Living truthfully in imaginary circumstances
By kevin stewart
11 July 2008
At the time of this writing, I am 48 years old. I have been keeping a journal continuously since I was 18 years old. Thats 30 years of self-documenting. By now I figure if I dont have some aspect of myself down, I have wasted a lot of time and resourses. I have not. And while at times I have traded my writing for discoveries made in life: while shooting, while drinking a beer or smoking a joint, or sitting staring. I am constantly though ever presently escaping the shawdow of what W.E.B DUBOIS called "DOUBLE CONSIOUSNESS". Nonetheless, I sometimes wonder if this great divide, this grand canyon of deceit that separates me from harmony and peace with others will ever close. My greatest fear is it will not. By now others who read my writing must be able to ascertain that I am not bitter, nor am I so far gone that I toss racial insults from behind a wall of racial inferiority/ vitimization. I am in the open where me and my camera endure the onslaught of indifference. As a writer I sometimes imagine an audience sometimes I try to forget that I know not why I write. But I never forget why I started.. I wanted to improve my writing. Along the way I got caught up in the reflexology of the act itself. The act has within the doing of it its own world. The world of ideas streaming out onto paper. From head to pen to paper. Often, (like now) I go back and forth...back and forth.
As a photographer, I am a director without a budget. I am creating low cost stories. The internet is the only new tool that has changed and the mechanics of my marks; making then immediately available to others. Most of my audience is not yet born. If they are, they are not yet intuned into my images. The stampede of others seeking whatever it is they seek collide with me. I recoil and scream at a deafing level all silently within me. Insults and pleas circle within and without. Images are often too personal. Yet I try to get them read by a mass of others. Rising to my own applaudes not always confident that they want me to continue. One thing is for sure, some of them will not let me stand on the same side of that canyon. Occasionally my shadow falls over there. llusions cause me to believe that I am coming..so I continue.
Its slippery in crowded places. I fall. I get up and I click my shutter..I jot a line. I click and press rewind. I purchase blank books and sketchpads. I doodle and I double expose. I do all this in hopes that someday that allusive audience is waiting wanting to cheer me on. I look up from what I am doing and they are not there..Wipe whatever clod of dirt they have caused to fall into my eyes away. They are gone. I go on.Today is but another day. The contests are closed. I get the rejection slip. I move on. And yet as is evident in writing this, I am living truthfully in imaginary circumstances.
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