I’m going to keep it brief today.
No, really.
It’s true.
After a month of long, intense articles about my experience in Chicago, I kind of need a breather.
Frankly, we all do.
There is an ocean of underlying anxiety that we’re all passing around these days. It’s like a twisted, evil game of hot potato, in which we’re all bouncing our fears off each other. (“I don’t want to feel like shit. Here. You take it.”)
And social media is the perfect vehicle for our existential angst. Just now, I tweeted a Guardian article I’d just read that confirmed what I know in my daily life: there is less and less money flowing through our normal economies, as so much of it has been hoovered up by the Billionaire class.
So not only do we have to worry about working harder for less money, or watching our jobs in the creative industries disappear, but it’s all happening while a heartless, idiot man-child runs around with his finger on the “kill everyone” button at all times.
Everything just feels so… tumultuous.
Chaotic.
Every day, we tap into the swirling current of our collective discontent. (And if you happen to waste your time on Twitter or Facebook, the effect is amplified exponentially.)
But we have so little recourse, beyond just getting on with it all. Stiff upper lip. That sort of thing.
As artists, of course, we can make our work, and allow our emotional reality to become sublimated into the images and objects we create. I’ve always argued, here, that it’s the best possible response.
And I’m not sure if it’s the motivation behind “Inundation,” a new self-published artist book by Kevin O’Connell that turned up in the mail recently, but it’s certainly how I responded to the work.
The entire object, near as I can tell, is made from images of the roiling sea. (As Kevin is based in Denver, I can appreciate the attraction. Being 1000 miles from the ocean can mess with your head.)
But then again, about half-way through my viewing experience, I began to wonder if I weren’t seeing a few aerial shots of snow-covered peaks mixed in?
Is that crashing-wave-froth, or fresh powder deposited on a monumental, jutting rock?
Hard to tell.
The only text is on the back cover; an excerpt from a smart poem, written by the artist, or more likely someone else. But it speaks of the ocean, and makes no mention of mountains, so I still don’t know. (Googling would take all the fun out of the guessing-game.)
Regardless, as so many of the images are visually similar, I came away impressed by that sense of motion. By the churning juice in my stomach, and the way it reminded me of how I feel each day, in this, the first year of the Trump era.
Ironically, I was originally planning to review a little ‘zine given to me by Lindsay Lochman and Barbara Ciurej in Chicago. A small, constructed poke at Trump directly. But as I reached for the keyboard, I felt a wave of exhaustion coming over me.
Do I really have to talk about Trump again?
So instead, I grabbed Kevin’s book off the bottom of the book stack. And still, I thought of Trump. But this time, it was through metaphor, and it came from my own reaction. I’d bet that in Kevin’s mind, this series has nothing to do with politics.
But it’s called “Inundation,” and that’s what we’re all dealing with: the wall of shared anxiety we have to climb each day just to get out of bed, and make breakfast for the kids.
Life is messy, and we’re reminded of that too often. So I’ll end with a positive message: we’re all creators, so create. Make things that help you feel better, and share them with others.
And for God’s sake, lay off the Facebook now and again.
You’ll thank me.
Bottom Line: Cool, experiential book about raging seas
To purchase “Inundation,” click here
If you’d like to submit a book for review, please email me at jonathanblaustein@gmail.com