Second-hand symbols

External voice: There's a lot of flappy-dapping with your mouth about some sort of self-reflective narrative that only makes me think of an ineffectual, confused and pitiful person. Don't use pity as a tool to create sympathy, it does you greater damage in the long run. Speak plainly and clearly, not softly and uncertainly. These symbols you use are strange and overly complex, what are they for? Why do you need them? What reason do they serve? You could have done yourself greater service by simply facing the facts, and looking the challenges and pitiful failures in the eye and referring to them as what they really are, not creating second-hand symbols in order to attempt some weak therapy.

Second-hand Dreams

I can't even believe that I have to spend time here engaging with this tripe that you so effortlessly spew, so honestly believe in and imbue with a quasi-cultish intensity that defies sensibility. And that's not even the worst, the worst is you won't even argue about it and take a stand, you'll cave in and think that what I'm saying is right, and you're wrong, and you'll  never get it right! But all I want you to do is stand up and say, "Hey, this is what I'm doing because I want to." Not, "Oh, maybe I'm wrong about this and that... or I could do it your way if you think it's better. Or, do you think I'm going about it correctly?" etc etc, blah blah blah.
Don't give me that namby-pamby uncertainty, get a spine! Believe in what you're about, don't waste your time searching for what's glaringly obvious. But just so that I'm glaringly obvious, and you don't miss it because you're an unperceptive naive half-wit, let me tell you.

It's what YOU like! The answer is only what you like and want to make. And you can discover it immediately, for it's always there, because it's you, it's looking in the mirror back out at you saying "here is the question and the answer. Me" Ignoring the befuddled imbeciles who pepper you with their half-baked concepts and dimwitted responses and criticisms is not ignorance, it's strength. Lead the donkeys, go your way, only see your mountain that you wish to climb. Have the confidence to say "yes" to yourself.

Dark Forest

Artist: "The story unfolded all by itself, whenever I attempted to force a direction it would simply guide me back onto the path that it wanted me to travel. I often feel helpless when it comes to the decisions that I make, to the point that I can weigh up the pros and cons and deliberate interminably, until a simple decision is made. The process of weighing up the two sides of any decision is exhausting, and I can't let go of the grasping thoughts of yesterday that peer into my clarity of today. Suspended in movement I am lost and require letting go of the need for decisions in a place that I am only found. How can I be lost in my own mind? It was the discovery of the Emerald, the symbol of my mind, that led me into the golden forest, the symbol of my heart. I let go of the Emerald, and in doing so the forest was lit from within by the golden glow, and my decisions were changed from to-ing and fro-ing between why and why not, to only trying to listen to the single direction of my heart, the strongest and surest guide. There was a Fool, who pointed into the darkness of the trees, before the trees were gold. And previously I had run from the forest holding my mind as though it were my greatest treasure, all sparkling and glittering with infinite variations and patterns and perfections."

Fleeing the forest clasping the Emerald 

"And then I had entered the forest again, and the Fool had urged me deeper, away from the edge where I had wandered unsure, looking out at the promises the world had to offer, and looking in at the journey to be taken to discover what was inside, in the darkness."

Manifesting the unreal

Artist: "The infinite divides the whole."

External voice: I am an animal. Thirsting, hungering, desiring.

Death will come, and the older I am, clearer is the inevitability. Why worry about others? They should worry about themselves. Don't even worry, be happy, be the strongest, be the best, have ultimate confidence in your ability to achieve power through whatever means possible, don't let weak socially imposed rules, guilts and ideologies ruin your strength. Move outside of their rules, bend them to your will, the real reality has no rules, and only the ruthless survive. The ruthless trait is more attractive than it may at first seem to your agrarian attitude. It will succeed where you will fail, through your reliance on the superstition of self. Tut tut Artist, it would be unseemly of you to appear as weak as your ideas really are, given that artists are traditionally considered free of such social restrictions. If only you lived the hedonistic free-wheeling, tempestuous life that the audience craves.... womanise, destroy yourself, destroy others, steal, kill, cheat!! They love it, you will be famous, though your life will be tragic and unhappy! But you will love them loving you, for they love the tragedy and the unhappiness! They love the tears of the women and the flippant callousness of the chauvinist. They love the deplorable self annihilation in the dank pits of drug-induced despair where lights are brightest and songs of hope are most mournfully felt when the ballads are sung. They love the break-ups, the recriminations and vengeful violence enraged by the other lover, sometimes bottled and expressed helplessly alone, cast aside once the drama has assuaged the Colosseum. They love it because they dare not live it. They muddle befuddled as they wish for one thing and do another, jealous of the strong, who live their life with only themselves to blame. It is right because I truly and transparently want it, and it comes to me effortlessly and quickly, without strain, and Oh, how you wish for such manifestation, yet your superstition cannot manifest the unreal.

Your golden forest is unreal.

A nightmare, with pits for eyes.

Moral compass?

Bludgeoned by a distant future unmade by the last possible insight left unattended.

Artist: "It's a moral position in the sense that it is a position anywhere on a moral spectrum. It doesn't matter where, it only matters that I say that this is the moral ground where I feel most within myself. I have found that when I make decisions that differ from my natural, or core, moral alignment, then I am unhappy, dissatisfied, guilty, quite often hurt mentally or physically. I can only speak for myself in this regard, for I do not know or care about other people's choices, that is their path to explain or ignore, or follow. And so I strive to live as close to my moral alignment as possible, without deviation. Through expression of this journey I found that symbols emerged and fell back from the aether, and they told a story with personal symbolic imagery that ran parallel to the lived. And the symbol that has emerged most recently, and continues dominantly, is the golden forest."

Golden Forest Twilight

External voice: Pretty. Pretty soft and useless.

Who needs rules? No one cares about these reflections, rules or guidances... make mistakes, do what's in your heart right now, do it with all your heart. Don't sit around reflecting on it all so that you become a useless flapping piece of flesh incapable of initiative besides that which searches for support for the tiniest decision. Is it the right thing to do? Is it ok to do this, to do that? Am I on the right path? Who cares!! There is no path, that's the path! Do anything, go anywhere, you silly Artist, making rules that merely bind you to mediocrity through the suffocation of dynamic action. Shame on your freedom that your heart reached this shackled state... moral position indeed!

My symbol is success, and it's in my head, I don't need to draw a picture of it as though it's not really there. But then, you are the struggling Artist, not as successful as me. I made my decisions for myself, I have no loyalties, no need for a silly moral compass that situates me in some absurd and invisible "moral spectrum". I don't care whether it's oil, or gas, or telephones or gold that I buy or sell, show me the profit, show me the opportunity, what else is there? You're deluding yourself that there is an ultimate goal apart from the here and now. I am here and I am now, and I'm going to take what I want and get what I want. There is no such things as lies, it's all a game, that I play well, no attachment is the key, everything will perish, survival of the fittest, and I am fit so I will survive.

A decision illustrated

Artist: "It's a moral position"

External voice: Amoral position?

Artist: "No. A. Moral. Position."

External voice: So the Artist's golden forest is suddenly a moral guide? A light, a beacon in the ocean of restless greed and desire that the lost souls can use to keep them from the cliffs of self-destruction? But it does not speak, it has no analogy, its message is mute, deaf and blind.

Artist: "It is a symbol of a decision that was made, without the desire for an imposition of its content upon others."

External voice: If that was true then there would be no need to express it externally, you would have it as a personal truth and not require an image to "crown" it. No, there is ego in the Artist's production, whatever the motivation or excuse or rationale. There is always the ego searching, requesting adulation, and it employs many tricks to gain a foothold in another person's eminence. The Artist even says that it is only for the self, for no one else, that it is not worthy, but they are simply different words from the same motivation, to be seen, to be heard, to be applauded and made worthy.

Journey? No thanks

External voice: Where is the edgy impasto paintings referencing the photography of an award winning journalist documenting the Arab spring uprising? Where are the kitsch irreverent products of a highly conceptualised manipulation of iconic modern technology? Where is the significance in a golden forest that seems neither to engage with social mediums or media, and refuses quietly to maintain an outdated reverence despite its lack of denomination?

The art that the Artist produces and thinks interesting and clever, will generally not be interesting and clever. The viewer loves the instant fix, as is the viewer's right. An illustrative cacophony of silence bends the light into the golden boughs and whispers nothing, and it has no content but its form.

But the Artist defends the meaning, or lack thereof, by referencing the invisible works that came before, like some grand narrative or concatenation of self-reflexive and mentally unstable self portraits masquerading as externally directed imagery.

Artist: "No, no! It's more like the crown of a description of Being that cannot be described in circular phrases, yet relies on the appropriation of the logocentric journey to delineate the boundaries and form the structure of the edifice that the image must crown."

External voice: Oh wow! What an amazingly esoteric and formidable browbeat, no wonder a recourse to imagery was needed. And why not dramatise it excessively by referring to it as a crown, the top! The pinnacle of achievement, wow, it must be great.... not. The Artist couldn't say it, and he can't paint it!

Artist: "But the intention was to illustrate the end of the journey and, in a sense, the beginning, the finding of the whole amongst its parts." 

External voice: Never heard that before, 'it's about the journey' they whine, and 'it doesn't matter about the product' they mewl. Well, it's not about the journey! The journey is nothing if you don't get somewhere or something, and so it's all about the product, we're nothing without the tangible reward, the success, the trophy of the win.

Ludicrous?

External voice: Ludicrous would be giving the Artist too much credit. Unimportant and meaningless would be better. The Artist continues to etch through the paint into the gold beneath, and does so regularly and with conviction, as though there will be a spectacular moment of revelation upon the completion of the work. A golden forest stands upon white, created with patterns of curling and useless intricacy, dizzying the eye, a redundant throwback to Celtic abstractions that symbolised a deeper significance than that of the absurd arrival of the empty forest of gold. What zeitgeist can it grasp? Or what zeitgeist can grasp it? 

None to speak of, and none are spoken of, as the spirit of the times waxes silent and mysterious, though it is not mystery that defines it. Electrolysis pulses rampant through the screens and begs for the attention of it's viewers, a veritable hive-mind grows inwardly stretching out through the burgeoning consciousness of the youth growing into the hyperlinks and terrabytes of the lived and programmed... and the Artist draws a tree, a golden tree among other golden trees. It is justified then, that derision be directed toward the moral high ground that the Artist purports to live and dully expresses so dutifully and systematically, whilst stripping his freedom and imagination bare of colour and the vibrancy of chance and passion. Reverence is not kitsch, and so commend the work to the cellar and search for more meaningful resonances of our time.