Shannon:: Project One

I think I really failed to explain myself in presenting, but to sum things up, what I've discovered in looking at all of these things in one place is that more than anything what inspires me is the Uncanny - that which is strange, which disturbs, which is unsettling, deeply and psychologically, in ways that the feeler can't quite place, because whatever it is, it reminds them, unwittingly, of their own Shadows. Strangeness and Ugliness, Rawness, Stripped-Down Nakedness and Beauty in places that some people might be afraid to look - which mostly means within themselves. I like That Which Is Hidden. Shadows. Secrets and the Dark, and by Dark I mean not something evil but the other side of Light, the stuff we can't always See. Monsters aren't so scary when the Monster is yourself, and I think that if we go into the Darkness as an Inverse, understanding that there is a purity in it, not a filth, that it's somewhere you go with Honor, we can learn to understand ourselves better. I don't believe in a negative anything, but I believe a lot in balance, and I believe a lot in Stories. I believe a lot in inner universes, and the idea that we're all made of a thousand Faces. I really believe in looking at things like Pain and Love and taking them out shopping, holding hands with the Butcher, so to speak, when really our first instinct is to deny that the Butcher is there at all. Instead I like to say, okay, I'm acknowledging you and maybe I don't like you much but let's go out together and try on some silly hats, or something. I like the pieces of ourselves that most of us try to convince ourselves we don't have. Beauty is a wonderful thing, and there's so much of it in this world, but I'm not so attracted to the picturesque as I am the grotesque or uncanny half the time because it's the black stuff in between the beauty that makes beauty exist, by contrast. It's the way that we get sick and suddenly when we're better we really Feel it; and we love what it is to be Healthy, when otherwise we'd have barely noticed how good it felt to breathe. The world is not at all beautiful - it is sick and deranged and terrifying and often very cruel, without reason - therefore, it is. Because it's in that that we bloom as human beings, and I think that if we can learn to embrace all parts of the Self, even the pieces we try to cut out and kill and hide away in mattresses despite the flies that buzz around our heads as we sit on them, trying to keep them down, we can really learn to walk with Balance. The Hidden isn't something to be feared. And that's something I never get tired of exploring; that's a place that I have a permanent subway pass to, and it's a pass I'd like to use in my work for this course.