I romantically excused myself for not writing much of anything anymore while on a walk the other day. I was slinking through the wood—if you could call it that (truthfully, I felt as if I was clad with only a meager shroud of pine against the bare commanding sky) when I stumbled over the difference between capturing something and letting it go- captivity and freedom? Or do the connotations become too bristly to bear? Mere semantics, you say- and yet perhaps the crux of my dilemma- or the key! “To capture” (rooted in the Latin “capere”) in addition to its standard use, can be placed in the creative context: to capture the essence of something—a far more palatable choice, but rooted all the same. Though- when speaking of art- is ‘capturing’ not analogous to ‘expressing,’ insofar as I “capture” and “express” a mood? Perhaps one is used more with visual as opposed to verbal art, but interchangeable nonetheless. Is this an oxymoron, and so a truth—a beautiful phenomenon- where only in the act of creation can you let something out by reining it in? Where “capture” itself dries up and flakes off its last layer of meaning, revealing its new skin of freedom, pinkish and pruned? Or is it a transference (transcendence?), transformation from non-stuff to stuff, a metamorphosis in which some external intangible item is snatched, internalized and then processed, attributed to or assimilated with some known feeling- given meaning- and then released back into the social cytoplasm, portrayed in some metaphorical way? Or is it a coalescence, where captivity and freedom intermingle and create something wholly new…it would be nice, wouldn’t it- to reconcile the shackles in art?
And it was this meddling that let me forgive myself for forgetting the metallic shock of briny sea that interrupted the mellowed sand. It was this train of thought that allowed me to dismiss the arching boughs that cradled the air above my head. I watched content as their essences swirled about my conscience, even prattled against the back walls of my brain, and I gleefully danced amidst the potent smoke, knowing that within every crevice of the universe lurked the very same wonderment, for what would the possibility of this life be without it? And to capture that or express it was no matter, for ‘it’ is given, ‘it’ is necessary. Even when you find yourself at a moment where ‘it’ culminates to become the true fabric of magnificence might you accept the normalcy and absoluteness of the instance, realizing that your attunement and alignment is natural and undeniable- it need not be bottled up and contained like pretty sands- though a reminder at times is welcomed. Much like the way we do not- sometimes cannot- grasp the fibers of dreams, but yet can feel their energies gliding between our fingers, does the life force vibrate continually about all things, regardless of our interpretation.