(sorry this is only a small piece of the image)

Friday, with a group of students from the university..... i had the opportunity to travel an art fair in the city of Bologna. the bus ride was epic.....the clouds were bellow us and the mountains stretched out like gigantic sand castles in an overly gigantic sand box. it made me question if i was in an autobus or an airplane......impatiently waiting to land so that i could once again plant my silly worn out newbalance shoes back onto the pavement.......

upon our arrival to the fair there were many people, places, and things to see (especially people-watching was in good spirits!).........it was crowded so that we all had to wait inline before making our ways through the entrance of this giant industrial spaceship/convention center/shopping mall/ airport/ field museum/ ice arena /very complex / complex.

inside i managed myself somehow...not fully sure really... to feel a little sleepishly..... (the story of my life not the sleepy part...or maybe? The assurance iguess)..... so then….eventually....... i found a café and drank two cups of coffee. one was very small and very strong and the other was mixed with milk. this made me slightly overwhelmed or a little confused for the next hour and one half because usually i am not too accustomed to this caffeinated and eye opening drink.

My confusion accompanied me with a heightened sense of mobility as well as a quickened gait to my step…… until eventually i began to slow down once again (but in a slightly different way from earlier) and proceeded..... writing or drawing or scribbling or stammering Into my little red book with a picture of a giraffe drinking from a pond pasted to the outer cover.... more or less about what i was seeing.

there was so very much to take in at this place....possibly too much so that…. at times…… i tried deliberately to forget about where i was and what all this stuff was suppose to be about….. passing me bye….. and try possibly.....or just maybe take a moment to remember who I was in comparison to all of this....right at this moment...during this moment. right then and there and.....maybe if i were to say now.....i mean...even as i am writing this....sort of now....or when this is being read ...or like five and one half weeks from now or previously a similar time before now.

i had a conversation with a friend at a certain point during a certain time on this certain day. there was a merry-go-round involved and it was going very quickly at times and very slowly at others. we sang two different songs to help us not become as dizzy as we could have been. ol mcdonald had a farm and row row row your boat in two part harmonies (felt natural i guess). Eventually after we felt very dizzy and laid our heads down pretending to take a nap…. Lorenzo (the painting instructor) came by and got on the merry-go-round with us (this was inside the building mind you)……I tired to get him to sing but he would only whistle …….he was pretty good at going round in circles but got dizzy right away…… this all somehow. being here and moving so quickly and slowly and remembering other experiences that i have had about moving in similar ways....helped me remember a feeling from a recent moment beforehand…….. maybe one week ago on a train near naples…….where I had my head out the window and thought to myself (while not exactly word for word) while I watched whole cities, sidewalks, squares, people, stop lights, oceans stretch by:

"i wonder if time is something that can be experienced in several different ways or something that is always at the same pace to that of the clock on my cell phone? or maybe its more valid to say: time is the way we choose to think about many different moments during the same moment…..and somehow imagine all of these moments together.....all at once. Maybe this is why we as human beings have trained our minds to endure abstract thinking......we as human beings may somehow convince ourselves that time is a series of times....one frame to the next…… a series of still images that in someway become similar to the continuation of a filmstrip. But also something..... resembling not the moment we are currently a witness to....but composed with several different series of movements, paces, rhythms, patterns, sensations that we can potentially be aware of simultaneously ....quantify, measure.....distribute............

to seek value…..something that is very close to the use of our memory and maybe being the catalyst to our imagination".

at this point i realized that art.... to me…. is something that...especially in this context at the bologna art fair. makes me feel inexplicably solemn.... i realized that art is something that is able to challenge the ways in which we identify with time. both as something literal and forward moving. but also as something broken....filled with metaphor.....always conveying new or old contexts in our own life and maybe an understanding of those contexts together…… in the present moment...... Something resembling many different perspectives of time and memory. ...... While taking into consideration our present state of emotion. then is it really possible to be fully present when surrounded by some many constructed timelines?

(sorry this probably doesn't make any sense)
maybe emotions then may resemble something as simple as a piece of fruit growing from the limb of a tree. nourished by the water and minerals from the earth collected from the water from the clouds collected from the water in the lakes and streams, ponds rivers and ocean.....maybe emotions are tolerant only when we have the opportunity to let them take shape. to become something physical. a language to acknowledge our own shape in result of the shape we allow to be........to be as a shape which......for an instant.......is representational of the experiences from the past........that we may consider in the moment to be just as valid.

maybe what im getting at is that i feel i myself am trying to understand this shape that is composed of many different emotions that i consider to be me, myself ………I. though at times are not necessarily which i had supposed to be real or valid..... until ive created some sort of an object from them…….(in)formation…a language i guess.

i then came across a painting that i liked very much.

well maybe it was more than a painting. it was fifteen feet wide and ten feet tall. the tones were all relatively neutral and composed mostly that of white and many shades of gray with a very small amount of black …..there was a woman floating in midair with her bed several feet bellow...... while being surrounded by an air-filled forest scene. maybe the opposite feeling inside a forest as if it were a feeling of being very small inside a forest.

the expression to her face was serene and complicated. To me displaying thoughts of acceptance with that of a flustered, peaceful but complicated gaze.

The image was titled: I want to be sedated.

in many ways to me she seemed to be transcending something. though im not sure exactly what ..... maybe life. Addiction, the forest. the time of being awake and the time of being asleep. or maybe this is best left said from the perspective of the artist. but surely to me this had something to do with a sense of both weight and gravity within a specific timeframe.

in a scientific way the woman's body was defying the laws of gravity.

in correspondence with the still image……. there were projections of simple white butterflies....possibly moths if debated...... but i concluded butterflies for some reason or another. maybe because butterflies are what we tend to associate with color.........and with the color taken out and the context if this image......made more sense.

there were anywhere from one butterfly to twenty....they managed to stay solely around and about the woman’s body. and throughout the duration of the looped video sequence they appeared to begin by coming out from the woman's mouth and appeared to end by going into the woman's pelvic region.

the woman’s eyes were present but the darks were not the darkest tone of the image. this allowed the scene to become something broader and less defined.... as less about the personality of an individual. with the figures laced pajamas holding the darkest of color value, the picture became more about the woman’s body.....and with the juxtaposition of the projected butterflies.....the woman’s body as interdependent within a state of gravity.

this gravity is what i believe drew me into the artwork and somehow inspired certain emotions inside me that then later compelled me to write about this. maybe it was a feeling of permanence by such a well composed still image arranged (excluding the projection) entirely of tissue paper loosely pinned to an abrasive surface.....pin for pin. layer for layer. tone for tone over tone for tone. white plus grey and black.

yet combined within a fluttering sense of movement, the wings flapping about....... rhythm, time. something holding tension between to points.

being fooled to believe that my own self could be compelled at ten feet above the ground……. bringing contrast to the place where my black shoelaces held the grey canvas shell and inner folds of my shoes warming and protecting my feet.....with their rubber bottomed soles bracing the freshly polished, white with specks of brown and blue…….industrial tiled floor.