Something left unfinished. Undone. An image, lurking in that void, the dreaded folder of work I’ll never complete. What is the point? What is the point of any work I create? Are you enjoying this? Does it bring some joy to your life? I hope it does.
Well… maybe not joy. I wouldn’t write the things I write if I wanted to bring joy to people’s lives. Joy is overrated.
But I question myself, I stop to ask: Is there a reason I’m doing this? As an artist, as someone who creates – this is a part of my identity, a part of who I supposedly am, the creature I have created for myself, whose life I live every day. If I am not creating, if I am not producing something, am I not diminishing myself?
I suppose this is something we all face – the slow and gradual disintegration of our selves. We can’t always control it. The last week I have been busy, I’ve been working too much, I’ve been tired and other problems have encroached upon my life that have eroded what little time I have to confirm and solidify that identity I call my own. This is a loss, but also a release.
Our identity, who we believe ourselves to be is often a trap. Matt Illman, as he stands, and know that here I am detaching myself for the sake of drama, is my captor. Who is Matt Illman, is he the face I see in the mirror? Is he the man I wish I was, a shining example of all that I could be? Or perhaps, is he the ghost of my mental illness, haunting my waking life, a character I play in dreams and fantasy?
We can’t know ourselves, honesty is anathema to the human condition. To lie, to forget is human. I know who I am. I have looked into that tempest and seen the swirling whirlpool consume and destroy everything I believed to be the case. Most of us have, but we carry on, we pretend this didn’t happen. So I lie, I forget. It is all we can do when faced with the prospect of our imminent annihilation. Deny that sacred truth at the heart of us.
There is no fate. I make my own destiny.
I know this to be false. I know it absolutely, but still I believe. I suppose, in some sense I have faith. This is important. Faith is underplayed, distorted and abused by the sick and the broken. Used to justify the very worst of human nature – hate and ignorance. I hesitate to use the word for all the pain and suffering it has caused. Let’s put that aside.
These are all topics I could discuss at length, but there is so little time, and that is not why I am writing tonight, drunk, alone and delirious. I am writing to discuss the unfinished, but also the content.
I paint to forget and to remember, this is the paradox of my process. I forget who I am to remember where I’ve been. But that isn’t all, I am writing, I am painting because if I am not, then who am I? Aren’t we all looking for confirmation of our existence, for a witness, to say “Yes, you have existed, these things occurred and you were party to them”? See my works, know that I was there, when the lights exploded into the night, when a small boy smiled at a camera in the arms of a man he’d never know, when that boy became a man and made sand castles on the beach, watching them crumble as the sun set and the tide drew in. These experiences are a part of whatever you’d call me, a part of my memory, a part of my identity.
Sometimes, I don’t finish work, perhaps this isn’t worth remembering. Perhaps this time, people don’t need to know the whole story. It’s more honest that way, gaps and holes, intense detail juxtaposed with flat planes of remembrance – a colour or a shape. I was here and I can barely remember this. We are constantly rewriting our memory. Every time we remember we are corrupting and distorting that initial experience – it’s gone, fading into the past. I can’t always fill those holes. I can’t always finish, sometimes it doesn’t matter any more. Painting, remembering, they’re all the same to me, sometimes, I just remember to stop myself falling apart. It has no significance.
But we’re back to that car park again.