half thoughts

entry 1 : a piss poor attempt at conquering knowledge that already vests within us if you will.

Early Drawings by Antony Gormley, 1980–84 ‘Dating from 1981 to 1984, these drawings are characterised by a fluid charcoal outline. Thick, heavy black pigment is mixed with linseed oil and vigorously applied to the surface with a hogshair brush. The drawings involve a very physical engagement, the wall acting as a hard, resilient surface to push against. They cover a transitional time in Gormley’s career, including a period of living in a squatted house in King’s Cross, following his marriage to the artist, Vicken Parsons, and then from 1982 onwards, the move to a new home in Peckham, South London, after the arrival of their first son, Ivo.

I would like to be a parent someday, that's what I thought this morning precisely around 7am. Once a friend whom I was incredibly fond of for no specific reason asked me if I ever wanted to have kids, and I whipped out my savoir faire: that I would only have kids if I ever feel big enough to be a home and not just a shade; as though I was ever that prudent about decisions when it came down to the minute. Said friend had responded with something that echoed, "Yeah, yeah. Very you." I had not known what to make of it back then, writing it off as the usual impression people have of me: thoughtful to the point that it borders pretentious and even annoying to some extent. But I think the great minds in science and philosophy were onto something when they figured that rationalizing an axiom out of a question that we will factually never have the true answer of, is the only way to breach the orbit of the real answer. A piss poor attempt at conquering knowledge that already vests within us if you will. 

But the rationalization did steer me down and hence the introductory line.

The first thought that struck me was how I want to pass on a piece of me like my father did to me. And it's ironic, given that I'm frequently keen on ending my life before I have even got to the worse and the bests of it. but it's true that at times like this I'm incredibly fond of the mind that has been sharpened with the whetting stone of loss. sadness does something to you, especially the type that seems to have made ant-hills within the recesses of your brain. It makes you unusually susceptible to hope, the kind of optimism that I think is akin to the human body's involuntary determination to survive when subjected to hypothermia or starvation. Funny how the mind works against yourself, how we're yet to realize that each of us are lonelier than the true sense of the word.

Sadness also makes you aware of a lot of things. Like Dostoevsky supplied—

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

—I believe in the inverse too. Suffering and sadness instill intelligence. Though imparting wisdom born of desolation to a child is a tragic thought. Almost as if I'm devising to make my child miserable just the way my father did. But suffering also teaches you this, if you're willing to learn—you get to know exactly what caused it. My father is unreceptive of the ethos that could render him vulnerable, belly-up. The blood is not yours as long as you don't look at the wound—is what he says to himself. I pride myself as I square my shoulders and look directly in the mirror.

Perhaps me wanting a child is a trial at being the people my father and mother could have been had they known better. Maybe I am as much of a parent to my parents as they are to me. I would have felt guilty however, for failing them, if they had not failed me first. Perhaps it all comes down to the same damn thing, the need to right what wronged me.