The heavy and light of it all

#100: Remembering the mission of Miscellanea, accompanied by the Springtime sun

On this 100th issue, a brief consideration of the idiosyncrasies that shape Miscellanea transforms into a revelation of preciousness and purpose. Thank you for being here and for supporting my work.

”There may never be anything new to say, but there is always a new way to say it, and since, in art, the way of saying a thing becomes a part of what is said, every work of art is unique and requires fresh attention.”

FLANNERY O’CONNOR

If you’ve been reading Miscellanea for some time now, you’ve become accustomed to its stop-and-start nature. I’ve come to accept that this pattern is not uncommon among artists — it is fundamental to what makes us artists: the questions and curiosity and doubt. As we question the world, we question ourselves; insecure, we slow down — at times coming to a grinding halt.

I begin to wonder if within me there is anything worth saying, a picture worth making, a truth that I can unveil. Writing this I realize that the requests I make of myself can feel gargantuan. With the pressure of an audience – which is actually pressure self-imposed – I think big. There is a tender inclination to conceptualize and impress with fancy words and important ideas. But when the pressure is off, the thinking is humble. Like everyone I know, my days are full with lists and tasks, whim and desire, dark and light.

My goal in writing, as in making photos, is to marry the modesty of everyday life with the earnestness of lofty questions. I know this union to be essential to personal growth, and I believe in the power of little things to inspire big things and vice versa. The inverse is important here, because it is no more significant to move from small to big than from big to small. Scale is an illusion — the oscillation itself holds the significance. Insofar as we move, we grow.

As I expressed before, often I fear that I’ve exhausted the topics relevant to me or that I’ve taken all the photos I was meant to take. But I am misguided in weighing so heavily this matter at all and in thinking that topic or subject is rich with message or meaning.

The matter which matters is how we make of the matter. How our voice bends around it all. We are the subjects we seek to speak of. It’s all so personal, no?

And so in making, and so in growing, and so in being human — we must move and oscillate, big and small, forward and back.

We will come to know this oscillation as our method — the way we poke at and poke through the veil of matter. The heavy and light of it all is that when we finally see through the muck, we see ourselves staring back at us and finally, we see each other: all the same and all moving and all growing. There is no me without you without us. We grow because we are together.