All at Once
While traveling in Ireland,
I saw the Cliffs of Moher.
I saw Killarney Lakes so blue.
I kissed the feet of Oscar Wilde and
donned his holey t-shirt.
I saw my mother
although I knew it was my father.
She was alive.
She was floating in the Liffey.
I saw my husband beheaded.
I raised an aqua vitae and swallowed a star.
I searched, and became, a dress of saffron.
It hid my child - no dress - a saint was he!
But off the cliff we were pushed willy
nilly.
I hung with pirates.
They left me their name.
(And I’ve been hanging ever since.)
I’m back in Prussia.
It is Pennsylvania.
We Neanderthals
will see
what we saw in 1972.
MDM 2018
I am American, but my half brother’s Y chromosome hails from County Cork and probably Skibbereen, in Ireland.
These particulars are related to how and why my artistic practice has become a device by which to achieve a compression of time of sorts.
The compression of time, in turn, is a device by which to achieve a sense of calm - to make sense of history (mine and ours), to survive the present, and to still the synapses sparking like sidewalk poppers whenever I dare to imagine a future.
I probably should also explain how the compression of time is my heaven, but that will have to wait until later via my drawings.
Meanwhile, during my (second) stay in Ireland, I must have taken several thousand photographs. I found a couple suitable for a Facebook profile picture and cover photo. The profile pic seems to be vapid fiction, as most are, but there I stand, cheesing with a documentary grin, against the very real backdrop of Oileán Chléire (Cape Clear) - my ancestral stomping ground. Cropped out of the circle are the ruins of Dun an Oir, the ancestral castle, but they are on glorious display in my cover photo.
This cover pic commits many sins of composition, is too dark, and the horizon is actually tilted. But I can’t stop thinking about it. While adjusting the contrast to sharpen the details of the castle, I inadvertently made a speck on the horizon and, indeed, the horizon itself completely disappear.
The speck was Fastnet.
The horizon, the Atlantic Ocean meeting the whole dang firmament.
Barely visible even in high contrast, I made it all just go away.
I only had eyes for Dun an Oir, because it stands as symbol of a glorious past when Uncle Lord of the Ó hEidirsceoil (O'Driscoll) Clan reigned o’er the heather, the pilchards, and the foreboding crags and cliffs of West Cork. So now you see that grin in my profile pic is sheer lust for power and a fortified room with the kickassiest view ever.
Further refinements to the contrast, however, and Fastnet reappears like a pointing finger.
What’s that about?
And so, we come to my project, By the Time You Cut Teeth You Are Already Ancient.
Through drawing, sculpture, and animation, I hope to compress time in order to squish out pottery shards, striations on kerf walls, circuitry, and breath so hot it steams your sunnies.
Call it my prediction of history (mine and ours) sans a pesky chronology.
