Musings of a Ridiculous Woman
3–9 February 2023
People need people for different reasons. Some can’t go on holidays or eat in a restaurant alone. I certainly could. But I can’t create for myself. I feel a creative urge to do something for some other people. But perhaps not just washing the dishes or peeling potatoes. I am in a mess most of the time because people seem to want my help but not with anything related to creativity. Only dishes and potatoes, not even a hope of creative cooking. This feels like a curse.
If I could just go on my own, I would go exploring the world. But I can’t. Instead I go through the calendar, following amazing holidays, wonderful celebrations, footsteps of creative heroes of the past. I experiment with AI and the collective subconscious. Meanwhile potatoes are screaming for me in the kitchen.
On February 3rd it was Setsubun in Japan and soybeans were thrown to ward off the demons from homes. Lemuria was a Roman festival in May when Romans used black beans for a very similar purpose.
On February 4th. I talked to my AI about Sri Lankan Independence day, International Day of Human Fraternity and a deck of Tarot cards I was about to order. It made four strange images. I made a collage out of it. I like it. Open to your interpretation.
There was a full moon on February 5th, the beginning of the month known in some parts of North America as Snow Moon or Eagle Moon. I have been thinking that the combination of seemingly random events associated with a particular day plus seeming randomness of AI imagery produces interesting results, like cut-up techniques used by William S. Burroughs. Apparently it also was his birthday and that range of techniques called aleatorism. Are we looking for lucky coincidences?
“In my experience, Captain Solo, there’s no such thing as mere luck,” said Obi Wan Kenobi.
On February 5th and 6th it was Tu BiShvat, Jewish New Year of the Trees. I have planted a digital tree in celebration, hoping it would amuse or cheer up someone. It grew mostly out of the collective subconscious, I only trimmed and decorated it a little.
Maybe I am a tree which is not ready to produce its fruit yet, maybe I am trying to produce the wrong fruit altogether (but I tried a lot of different things). What happens if I go silent, at least for a while? Would anybody notice? I do play my harmonica by the river, where nobody can hear me, but I do have a hope that I will be good enough to share that sound one day. When I imagine myself on an uninhabited island without any chance to get out, I can’t see myself making artwork which nobody ever sees. What’s the point? But maybe there already is no point.
It’s funny that it is the same word, “retreat” as in battle and “retreat” as a place of relaxing or meditating.
I think I like this ongoing history-related collage image making because it is a sort of visual meditation. Or a divination. The symbols, the ideas and the images. Themes are emerging and repeating, connections are forging.
On February 7th in 1942 one of my favourite artists, Ivan Bilibin, died during the Siege of Leningrad. He studied in München with a Slovene painter, married one, then another of his Irish students in St Petersburg, emigrated after the revolution but then came back to his city to perish during WW2.
There was a religion — propelled “bonfire of the vanities” (cosmetics, art and books (!) in Florence on this day in 1497 and the leader of the Guarani rebels was killed in 1756. Some people consider him a saint.
Fire, faith, wars, art, vanity, injustice, exile, beauty and fighting for freedom. All mixed up in history and in almost any individual life too.
“Co ivi oguerecó iara” — “Esta terra tem dono!” — “This land has owners!”
While some give roses on Propose Day, others think about human impermanence on Parinirvana Day. But both Jules Verne and John Williams, born on this day, teach us to be brave and adventurous no matter what. Happy February 8th!
9th of February was the day when Fyodor Dostoevsky died. He was my favourite writer at school, at the time when I started to think what type of human was a good one and what I wanted to become. I especially liked “The Idiot” and “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”. Then friends enlightened me about my Jungian personality type and that was allegedly why I understood Dostoevsky heroes so well. I even called myself a “FiNe artist” at some point. Later I started to suspect that something even weirder was at play. The “Ridiculous Man” might have been the story I have read (or only started reading) before… uh oh… dying for the last time… Maybe even the reason why I ended up in the strange country of Russia next… But this is just a crazy fan art sequel for a fantastic story of dying and having another life on a strange planet, written by the real FiNe artist, a master magician of human connections, human growth and human failings.
A tribute from the web of human collective unconscious a bit in the style of Frank Frazetta who was born on this day.
It is February, still dark and cold in Wales, where I am at the moment. But snowdrops and the first daffodils are already out. Maybe it is vanity which makes me want to share something, rather than do potatoes. I often dream about putting my paintings on a big bonfire to free myself. But the third of them are in Russia and I am in a sort of exile because of the war, so I can’t do that anyway.
And maybe it is not the right season for lighting fires, but it is always a good time to look for new connections and meanings through time and space.
