The Swaddled/Crucified Existence Engenders Something Awesome (Part 1 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 8 January 2014.

I'm thinking, as usual.  

James threw the Macbook on the floor and now it's making a "death beep."  So recording in my basement man cave is impossible for the time being.  

Also the low D on the piano is sticking.  

I'm meditating on this notion that the swaddled/crucified existence engenders something awesome.

So as to not become despondent, I reject the notion that my many constraints prevent me from creating.  I instead posit the opposite through faith: constraints, suffering, and setback are the fertile ground within which new life explodes.  I'm not sure what's male, what's female, etc. in this fecundity analogy, but I believe this.  I'm willing to stake a lot on this.

I'm going to lay this new idea on you.

It's a subtle change, but it all began when I made a passing reference to post-structuralism in a recent email.  This has been hinted at in various forms since the very beginning: the idea that telling the story is the most interesting story.  What's more, that the people telling the story could be characters (the main characters?) in the story.

Why do I say this now?  

Here's one major reason: I've been going back and marveling at the 248 threads I've saved from our correspondence dating back to July 27, 2012.

That's right--threads, not individual emails.  

And many of these threads include extremely involved exchanges on the creative process, the Catholic artist in the postmodern age, etc.  

Add to this the many other products that have been spawned from this process: scratch tracks, Pinterest boards, photographs, fliers, websites, a radio interview, unedited documentary footage, a pitiful recording studio in my basement, fully- and partially-realized costumes, etc.  

Add to this other artifacts that predated the current project such as the earliest-known Arthur White poster, The Principles of Theory, and the countless stories that revolve around them, and you have a treasure trove of material with which to create a post-structuralist work of art.  

And the only thing preventing us from using this material (and opening the floodgate to future similarly self-referential deluges) is a decidedly premodern insistence on the story being a self-contained object that is whole, complete, and separate from both artist and audience.

Don't get me wrong: the Arthur White story is an amazing story with fairly progressive ideas of what counts for text, etc.  

That said, the story of us--of what we're imagining, trying, and mostly failing to accomplish--is even more amazing.  Why not let all of that "real" material cross-pollinate with the artifice?  Paintings within paintings ad infinitum.

So what would that look like?  I'm going to reply to this email with the answer.