. The film tells the story of a prince whose father sent him to Egypt to look for a pearl. Upon arriving in a town, the locals give him a drink that makes him forget his mission and his father altogether. He lives instead with one eye in the bottle, indulging in life’s sensual honey pots, romanticising and whoring and basking in a pleasure that’s easier to face than the abyssal loss of himself.
The prince continues to party with the vague hope that the mission, so important indeed, would reveal itself between the folds of comfort.
However, his father, the King, has not forgotten his son. He sends messengers; guides to awaken the prince from his slumber. To pray he remembers himself.
There have been many times I have felt like the prince.
4. “Forgetting”
When we remember, eternal truth resounds in us like ripples on glassy water.
We are left with a pounding dilemma, a choice.
That of ignorance and, thus— self-deceit.
Or that of acceptance, and thus— ground zero to change.
One is hard.
One seems easy.
One is made of invisible fabric, cladding transparent material that births character.
One asks for the rag to be dragged over our eyes like blinders on a horse.
One prefers the compulsive spasm of elbow-bend-phone-raise.
One requires deep breath, mirror-face.
Regardless, we remember.
Regardless, we forget.
5. “A Pilgrimage To Truth”
The power of creativity lies in its transcendence beyond remembering and forgetting so that it attempts, instead, to uncover that which always is.
At the best of times, creativity is a search into the depths of ourselves. The most personal of projects hold up a mirror to our soul, granting access to parts unknown, parts unseen. Before any action is undertaken, creation is an act of faith. To believe you can bring out parts unknown, unseen, into the world— is premeditated manifestation. It requires belief in ourselves and the elusive to mix into morphed physicality. The things you know and don’t know about yourself mesh into something larger than yet reminiscent of— yourself.
We scratch at the border between mirror and reflection in search of ourselves, in the subconscious hope that we may find the ever-elusive truth.
In that sense, calmness can wash over us in the knowledge that our ‘duty’— if there is such a thing as an artist, is to create from the most rawest truth within us. That to be successful as an artist means to be the most of yourself. And similarly, to know that truth within us lies beyond our knowledge or rational understanding, and even beyond the surrender of trying to figure it out, so that what lies beyond us can move through us.
Perhaps then, others can see themselves in our creation. Long after the work has been done and the project has been delivered, we may forget so that others, years or decades later, can see our work and remember.
That we may start the sentence that they will finish.
That we may remember.
That we may forget.
✧ ✧ ✧
“Be it good or bad, energy spent with another seems to mix in me like ink and water, one contaminating the other until I’m left unsure if I am ink or water and have instead become a mixture of the two.” This was an amazing piece of writing, wow!
I'm over here deciding what line to highlight... this is pure brilliance.
Spoke right to the inner artist in me. <3
Creation is an act of faith... it feels like a dance in the dark, building itself with every move.