Times are tough and I am not one to complain or make things negative, but by following my American Dream I have gone into a nightmare. Today I had to warn my family that people may be looking at our house in a suspicious way, a sellers way. I have been negotiating with my mortgage company to get a modification of my loan, which has gone up beyond my ability to pay and have been turned down and led on for months. Now my house has gone past two months delinquent and I am about to go into 3 months, which may mean foreclosure. I received a letter telling me that I have to allow people to inspect my property, which means they would be calculating the value on the open market if they took the property back and resold it to recoup their loan. All bad news to me, but a harsh reality to my wife and kids. There is no real plan that will allow me to cut my expenses any further to the point that I can pay the mortgage and keep my business, so now is the time of desperate action.
As a fixation that distracts me from my real problem, listed above, I have been compulsively making brick projects trying to come up with a combination of materials and style that will magically put my house back together again. It has been like alchemy in that the combinations of one thing with another does make interesting compounds that seem like a magical material, but none of them are gold. I can even make yellow bricks, but I have not made a complete road to follow that will solve my financial problems. I have manifested my problems into my work, I have dreamed of the things that could somehow merge these ideas, but every morning when I wake up I get the same fateful call from the mortgage company, "Your modification is with the underwriters and we will contact you when we have an answer".
The worse scenario is if they keep requesting documents, as they have over and over again. I am losing my ability to satisfy their demands. I am losing my ability to work on my day job. I am losing my ability to do anything except make bricks in new and different ways.
Let me assume that my dream of the bricks somehow paying my mortgage was realized, what would that mean? All my work would be created to pay interest on my loan. Would I be able to accept that as payment for my efforts? Whoring my work is my only way to insure stability for my family in order for them to get to the next step, which is to go to college and or for my wife to be able to finish her efforts to have a successful career. The nightmare continues because even success on paying my mortgage is a complete compromise to sell out my work in order to pay the bank for a few more days.
Artistic compromise is acceptable in many ways because my work has been compromised from the beginning. I think I like the current work in that it is an obvious compromise and a non-sequitur of my efforts. I make bricks to save my home, I make bricks because I cannot make artistic expressions, I make bricks for others to see my exterior, I make bricks that can be used for shelter in the event that I cannot save my home, I make bricks that can cover cardboard so that I can build a new home, but my bricks are not real bricks. The bricks are veneers of bricks. The bricks are images of bricks. The bricks are fake.
I can reach almost any point I want to make when I use a brick as a metaphor. I can make almost anything I want to make when I use a brick to build with. Defying the dimensions of what a brick is, is a challenge. Throwing a brick through the bank window would be a joy. Sticking a brick on the wall is the most I can accomplish.
A brick: A brick is a block, or a single unit of a ceramic material used in masonry construction, usually stacked together, or laid using various kinds of mortar to hold the bricks together and make a permanent structure.[1] Bricks are typically produced in common or standard sizes in bulk quantities. They have been regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history.
I took this definition from Wikipedia and accept it for all it says. There is no reason to tear apart the definition of a brick because it is a word that fits it's definition. A brick is everything that art should be but isn't. A brick is not art, because it is a brick. It's very name is a compromise and it's existence is but for others, for shelter. Yet it is, "regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history." Over the centuries we have poured our existence into our shelters, yet we cannot make art that exist more than a few centuries. I reference this not because of the need for permanence, as all mountains will eventually fall, but because of the need for more and information and a truer understanding of ancient values.
If our societies are living on an edge, as the media constantly reminds us of, to the point that we are mere subscribers for the sake of existence, then why haven't our predecessors conveyed their epiphanies in such as way that we are not continuously oppressed as a population, or that we have to be in a metaphysical trance to comprehend a set of ideas? Is it that we only comprehend metaphors when we are under the influence of religion and booze or drugs?
I have taken on the opinion that artistic representations of past cultures activate nostalgic instincts that may allow us to empathize with past generations, in the same way that looking at an old photo of a family member reinforces the idea of heritage. If a person is not told that a photo is of a family member then a large difference in perception would exist. If a person is told that the picture is of a family member then a sense of communication with the non-existent may commence. The details of an image of a family member would be analyzed in a completely different way than if a photo is shown to someone who they do not think they are related to would have.
These feelings and comprehensions defy analysis but are artistic in nature. These types of information transfers between generations are acceptable manifestations of communication between generations. The question is what do we want to tell the future? What have we learned in the past that should be conveyed to the future? Why aren't the lessons clearer to us so that we can avoid being oppressed? Why didn't they write in brick?
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