The criticism eternal

Artist:  Leonard Bernstein said "this will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before". 
I believe in this intention. For myself I would replace 'music' with 'art', but it is all the same.
Thanks Lukas!

External voice: Your golden forest is unworldly. With so much going on in the world, how can you spend so much time and effort saying absolutely nothing? There are civil wars in Africa, Egypt unstable and Libya having overthrown its government, atrocities in Congo and Somalia a haven for pirates. The Middle East reels from the Arab Spring uprising. Israel and Iran gnash their teeth and threaten war, Syria destroys itself in violence and bloodshed. In Europe the people carry the financial burden of a greedy capitalist structure that has left Greece penniless, and Italy and Spain trembling as their economies teeter dangerously on the brink of collapse. Brasil continues to expand and absent-mindedly destroys its rainforests in the name of 'renewable' energy and progress. The USA struggles to regain a global economic advantage in the face of an imminent collapse if its binary political system cannot agree on an answer... is it in decline? China continues to suppress its individuals in order to further its 'nationhood', and churns out cheap consumables to feed its growing political and military engine. India is corrupt. Australia mines its resources into oblivion, and will soon be a wasteland. South-east Asia struggles with corruption and internecine religious and political conflict. Masses of refugees criss-cross the globe in search of a peaceful life. And with all of this going on and more, you paint a picture of a golden forest in excessive 24kt gold-leaf!!?? What does it mean? What are you contributing? How are you existing in the world? What sort of middle-class attitude are you bringing to bear on an existence devoid of normalcy and filled with the desperation of humanity?

Artist: It is not in ignorance of these global issues that I create a golden forest. In fact, it is a response, or reaction, to the immediate confrontation of these realities of existence that I choose to create a golden forest in the first place. The golden forest symbolises togetherness, not just of people but all things and meanings and actions and futures and pasts. I do not wish to depict the atrocities or wade into the political warfare that some Artists wish to be part of. I wish to make a statement that I do not condone any aspect of this bloodshed and violence and injustice, on a global level or on a trivial level. I wish to not be a part of the argument, because both sides are wrong and right, thus there are no sides! And I will not accept that "no side" is a side, for "no side" is all sides, therefore none. I do not believe in creating anxiety for my reality, or anybody else's reality, and the golden forest is the antithesis of anxiety and trepidation. 
Yes, it is an escape. Yes, it is not a place that exists outside the realm of the individual psyche, but it is a place that all psyches can go to, or achieve. I believe in the place-ness of beliefs, that when someone 'believes' something, then they are in that place. I believe in the non-denominational, apolitical, holistically organic nature of existence. It is not anything in particular, because it is always growing into something new, shedding the old identity for the new, but always retaining an aspect of that which it left. 

The golden forest also symbolises divine providence without a god. There is no god in the golden forest, but there is no "no-god". There is neither a god or an absence of god, there is only the complete synergistic concordance of all meanings and actions, thoughts and possibilities. Nothing escapes, all relates.

I chose gold because it is eternal, it is beautiful, and it is a symbol of a metaphysical existence. I did not choose it for its cost, or its rarity, for these aspects are accounted for by its first characteristics. The golden forest is not unworldly, it is particularly worldly, and its existence is a silent statement that says nothing but itself. It speaks only that which the viewer speaks. It is an image that means only what the viewer gives it to mean. It is a place that cannot be destroyed, for it is a symbol of a belief that has no content except its symbol, and that symbol is anything and everything. 

Centrepoint

The Leap of Faith

External voice:  Ahh, it speaks! And what does it have to say. More of the same attempt to defend an emotional position. Be rational. I notice how you attempt to twist my words to your own ends, by making me the bad guy. But all I wish is for your focus to be in the material realm, not caught up in the fantasy of narcissistic projection. There is nothing that is not in the world of your senses. The fantasy that you escape from harsh realities with, is nothing but a re-organisation of conceptual fragments derived from the original material world. It begins and ends here, where we all meet.

Artist: Your ideas and projections are only in your mind. I do not accept your reality, you can live it without me. My consciousness never escapes from the gravity of existence, even as it tries to leap into oblivion. We are saying the same thing. 

The Leap of Faith

A response

Artist: Up until this point I have ignored your barbed words and inflammatory remarks. I have ignored your empty criticisms thrown from your empty house. It is easy to criticize creativity if you do not create, far too easy. 

It is to create objects within the material world that is true. 

The true experience.

It could be argued that the metaphysical world of the individual is the truest and most ultimate reality, and that the material world merely provides the medium for an expression of that reality. I wouldn't expect you to understand such impractical abstractions due to your 'normal' and 'material' understanding of reality. But note that the simple fact of our disagreement is enough to prove the subjectivity of personal reality, not within the world, but within the mind of individuals. And it is through the expression of that reality that a broadening of our limited reality can occur. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it merely limits and suffocates the creative individual. But how would you know, how can you comment if you do not express yourself creatively?

Pointing into the Storm

As for the journey, do you expect that your life is only taking place in the external, sensible world? That it is not taking place in the confines of your own mind and understanding?

To ignore the personal journey, and not reflect on its meanderings, is a terrible ignorance, and one that I would dare not inflict on my psyche. So I choose to look at the path, at the symbols and synergies, the serendipities and stumbling steps.

You say that it is not very interesting to read the description of the journey, and you deride the need to do so. But it is equally uninteresting to wade through your unconstructive negativity spawned from  selfish ignorance. So I will not waste any more of my time in trading pointless blows with your empty bluster.

Furl your sails in a Storm

Caught between the fear and the wish to create and express something personal, it can be difficult to take a step. But any step is useful, and 'no step' is not a step. A decision to express something freely is not itself a free decision, and that can be perceived in the product. A freely produced expression has no reason or rationalization as its motivation, and any attempt to describe the motivation voids such an example immediately.

I simply wish to express myself freely, without the "you should do that", or "you should do this" whispering distractingly in my mind. When my mind has no self-conscious thoughts it expresses itself freely. A free thought has no idea about other people and their opinions, it has no understanding of  itself, it cares not for its beauty or vulnerability or silliness or naivety or genius or mundanity. And most of all a free thought has no fear, especially of your criticism that you shoot without understanding. 

Your ignorance is terrible for its pervasive and eternal recurrence.

Your lack of understanding is as ignorant as my free thought.

Your criticism and my free thought are both devoid of an other. 

Are they brothers? 

Or are they one and the same place?