Tag: origins

Fictional Singular Beginnings

With Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa.

Light through a lens, an entire image. It appears whole, complete. And it is, but it is also what you said: the fiction of singular beginnings.

When you added, every image is saturated, we thought you meant with meaning, and we said sure. We are big fans of your work.

––With origins, you correct us, and there you go again, making and remaking our capacity to see, and we begin to get a sense that any of the meanings we saw––anywhere, were nothing but beginnings.

***

Inspired by the essay “(W)hole” by Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, appearing in the most recent issue of BOMB magazine, in which the photographer and writer reflects on some of my favorite themes. Italicized phrases are from this text.

Odds and Ends

Considering our chances.

If a swerve of atoms begat cause ever after, why one moment and why the next?  Any beginning can happen when two lines of action coincide, but tracing their independent paths only gets you so far. Cause may control speed and direction, but not collision of particles.

Take this body, evolving from protozoa by random mutation. Faith is one thing, but to abandon one’s determinism so completely ignites terror in many. To offer up is one thing, but how big is chance, really? The very word implies an endless plurality, and then what are the chances, on and on?

Too much to hold, that much is certain, and it is possible to turn a deliberate blind eye to what may not be understood. With vast unknowing extending in every direction, there may be some sense after all, in choosing a lens of unrelenting possibility.