And the new name is ...
objet trouvé (ôb-zh tr
-v
)
As if anyone wouldn't notice by the new banner. It is big, but hey, I like it.
Before I get into what it means, and its significance to me, I want to thank April very much for not only coming up with the name, but for working on the banner. I think the only thing I came up with was the picture, which is one I took in 1998 while walking away from one of my two visits to La Louvré. It's one of three pictures I have framed and hanging above the couch in my apartment.
As I mentioned, I had seven names I was considering at one time or another, but it was April's that stuck with me.
objet trouvé–-an ordinary object found at random and considered as a work of art.
I think sometimes, in my own life, I get underestimated. Didn’t finish college, don’t have the best job, not married, live in an apartment, have awkward moments, lack close friendships, ‘normal’ relationships. I don’t know what others’ perception of me is, to be honest, so I don’t really know whether people see anything extraordinary in me or not. I’m not sure I do on most days, to be honest. But deep down I do believe there’s something special about me.
Just ordinary, nothing extraordinary about me. But what I like to think is that within the ordinary, there’s something special, a unique work of art, that emerges, that is exposed, when observed a little closer. However others see me, I am a work of art, whether I stand out or not.
I'm like that guy you might run across on the subway, or anywhere else in a crowd. Nothing in particular to make you notice, yet if you do look, there's something deeper, more profound. At least I'd like to think so. A work of art.
I found this: something written about a South African artist.
Thus by picking things up, collecting fragments from the beach stories and thoughts about these objects' history are created.
That makes sense to me, especially since I like the beach. In my journal are fragments of my story, and that of others, from what I've absorbed in my life. From that my history comes alive.
Another phrase in there jumps at me: the discarded and mundane is rendered special and accredited with implicit value.
The artist noted that embodying the daily ritual and experience of the climatic changes of the beach, things sculptured, distressed and shaped by sea, wind, sun and rain - I dream of other worlds and distant horizons. The process is what the work means and gives to me. Thus by picking things up, collecting fragments from the beach stories and thoughts about these objects' history are created. ...
All in all by mixing together ordinary elements that most people ignore as been part of the real world, elements that in some way express or represent time passing. How impossible to explain the poetry of one's daydreams!
I wrote in a letter earlier tonight that I considered my writing to be like a painting; I try to capture a scene as accurately as I can with my words, and I hope, to capture the emotion of it too. I try to do that whether I'm writing in my journal, and in any of my other writing. Everyone is going to have their own interpretation.
I hope that even as I'm viewed as ordinary, I can see myself (and perhaps a few others can see too) as a work of art.
As for my old name, it's not that I don't still have those moments where I hurt as I watch the world go by, but I thought it was time for me to move beyond that. Even if no one else but me were to know, the fact that I can start to see the significance in myself and the life I lead, that's something, I hope.
P.S. I'm too tired at this late hour to work with the color scheme, so I've settled upon a color scheme for the moment, but if anyone else has any ideas for that, pass them along.