something like magic
Lev Grossman says that "A magician is strong because he hurts more than others." Because "His wound is his strength"
I don't know anything about magic. About spells or casting them. About potions, elixirs, or alchemy.
I don't know anything about doves or rabbits. About handkerchiefs or hats or what can or can't be pulled out of them.
I don't know about trap doors and secret compartments. Nothing about smoke, or mirrors, or what card you picked.
But I know what it's like to conjure the will to work and keep practicing. I know what it's like to toil constantly. To summon the strength to make things.
I know what it's like to feel sad and hopeless and angry. To feel stiff, and stuck, and stagnant.
I know what it's like to press all the pain into paper, into glue, into torn edges and fragments. To turn it into something that it wasn't before. To create something that wasn't there before.
I don't what it's like to be a magician or what it's like to practice magic. But when Grossman talks about the kind of strength that comes from a wound, the beauty that can come from the ache and the unhappiness. I know what that is.
P.S. 100 days of ICAD - Day 66-68
P.P.S. - Two weeks ago I submitted 10 pieces for consideration in an upcoming exhibition called Paint It Black, put on by the House of Shadows in Tampa, Florida. Three of the submitted collages were accepted. If you’ve been reading the newsletter for a while you’ve probably already seen them, but here they are anyway:
Congrats on having those pieces accepted! Like all of your work, I love them!
I'm fascinated by your collages. Within the abstract visions, I thought I'd work down the collection in this post and improv a poem. A journey of sorts. One of uncertainties and beginnings and ends and illusions... Which is apt given the mention of magic.
---
If I feel I've reached my destination at the very start,
Does that mean working through toward the end will only take me further away?
Like lifting nothing out of spite and getting caught up in it,
As the real deal, the me-ness of me,
Fades away over cracked pavements,
Under illusions I never catered for in the first place
But still tempt me nonetheless.
-
Perhaps the feeling of final is fleeting.
(Or could it be a fusion?)
Standing in empty space, shrouded in symbols I can't understand,
Yet assume contain answers.
Only when I look back down the river do I see the past.
Once a marvel of modern, now normal;
Free to stay locked up. Spend, spend, spend,
Until coins dry up and we spy freedom for a fraction
Before hearing we've escaped and we are bad and we must return.
Or else.
It sure is bright out here in the sun;
Allow me some shelter from this illusion
While I am lost, far away from that final destination of my beginning.
-
It is, of course, immediately granted, as I
Walk back to these chains and receive pat on the head
And know I am good again.
Yes, all is well.
Did I start here? Is this a new start?
I have mapped nothing whilst exploring
Every possible angle.