All texts and images by Gaelle Konak (unless stated)




Friday 29 April 2011

The Revelations of the Absurd

I've been reading Albert Camus's essay on absurdity, The Myth of Sisyphus and it struck me like a slap in the face after a long mind-numbing slumber. Added to the rediscovery of musical masterpieces and inspirational artists, the revelations I received ignited a fire within me which had been quietly smouldering for a year or so. An existential crisis? Not quite, but a definite wake up call. The realization that things don't just "come your way" and that time is not eternal. Not even for me. My mortality thrown right back in my face while I'd desperately been trying to forget about it for the last few years, abandoning myself to the comforting state of oblivion found in ignorance, simplicity and routine.
Then suddenly I reach a date, which is only just a date but disturbed forgotten beasts within, woke up the fear. I'm dying. And I realize that I want more, I want to live more, feel more, mean more in this world so adverse to mortality and humanity. To live more and feel more is to awaken the pain, the fears, the desires, the passions, everything which hurt but make us who we are, universally and individually. I need to embrace this absurdity. Again. Not let it destroy me, but let it take me to the limits of myself, show me how I can have an impact on this world, in this life of mine. A scream. A fever.
A new start and a promise not to forget and fall asleep again. I will resist the annihilating force of habit, so dis-alienating and normalizing. So here I am, gesticulating madly, rubbing my eyes raw to stay awake and see all the sublime horror of this absurd world and our absurd presence in it, hoping I can resist the pull, and shake a few of them awake, if not just for one exquisite moment and give this maddening masquerade the semblance of a sense.
I'll give myself to Art. Beautifully absurd, unequivocally human, exclusively me. Here I am, this is my new page.