Grain #1

I am writing this for me largely and perhaps for some others to stumble upon. I collect small memories here and there, but I stopped doing that - I've bee dead for a number years now.

However two small art projects shook me into a lesser state of complacency lately while I've been wastign time consuming ideas rather than generating them:

• http://www.foundmagazine.com/
• http://www.postsecret.com/

I usually go trolling for shocking ideas, metaphors, and life accounts merely to stretch myself to understand experiences I could not have either done myself, or that I've been unwilling to go to the effort to achieve.

These two places above are great because I feel - literally feel life In me looking at the objects on display (Found); and the secrets (postsecret) revealed. They are raw, uninterpreted, and real. As with many universal truths they are communicated in very few words but they set off many things in the reader upon exposure. Its this interaction that life brings when you run through a cool, foggy and green forest alone, or you experience victory in something undoable, or you're given a horrible choice to make.

The web? What can possibly bring that? Gore? Eye-witness accounts of disaster? Pornography? They seem to incite appetite for more in many. It's desensitizing.

These two places bring me an appetite for less, and a desire to look inside me and inside of others. A remarkable thing considering what the web has become.

Thank you for serendipity, and the hard work of creative people.

JB