1980 Berlin
11 January
I discovered, in writing a letter to Martin, that I'm interested in 'clarity.' Not the satisfying clarity of form, colour, surface, intention or idea etc, but the awful clarity one has when one wakes up in the middle of the night in the act of listening or when, drunk or stoned, one catches oneself in a mirror and, for a moment, recognize ones' self as a stranger; or, when looking over a shoulder, there occurs an instant of confirmation, though it's impossible to decide what expectation is confirmed.
Thinking about it now, I suspect that this idea/concept is essentially literary and any approximation of it/towards it, in terms of the visual arts, must, of necessity, be primarily an intellectual endeavor. This suggests to me that I hold my concerns wrapped around me as a mood. This is not such a contradiction as it may first seem.
Far from wanting to, or feeling it necessary that, I should explain or externalize my ideas or discoveries, I have concluded that the making of things, in an art context, is a particular kind of sympathetic magic. Out of a mood, intellectual/emotional a thing is made the contemplation of which, hopefully, induces a similar mood without the object, necessarily, referring to that mood directly or quasi-objectively. Of course this means I find it very difficult to have an opinion about what I do and leads me, when pushed, to speak only of actions and reactions.
'If error is marred truth, and truth can only be realized through the development of its imperfect manifestations, it becomes clear that reality can reach us even through a fog of obscurity and muddle.'
Simone de Beauvoir, 'The Prime of Life.'