CHAZ CARTIER

From a dozen years ago.......from a note to a friend, whom, at that time, I knew as "Chaz" and with whom i've shared many 'dialogues', although we have never met in the "real world", but only within the contexts of Myspace and Facebook: Re: mental illness as the burdensome lagniappe of Creativity...the compartmentalization, then unravelling, of associative collusions within the mass of cortical tissues......:.....It is not so much that eccentricity is incomprehensible, for i don't seek to discover the periapsis of intellect or the common, intersections that we share......somewhere between 24 and 42, so to speak, wherein the trajectory of random thoughts collide in expressions that are both recognized as "real",yet, at the same instant, are transient and unknowable........i keep, at my bedside, 7 boxes, varying in both size and design, materials of construction and contents.......At one point in time....well, actually not a POINT, but a span of time........there were fewer containers for the stuff, less stuff and a more random assembly......to find an item, i had to open all the boxes and search the multi-leveled vaults of treasures, many that i had forgotten were there and could no longer remember their origins.........Now......i can see a box and, because of my 'organization' have a relatively accurate idea of the 'types' of things therein.........an economy of placement now constructed, my prior randomness gave way to 'you can find it if you concentrate' .......Many of the "things" in the boxes represent entire constructs or clues to memory and insight.......some are purely nostalgic......One could say that this whole procedure is just a form of OCD to fill the dots between the mind's clicking in time......but the process inhibits dissociative thinking, for me, and ties me into the more rigid relativity of the rest of the world........eccentric? i suppose so........ but then, i make no claims to normalcy, and find it rather pathetic and dull, don't you? On the other hand, however, i have seen Madness, both intellectually and emotionally........and my advice is: "don't get lost" The vast space with which we have little familiarity is far greater than the known universe.......the world is full of "code".....the world, perhaps....IS just "code".........the "cheat-codes" are just delusionary devices to corral the Incomprehensible into a text of believability.......So....I've found that Art is the best excuse for living.......writing it, drawing it, dancing it....whatever........then observing this output, thinking "ha ha....it is what it is". Now, there are a dozen 'boxes' of inter-related conceptualizations, taking form as 'things.......a box of nail clippers, of bracelets, of old photographs, of clippings from books and magazines.....of refrigerator magnets bearing 'words' that can be assembled and reassembled.......as Fancy would have It...... then, this assemblage of words will be enveloped in stacks and stacks of paper, bearing other assemblages of language as 'brushstrokes'......