Secret World

I've kept a sort of personal journal cum diary since 2001. In some respects this Far Place is an extension of that. Today I was looking at some of the entries for Januarys past and I was struck by just how private they are, or rather were. I don't mean that the entries are extremely introspective or soul-searching. Actually this is by no means the case. Rather that they reference aspects of my life in a kind of short-hand with little sense that they might one day have a kind of public function, for this reader. That I would one day be distant enough from the chap who was writing them as to not quite be able to take in the implications of every reference. In contrast, what makes it to this Far Place seems to me extremely public, guarded, composed, which is, in a sense, as it should be.

Such shifts in the way we compose ourselves seem to me to relate to what we do when we make art. When those first cave dwellers grabbed the painting sticks and decorated the walls my guess is that the urge to do came not so much from a desire to express themselves as from a desire to get the attention of others. And to dissolve the boundaries between individuals - assuming they recognised such boundaries at all. Perhaps it was not so much getting others' attention as the group looking at itself through its daubings.

These days we seem to scream for such attention, or at least some aspects of modern art suggest the raised voice, the neediness of the group. I suppose we are all needy in varying degrees - but the less we need, perhaps the better.