Hopefully you were able to take a few things away from critique that were useful. I was personally frustrated by the way things went, brought out my existential boxing gloves a few times, but reminded myself about my own “coachablity”. I just want to share with you a few jots from my notebook. It’s important to note too that I may be entirely wrong.

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I could sense the sad melody of the images. I’m talking about “sense”. “Knowing” something viscerally doesn’t necessarily mean that “vocabulary” exists to “define” (simplify and reduce) what we understand. Defining doesn’t necessarily mean knowing. I am not backed by a “sort of intellectual thought” when I “know” things. Knowing comes from direct contact, immediate experience, is relative to each unique individual experiencing the sensation of “knowing”. It is very much, “to each their own”; there are many truths, some contradicting. Some people by their nature are skeptical, some are faithful. Faith is trusting in intuition, in your own knowing.

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Sanctuary/Captivity/Altar/Enclosure. The images that have enduring interest to you offer space for contemplation. She asks, “what about this that we don’t know?” and not seeing/understanding/knowing.

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Some people have a sense to the sort of spirit that “vocabulary” induces, alludes to, suggests. “Vocabulary” being, at least now, literal and visual. My job is to believe what you are saying, that there is something to it more worthwhile than you and others suggest, that there is more to things than what meets the eye. What is to be sensed might not be seen, but still present, given the time and space to contemplate in the images, as deeply as you have.

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She asks what to do with this? We do what we always do, we create, we lose our minds. Divine madness to express what we know. Your work should serve you first. Make work by caring and in that act, others may care too. People might be too literal, thinking too vertically, want answers that are easy, want explanations – there are not answers, nor explanations. There’s a reason we search and search and search. Photographs produced that allow us to search, to reflect, to deep dive and contemplate things that are unanswerable is as much a call-to-action as any – is another “activism”. Awakening, or realization…knowing.

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Again, “we’re” in a position to be taught, educated. It’s not grandiose, it’s faith in what quality an art-ist generates/captures…can teach an artist through his own experience. To learn from your learning, as we are not understanding just yet… to KNOW and SEE and UNDERSTAND how you know and see and understand. That’s why it’s you who is making it, nobody else. Everyone’s knowing is unique, and the more we all share in that sensation, I suppose the better. Maybe it is grandiose, but if so, then let that be the point in me saying this. In your own words, “You gotta try hard stuff.”

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There are larger hierarchies to contemplate than those of the art world or even those of man. Don’t reject yourself what others have rejected, and don’t forget what you know, what others have yet to understand. Teach to who will listen, those who don’t may well be fools if they wish. If you make the work that is right for you, the right people will find it, you will learn from it, and others will learn from you. Sometimes the choir needs preached at too, reminded, had they gone complacent while off singing their songs or neglecting their deep searching for what they know. I don’t think it matters if anybody’s in the church or not, it’s a practice, certain pursuits in certain kinds of work are a devotion. Science, mythology, wolves, water, snow, and sunlight – soaring soaring soaring; as we should be.

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The right people will hear.

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A song I started working on writing yesterday – it’s a bit ambient. Named it “Rozumiem” which means “I see, I understand.” Made me wish it was for that owl seeing that lake mesh with the sky.