2016: Things Are Not Things, But Collections of Events

February 27, 2017

The world tilted a bit for me last year when it came to light that my brain had somehow developed a mass of scar tissue in it's right anterior temporal lobe, a crucial region in the the limbic system, which is the physiological seat of what we think of as consciousness ie the processing or sensory information into emotional response, filing the experience into the short term memory, and thence to the long term memory, by which we develop our sense of "self".

The scar tissue evident on an MRI brain scan suggested that the frequent episodes of really intense, really spooky experiences of deja-vu I had been experiencing for years were actually "focal, partial-onset seizures", small electrical storms in the brain.

I began processing this information through my work, and realized how deeply the un-diagnosed condition had effected my consciousness and artistic output up until then. I was told that if the seizures weren't controlled completely they could develop into generalized grand mal seizures, that epileptics have a high sudden/early death rate, all sorts of pretty terrifying things. It was a blow, coming off of my recent recovery from that whole back surgery ordeal.

So, all year I'm cruising around the beautiful Central Coast of California, apprenticing with a super mellow old surfer architect guy, curating and managing gallery festival installations, visiting my beautiful at-the-time girlfriend and friends down in Santa Barbara, absorbing all this gorgeous country side, working with the earth, making paintings, living a totally privileged, aesthetic existence, and yet I'm in a state of near constant anxiety, waiting for the shoe to drop, so to speak. I was trying to stay grateful for all of the moments, desperately absorbing the moments, greedy for the moments.

Everything was heightened, I don't want to waste a drop. Sadness, deep sadness at the irretrievable splendor of the present moment, was there, pushing the sweetness of life, pushing the sadness, pushing the sweetness; life becomes unbearably tragic, excruciatingly beautiful, taken apart into discreet moments, trying to separate the chemical soup from the electrical storms from the industrial chemicals from the solar radiation from the oxytocin. Just trying to make sense of it, trying to impose order and control onto these minutiae of exquisite, discreet and discontinuous marks on my consciousness, at the same time trying to surrender to the unbearable intimacy I felt to all beings in this phenomenal world, and simply trace the way consciousness and physical interactions and forces of nature construct the world, and the self, and life in color, in line, in mark, in moments, in movements. These are what came out. It was a lot, 2016. These are really pretty amazing paintings: