needs and desires

inter-lace,  oil on canvas,  30" x 24"

*****

hello my russian friend,

your last letter about grigori n. chant was very poignant. poignant means something that is sharply, deeply felt, something that evokes a sense of sadness, a particular kind of sadness that brings us closer to the fragility, tenderness of human life, of all life.  one late night last week, while sitting around the fire in the oil drum that is the hearth of our current squat, i decided to share your letter with a few others from the hotel perdu - we were unequivocally moved to tears by the story of grigori n. chant. his is a story that reveals the truth - his personal truth and the truth of society at large. after much discussion we all agreed that if the man is happy being alone then no-one should be worried or concerned. we all also agreed that his decision to move away from society reveals a curious and noteworthy feature of how the needs of an individual become the desires of a group.  grigori n. chant sounds, by all accounts, like a brilliant, simple man. his examination of the world, his self-posed question, why are we here, his primal urge to make something is really the story of beauty and the beast, how grace can became repugnant, inconsistent with the innocence of it's source. as an individual, grigori n. chant attended to and nurtured the needs inside of himself, believing that his examination, exploration would represent a window, a doorway, a guide to feelings of exaltation with universal energies, connections of oneness with other individuals, feelings of expansiveness, of light, of affirmation. however, as grigori n. chant sadly discovered, once the expression of needs are put on display in society they very quickly decay into desires through a process known as the downward pull of the tunnelization of funnelification, which consistently devolves in the following manner:  society views the expression, rejects the expression, is indifferent to the expression, questions the expression, accepts the expression, is in awe of the expression, society becomes envious of the expression, wants to own the expression, craves the expression until the primal urge that was innocently cultivated from a single moment of guiltless beauty becomes a poison, contaminated, a host to a party of viruses.

i hope you are keeping well, i look forward to your next letter.

sincerely,

your canadian artist friend

*****

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