I stand here, staring
at the same stars I’ve always seen.
They look a little different
without you here,
but I figured we’d made a promise,
and maybe tonight
you’re looking at them too.
Maybe it’s the bumps on the road
or all the bright lights.
But at some point
I couldn’t see them anymore.
Ballast for the journey.
A compass that never vanishes.
We had such high hopes.
Wishes on stars,
now covered in dust,
the noise of life
shielding them from view.
I still look,
seeing if I can find the same shape,
clutching at what’s left,
but,
the words stay in my mind:
even if I find it,
I know it’s over.
Even though they never change,
we do.
And the world,
the world has its own plan.
Rivers split.
Mountains fall.
Sometimes,
no matter how hard we try,
it’s just not right.
Maybe not in this life,
but in another.
Sure.
I’ll be waiting.
But on this one
I guess the universe just threw something at us,
and we couldn’t get out of the way in time.
You called it early;
maybe,
that’s why it ended.
Side notes of emotion
permanently etched into my mind.
The story
always ends when it should.
So what now?
We go about our days:
different beds,
different roads,
never to cross paths again.
Does it make it any less real,
the fact that it’s just a memory,
one that maybe only I have?
When I look up and I see
the same sky I saw before,
maybe it’s true
just not anymore.
Not for me,
not for you,
not for anyone else,
ever again.
Urania
Truth is a subjective experience.
When you pare away at the onion of life,
the layers reveal what can’t be described.
Urania represents the forces that pull this together:
the known and the unknown,
the wonder of space,
the beauty of math,
The methodologies of description.
While we use paint and marble
to show what we see,
the eyes are a faulty product.
A pinhole into reality.
Our narrow field of view is supplemented
by a myriad of senses,
some we understand,
some we don’t.
There’s an idea that reality exists.
That because we hold it,
and it feels so real,
it must.
But we rely on belief,
no better than a blind man grasping for a door.
We paw at the world,
hoping it behaves how we expect.
Urania reigns over the unexplainable
and the tools we use to understand it:
astronomy, navigation, mathematics.
She’s usually pictured with a globe and a stylus.
The globe is a map of constellations,
patterns humans project onto the infinite.
The stylus is a reminder of how we record those patterns.
Astronomy became navigation.
Navigation became empire.
The Muse is never neutral.
She’s sits next to truth.
She’s the inspiration you feel
when you stand under the night sky
and realize how small you are.
To understand that even the most personal heartbreak
fits inside a universe that doesn’t even notice.
She is always the patron saint of perspective.
For Plato, the stars were the eternal realm of forms
the immovable truths between generations.
For Kepler, she was invoked when charting planetary motion,
science written in a devotional register.
Even now, NASA uses her name for satellites,
her image underwriting both wonder and control.
But with art,
we seem to have forgotten
that our brothers and sisters in math
were once slam poets
who one day figured out notation.
But maybe that is what our feelings need
a way to pass them between us
without all the pain we currently carry.
And maybe
That’s art.
Geek
If you’ve had the liberty of being in the studio,
you’ll know I’m a math geek.
When I left school to join the army,
I was doing Math Olympiads.
When I left the army to become an artist,
it was easier to get a scholarship for math
than to figure out what a portfolio was meant to look like.
At school, I found a lot of freedom in math and science.
It was honest.
The answer was the answer.
It was easy for a lazy kid.
And if I was good at math,
I could spend more time making art.
Art class was a little less kind.
You had to bend.
Freedom, when it tries to occupy a unique perspective,
is hard to evaluate.
Truth is a complex feeling.
Weird how things end up.
Domesticated
This week I’ve been planning my next show,
rekindling my relationship with science and math.
At the same time, I’m sat here knowing it’s a New Moon,
and that tonight is a great night
to start something new.
The next show is called Domesticated.
It opens on October 10th.
It’s another interactive public installation,
this time in Elephant & Castle.
The last show, Pompadour,
won its category at Chelsea Flower Show.
I’ll share more information soon.
But for now,
enjoy the pages from my notebook,
working out how it all fits together.
I love you loads
- R x