a vanishing topography
As someone who's moved around a lot early on in life, 'home', as a thought, as a feeling, as an idea, even as a concept, has been allusive to me. I've always felt out of place everywhere, no matter how long or how often I've been. There's a layer of disjuncture and uncanniness that settles over even the most familiar of things.
'Home' has never been a where for me. Never a place. Never a geography. But the texture of a moment passing candidly. A moment of being fully seen.
It happens when a book, a song, a poem, an image, a person, speaks to you directly. Personally. And, for an instant, all you aloneness vanishes into a kind of comradery. When for the first time, no matter how many times it happens, you feel comfortable in your own skin.
So inexplicable, so unpredictable, when it arrives and emerges, that charting it is like mapping terra incognita into a vanishing topography.
**This newsletter was inspired by an exchange I had with following a collaboration I did with recently, thanks so much to both of you!
P.S. - ICAD - Day 244-247 - all the collages below are available for purchase here.
P.P.S. - I’m happy to announce that ALL the collages in this newsletter are available for purchase here.
P.P.P.S - One of my collages was featured in the lates issue of the online magazine Grim & Gilded. You can see it here.
The depth and displacement in “the other is likely to be relevant” is amazing. Love the blend of themes and a continuation from the astronaut collages. Home is not entirely geographically assigned but if you’ve lived in a place ling enough its soul and water become part of what you identify with. Once that layer is removed you’ll be left with yourself and the people around you and feeling home is about me making the new geographical spot my home. Wonderful work with many perspectives to explore on a personal level. Thank you for this journey.
Duane, thank you for this. Is there anything more profound than the deep human need for home? I feel like it's something we all need from the moment we're born into the world: shocked by the light and air, bewildered, suddenly disconnected from the only place of comfort and peace we've ever known. This ongoing need for home is in us all. It is especially urgent right now.
How cathartic and satisfying (and rare!) it is to find a true sense of home in your creative practice. And then, to share that with others--that's next level! It fosters freedom in your creative partners, too, and I feel very lucky to have experienced that.
Thank you for your own particular light--your playful sense of humor, your devotion, and your pain--it all comes together in the work you're doing. What a beautiful way to come home.