83. The onlooker

I did a small collage yesterday. Had no idea, no plan, nothing except a need to rip magazine pages, to glue these uneven pieces to a wooden board, to look at what happens if organized content laid on a sheet of paper gets submitted to rupture and hapharzardness.

Had no message. I wasn’t communicating. I wasn’t inspired. I was simply curious. That’s the whole point. Not wanting anything more. No faith whatsoever in my own central themes. I do not have a mission, I do not have any information to share. I’m simply interested in the effects shreds of colored paper generate when randomly placed next to each other. Marveling at such occurrences. And I’m satisfied.

I tend to write with a similar approach. Words are always fragments torn from past sentences. Since their beginning, they’ve all often been part of a structure, invoked by authors to convey intentions, written down as elements of a line of thought destined to be read. All of them have been used in titles, paragraphs, stories, essays. They’ve all contributed to building logical compositions. Arranged on a page so to create sense. Bricks in the edifice of knowledge.

I look at a word, aware of its huge history, and wonder what it would look like if placed near another similarly potent. What sort of phonetic protuberance would I hear. What shape, slide, surge can be designed. A “k” next to an “s” or how vowels cope with each other. Where would breathing set its movements. Would the intake of air jerk or be mellowed down by some soft resonance. What would happen if the amount of syllables changed. Why do letters clash or melt, for they do have affinities, aversions, sometimes even indifference. I have little to do with their mood.

It doesn’t always matter what they mean, because eventually words, in an autonomous fashion, will draw their own significance from the way they relate to their own presence. There’s meaning out there, it’s everywhere, in the great depth of microcosm, mixed with all the punctuation that can be. It organizes itself along guidelines that escape premeditation, over which one has little influence. I’m just supposed to let it happen. As a hand on the keyboard. I’m simply trying this or that. Enlarging possibilities. The rest is what counts. And it is a master. I cannot teach it anything. It teaches itself. And I'm pleased, I’m the content onlooker.

Laolao