Stephan's blog

2008-05-14T05:25:00.000-07:00

I have been working with the idea of love for a while now and it is wonderful !!!!
I rediscovered the two lectures by Nick Cave and again I am inspired...
Well I am done building the boat to traverse the sea of love.
I wonder about the perfect and pure notion of love as water... This is not a strange idea but my thoughts wonder to floods a storm at sea that incredibly destructive power that leans to expose the sublime... the smallness of man against the emotional elements... water and love as much as it is life giving and rejuvenating there is that power to destroy....

anyway i need to think some more....

The things that bind us

2007-09-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

It has been some time since my last post. And allot has come to pass..

So here is what has been occupying my mind: The things that bind us... What are those things that bind two people together whether it is for a short bit or for life... is it something that we project onto other people or not My thinking is leaning more to the notion of projection...
Thus with the passing of time the other person fits our projection or not which i think is a tricky thing... Seeing that we all grow and continually change...

Anyway what are these projections that we place on the other person? I think that it could be a combination of several things... like notions of or prince or princess that we dreamt about as children, images of our parants, characteristics that we appropriate from fictional figures or fictional ideas we have about other people...
I my case it is the notion of the muse that becomes the images that gets super imposed onto the other... and it is this image that gets imposed onto the other...

But the question still remains what is it that binds me not only to the image but the person....

As Time Goes By

2007-05-19T13:11:00.000-07:00

Well it has been a while since my last post. I have really been busy with the new exhibition and all the spin off's from it but hopefully things will start calming down a bit. Anyway there has been a couple of thoughts running through my head but nothing substantial... Much like my last post i guess the question is what do you do if your little boat is empty and there is nothing left? What do you write in the love letters?

I guess once one has written so many love letters that never seems to reach the one they are intended for then one starts wondering and i don't mean doubting i just mean wondering.. I guess it is important every now and again to be quiet and to listen just as it is important to fight the good fight for love it is important to sit back and just listen.... to the water....

and in terms of the love letter it is just as much about the words as it is about the spaces between them, that makes the meaning...

I guess for now in as much as the writing of my love letters are important it is also listening to the water, the wind, fire and her voice, gaia... and to listen to myself!!!!

My Little Boat is Empty

2007-04-16T02:36:00.000-07:00

My little boat is empty it don't row row row - Nick Cave (taken out of context) I like this metaphor of the boat as a the love relationship... There is nothing left to write there is noting left that one can do but sit back and see where the currents take you or where you will be stranded (this is what this quote means to me again out of context)... There is another song that deals with a similar metaphor... I will go down with this ship, I won't put my arms up and surrender, there will be no white flag on my door... - Dido. Strange combination but non the less there it is both dealing with ocean fairing.

This weekend i spend a bit of time wondering about these two phrases and how they relate to each other... I guess both deals with the notion of the broken or sinking love, in both i think that the two authors haven given up they are still writing the love letters and most importantly they still hope... It seems a bit melodramatic that both will not give up but what if???? what if by some divine intervention or miracle something happens that saves the lover and reunites them with the lost ones...

Is this hope idiotic is this love foolish... not to give up on someone... we all have at some point or another given up hope and jumped ship only to land in the water anyway...
Or does it have to do with the notion of honour and commitment that we see so little of today???
And in this case i mean a commitment to something bigger than the self...

So I guess all that is left is to carry on writing my love letters and hope they do as i hope and pray...

Called out to prove my love...

2007-04-10T23:09:00.000-07:00

On my way into work today i was listening to Crowded House - I am in love. and it starts with the following words - Called out to prove my love... And as these things make me think maybe a bit to much... How does one prove your love? I am also reminded of a scene in Contact with Jodi Foster where one of the her asks if she loved her father and she said yes, then he asked her to prove it and she was strumpet... So how do you prove your love when called on??? with out the Hollywood melodramatics???
I also recently saw the Last Kiss where one of the actors is required to do what it takes...

So how do you prove your love when the other person acts defencive - when you only do what is required of you when you are called on to prove you love... How how does this relate to the idea of the love letter? What is the love letter other than a confirmation / proof of your/my love... and i do believe that the love letter is not only confined to putting pen to paper it could be actions it could be objects, done/made to confirm or in this case prove your/my love...
I guess this makes the definition of the love letter very broad but I need to keep it broad for my purposes... for the things i make...

So here is a question for those actually reading my rantings... How do you prove your love???

A hand ful of hopeful words.

2007-04-07T02:10:00.000-07:00

The song goes: a prayer, a petition... a hand full of hopeful words i love her and I always will...
The song is about a very particular type of love letter - the kind that one writes to win someone back... does the love letter have the power equal to a prayer? and who is the prayer addressed to? Could it be that for the lover the the beloved becomes not a god/dess but rather a person to be venerated. I guess it has something to do with the belief that we are two parts of the same soul that can only be completed once the two parts become 'of one flesh..' and the other part of our own souls is to be completed by another.
And the other becomes a symbol for the ideal... the complete... and thus something to be yearned for...

There is ritual in African tradition where someone inflicted with some illness hammers nails into a small sculpture in order to drive out evil spirits into the sculpture - does the love letter have the same function? that it becomes a way of expelling the emotions making these feelings real as external forces... Thus they would become a hand full of hopeful words...
Words that could on their own live and do what they need to do... what they are intended to do...

In Christianity God said quite alot about the word... and that God is the word... one can take this even further if one looks at words as vibrations in relation to super string theory but i don't wanna go on a rant about that now. What i would like to get at is like any form of energy words live on but they might just change form... So the live on...

Anyway I better go...

Just a short note...

2007-04-05T09:32:00.000-07:00

I have been spending a big part of today driving around catching up on with my to do list...
While driving I listened to some of my fav. songs and thinking about love letters - the ones that i would like to write to my muse and it suddenly struck me the writing of love letters are done from a place of arrogance.. just think about it here the author sits and writes a declaration of love assuming certain things and the biggest one of these assumptions is that the intended recipient will read it or that the recipient would deem it important enough the read... AND what if it is never read what happens to the declaration of love???
Anyway just n quick thought.
have a good Easter

The Sorrowful Love Letter

2007-03-28T07:18:00.000-07:00

The love letter apart from being an affermation of the author's love for the intended recipient. also becomes sorrowful, it has to otherwise it is false... Levi Strauss the father of anthropology talks about meaning being constructed form created opposits. The opposite of love being sorrow, a feeling of loss.

So for the love letter to be truthful it needs to explores both sensations. The golding light of her presance as well as the darkest cloudy night of her absence. On the simplest level the letter needs to not only venerate her virtues, but also explores her absence or her loss...

Someone once said that the man that has ceased to fear has ceased to care...
this creates a strong link between caring(loving) and fear... the fear of loss... I guess. Some might say that if there is a relationship there is nothing to fear but for me it is the fear of loss that makes one work just that little bit harder to keep the relationship alive...

And what if she is already lost? (as in my case) Does the writing of the love letter becomes a way of remembering of congering up her face again? Or as in the old Afrikan tale throwing the coals into the air so she can find her way back into the arms from which she fled... my arms. Or does my love letters become 'a prayer, a petition, a handful of hopeful words'... Again playing on both joy and sorrow...

In both cases i guess the love letter needs to draw on both love and sorrow - writing to the lover that is present, the letter declares the authors love to the intended and fears the sorrow of (her) loss. In the letter to the lost love the author sorrowfully talks about his loss and with love the author speculates on the return of the lost love...

The Life of a Love Letter...

2007-03-27T00:42:00.000-07:00

Well i am still sitting here waiting.... waiting for her... I wonder why i have this need to publish this need to wait for the most perfect of muses, my Sophia, my Gaia, my angel of the midnight sun...
I have been listening to Rogue Wave - Publish my Love and again my thoughts turns back to the love letter... and the idea of publishing 'love' or at least proof of love... In the past it seemed quite appropriate that love letters where written on paper with ink that in time will fade or get destroyed... i guess it just follows that most of these feelings will pass as the love letter do... But what of the love letter that survives longer than the people that wrote it or that it was intended for? Something like the Tashma hall, despite the fact that it is a building it still served as proof of love for a queen... is that a love letter in as much as it is a proof of love. I don't wanna get into semiotics to much but as much as a love letter is a signifier of love can the Tashma hall be a signifier of love? And if so can a work of are be a signifier of love?

What happens to the meaning of this signifier once it is put into the public realm??? Will its meaning get lost or popularised to such an extent that it eventually looses its meaning? Or will the meaning survive like the tales of unreturned love that the knights from the the 11th and 12th century strove for???
or
does the love letter like the love song go out into the world and becomes a living breathing entity that carries on living, taking on a meaning of its own??? divorced from the two lovers?

Love letter love letter go get her go get her...

2007-03-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

I do believe that the love letter has a very special power, but the question is what gives the love letter such power if indeed it has any power...

Could the love letter be some sort of spell that one casts over another person. Where the words like the night sky wraps us in darkness/sorrow only to reveal small but beautiful rays of light??
Does the love letter have a life of its own... can the love letter like the love song go out on its own and do the deed that it is intended to do? Does the love letter need to be shown to the intended to do what it was made to do??

Normally I think that the love letter need to reach the intended to do the deed so to speak but what if the love letter is not the conventional letter but a very special one that takes up not only space but conceptual space as well, and the love letter lives on not on its own accord but the images that survive documenting it...

Just a couple of thoughts...

Letters of love and sorrow

2007-03-23T06:52:00.000-07:00

So here i am sitting and waiting for her to come and see the love letter that i wrote her... I wonder if it is even worth waiting anymore there is only one day left before it will be taken down and destroyed. Well not destroyed but it will never be the same again...

Nick Cave talks about being an erotoghraphomaniac... someone who writes love letters obsessively. Why do people write love letters? What do people try and archive with stringing letters together into sentences that weave and wind their way around some one's heart, and tries to tie them to the writer...

What makes us expose our inner most feelings to some one that might betray us at anytime???