When Iron Meets Water

I can’t change the past, neither can you. Only the past exists.

Lately, I can’t seem to make anything other than the thing that already exists—the past— whether it’s a piece of writing, a painting, or some other related object. You too can make something out of what already exists, which is the past, the past is everything, the past is the only malleable substance there is that can actually become something.

The idea that artist’s make something called art has become amusing to me, sort of preposterous, especially if the artist is the one designating or openly declaring that the art that’s been made actually is art. For if something really is art it already existed in its existence before being made. At the very least the artist could acknowledge that the thing that seems to have been made actually existed before it was made, and that the so-called art piece is merely the result of a kind of dress rehearsal that the past performs in honor of its new existence!

So often, art is taken up by people who make things they actually believe will last. And so, a large industry of past, present, and future art has been created. But art and art projects really aren’t meant to last. Impermanence is the key, impermanence is the soul of art. Once impermanence is understood by the artist, art making can proceed with the awareness of all involved that the art piece could not have existed in any other form, other than in the past, deeply rooted there.

Arion Press, San Francisco, makes books out of the past and present for the future, melting down old type for new type to be melted down again. Photo by author, 2014.