Stuck in the middle with you.

As I began to take everything in, I noticed the two halves. Black and white, left and right, East and West. Seperating the two was a thin fence. I didn’t enjoy being too much on one side or the other as I felt they both could be wrong. I sat on the fence, precariously balancing taking in the black, white, left, right, east and west. It is not easy to balance on the fence. It was easy to fall to one side and was hard to climb back up again.

Conflict will always happens at the fence. The differences ironing each other out. I felt overwhelmed having to balance, be a mediator and to seperate the warring factions. It was tiring and much of the time I felt alone. But in and amongst the factions I saw more and more people making their way to the fence. They shook hands, turned around and faced their factions with courage preventing their side from attacking the other. Eventually more and more came to the fence and I noticed the fence was no longer a fine line impossible to balance on. People began becoming the fence and the fence grew. It grew from the centre out, until the entire area of black, white, left, right, east and west became the fence – Became the people.

This is synthesis. Transformation. And it starts at the centre, the heart of the individual and works its way out. Eventually affecting others.

Help. Vote. Support.

Hello all!
I know I’ve been rather quiet, but I’ve been busy trying get my freelance photography going, which is what this post is kind of about. I need your help and your vote in order to try win some much needed gear. If you would be kind enough to follow the link to viewbug and vote for my image, I’d be eternally grateful. Please follow this link to vote.

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God

God is music. It causes something to stir within the human particles within its universe or sphere of influence.
The particles begin moving, thrashing and colliding until they coalesce into a sea of varying waves of expression.
A particle does not necessarily realise the awesomeness of this until they take a moment to change perspective and try take in and observe the living universe in its perceived entirety.
What do they see?

This image is not my own.

They see a sea if different bodies expressing themselves accordingly; but collectively, they are the expression of the music itself and it is the music that determines the quality and character of life in that universe.
But what the particles don’t all realise is that God has different expressions and although many worship music, others worship literature and art, and if you look a bit more carefully, you will find God everywhere.
Not all particles understand that music, literature, art and all the other Gods also have Gods, as do those Gods and so on and so forth.
This is the best I can perceive eternity.
So…
What God do you worship and more importantly, what kind of God are you?

What am I?

Every now and then a stranger is interested in my nationality or what race I am. The conversation usually goes something similar to this:
“So where are you from?”
“Cape Town, born and bred.”
“And your parents?”
“I think they were both born in Port Elizabeth.”
“Oh, so what nationality are you?”
“South African”
Eventually the conversation withers down to “Chinese”.
This got me thinking, what am I? Anyone who knows me well, knows I am the furthest thing from chinese, apart from eating the food. But, hell, I got a friend who is British and he enjoys it too. I don’t speak it or practice any cultural celebrations. If I had to be honest, I don’t feel a strong connection to my heritage. Does this make me bad? Is it really that sad? Because I don’t have pride for a country I haven’t even been to? So, am I Chinese?
Am I South African? Yes. But mainly because of location, it’s the name of the country I was born and live in. But do I believe in and support what the leadership that represents South Africa? No, but I love where I live. So, am I South African?
Am I Capetonian? Yes, but only because where it is situated on the map, but if it were named differently I’d also be whatever it were called.
So, What am I? Am I my profession, my musical taste or hobby? I guess I’m all those things, but I’m also an effect of time. Our qualities develop & evolve through countless challenges over time. So, what am I? What are you?
Maybe our qualities should be what defines us and not labels, boundaries and borders.
Little do we know that it is the variations that keep us alive.
So what am I? I guess I’m human.

Puzzles

You and I are puzzles residing in a greater puzzle.
Let’s align our pieces. Make a shape to make a picture, because without us solving for our individual puzzle, we can’t expect to see the bigger picture whether that bigger picture is two puzzles or the sum total of every existing thing.

The abstract, chaotic pieces are there, we just need to make sense of them and shift them in to place, maybe then we will see not puzzles, but art – as life should be seen.

365 days and going

I haven’t really written anything of late, so I dedicate this post to my mother, who passed away one year ago today.

Dear Mamma

it has been an entire year since you left us. I’ve been thinking of you a lot recently. When I woke up this morning and thought of you, I wondered how to celebrate you. This seemed like the best as you were one who always read and supported my scribblings on here.I started thinking about the whole ritual of celebration, how we go through these personal ceremonies to celebrate those who have passed on. I then started thinking about who this serves more – the person conducting the ritualistic reminder, or the memory of those gone? I wonder why I feel inclined to write this, as I’m sure the laws of being in your case are very much different to what I can possibly fathom, and you may not see these words but this is how I choose to celebrate you – my ritual. I guess it allows me to feel closer to you as I focus on words that are inspired by your spirit, which I am now sure is eternal.

The last 365 days have been illuminating. The beginning of the end triggered a series of life lessons for me which has left me with clearer vision. Words have more deeper meaning for me now and the way things express themselves, I find weird but somehow logical. I have had run ins with too many seemingly coincidental circumstances to just write them off as coincidences. To others, no doubt, they are, but to me I feel a little bit more. These abstract feelings and intuitions are bit too strong to write off. Some may say I put and look for too much meaning in things. My response would be, if we are not looking and making meanings of seemingly abstract things, then what the heck are we doing with life? If we don’t put meaning in our lives, then surely our lives are meaningless. Having a career and filling you life with things, for me, is not meaningful. I guess the way we each perceive and express those meanings are somewhat different, but the abstruse that motions and drives the subjective to expression is surely what connects all of us?

I found pain to be something that is mostly self inflicting. I found much pain to be caused by mindset and the human egotistical characteristic of personalizing everything to the point of strangulation; expecting things to be a certain way and when it reveals itself as something very different to what we thought or envisioned, we become childish. I realized how unfair, unrealistic and varied our views on life are. Expectation has killed so much and unchecked expectation which we are so easily susceptible to, will be the downfall of unity. Before you passed on I found the thought of not having you around to be painful. I felt that pain at its apex one week before you left and one day before I said goodbye. I even told you about it and your response was so undeniably you. You told me not to be angry and not to hold whatever trace of hate there was in my perception of your departure. Even in the face of death you showed no fear and within these past 365 days I have learned death is not to be feared. Fear is based on a man made, short sighted illusion and I am glad to say, even though I may sometimes live in fear, I try not to live according to it. That was something you taught me, not necessarily with those words, but with actions and intentions much of which I have identified, albeit in hindsight.

Through this last year I have encountered some great life lessons in the wake (pun not intended…Although you always did enjoy a good laugh, so pun intended!) of your absence. I am lucky to have the sturdiest of blueprints you passed on to me. Some tribes passed on wisdom and insight through ritualistic and ceremonious dances which were symbolic and held meaning. Your dance was your life, and you danced it beautifully. How do I know this? Because I interpreted and understood your dance and it has very much influenced mine, giving rise to new melodies and movements.
I’m happy to tell you, mamma, my melodies and dances hold no anger or hatred. You taught me that and these past 365 days have solidified those feelings and intuitions. How so? Because I questioned them and honestly answered them. How do I know I was honest? Because sometimes the answers did not benefit me, but fitted perfectly into a bigger picture which I am apart of. I don’t hate that you are not here, I do not feel your time was cut short, I do not hate the cancer or the complications that took your life. I miss you, that is for sure, but with your life and your death you passed on something abstract which I am unable to articulate clearly. What I do know, is that it was something truthful, honest and beautifully illuminating and I hope others can see the reflection that your bright light casts from me. This is how your spirit lives on.

All my eternal love

Matt
XXX

My rhythmic personality

My rhythmic personality.

At the moment of birth I was given a body, it just so happened to be a drumkit. It was complete with faculties I never thought I’d use and used some faculties in ways I would never have thought.
This body changed as time went on experiencing its infancy, childhood, teens and a portion of adult hood, which has caused me to reminisce and take it all in; its evolution up to its present and what it means to me in its entirety, in the hopes of perceiving some personality in something most consider inanimate.

I feel otherwise.

The hi-hats and cymbals are the vehicles for this body’s intelligence and imagination. With it the possibilities of latent beats are carried. They hold a dynamic range of emotions with an ability of precognition which gives the rest of its body anticipation with crashes and washes of promise and hope.
This rhythm has a pulse to it. A heart beat. That which punctuates the rhythms with life. This is the bass drum, my heart.
With the intelligence rhythmically calling notes, it stirs the imagination causing motion. Yearning to be expressed it calls for a life and my heart replied with a beat and it casually yet purposefully punctuates the rhythm.
It now lives but yet still desires more. This rhythm wants a voice. Something it can share that others will hear. The snare speaks life into a morse-code of repitions to those who listen.

These are my voice, heart and intelligence divinely giving birth to the rhythm. This rhythm has moods and moods are cyclic and those moods are toms and cymbals. The line is often blurred between intelligence and mood and hopefully I learn where that balance is.
Each tom and cymbal is a facet of mood and with each other faculty of its body; each is a facet of #rhythm and personality. How that personality or rhythm is expressed is infinite in possibility.

This #drumkit and the rhythms it produces is very much alive and is a life abstractly rather similar to its human counterpart and those who read this.

Push n pull

You feel it don’t you? That magnetism beneath and within your material body. That indescribable, subtle feeling that you can’t put your finger on, but its effects are very much felt and witnessed. I feel it. Because it is so subtle and intangible, it gives me the illusion that nothing can be done about this unidentified cause of feeling. It’s the subjective battlefield we all are fighting on and this war cannot be won on the dense, physical plane. This conflict will only be resolved on the plane of intelligence; the mental wrestling of our internal, subjective turmoil. It is separate from any other’s war, but believe me, the effects of this internal, spiritual, if you will, will be felt, seen and experienced in our conscious physical life.

I have found creativity to be a tool to help instill a balance to this inner turmoil. The whole process of creativity, if you think about it, is incredible, beautiful and symbolic. The process of creativity itself is peppered with analogous concepts of life and evolution. Art and creativity then becomes something more than just a pleasing, objective expression. If done “correctly” (and I use this term loosely, as I believe there is no such thing as “correct” art or a “correct” expression) and if the mind is involved equally as much as the mechanical motions to objectively create art, it becomes a tool for healing, and with the risk of sounding like an acid-dropping hippie, a means to expand our individual consciousness and this, I believe, adds (or detracts) to the collective human consciousness.

I like to think of creativity as a form of purposeful, intentional activity; activity with a purpose. I have various tools or outlets for my creativity and each one has various effects and results. My main outlets for creativity are reading, writing, photography and music.
Is reading creative? I guess that depends on how and what you read. Reading is more associated with entertainment, but I say it too can be creative. I have found each one of these outlets work efficiently in different times for different means. I have found in periods of inactivity reading works best. I find myself like a sponge, drawing in on other’s perception and understanding – something to challenge my thought and understanding. I find when I am ready and filled with this external inspiration and aspiration my other tools are at the ready to help me comprehend and objectively and creatively have my artistic say of the condition of my personal internal struggle.

As some of you know I thoroughly enjoy writing my piece of mind, and there are periods where that facet of me is inactive, such as it has been recently. The focus of my expression has shifted lately and my photographic facet has taken over. I have paid attention to my photography, slowly improving my craft as well as finding my own unique expression within this art form.
So I decided to create a new blog; A new life for my photography. I felt it unfair to try fit all expressions within this blog as this blog has evolved into a life of its own and I fully intend to keep on exploring it. For those of you who are interested in my photographic side of my expression, please do visit my site and follow. It is still in its infancy and will hopefully grow and flourish as this blog has done. I’m feeling a change too, so I am looking at revamping this blog and giving it a new look and feel.

If you are interested, please check out my new photography blog and portfolio here.

May you all identify when life pushes and pulls you and make the choice right for you, because there is no right and wrong only consequences. Such is the duality of cause and effect, a concept we cannot escape in this material life. Try ride life’s crests and troughs best you can…

Life

This morning at 5:30 I was woken up by myself to chat with me. He said to me:

“Remember, within this objective, materialistic world of black and white in which we live, it is our ideas and thoughts that deck these forms with subjective shades. It is all of us that paint these shades of colour into life, not just one or some, but all. Not just the academic, clever and creative, but also the unfortunate, sick and condemned. Our colours will mix and bleed into others causing chaotic beauty and not all colours will harmonize for art is tragic, beautiful and challenging. Try be mindful and respectful of colours that are not of your palette, believe it or not they do tell you something even if it is seemingly abstract. Life and truth is a sum total of disgustingly gorgeous shapes and colours. Open your mind, dip your brush in a colour of thought and help paint our reality with your range and choice of colours. You are an artist, armed with a unique perspective that no one has the right to deny, just as you cannot deny that of another. It is our sum total of the objective & subjective that leads us to a paradigm which pushes, pulls & challenges us but at the fringe and periphery of this solidifying paradigm is a percentage that challenges and shifts the paradigm itself in an evolutionary movement, keeping it dynamic and alive.
Right and wrong, best and worse are objective words coloured by the opinion of perspective through experience and each experience, although humanly it may be perceived objectively, is simultaneously and uniquely subjective, as is the artist who holds the palette within.
Life is not simple, happy, sad or short, nor is it’s point the attainment of a single, tiny facet (which we have conditioned ourselves to believe is happiness). Life is a collective. We should sew and connect all the various pieces which we often see as seperate and contrary into one single picture which will bring not necessarily happiness but peace and attempt to grasp it, interact with it best we can according to our capacity which is ultimately influenced and affected by everything.
We have been creating and colouring this complex Rubik’s cube of reality, individually as well as collectively that we have forgotten to also solve for it. Solve it for your own sake. Solve it for all our sakes.”

I then dissipated, leaving myself to fall back to sleep…

A letter to my sum total

Dedicated to the desolation of Smaug…

My dearest Heart and Body,

I felt as though I should write you both this letter before we endure this journey together. I am the eldest of us and I’ve been through this process before, and I feel that perhaps these words will some how help prepare us in some unconscious way, at some point in the future.

The three of us are all separate beings, yet at the same time, we are one. We exist in a realm of free will (to some extent) and even though I have experienced this before, it is different and I too will be learning new lessons because of the two of you. Together we make up a dynamic being, both seen and unseen. We are a balance of our separate selves – a synergy, but believe me there will be times where one of us will be predominant and take lead. We will all have countless chances and we will all learn and share from each others mistakes and glories – this is what pushes and evolves us through the consequences of those results, but remember we experience it all together. We will each feel the effects of each others choices and actions. At times we may even betray each other unknowingly as we each speak different languages. You won’t understand it at first, but conditions and environment play a major part in our dynamic and being, and we each will want to react differently. Hopefully over time we will become more in tune with one another and realize we are bigger than our separate selves, then hopefully truth will shine through like a back-lit canopy casting light sparingly on the shadows of our periphery. In time hopefully we become brighter – that is my hope for us.

To my heart, you are the most sacred of things in this life, the being we want to protect the most as you are the most fragile yet malleable. Our dear Body fears for your fragility and I fear of the potential of your malleability. This will eventually cause us to disagree on certain topics and affect our decisions which we choose together and experience together. Heart, you will experience the brunt of our choices, the effect of which has the ability to shape, mend and bend you, even to the point of shattering. The effects on you affects our Body and myself in different ways. The way in which you shape is incredibly important to the sum total of us. You will break, bend and mend to varying degrees, on seemingly differing levels of importance. You must be aware of the shape you cool yourself into, because sometimes you will bend into a shape that causes cuts and wounds and if, like metal, you cool down into that serrated shape it becomes difficult to cause a fire and heat in order to be able to mend and round your vicious edges. Sometimes you may bend unwillingly, unknowingly or naively into a shape you don’t like or other hearts, bodies and souls may not like. Sometimes you won’t know any better and are at the mercy of elements in the realm of our Body. Our Body should look after you, but it too is its own being and has free will. Sometimes our Body may betray us in moments of weakness, but we should not be too hard on it as we are responsible for its conditioning. We are a dynamic synergy and we are responsible as a whole, even though we are separate free-willed beings. The catch, my dear Heart and Body, is that to learn, condition and evolve each of ourselves together as one, requires experiences which predominantly takes place in the realm of our dear and fearless Body. That is where our Body is king, just as emotion is your realm, Heart, and ideals are mine. We work separately and as one – I cannot stress this enough.

To my fearless Body, you are our doorway to the collective reality of this life. You are the youngest and less experienced of the three of us and your conditioning and quality of life is largely mine and our Heart’s responsibility. Remember, you have free will and sometimes you will not always abide to our wishes. You and our heart share a close relationship, one that I will not always understand, and I know there will be times when the two of you will conspire against me and my ideals. We each have our strengths and weaknesses, like every being in existence. I have a foresight that the two of you won’t necessarily be able to recognize and due to the lack of foresight the two of you share, you will rebel and we will lose balance within our dynamic. Hopefully we learn in those times of crises. The only way to regain balance is for the three of us to come to an unspoken compromise that can only be attained in time, experience and sacrifice. We should become purposeful and disciplined but at the same time we cannot be overly hard on ourselves and each other, as evolution takes time and to evolve means learning and to learn means the destruction of one ideal and the creation of a new, better one. That is where I serve the both of you. Within my realm time is an illusion and that is something the both of you will struggle to understand. Time is a necessity for evolution and because you don’t posses the foresight and understanding I have, the effect of time is different for you and it will cause you to make decisions and act out in ways that may not be intended, and this is where Karma works. Karma is an extraneous force and being, which the three of us won’t fully understand, but it is necessary for everyone’s evolution. No human or being of any kind is exempt from its laws. We may at times like it, or not like it but it is there. It is not about winning or losing, but learning and understanding which makes Karma one of the greatest teachers, should we be able to see and identify when it is at work…and it is always working.

Dear Body, you are physically the strongest and you bare the brunt of living in the accepted collective reality and therefore you are perceived more real than your Heart and I – this is your weakness. You have an ego and it often tells you that you are the only one that matters, this hurts your heart and myself, because there will be countless times that your ego will get in the way and distort whatever limited foresight you have, causing you to make decisions without your heart and I having any say. This is to be expected, but also realize that is not necessarily who you are. You are part of a sum total of three – you, your heart and me. Those moments of crises will come, where bad judgment and vulnerability will cause you to manifest actions that will affect not only you, but me and our precious heart too, even the hearts of other beings can be affected by your actions.
Body, you are powerful and your actions are powerful, so be careful how you express yourself as it has very real effects on us and on others. Having said that, it is mine and our Heart’s responsibility to teach and condition you and hopefully sooner rather than later your ego will wane and you will know there is more than you – that there is more than just the three of us. Sometimes we will forget that.
The past does matter and so do consequences. Why does it matter? It matters because the past, with the aid of Karma and consequences, teaches us and hopefully we learn. Hopefully I never fail the both of you with my ideals that you cannot see. Heart, hopefully with my ideals and lessons of consequences, Karma and the past, you shape yourself into a beautiful shape that is unwavering yet compassionate. This shape that you create yourself into colours and conditions our beloved body and your shape, my dearest Heart, is more so my responsibility than our Body’s. I will try not fail you, as I hope that the both of you don’t fail me, and when we do fail one another, be loving, compassionate and understanding and learn from our mistakes. We are an ecosystem. I am you and you are me, we are one, even though each of us are free.

Here’s to our voyage, to our glories, our failures and the lessons and consequences each one brings and as time passes may it bring us closer together making us evermore one, not only with each other, but with those other ecosystems and sum totals that are in existence. To those other ecosystems and sum totals of bodies, hearts and souls that may feel our effects negatively, we are truly sorry and remorseful.

Here’s to the journey, may we become more evolved and better equipped as it unfolds. I love you all.

All my love

Soul