Rosebud

We were in the man’s apartment. The walls were covered with paintings, prints, and drawings created by him as well as others – abstractions and figurative representations of people, places and objects. There were also sculptures and found objects, knick-knacks and fragments along the same lines. My friend asked if the man had any photos of his family, past, etc. There was not a photograph to be found displayed anywhere. He was surrounded by family and past. Each of the works resonated with what had passed, was gone – never to be retrieved. His memory must not have been digital or in color, Kodachrome or even black and white. Yet living vibrated there through these disparate creations. While there I noticed a nuthatch had landed on a feeder outside the window. Seen head on, its “face” appeared as some carved image on a Northwest Native American totem. These massive objects pre-date photography, let alone digital. Those carvings that have survived continue to resonate an affect. What is to be done with affection? It is not a document, so how could it be a memory? Are memories documentaries? Perhaps the document is the 21st century version of a fetish, an idol set aside (and above) to insure that a specific outlook continues homogenously throughout; an ideological ADT guaranteeing the security of interpretation from intrusion or tampering.

It is said that capitalism always eventually appropriates and subsumes everything, for which there is no alternative. The plethora of global struggles to elaborate an alternative (“As we walk we dream”) rely heavily on an appeal to what folks like Jacques Ranciere and others elucidate as “capacities”. Here was a man who managed to not be identified by a photo ID. Like the nuthatch outside his window, identity was created through his vitality, moment to moment.