Our touch on this world is light.
The scientist Richard Feynman said "The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery...". There are constant exhortations to do more, show more. But doing the work just for yourself is equally as valid.
I probably don’t spend enough time sitting and trying to remember.
As I get older, the more layers of meaning are attached to places, layers which only exist for me. Memories of people and different versions of myself. Changing silhouettes against the skyline as family and people move through their own lives.
Some memories become stronger as I get older and was the light really like that. And some memories live I don’t know where, for years, until they are fully there again. Proust’s involuntary reminiscence.
It goes in two directions. The remembering and making sense of the past. And the current artefacts that you are leaving for your future self. A person sets out to draw the world. You people your world with all your mind can make sense of and hang onto, and sometimes with bright moments and sometimes dark.
The writer Borges said that we make sense of our reality with our stories, ‘fictions’ he called them. The patient labyrinth of lines that a person traces over the years describe the lineaments of his or her own face.
A complex map for all of us. That is why you should make something, create something. Because there is only one of you. A tiny infinite Universe.
It is one of the aspects of loss which I struggle with. When a person is lost, the absence of their presence is devastating. The loss of how they lived the world, the loss of a keeper of your shared memories. I think creating things is a small bulwark against the entropy. To avoid entropy, energy needs to be extended. The second law of thermodynamics doesn't give us another option.
We are subject to constant exhortations to produce more, produce better, show our work. But as the scientist Richard Feynam said, “the prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out.” It can be for you, just for you, to express feelings or to make sense of something, to mark a moment, a labyrinth of reasons.
“I’ve already got the prize,” Feynman said. “The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it — those are the real things."
The work is the prize.
I hope you are all taking care of yourselves.
END.
Ps I did a short film about memory and loss. It’s just a couple of minutes long, in Gaelic with English subtitles, in case it’s of interest. Thanks for reading.
An Tràigh - The Beach - Short Film