“This thing”—The Exile’s Language.
I am an exile—that sometimes listless nomad stuck in a land without a name, a place that seems strange yet familiar, where fear and possibility perform an age-old dance choreographed by the living and the dead, where silence and sound compete, darkness and light blend into gradual noncommittal shades of gray, a land where black and white hold their place, each seemingly oblivious to the reality that one exists only on account of the other.

In this interstice of knowledge and doubt, “this thing” that some call art is the only language that is understood, weaving breath into inspiration, tugging, dragging, compelling, flirting, denying, cooling, heating, drawing, erasing, attracting and repelling all at once, and even in sleep, translating into dreams of water, oil, coffee, sugar, diamonds and gold. This language, not quite the alluring song of river goddesses nor the discordant ramblings of an insane mind, has been influenced by institutions—schools, psychoanalysts, governments, corporations and religions competing for its spirit, laying claim to its cadence, accents, timbre and inflections, and to its very soul. But with “this thing” the exile self-educates, self-medicates and meditates, hoping to wrest the reigns of destiny from clawing greedy controlling hands, flowing into the realm where wondering spirits wander towards knowledge in their search to find a tribe of like minds.

With “this thing,” stories will be shared, experiences related, self will be recognized in other and other in self; we are in the end—in one form or another—all exiles. And so, as the curious exile sees her reflection, she is aware that it mirrors her spirit and the spirits of beings she has encountered and experienced on her travels, and with “this thing,”—this compelling thing—the exile observes, directs, demands and questions, blowing breath into bigger breath , hoping to inspire future architects of spheres that cannot be circumscribed, boxed and categorized into black, white and gray boxes .

The exile surveys this landscape of potential, humbled by the knowledge that “this thing” these words, this language has the power to build, to sustain or to destroy, that without “it” there would be nothing beyond nothing.