in twenty – twenty – one :
Forthcoming …
in twenty – twenty :
My every instinct pushes me towards preservation. I feel a compulsion to savor and document the moments of life that become irretrievable once they have passed. My innate desire to capture quickly combined with my emphatic love for all things paper. I have always been easily lured into any stationary, vintage or bookstore. I have never been able to refuse the possibility of discovering treasure: extravagant art, stunningly realistic impressions, mind-opening ideas; all accessible and transportable when produced on the page of a book. The power of the written word and other artistic forms transcends ownership and permanence, granting autonomy to ideas, allowing them to spread far and independently from their point of origin.
This power geometrically opened my perception of reality, allowing me to see into worlds that have never existed in front of my own, observative eye. My earliest memory: beginning to fill any available page space with words of my own. Words that resonate; words that have the ability to mirror life’s undaunted beauty. Over the years I found my life uncontrollably unfolding in front of me but I could hold onto certain things– as long as I wrote them down. A glimpse of an orange tree baking in the sunset. The smell of a stained white tee-shirt. The empty space left at a family dinner.
Like a modern historian, I preserve these artifacts of daily life in my writing. I often imagine this process as pinning butterflies to a board. My memories are these soft, agile butterflies and in writing about them, I pin them down so they can be viewed by both myself and others. Articulate, precise wording is the expert skill required to pin these metaphorical butterflies without deforming or detracting from the natural state of their beauty. The delicate art of poetry allows me to be vulnerable on the page– confronting and questioning my feelings about these moments that I cannot release. It is a tender practice, an examination of both the world around me and the one inside of me. My work with fiction writing provides me an outlet for imagining things beyond this reality; alternate outcomes, parallel lives.
The process of writing is my practice of presenting snapshots of life with the reverent motivation of absolute honesty and true intention. Writing grants permanence to things, people, and moments that would otherwise be washed away by the erosion of time. The page has always been an extension of my consciousness, holding the things that my working brain cannot be trusted to remember– things too important to lose.
Art is our primary means of gaining knowledge and insight into societies, both past and present. In acquiring this greater awareness we too gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and a more expansive empathy for the larger communities we exist within. Art provides the opportunity to reconnect with the universal tie that we all hold, no matter how long forgotten.
The Carr Show 