TRANSCENDENT SCEPTICISM
The Place of the Soul.
(Or beings in search of their souls.)
Where is the beautiful, the possessive, the good and the transcendent to be found? Inside or outside? Inside the outside or outside the inside? Who should be your guide? Maybe what is an easier answer, light is omnipresent, it's colours suffocating with meaning. Maybe the smell, or nothing of the above but the fact of bringing to life something long dead, like making a garden in the desert, that's where the soul lives. But what is the soul? Is the image of what you most desire and least want to look? Is it what you cast away as a child? A child in the desert, hungry for pleasure and play, the birthplace of meaning, is that the image of your soul? What is most deserted of meaning than the modern city? Where is our childish self hiding? Where do we least want to look?
The Abandoned Inside, or the Saturated Outside.
We are drawn to what is no longer among us, we are drawn to what is dead and has a life of its own, hidden, forgotten, abandoned. Is it to kill what it is or to bring to life what it was? Maybe to kill what it is with what it was and drown the pain of our existence in it’s blood. But how can we kill what never was, or bring to life what always is? Maybe through innocent play, death becomes a mother and meaning and beauty are her children. Children grow, and play and forget, and they kill in order to grow, and they forget in order to live, but they always play, is that what justifies and gives meaning to their existence? Is that what allows the rivers of blood to keep flowing? Maybe blood is the only thing that can make a garden grow in the desert.
The Mirage in the Desert.
The image of the soul can be a mirage in the meaningless desert of existence, but it happening is as real as anything. When starving for meaning, meaninglessness can disguise as nourishment, how can we then trust our senses during our existence in the desert? What oasis should nourish our thirst? We might die of thirst chasing meaningless shadows of what’s real in empty lands, should we not dig our own well then, and nourish ourselves in it’s riches? He who chases the shadow is the one who spills his own blood to settle his thirst, but he who digs a well in the middle of the desert, grows a garden from his blood and makes the mirage a living thing.
The Place of the Garden.
We know the place of the garden, and the flowers it grows, but we’re unwilling to provide them nourishment. Life kills in order to live, unwatched, unattended, in it’s blind ambition, the beautiful becomes it’s victim. Seeds for growth are not to be found in meaningless sacrifice, and yet, death makes a void for the garden and for the smell of its flowers. But children and gardens do not go well together, play is disinterested and cruel, the beauty falls it’s victim. What is it then that should die, for beauty to live ? From its ashes what often rises is a beautiful yet meaningless existence, an adult walking among the flowers, a child playing on concrete, an endless pit separating them, yet play acts as a bridge.
PRIMORDIAL PREOCCUPATIONS
God is Dead, and so is the Individual.
(Or the symbolic value/significance of elements)
(The search for the divine, for the humaine, for nature and for oneself.)
The divine codependence: for millennia, the sanctity of the individual depended on the divine and the divine bathed/delighted in the sanctity of the individual. People thought they saw God in the “outside” (or in nature), so it gave value to the “inside” (or the self ), the relationship between one and another had meaning. Once the “absence” of God became apparent in the “outside”, so did the “sanctity” of the “inside”, the meaning withered, evaporated, dried. Between the old God and the new God lies meaninglessness, what is to be done?
The Journey “Inside” the “Outside”. “The capacity of architecture to restructure the psyche.”
What is more deprived (absent) of meaning than the modern city? The architect stretches his hands in the darkness feeling varied shapes and picks the “weightless ones”, so the modern city is a sea flooded with empty weightless garbage, because the “rocks” don’t float on the surface, you need to dive to the bottom to find them. The bizarre often signifies the new, the unexpected, the unaccustomed, but sometimes the new can be the long forgotten old, the unrecognisable, drawn to the bizarre, curiosity takes hold, possesses, drawing the individual out of the unconscious. Ascension, or the desire to ascend becomes the mother of sin. (In the bible, Adam and Eve are promised a status equal to that of God by satan/the serpent, therefore greed/desire symbolises the move upward.) Desire nourishes action, it always speaks to the higher, (never to the lower), it addresses our potential and shapes it in our imagination. The movement to the higher takes place through the lower (the serpent/the apple/the abandoned), (the forbidden fruit/the (forbidden) abandoned.) Once inside (the apple/the abandoned), there’s blur, doubt, trees symbolise the fog, or transition to “sin”, the “skin” of the apple, from “unconscious” to “conscious”, the tower acts as a guide in the “fog”, it is the “landmark”, always the desire that draws, you enter but you will get changed by the place, you will not get out the same way, you will taste the apple without even knowing it, just as you do with great writings that restructure your psyche as you are reading them. The Surface is the Reflection of what is Above and Underneath. (Hope and memory, hope as a desire for a certain personal and collective experience, memory, as the foundation based on personal experience of the world to generate that desired experience).
The tower symbolizes transcendence, becoming more than you are, seeing more than you see, greed. The concrete playground symbolizes limitation. The apple tree symbolizes restraint and hidden pleasure. The flowers symbolize remembering. The water cylinder symbolizes life and beauty through decay. The ondulating ground symbolises history, destruction and regeneration, healed scars.
“The garden is foremost rupture, isolation, retreat through desire, curiosity.”
The escape is a way of addressing the contemporary desert of meaning in the city, the city is a desert, this garden is a oasis, feeding the thirsty. The elements of the garden are it’s water, the nourishment, they address the mind and the soul, first by signaling the abyss between the two (separating them) by putting you in a state of confusion you freeze, it’s the moment of doubt, dissociation between the “mind” and the “soul”, you question at the same time your desire to come here in the first place (the soul manifesting itself, or the wickedness of your soul becomes apparent, it’s deformation) and your capacity or limitation in fulfilling that desire (the mind, or your intelligence, your potency), yet desire acts as a bridge, uniting them, stemming from both. Your curiosity, fearfulness and ambition push you through towards the tower, that signifies conquering, surpassing, you climb to see more than you saw before. You descend from the tower and you discover the past, waiting for you, the violet flowers, the memory of what has been, therefore connecting the past with the future, the things you saw from the tower with your memories of the past, (tower, future, forethought, idea, violet flowers, past, memory, emotion), concrete playground where joy liberates you from the burden of the past and the future by putting you into the present (with its limitations), the hardness of the concrete, the wetness of the ground, the grass, all limiting and sometimes increasing the pleasure of play. But play makes you sink into unconscious, playing means forgetting what you/who you are, delighting in pleasure, into the present, staying/remaining what/who you are in need for awakening. The apple tree symbolizes that awakening with the taste of its fruit, with the proximity with the madness, water realises that awakening. Once awakened, you observe two things, two surfaces, reflecting the above and the underneath, the light of the sun, and the rubble of the ground. The plants floating on the surface are a consequence of the stagnation of the water underneath reflecting light coming from above in a green fluorescent manner. The dunes, by their shapes reflect the underneath, and the history that brought them there. Both of these elements require close inspection to be understood, they confront now conscious dreamer to the beauty of the real.
Inside the “Inside”.
Sharing, discussing, understanding, experiencing something else is a natural need. The presence of the table is to fulfill that need, the mandala sanctifies the place and gives it a spiritual value, yet the absence always there, the distance, the unapproachable unknown. The always present void of abandon, the silence, yet the desire to speak and or share, never satisfied, always unrealised, that’s the table, that’s the space. Then there’s the intimate desires and needs of the individual, a space for oneself, a space to eat, sleep, read and clean yourself, all closely clustered together, each space, a mental collage of needs and desires floating creating a certain redundancy of the material itself, in its essence, it is almost immaterial. Vegetation and water, combine together to invade the space and take possession from the outside in. People, visitors combine and invade the space and take possession from inside out. The meaning stands as a barrier between nature and people, between indifferent expansion of nature and the blind desire of people.
Potential. Desire is a window into the future, often covered by the image of the present. When not, it is devoured by the present in a cannibalistic indifferent, ignorant, narcissistic way. The remains, ruins of the unborn sparkle in the urban landscape, a last hope of reincarnation. And yet the past with it’s corporeal presence stands between the present and the future, often laying itself on the table of sacrifice, what should be done when time itself surrenders itself to you ? It speaks to your weakest instincts, unformed, untouched, unaddressed in the dematerialised present. It’s voice appears silent, it’s meaning transparent, it’s body like water, impossible to take grasp of, but to take hold of water, you must transform it into ice, and so does the past. But stagnation is the mother of decay. It’s presence announced by a veil of dust, slowly covering what is, the present becomes a cocoon and through stagnant metamorphosis, it transforms into unexpected beauty, devouring marble columns, brick walls, metal beams, all reversing into formless slums. Everything can become everything, and everything new attracts the soul, unattended and unwatched, the ruin becomes a temple of madness. A temple of colours, a temple of light, waiting to be stumbled upon.
The in-between. Experience is a child of the past, continuously growing and in search for play. But children, in their playful indifference transform and create the present into the future. Creation is positioning yourself, an irreversible act of acknowledgment, your existence becomes a reality in between. You realise your existence as a moment after something is and before it becomes, your choice, the only act of “control” over your existence and over existence itself evaporates in the heat of desire that transforms what is into what it could be, but what something ought to be ? A question born out of uncontrollable desire and anxiety. It’s answer, in the simplest and most profound form, presents itself in a courageous act of surrender. That’s when, things unknown to you, unknown to everyone, yet known, burst into existence. Matter takes a life of it’s own, gently guiding your hands, an idea searches for body, you release it into being by imprisoning yourself in the act of creation. By surrendering yourself, you gain your freedom, exposed to the danger of choice again, you understand the indifferent nature of reality, and you are her object of desire, your needs, your wishes devour you slowly so as to expose your remains to the world, and yet, that’s the best we can offer and what we most desperately want.
Genealogy of the creative act Love opens the window from the present into the future, good future is a child of love, and what future does not come from love, it’s not a future worth encountering. Love guides, reveals, and justifies, never satisfied with what is, we wonder into the unknown, indifferent to everyone’s pretentions, we liberate ourselves from conventions, we step into the unexplored. Indifferent to everyone’s pretentions, nature lives and dies, it’s existence, an ethereal meaninglessness springs forth the most indifferent of beauties, almost in a cruel and playful manner. Willing to know ourselves we act, almost in a cruel and playful manner, driven by desire and experience, we decide to exist, when tired of playing with ourselves and knowing others, we decide to play with others and know ourselves.