Gilgamesh Interviewed on the Ancient Mesopotamian Battle Network, by Cole Wood – artist statement.
Genesis 1-2 Retold to “Saturn” by Sleeping At Last by Shey Clayborn – sources and artist statement
by Nya Fernandez
Nature & Civilization in the Mesopotamian Upside Down by Maitiu Gormley – artist statement
We are reminded of the unrelenting exploitation and devastation of our own world’s priceless ecosystems as Gilgamesh and Enkidu set out on their expedition to face Humbaba, the Cedar Forest’s protector. Through my multimodal artwork, I make connections between the two settings and situations through the connection of themes of loss, desolation, and change.
How the World Was Made (Cherokee) by Susan Hudson – artist statement included
I look for the thinkers and I find them everywhere. The people who have a lot to say but never do. I could say it’s because I love getting to know people, at least the process. People remind me too much of the contradictions of myself. We are complicated beings and yet, so simple. We can be selfless to a fault and sometimes, so selfish. We have morals until they work against us, we love unconditionally until we hate. Our minds are so full and conversations empty. We are nothing alike and yet, we are the same. That is why there are days when I wish I knew no one at all.
Sometimes I tell people things that are not exactly true. Not to be intentionally inscrutable but it’s like the lie I find myself coming back to. I swear to some people that I do not understand what it is to cry. That I can not cry. That I feel no desire to cry. I haven’t the slightest why I do it. I grew up with a lot of criers. The types to cry about all sorts of things. Melancholy things, choleric things. I mean, they even cry about sanguine things; and so that we may have a full cast of Shakespearean humors, I have the laudable role of a phlegmatic arbitrator. I think that because I’m not the type of person to express my tears in the same manner, I come up with a lie to save myself from the complications of explanation. It may not look like I’ve participated in chasing a summer storm when things go to hell but I still feel things. I may even be the saddest person I know but even that may not be the truth of it. I think sad people jump into lakes and sadder people jump in to save them.
And sorry for saying hell but some words can never be more right.
That, or they become poets. How dare I call myself a downer when people like Wilfred Owen exist. The poets that use words like piteus, encumbered, and end the whole thing with good-bye. “There, encumbered sleepers groaned” I like that line. Yes, English poets from war are most certainly the saddest. Perhaps I could become a poet. Because I think while writing about all the grievous things, I would fall in love with the world. See, a walking contradiction.
I met a writer once. He told me that the zenith of his life would be the moment he became completely insignificant. That got me thinking, really thinking and it still does. Does questioning significance out loud or proclaiming its existence make someone more significant? It confused me at the same time. Seldom in my life do I come across those who love being alive as much as they can’t seem to stand it, like him. Like me. At any opportunity, he would attempt to escape whether it was disappearing physically or mentally for a while. A fellow escapist I would joke, never really joking. I’ll tell you a secret, I think he cared way too much to be insignificant. I believe insignificance would destroy him. To hate a life, you must love it until it treats you like you are; insignificant.
Referring back to a previous topic since we don’t possibly talk about it enough: lying. Firstly, why do we do it? A simpler answer would be because it’s easier that way. Even the people who say they could never lie, the most decent kind of people, are the biggest phonies of all. It is only doing one an injustice to tell someone the things they are desperate to hear. Unless that thing is the truth of course. Secondly, why is lying such a bad thing if most lies are said just to make people feel better? It’s all a matter of opinion really. And timing. Especially timing.
I’m not certain that I have what most would consider a lot of friends but the friends that I do have know that I have a certain tendency to be frank. I may never understand the aversion to a point. My own silence would never hesitate to eat me alive. A friend had told me once that I was much too honest. I could blame that one on genetics. A family of criers and honest, honest people. “Your honesty could be called brutality if you really meant the things you said” she had said. I liked her for telling me that. For the reason that it was honest but because it also made me wonder if I meant the things I said.
In the words of Catherine Camus while sharing the ideal of her father Albert Camus, the philosopher, she states that we are “obliged to accept certain contradictions if [we] don’t want to reject certain obvious things about life, certain evidences.” Contradictions must exist, they are proof that we think and that we evolve. That we are an ever changing and quarrelsome species. This mentality, I find this ironic, is paired along with a moral from Camus’ book, The Fall, that all living things crave sympathy. On some level, our decisions are almost always decided with a piece of solidifying sympathy. Or according to the philosophy of Jean-Baptiste Clamence, the main character of the story, sympathy is the prevention of solidarity. He is able to explain this by using an example of friendships. Friends tell us just what we long to hear. The things we need to be affirmed. Not because they agree with us or know every perspective of our life but because in one way or another, they expect the return of this sympathy.
It will forever be impossible not to think. For me anyway. I will no longer attempt to speak on the behalf of other thinkers. Though what I will find possible is the desire to contradict myself, to lie, to be brutally honest, to cry, to think. And the desire to desire. I do not ask to be remembered for much at all if anything but I will not exist in this world silently. I am a finder and I will find those who are nothing like me. Who can disagree with and inspire me until they want nothing to do with me, who want everything to do with me at the same time. I will be brutally significant.
