My ethos in my art, work, self and performance is to show reality. To find truth. To share my true nature. To not worry about presentation. To not need to come across as my “best”. To look silly, foolish, grandiose, ugly, egoistic, dark and light. In order to express truth and reality the ego must be sacrificed.
Everything you think, experience, do, know, feel, IS your body. That is all it is. There is no mystical smoke animating otherwise dead flesh. All there is is your body. Without it you know nothing, think nothing, feel nothing. You do not exist. Everything you think the world is, that you have seen or learnt, is IN YOUR BODY. It is the ONLY reality. You cannot know what it is like to think, without a body. You don’t feel anything. Emotions are language simulations overlaid a PHYSICAL sensation. You are ONLY your body.
The understanding I have of how everything is structured is almost a model in my mind. Not an explanation, but a visualization. The map inside, the territory yet to explore, the plane of every day operations, language and where most people are. The external territory of places and people that expand your inner map. You inner map that is your knowledge of the world, places you have been, thing you have seen, experiences you have had, turned into landscapes. Everything you know about the universe is actually just you. There is nothing outside of what your body is currently experiencing. Everything else you are aware of, is inside you. The vastness of the universe, the infinite possibilities of life, all fit inside your physical body. The map has areas in you even you haven’t explored. Dark forests and valleys, mountain tops, far away horizons. The more you know, understand, can navigate and can transmute the map, the more you know you map, the dark areas explored and found to be exciting and not scary any more, or areas you don’t want to go back to can be avoided, you can take new routes to unconquered peaks, you can move from one location to the next instantly, you can play in you, which is the universe, limitless, that can be carried out in the territory of physical realty.
So the best analogy I have come up so far about the nature of humans as animals is that between humans and dogs. There are a variety of species of dogs, some more trainable than others, some more domesticated, some wilder, some are still wild and undomesticated, some are so over bred that hinders their quality of life. There is a spectrum of dogs from most over bred, least capeable, efficient, undog like domesticated dogs, to wild dogs born free and never domesticated. And then there are wolves. That cannot be domesticated. I see humans on the same spectrum. Some so conditioned, trained, incapeable of physical activity, incabeable of free thought, unaware of their emotions, slave to the life they have been told to have. Some let elements of their natural wildness out, through agression, extroversion, sex, drugs, etc, without knowing why. Some are are aware of the world around them, some awakened, some self aware. Some get to live wild and free. Some know they are wild but are trapped in the life they have been told to have. Some get to connect to their true selves, some to their deep human nature. There is the same spectrum of domesticated to wild. And then there are the englightened. The ones who can no longer be domesticated in any way. Who embody and experience the true spirit and nature of the whole species.
The Saffy Gallery 