Onward

An ode to the struggle but also the resilience of the artist, and a reminder to embrace scarcity and restraint. Scarcity is one of the main drivers of story (typically there’s a lack or wound that propels the hero towards the unknown), and story can be seen as a condensed expression of the human experience. This notion extends to the process of creating art: Just as a haiku's concise structure forces a poet to distill emotions into a few words, the scarcity of choices an artist can make throughout their limited life span forces them to continuously evolve and recalibrate their creative process.

If we would be able to remove all restraint and become immortal, would it affect how we evaluate art? Would the drive for creating it even cease to exist?

It is often said that restraint has been a major contributing factor to some of the greatest works in art and film, as it challenged it’s creators to reach deep into their abilities and become more inventive. George Miller created Mad Max (1980) on a budget of $350k.
The film is widely regarded for it’s inventive storytelling, practical effects, and resourceful cinematography and made more than $100 million in gross revenue.

Some of these thoughts and questions went into the creation of the piece, but also a childhood memory from a 1975 Japanese televison series called “Sinbad No Bouken”. In episode four of the series (which is based on the original tales from “One Thousand and One Nights”) Sinbad is enslaved by the “Old Man of the Sea” who rides on his back until he is on the brink of exhaustion. The image of the very pale and skinny old man’s legs twisted around the boys neck haunted me for some time. It terrified me in part because I couldn’t wrap my head around the meaning of it.

I find it interesting how in the process of creation old memories resurface from our unconscious. It seems that the artistic process is like a ritual that enables us to communicate with parts of our mind that are hidden otherwise.

While the certainty of death, similar to the old demon riding on the boy’s back seems more akin to a curse, I’d argue that we can also see it as a great motivator and source of positive creative energy, for it makes every moment and everything we do infinitely more precious.

Part of the Rug Radio Stubs collection (link)