Repeat after me: … “It’s easy!”
I did a spiritual healing session with Gab Cohen
It has to have been the second within a month or so, and as always it was extremely cathartic.
Those in my immediate circle might have immediate questions – naturally. Things like:
Big Ell, you have it made! I mean …
You do your best to live out your passion, don’t you? You go out and strive to write and design, all for the sake of others – you find that fulfilling, at the very least, don’t you .. ?
That’s the problem (always creating one where there isn’t one)
At least, there is the illusion of the problem, although, as the new-agey saying goes: “the more personal, the more universal …”. Helps, doesn’t it? I agree that it definitely doesn’t. It’s ok. How about “whatever you resist persists” … did that one help at all? Didn’t think so either.
I guess we’re all doomed. Joking, I need to go take my Lexapro.
Also a joke, I only take that at night — fooled you once more: it is night when I am writing this. I’m quite the jokester as well in case you haven’t noticed .. the oblivious fool – the one who is famous for being archetypally lost in his thoughts while casting his gaze upwards, ‘towards the heavens’, meanwhile about to take his final step over the edge of a cliff; go figure.
I know it’s not especially hard for me
And believe me, I’m not complaining – but gee whiz, man.
The pursuit – the pursuit of the creative. It is one rapturous, torturous beast, eh?
In one moment it is fully within your grasp, the other is has gone and left you empty and depleted. On occasions, you ride its bountiful waves, even spreading joy, warmth, and comfort to others, yet other times you come up short. In those latter instances, sometimes you may even show signs of resentment, and the abundant pleasure you could concoct and share to the collective now becomes your sour stake rooted deep within the past. It hurts to not be able to conjure up the same vision. Where did that vision even go? Was it some phantom?
I don’t say this to draw your attention away from fashion
It is my passion, as well as that of countless others before me, or perhaps it was design, or perhaps fine art, or history, or culture, or (in the very dregs of society) marketing, sales, business (eeeuughh!). And while I would plenty love to tickle your fancy in these measures, as is the Lambdog tradition we implement a wee smidgeon of the spiritual side too. We’re the only clothing company that has its head so far up its you-know-where that it is able to gaze at its own navel from the opposite side. What’s worse (or better) is that that seeps out into the rest of the content (eeeeuuugh!). Who does this??
Ell does this
But it’s not all about Ell. That guy is mid. I would much rather focus on what he creates. After all, judge a tree by its fruit, so on and so forth, but what does the Good book say about the vine, where grapes that ferment produce the intoxicant-du-jour, and which has no nay-say heaped upon it except in excess? Consider this: the grape is essentially rotten, yet it is still consumed, and consumed often, and also considered positively in its regard – so that means that one cannot determine an objective measure of the tree by its fruit – since a fruit may be acceptable in all forms of its utility. (Take that, Good book!)
Believe me, I don’t mean to dunk on anthropological literature, but even this analogy seems to support the odd conclusion at which the painters of the renaissance must have arrived when they began to play with the concept of perspective. During this period, instead of representing an objective world where the object must faithfully represent subject, making it into a new subservient-to-object–object, the renaissance painter put the subject at the very center, looking outwards upon creation – almost to encapsulate the entirety of its perception from a singular standpoint.
Although this feat would clearly be impossible to portray, it created some of the most intricate and, in my opinion, beautiful works of art that have ever been created in the entirety of history as we know it. Nothing has ever come close as far as intrinsic beauty, presupposed value, technical capability, or accuracy of representation of forms – a short blip in the human saga that betrays its name; rebirth, or renaissance, since it was only so long as far as history is concerned before it succumbed to the ‘second death’, quoting again from the Bible.
Ell – your title.. Respond to the setup in your title!
That’s it, simply remember those things and keep everything in its proper place.
Joking, you as well as I know that it’s not anywhere close to being that easy. At the end of the day, we must wrestle with ourselves, our conglomerate personality.
But I will say this: creation – the blessedly remarkable feat, the manifestation of something from nothing, or even the reordering of what already exists, is the pathway into true freedom as far as I’m concerned.
Delving deeper into design – it’s, at the very least, freeing; gratifying.
This must be the way a mathematician feels when he has landed upon his ‘correct’ answer, or finally can prove that he can represent the world of forms through a series of numbers, equations, or geometric patterns.
The difference between the mathematician and the designer is that the mathematician only delights himself upon recognizing that he can, in fact, represent the world of outside forms in a cohesive, map-like structure to himself internally, so long as it purports with the agreed upon set of values.
Though gratifying, it merely strengthens his identification with his own internal representations, while the designer has assumed the role of the Creator himself, casting and recasting, and ultimately forming something with an ultimate and absolute purpose and utility. The mathematician, though accurate in his representation, could do only that, his reliance entirely placed upon a man-made system that, at best, reflects a linguistic series of symbols that can interlock amongst themselves.