ONE FLESH

A Dialectic of Art, Poetry, and Self

Spring is in the air and I am most defiantly a soul snared by the joy of it. Though in most ways I am a winter person [ i love all my layers of black - warm furs and the crisp air] I can not deny the beauty that buds with the first few warm days of March.

It has been pressed upon me in some of my most recent conversations, the curiousness of my coupling a painting and poetry. My insistance that they are as one work but - evolve separately. I was asked how that came to be - the pair of poetry and painting. If I am being fully honest I don't know... I just knew neither one was complete until the other was beside it. Robbert Veen [a philosopher, theologian, and friend] referred to them in conversation briefly as twins. That echoed through by brain for a while after we talked but upon further consideration I think they are instead a marriage.

Robert Veen most recently wrote an article exploring the dialectical opposition within Heidegger's view on art and Levinas'. Within that was a consideration of how Levinas' thoughts on art seemed to speak to my need for the abstract work to be beside the 'word'. [read Veen's thoughts on the matter here]. And I think I agree. What pushes my thoughts to consider the works as a marriage may seem a tad reductive but I do think present a subtly yerning within my own soul. I do not see them as twins, or limbs of each other or even extensions of the exact same thought. Even how they evolve begets that.

Some times a painting sits for years without a poem and one day as im writing a poem my eyes or thoughts will drift to the un married painting seated in the corner, then with a semi - surprised "oh!" it will settle upon me that they are for each other.

Other times poems build and build in my unpublished anthology [all tagged with my now ironically considered titled note 'Un-Attached' to indicate they do not have a painting yet] when suddenly a brushstroke will fall and the poem with float up from the depths of my brain and I will smile warmly as the seem to sing together - as they give each other purpose in their oneness.

And sometimes [though most rarely] as I paint or as a write the other will begin its formation simultaneously. Words will direct the brush strokes and color will breath rhythm into the words. They are of one flesh from the start.

This is why I think they are Married - bound intimately and with a profound service to each other but also individuals. Can they be present and explored as separate objects but they are most intimately known by each other. This perhaps resonates in a small part with the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, the concept of "the Look" (or "le regard") emphasizes that our sense of self is not something inherent, but rather something we gain through the gaze and recognition of others.

Or maybe its as simple as one is the body and the other is voice. It seems an ever present desire for my works to dialogue with the viewer. Perhaps the painting would give the viewer a face to look at, a person to desire to know and the poem would be the voice for the conversion I wish them to have... or begin to have. That act of coming to know another guided by word given substance by art and then left to the viewer to explore farther.

I do not yet know in full but think I am beginning to understand.
Even the above is but a scattered, un-orchestrated stream of consciousness mussing on the tip of the iceberg.

Origins: Hymns of the Oceans Verdure

AUTHOR: Bianca Valencia Criscuolo