La Machine

[mavinga]

Comments

gratitude for the gift of life

[zuma]

i always find your work impossibly wonderful, jean, and i can't imagine what it may feel like to be able to produce such. from our ongoing dialogue though i'm beginning to understand subconsciously at least the nature of it, as you describe here, and yes, it does lend to being able to imagine, just a touch, of the experience.

-i was just going back a couple of pages in my GJ LJ and had copied some words into my text editor from a post i did there some years back. maybe they apply here, i don't know, but here they are:
http://gigabyte-jones.livejournal.com/11238.html
http://zuma.vip.warped.com/nightfalls.jpg
"When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has
been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive
presence, inevitably you have to think of your art,
whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the
world in acknowledgement of the gift you have been
given, which is the life itself. And I think the world
tends to forget that this is the ultimate significance
of the body of work each artist produces. It is not an
expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or
prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitude
for the gift of life."
Reprinted from
The Collected Poems by Stanley Kunitz © 2000

Re: gratitude for the gift of life

[mavinga]

I think the most important thing about this is how much of a struggle it actually is. While doing it, it's actually a little difficult to appreciate until hours, or days later after not seeing it for a while. Even then it's only for a second before I start to dissect and I get annoyed at it.

I'm probably a bit late at figuring out that life is the same way, and to a lesser degree big projects: Most of the middle is really excruciating at times, but on the other side of it, it's always worth it.

The image though, can't really explain that other than I'm just alive to conceive it. :D

Thanks.