I recently spent 4 days away from everyday life in a place of great natural beauty, absent of the clutter of modern life. I touched my phone twice a day, setting sleep-music to play in the evening, and turning it off when I woke the next day. During the day I was immersed in activities designed specifically to foster connection between self and other. Other people, but also non-human beings: animals, trees, streams, lakes, stones, soil, fire, the planet, stars, and ancestors past and future.
When I returned home, I became suddenly panicked and overwhelmed by imagery. Everything I encountered was an image — a copy, a signifier, a layer of abstraction, a simulacra, a representation, a reference. Not only was everything an image, everything seemed to be an image of an image. The modern human world as comprised of copies of copies, layer upon layer upon layer of abstraction and mediation, forming self-referential feedback loops and degraded artefacts that seem to gesture lewdly at something more real.
I had for a moment glimpsed the real, underneath it all.
The Origin of Imagery. Non-representational reality. The stuff that underpins everything — that base, divine, element that we are all made of, which unites us and the rest of the universe as One.
As far as I can perceive whilst working within the dimensional limitations inherent to the human perspective, the Universe is not made in the image of anything else. The Universe is full of fractal patterns, infinitely repeating at all scales, but these are not Images Of - they are themselves part of the Origin of Imagery. The all-encompassing conscious network of objects [beings] which comprise the totality of it all, the bounded infinity of the cosmos.
Different cultures are more or less reverential of Origin, more or less concerned with the production of images. Places in the world contain more or less imagery, more or less Source material. Bodies can move and make sound in ways that are more or less representational, more or less connected with the oneness of existence and the Origin of Imagery. The relationship between Body and Place is a space within which we can interact directly with the Source.
We’re part of it - humans are of and from the Source. The human body is as divine as the Sun. We are immanent beings. We are all a part of that layer underneath everything, pure and beautiful and of such wonder and divinity, such simple yet complex majesty. Every single one of us. There is no-one that is not divine. We are all deserving of worship and adoration.
I momentarily mourn the accumulated sedimentary layers of self-referential detritus that seem to obscure this unifying truth [belief?].
My grief fades. We create beautiful and affecting images. We are Image Makers. This is a eustasian position to inhabit within the universe. We have the faculty of choice, and we choose to make images. This is not an accident. Through our craft we are capable of forming representational feedbacks loops that evoke rapture and reverie, intensifying even the purity and beauty of the Original Source. We have the capacity to experience such joy and wonder it is as if the universe is engaging in an act of ecstatic onanistic self-love through us. We create such crescendo and beauty in representation that it is no wonder we become absorbed by our world of images.
What I take from this insight then is not a desire to rub all the images away, to rip and tear, rend and fold, until the Origin of Imagery is all that is left.
No. I am an image-maker too. I revel in imagery.
Rather, it helps clarify my direction of travel. I feel a renewed devotion to the Origin. I seek to celebrate and honour the Source. To revel in its sublimity. To seek rapture, and to make the journey with others who share that desired destination.
[Do you want to journey with me?]
My interest in the non-representational settles for the moment upon Body and Place. Voice, movement, and place. A divine trinity.
The universe leads us to ecstasy, if only we learn to read the signs. Images tell us some of the story, providing clues from ancestors who have interpreted the signs before us. The whole story is all around you. In the sky. In the soil. In the rocks, which birthed us. In the forest. In the seas and the lakes and the rivers. It is in the birds and the beasts, the insects and the fungi, the fish and the plants. Look to the stars and it is there too. In the fire and the ash. Look down at yourself. It’s in your body too.
If you get anything from this newsletter, please do consider subscribing! I will never put any posts behind a paywall, so you won’t get anything extra but it would mean a great deal to me as a token of your appreciation, and it will help me to maintain my (admittedly somewhat irregular) output. If you subscribe in May you can get 50% forever! That’s a full year’s subscription for just £17.50.
Thank you for your consideration.
With love and solidarity
Laurie