When the war came along, I decided to use only quiet sounds… There seemed to be no truth, no good, in anything big in society. But quiet sounds were like loneliness, or love, or friendship.
— John Cage
Ellsworth Kelly, "Lake II," oil on canvas, 2002. Beyeler Collection, Basel. © Ellsworth Kelly.
There are so many ways to form a sentence or express a thought. And there are so many thoughts to have! What should I think or believe this day? And then, which of these thoughts should I tell others? I often find myself considering a crisis of the authentic, the un/utter-able, the overlooked, even, and the quiet. Which is to say I usually find myself considering. I make photographs but often wish I wrote songs, or produced television. Editing images is not like piecing together a well-crafted interview, or cogent Op/Ed piece. It’s the difference between argument and suggestion.
I’m far more susceptible to suggestion, how about you?
The Internet is the perfect platform for us to go on discussing the ever-expanding ways in which we can have a conversation. Experts agree language is changing, as various historians remind us it has and will. But I finished grad school a number of years ago and I’ve grown weary of talking about talking. So I think I will just speak, regardless the medium.
When I was twenty I wanted to be Susan Sontag. It was in her work I first encountered the thoughts I wanted to posses. Where I first discovered the possibility of tearing down walls with words. I wrote furiously thereafter, formulated opinions and arguments based on chapters read and patterns found. I always thought I would grow into a me-shaped hole in the universe complete with accessories: my words, my ideas.
What I never anticipated is that there is not a book in existence that contains the point I am trying to make.
Rebecca (Marks) Leopold, "Library of the Ever & Anon," Chromogenic print, 2010. Courtesy the artist.