"Places become a part of us", Maria Popova says. We grip the ground of where we come from, of where we've been, and the dirt slips under our fingernails and into our veins. We may only hold on to them for a time, but they never let go of us.
It's not just the tangible locations, but also those we've expected and hoped for. Those we wish we could undo, and those that didn't come true. The 'utopias' we imagined. The 'No-Places' or 'Not-Places' that might have been.
Eliot Peper says that "history and science fiction are two aspects of the same genre". At the heart of each is a comparison. A juxtaposition. The world and culture we inhabit, the time and place we are in, held in stark contrast to somewhere completely other, somewhen totally different.
Part of the appeal of both, the attraction of each that draws us in, is in experiencing the gaps between worlds placed in tandem.
So much of my work tries to do this. To do the work of both history and science fiction simultaneously. Using regret and nostalgia, memory and longing, the fissures between feelings, to examine the distance and difference between where we find ourselves and the worlds outside our frame.
Pasts that never were and futures that will never be. The moments behind us that could have changed everything if we could have done things differently. The days ahead that seemed promised, that suddenly vanished because of decisions that can't be unmade. The tender anticipations that still linger. The yearnings we still harbor. The quiet ache of possibility.
It's a homesickness for places that don't exist, in the struggle to understand what it means to be here…
P.S. ICAD - Day 47-50 - all the featured collages are available for purchase here.
I like this point you make, Duane: "Pasts that never were and futures that will never be." It's funny how we can fall into this trap sometimes and get anchored by regret. Interestingly, the older I get, the less I think this way, which is quite the opposite what I thought would happen as I got older. Interesting times indeed.
Also, the colors of these collages are stunning! The second one especially…