What Holds Us Together, series 3, no. 22. Graphite and cotton floss on paper. 2020
The danger in, and pleasure of distance…
What Holds Us Together, series 2, no. 28. Graphite, ink, colored pencil and cotton floss on paper. 2020
…on the one hand, there is relief in separation, when vehicles become scurrying ants and buildings are reduced to plastic Monopoly game pieces scattered about the landscape 2 or 3 miles below. Suddenly their contents don’t matter any more. They’re simplified, imprinted in what looks like the same satellite shot we might see in the smart phone apps used to get around down there. All the problems they represent are abstracted into moiré dots that quickly disappear into the horizon.
But as my eyes scan the vast number of miles reflected in each flicker of retinal movement, all it takes is a memory to make them stop, and I’m sucked right back down there, into someone’s car or house, and the world gets tiny again, dense and oh-so complicated. Because each driver of every one of the thousands upon thousands of moving metal cages has thousands upon thousands of things to think about - their as-yet-un-filed taxes, expiring or unaffordable health insurance, their kids’ drug problems, a hurtful thing their significant other said, the looming prospect of not being able to pay next month’s rent, the dark, irregular-shaped mole on the back of their neck that is finally starting to itch...
There are nearly 8 billion of us, each with many times that number of synapses all firing off at once, representing trillions of memories, worries, nightmares, dreams. The fact that the world has not yet exploded from the shear intensity of it all leaves me hope. It reminds me of how much lies beyond the limits of human perception and I take comfort in what I can’t possibly know.
I smile, sit back and enjoy my flight.