silence
Carl Barnett Design/Studio
rejuvenates.
light and white it clears the paths.
soothes the mind.
settles
the inner rattle.
emboldens.
a candle in the dark,
an open palm.
expands. embraces.
settles the roots.
bursts the blossom.
CB 10/27/18
Honest Simplicity
To live life with an honest simplicity seems to be the best approach though it may actually be the the most difficult. To go with the flow and take life as it comes is the stoics way, though too difficult. Perhaps its a combination of both, to strip life to its bare bones exposing its truths and lies. Its naked vulnerability. Life shivers sometimes at its own reflection. Its beautiful ugly. To simplify honesty just might be the needed action. Our best course forward.
The human condition has been documented for centuries obsessed with the need to find meaning, to create purpose. Attaching words to define emotion, wrangling in the unknown and confusing. God, country, love and the like.
Wolfgang Tillmans at David Zwirner Gallery
Carl Barnett Design/Studio
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“The search for meaning is in how you live your life but also in how you describe it and what else is around you.” ~Rebecca Solnit
~~~
It seems always to have been our need to create the outer self to match the inner self, our landscapes of the physical and emotional. An attempt to simplify the tumultuous. This however has turned on itself, a feeding frenzy of survival of the lost. Hanzel and Greddle with no breadcrumbs. Maze of yellow brick.
It seems as if our physical world has betrayed us. Our best laid plan no longer valid as we hoped. The mirror has turned, its image beckons honesty, not to scorn but to show a new way. The mirror has become window, where light comes in.
Carl Barnett Design/Studio
Cindy Sherman
We know of what we hope for, we have created where we are. There should be no surprise ending, the twists and turns we see, the boogie man around the corner is us. This is what we’ve built and can build. This is us. We, moving forward.
To simplify honesty is to own our place in time. Dissect and extract the unnecessary. To find ourselves unhindered, wondering. Discovering who we are. Finding our truth.
CB 10/24/18
Act and wonder
Image via Dezeen
No choice but to change. We have hit a major marker in our path forward both in politics and the natural environment. How we live , where we live and the future as we hope it to be. This is a time for clarity in how we see ourselves, how we are and how we need to be. The reality of our living.
This is not an issue of choice. Our time of bounty has passed. It is a strong matter of the future, to have a future. To not just save the sinking ship but to build a new one, not an arc but a rocket, fueled by idea, wonder and bravery. Guided by hope and will.
Jenny Holzer
What will save us is our creative mind and collective drive, our acceptance of how things are and what can be. The responsibility to the facts and humanity, though flawed and lost. Hope and change in a material world.
~~~~~
“When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.” ~Ursula K. Le Guin
~~~~~
This is a time to both act and to wonder. To upset the patriarchy and steer a new course. Our government is broken, but the future needn’t be. We have within us the capability, we are in fact adaptable. Having created greatness in our histories, we can create greatness for your futures. Now. We must allow the dreamers to foresee, the writers to inspire and the creators to build. This will be our ground work. Our pebbled path forward. Savior.
Zaha Hadid Architects
We see the task before us and know the fear within us, the only choice is there is no choice. To fight the great fight and dream a bigger dream.
CB 10/21/18
Complexity
Complexity has a tendency to overshadow our everyday, even the simplest of tasks. Symptomatic of a fever that flairs, this is life, our current condition.
Within complexity there are pockets of simple deeds, beauty tended and actions taken. All in gesture of a better balance, a clearer present and a future forward.
“Lady Justice unbalanced.”
It is however complexity that is having its way, contradicting basic morality, fusing itself with an underbelly better left dying. A complex simplicity that is disorienting and infuriates, leaving society divided. Lady Justice unbalanced.
There are no mixing of words here. See it for what it is, a wound unbound. No clear solution but to push, eyes open, determined. Common decency is innate as fight or flight , we know this and simplicity will find this.
My simplicity is to favor less words and open space. Dig deeper, act further and follow my path of truest intentions.
Truth
Carl Barnett Design/Studio~Untitled (02/09/17)
Moving forward does not require the preciseness of plan.
It does however ask of faith, not knowing what’s to come is a necessary marker of change.
It is this journey that tells us who we are, exposes lies and truths.
But it is truth that hurts the most as it pulls at our egos.
Truth provides for silence and softens the inner rattle.
Together they are our contemporary alchemy.
Clarity in the noise of lies.