On Wednesday nights at The Glenwood, a jazz combo led by a young man named Taylor Kennedy plays in the corner of one of the rooms.  I’ve taken to toting my materials in a well-worn bag and spending a few hours there, sipping wine, listening to jazz and making art.  Questions Without Answers is probably the first one I completed there, and it was a great deal of fun to create.

Questions Without Answers

Can you imagine what would happen if you burst in on a clandestine meeting of philosophers and asked “What’s the meaning of all this?”

You’d be there for days, wouldn’t you?

Where would we be if we had no ability to ask questions?

How can anything get done if we have no way to ask for it?

And how could we ever work out the paths of our lives without the questions that drive us onward to our own destinations?

If no one asked why, there would be no becauses, would there?

So why are some people so reluctant to ask aloud the questions that lurk inside themselves?

It’s not as though these questions don’t exist, is it?

Do they honestly think that if a question remains unspoken it will stay unanswered?

Does it never occur to them that some questions can be answered without words even needing to be spoken?

Have you ever been foolish enough to ask someone “Do you love me?”

You learned a thing or two about how actions speak so much louder, didn’t you?

Why do people ask questions and then act as if there was no answer given when they in fact did get an answer, it just happened to be something other than the answer that they desperately wanted to hear?

Is that the reason why others are afraid to ask any questions in the first place?

Is the answer you’d rather not hear really all that terrible to think about?

Are people so afraid of the truth that they shy away from discerning it?

Why is that?

Isn’t it better in the end to accept the answers you get, even if you’d so much prefer that they would be otherwise?

If we seek the truth, isn’t it best in the end to find it even if it wasn’t the truth we’d been expecting?

What sort of scientist would throw out the data if it didn’t support the hypothesis?

Would we have gotten anywhere if we hadn’t been willing to live with the answers we didn’t want to hear?

Can anybody name a single civilization that managed to be able to suppress any questions without ultimately collapsing?

Is there really such a thing as “too many questions?”

Isn’t it much more likely that there aren’t nearly enough of them being asked?

Or does that just lead to the aforementioned problem with those who freely ask questions but refuse to hear the answers they’d like to hear and thus instead ask the same questions over and over again in the hopes that maybe if they ask the right person in the right place at the right time, they will get the answer they really wanted to hear?

I’d drafted the first two lines in a tweet to the infamous Torley, but, as usual, the line changed a bit as I wrote it into the artwork.  I was quite fond of the opening and had it memorized to quote at people when I showed them the snapshot I’d taken of the finished product on my iPhone.  The best response to it was probably from Tom Flynn, a professor of philosophy at Emory who suggested the reply would be “Congratulations; you’re now one of us.”

Prints of this work are available here.

The original is not for sale.

After I finished Spiral, I took a short break and then sat down and began on what became That Which Is Called the Heart.  It was an initial experiment in writing around white space and it taught me the singularly important lesson that I’ve carried to every subsequent work–use something to keep the lines straight!  I didn’t do it with this piece, and it shows.

The title, by the way, I came up with after I finished writing (I pretty much always title them at the end) and didn’t write it down on the piece itself until much later, but I realize that the title changed slightly between the mind and the pen.

That Which Is Called the Heart

Most people look at it and think “Oh, pretty, a heart!  How sweet.”  Then they read the words.

Love is patient. Love is kind.

Love is so terrifying and powerful that the translators of the King James version of The Bible fell back from calling it love when Paul wrote of it and watered it down to ‘Charity.’

Love confounds our instincts for self-interest by giving us another to take an interest in.

Love binds us in ways we would have no other reason to be bound and binds us so tightly that the moment that bond is broken, the pain is that of a physical wound.

We feel it in the center of our chest, where the heart is carried, both the joys of love felt and the agonies of love denied to us.

Once, I was asked what I meant by love. “L-O-V-E, what do you mean by that?” he asked.

I was still in a state of ache for a love I had lost and this fellow had hopes, of a sort, for a way to talk me out of them.

So I gave him my reply.

It was not forced or at all faked or somehow contrived.

I spoke it without a second’s hesitation.

“That I would move heaven and earth for him.”

And it was the truth.

His reply was an odd one and not entirely relevant to this conversation.

He claimed my reply marked me as one of the fae.

I think my reply marked me as a human being who feels deeply.

My heart will not love on conditions.

It gives itself over only after careful examination of the recipient.

But once it has spoken, it will not be dissuaded, not by rejection, not by distance, not even, in some ways, by death itself.

My heart beats freely, it spirals inward and overflows outward and it refuses to be denied.

Love is infinite and I am not afraid.

I drink deeply of it.

I let it flow from me.

I let it flow over myself.

And if you are patient enough to have read these words all the way to the bottom of this little mess of artistic attempt, then in this moment, I give my love to you and thank you kindly for your love of me.

The conversation mentioned in the piece did, in fact, happen.  The fellow’s response when I provided my definition of love (“that I would move heaven and earth for him”–yes, I said it and meant it) was a slight pause and then: “You’re not human.  There’s something of the fae about you.”  The incident stuck with me in such a way that it came out of me in this artwork.  It’s not often that someone will say to you “you’re not human” and mean it as a compliment.  (Then again, this was at Dragon*Con, so perhaps not so strange in context.)

Prints of this work are available here.

The original is not for sale.

Spiral was the first prototype for my Word Art that I was willing to show to other people.  (I’d tried something a couple of months prior, but the result was such a hot mess I’m not showing it to anybody until I’ve established a solid enough body of work to render said hot mess into a fascinating historical document.)  I’d cut a sheet of 25% cotton paper to fit an 8 x 10 frame I’d found in a drawer (still wrapped in plastic–where did it come from and why did I buy it?) and traced some pencil lines to define a space within the space.  Then I took a couple of gel pens that I’d gotten as a birthday present from my goddaughter and worked my way around.

Spiral

There are times when the craving itself is so sweet and so strong that satisfaction is something of a disappointment by comparison.

There are other times when the reward is so sweet you wonder why you even considered denying yourself.

And when the source of pleasure is mixed with a dose of poison, how much harder it becomes.

To ride that ever so delicate balance of pleasure and pain, as if balancing profits and losses, income and expenses, how much pleasure makes the pain worth it, how much pain cancels out the pleasure?

Pain is a signal from the body that something is wrong which needs to be set right.

We ignore these signals at our own peril.

But the signals of pleasure are far more muddled, given they are known to transmit at times when a reward is the worst possible thing to be handing out.

But “such are the credentials of pleasure” that we will make a god of that which gives it to us.

Blessed, indeed, are those who take their pleasures from the simple joys of living, who revel in ecstasy but shun intoxication.

But what of those who pass through the deserts of pain to reach the oasis of pleasure?

And what, in turn, of those who seek the oasis of pleasure and find that the gleaming waters they hoped to drink from were merely mirages?

How many addicts choke on sand and call it water, lest they be forced to admit that what they endured was ultimately for naught?

Some pools grow shallower as one drinks.

Others are as deep as oceans, but long and arduous is the journey to reach them.

This perhaps is why we are drawn to the pools that so diminish, for we sometimes wonder if we will ever reach the springs that never dry, or indeed wonder if those springs are even real, or if they are merely illusions themselves.

But ever so sometimes, the shallow pools give us a tiny taste of what the springs can provide and that perhaps beyond all other reasons is why we crave them so.

But the path to the springs, to the living water, is not impossible to tread.

It demands much, but gives much in return.

But far too many mistake the path for the destination.

While others seek the destination but hope to bypass the path.

The path to the center does not come with shortcuts.

Yet it is not as hard a path to tread if one simply keeps the burden light.

How simple and yet how difficult for so many.

We carry burdens on our backs that we need not carry with us and yet we fear to put them down for fear of losing them.

We turn to our panaceas to ease the burdens that we tire of carrying and yet fear to let go of completely.

So the spiral continues, as we drink of wells that resemble the springs we truly seek to ease the heavy weight of the burdens that we know slow our journey to the true wellspring of all.

And the worst of it all is this–that the wellspring you seek can be dug in your heart and no one can take it from you once you have it yourself.

“Such are the credentials of pleasure” is a quote from the book Delusion’s Master by Tanith Lee, and a line I keep in mind when weighing the consequences of certain decisions.

I don’t know if I will ever do another piece like this, because the lines become a little difficult to keep track of after a certain point.  Even though I want the work to stand on its own visually, I also want those who are willing to try and read the words to be rewarded for their squinty efforts.

Prints of this work are available here.

The original is not for sale.