The urge to create. Music. Monuments. Machines. Mathematical equations and scientific theories. Poetry and literature. Art. Photography. The compulsion to give our existence meaning and to creatively express our experiences and impressions is deeply ingrained in us, evidenced as far back as 20,000 years ago in those celebrated late Palaeolithic era cave paintings created at Lascaux in south-western France.
As we hurtle toward a cold and barren cosmos, we must accept that there is no grand design. Particles are not endowed with purpose. There is no final answer hovering in the depths of space awaiting discovery. Instead, certain special collections of particles can think and feel and reflect, and within these subjective worlds they can create purpose. And so, in our quest to fathom the human condition, the only direction to look is inward. That is the noble direction to look. It is a direction that forgoes ready-made answers and turns to the highly personal journey of constructing our own meaning. It is a direction that leads to the very heart of creative expression and the source of our most resonant narratives. Science is a powerful, exquisite tool for grasping an external reality. But within that rubric, within that understanding, everything else is the human species contemplating itself, grasping what it needs to carry on, and telling a story that reverberates into the darkness, a story carved of sound and etched into silence, a story that, at its best, stirs the soul.
— Brian Greene
Human creativity is a wonderful thing. Ballast amid the chaos. I’ve chosen photography to reflect on my world, but I used to paint and draw and there was a time I used words to contemplate my feelings, experiences and impressions. Not long ago I came upon an old notebook — a diary of sorts — that was full of poems penned by a much younger me. I’ve begun to collate the analog writings into digital book form for archival purposes and in the process have rediscovered thoughts, emotions and impressions of people and places I’d long ago encountered and in time all but forgot. For instance this poem, a portrait of a woman I knew in Sydney in 1998.
And her quiet space
her wistful face
a sadness draped
over
inner grace.
Her stillness
moves
throughout the room.
Her strength
a wall
against the gloom.
Her warmth
fragrant
summer blooms.
From a quiet place
such a tender face
upon which
melancholy
leaves a subtle trace.
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