Hello!
In the past month, I’ve been working very hard on getting my MAPS system transferred to GoogleEarth. I think I’ve basically finished the essential transference of information from Master Atlas (physical object). I have the transfer backed up. The next step is tricky: divide all that information into subjects for further scrutiny. Currently it’s organized by states per the atlas. Tomorrow I’m going to study how GoogleEarth can aid me in dealing with this essential division. At the least, I can have two separate databases working at perpendicular angles that still might coordinate with each other.
What am I learning from all this? A lot. It’s been about a month since I began the project and I thought a blog update was in order.
Behind the naming of US population places and certain locales is a hidden order against the random crash of information, the background noise. This order is built upon an essential system I created many years back and still practice, in modified and abbreviated form, up to this day.
The earlier stage of the system relied on internal matches — within the system itself. Present stage relies on outside resonance, in contrast, while understanding internal resonance certainly still exists. An essential division is the Ohiowa Project of 1990-1991. I put it in a paper for a class at the time; will have to look that over again soon.
Is the system skewed? Absolutely. You can only pick out from otherwise noise what you understand and know. I know the names of most presidents, a lot of classic writers, a lot of rock stars, a considerable number of explorers. Common knowledge is important and adds energy. Abraham Lincoln for example. What is his role in the system?
And I cannot escape who I am when building up. I am a syncher through and through. Collage is synchronicity for me. That’s why I attempt to interpret all collage series I concoct, because synchronicity at its heart is a fusion of strangeness and then meaning behind the surface oddity. Meaning attracts meaning, like water in a stream. This is the advantage of working in series, one piece flowing into the next.
Different bits of information relate to each other both locally and distantly. States can contain a distinct voice. *Counties* can as well. The voices within, outside the system and entering the mundane order of things again, can be instead seen as disparate.
What is at the heart of the system? It appears to be a virtual world, distinct from Second Life but connected. It surfaced near the very beginning. A wicker man was burned, along with a wicker dog (man’s best friend). The dog was quickly scuttled; the burn moved to the desert and enlarged to the event we know today. The founder of Second Life visits in the 90’s, becomes inspired. A Second Life is born from First, unburdening freedom of expression from an often clunky and cumbersome physicality. Collage galleries can be created for repressed artists, beaten down by, say, copyright issues and lack of overlap between shared images and shared market value. Suppressed or renegade religions can find traction. Whole villages and towns can be formed with their own internal logic apart from day to day reality. As Collagesity busker Tom Wilmot famously lamented, too bad it’s all within a glass bottle. What is created within cannot be shared with the outside in a large way. Sure you can visit Second Life. But unless you are truly involved, truly immersed in some fashion, you cannot grok. We must push further. A third life must be found, with unexpected ties to the first. This is our goal. We must find not god within, but dog. Dog. The pet, like the moon might have its own, smaller moon as a pet.
Blog resident spirit Hucka D. has stated over and over again that I must look to Arkansas for answers and not the distempered state of Missouri directly above it. Neither will Miss Ouri’s partner Miss Issippi suffice for answers. But it’s this triangle of states that seems to hold the key to getting inside. They play off each other, acting as both lovers and rivals. Love and hate share a foundation. I hate people in my daily life (flip flop wearers, chewers of gum and candy, loud phone talkers) because I love them. I want them to turn sane again and away from the poison of pure capitalism untempered by the understanding of a larger reality. Property rights surface, yet we do not understand the source spring of creativity. No one person can really own, at the end of things, what is shared with other people in a public fashion. The two things become symbiotic. And this is what we must realize at the bottom of it. We are one. Energy from a movie, a book, a play continues to build through time beyond its creation. It becomes a public thing outside time and perhaps eternal.
Sunklands 