Willing Blindness

Ultimately to be willingly blind is a complex question of the identity of each of us as individuals verses the mass mentality, and the choices we make to conform to our destiny within our given circumstances or break away, speak out and choose a different path. This phrase is gathering some momentum at the moment and has actually been used as a headline on the front of the Guardian this morning. It is often presented in quotation marks, which in itself seems ironic. There is an article and video currently on brainpickings.org that explains this human condition in more detail...The Dangers of 'Willful Blindness'.

When I think about this topic I am reminded of the story of Oedipus the King, created by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, yet is still as poignant in today's society as it was then. With the evolution of technology, education and comfortable living standards, our relationships with each other have not diversified with such velocity.

For those who aren't so familiar with Sophocles and this play, he tells the story of King Laius and Queen Jocasta who were thwarted with the prophecy that their son would kill his father and marry his mother, and so when they bore a son they bound his feet and left him to die on a mountain. But the baby did not die, and was instead rescued by a shepherd and then raised by King Polybus and Queen Merope of Corinth as their own son. When Oedipus came of age and visited the oracle at Delphi he learnt of the prophecy bestow upon him, and in doing so he vowed to never return to Corinth so that his parents would not come to any harm. He headed to the city of Thebes, and on the way he encountered a situation that lead him to make a choice that he had never made before. He put that incident behind him and eventually arrived in Thebes, where he learned that King Laius had recently been murdered, and the city was in chaos and at the mercy of a Sphinx. Who ever solved the Sphinx's riddle became the new King...Oedipus solved the riddle, became King and married the previous Kings' widow, Jocasta. They had four children together and Oedipus became determined to discover who had killed the previous King to end the plague on his city. He came to realise that he was the murderer, when he killed a stranger on the way to Thebes. Jocasta hung herself upon realising the truth and Oedipus removed two pins from her dress and willingly blinded himself with them before being banished from Thebes.

This story is rich with questions about warped morals and hidden truths, the very foundations of willing blindness: Who did the right thing and who did wrong thing? Was it Oedipus in his infinite wisdom or was it his parents who did not tell him the truth, or the parents who left him to die? Are we responsible for our own actions or at the mercy of decisions made by other people? Do we make our choices in life willingly blinded by everyone else one way or another or can we make our own intrinsic decisions? This story focuses on willing blindness within the family dynamic, but in this day and age we are bombarded with this conundrum every minute of the day with exposure to the media, consumerism and our working life too.

Oedipus the King is such an emotively charged tale and has so much more detail in the full version, it is layered with subtle connotations that nod towards the truth through out, and is very much worth a read in its full entirety.

The Wind

I love the wind.

It is such a unique and powerful force that gets taken for granted. You can't smell it or taste it. You can feel it. Its something that comes from nowhere and hits you, it can take your breath away. It can make you feel present, in that moment its all you can think about, this intangiabe thing that is a powerful force.

The wind does connect with some of our senses, you can hear it in different ways, it might whistle to you. Or you might see it, because it can make things move. It has an interesting relationship with trees. It blows through their leaves and it creates a beautiful sight and sound. Do the trees and the wind embrace each other? I do not know. It seems that they do have an understanding of each other. The branches of a tree sway in the wind, the leaves rustle, they don't fight it, they go with it, but the tree stands strong because of it's roots and trunk. Yet a tree's branches and leaves are vulnerable, and some may break off and fall to the ground because of the wind.

The wind carries itself and other things, but we don't know where it comes from. Where does it start and where does it end? Why does it exist? Nothing has no purpose does it? The wind gives so much of itself to other things; pollination, the ability for birds to glide... but it comes and goes and changes minute by minute, and for no reason. Perhaps thats why it is hardly recognised as having any value. And the wind never takes anything back for itself, apart from having a destructive streak when it gets really out of control.

There isn't really any logic to the wind, it just is what it is.

I love the wind.

The Truth About Lies

I had never explored the activity of telling lies until I turned 30 years old. Up until that point I was totally honest and transparent and I worked hard to never step a foot out of line to be able to uphold that stance. Where had that value come from? It meant so much to me for so much of my life it must have been just something naturally in me, right? Well with the velocity at which that value has unravelled in recent times I now don't know what to believe about myself and my values. How can something that is so wrong have made me feel so free? Rebellion? From my parents, from my marriage? Am I being my true self when I'm keeping the truth just for myself and not for someone else? Or am I living a fake reality on unstable foundations with everything about to crash down around me at any time. Do I like the thrill of it? Never knowing what each day will bring because everything hangs in the balance. I have discovered that there is an element of exhaustion that comes with this lifestyle, much like how the stock market can just crash, and usually then the truth comes flooding out to everyone. Perhaps ultimately this is the only way to move forward, a way of cutting all the baggage of carrying the lies around every day. But when you tell the truth about your lies to other people your then recreating their reality as they knew it, controlling them and their belief of the past. Lies are about control and living in the past.

I think the truth about lies is much like the truth about drugs, do not do it in the first place, refuse to go anywhere near, because the minute you tell that first lie your opening up a new path, like a third dimension, and it will only ever suck you in further and further until your living in what feels like a totally different reality with no ability to find your way back, always beholden to that past moment in time, to that time when you first did it.

Another truth about lies is that it takes at least two people to lie, the liar and the receiver of the lies. This receiver is then either a victim of the liar's control by being oblivious to the fact that they are being lied to, or they join in with the lie and form an alliance and then the two of them are liars and the receivers are multiplied and the cycle continues and spreads like wild fire, usually involving all of the people closest to you. Then the lies multiply rapidly, to cover up the previous lies, and on and on. The two liars can think that they trust each other in their constructed 'reality' but in actual reality they can't, because they are liars. What if one wants to tell the truth and one doesn't? What if no one believes the truth because one of the liars has warped the real world enough to make their lies the truth that everyone wants to believe?

My truth about my lies is that I chose to explore something that I knew nothing about, dived into doing it willingly and naively and now only have myself to blame for the fact that I am totally lost about the truth of who I really am. Lying to myself and then to the people who I care about the most. And sorry is just not a big enough word to override it all no matter how much I wish it was.

Drowning in Decisions

Its been so long since I last wrote a blog and so much has happened I don't know where to begin. At the moment there is no beginning or end, just the feeling of drowning in the middle of the decisions that I've made.

Other people come into your life and its only when things go wrong that you really think about the relationship with them and try to work it all out as to how you've got to this point. Maybe thats where I go wrong, because I just drift along, and if I get on with someone I spend as much time with them as they want to with me. And when I fall in love with someone, I fall in deeply. This could be described as wearing my heart on my sleeve, or just plain ignorance to what is good for me, and the other person.

But there's only so long I can hold my breath for and I have been for months now. I don't know at this point whether I will fight to get to the surface or if I will continue to hold it, and eventually succumb to the elements around me.

'Drowning in Decisions' 2014

Letting Go

It sounds so simple yet it can be so difficult to let go; of the past, of other people, of emotions. Everything on this earth is always changing and we as humans are just one small part of it, and even though overall as a race we have come to believe that we are the central force of a world that revolves around us, we aren't. To try and stand against the flow and to never move on will only lead to the destruction of ourselves and in turn everyone and everything that means something to us.  It is a force of nature that is far more powerful than we as mortal creatures will ever be.

The unique element to human nature in this world is how we process our thoughts, but within that we can become beholden to memories that can replay in our minds as if the past is still a part of our present as well as making us think that we know what the future will be. And this can affect everything we do, say, feel; how we exist.

But we can't control everything and everyone, or even ourselves. And thats why there always comes a time to let go. Sometimes the thing we encounter is so beautiful, like an enchanting, colourful, delicate butterfly, that we want to capture it in our hands and never let it go, but in doing that we actually destroy everything that we love about it. If we want to keep it and hold on to it we are only thinking about ourselves. No matter how difficult it feels to let it be free to fly, that is the only way to truly enjoy it's beautiful existence, to truly love it.

Letting go is so multi faceted that it can feel so hard to comprehend and achieve, and it can feel much easier to try to avoid. But one way or another it can not be avoided, it is something every one of us has to come to terms with at some point. So perhaps a life where letting go is embraced, respected and celebrated is what nature has really intended for us all along, and why we are shown this powerful force in all sorts of ways every second of every day.

'Letting Go' Kate Barry 2014

Connecting

As an artist it can be a struggle to know whether your work is connecting with anyone else out there, but ultimately this is why I create, to say 'Look, I'm human, and I saw and felt this and if you did too then you are not alone'. But its finding that point of osmosis in a subtle yet striking way, where the message in the piece permeates the viewers conscious mind both superficially and fundamentally, that has become the crux for me as an artist at this present time.

So I have been thinking about this a lot recently and I have found that music, especially pop music reaches this level of connectivity that I am talking about in a very unassuming guise, engaging massive audiences. I want to really understand this process and to be able to channel it into my work. I have read theories on it such as 'Ways of Seeing' by John Berger but theories are just that, and real people listening to their radio happily singing words that talk about their deepest darkest emotions is something totally different.

I guess the ultimate reason for this contrast is that speaking, listening and seeing are all very different behaviours and connect with us in very different ways. Perhaps the intangible words and the upbeat melody of a song are the perfect segue for talking about emotions, but seeing a physical image of that same emotion is too much for most people to deal with.

This is an ongoing exploration and I do not have many answers at this present time, but I will continue on my journey, continue making art and continue trying to connect. This image is a summary of all of this, its a piece of art about my art, about my audience, about other artists, about popular culture, about my questions and about myself.

'Connecting' by Kate Barry

Conformity

If you see an ant going about his daily life he may look a bit crazy, zig zagging here and there. If you see two ants they might zig zag in slightly different directions but ultimately get to the same place. If you see a colony of ants they all zig zag in the same direction, form a trail, and march along a clear path from A to B.

Is this why humans feel so compelled to conform? Because we don't want to feel like one crazy little ant zig zagging all over the place with no destination in sight?

And what if the two little ants zig zag in the same direction, and don't care about the destination?

'Two Little Ants' by Kate Barry