Trajectories, a blog of my practice

As an artist I have very few true influences that have directly shaped my work. There have only been a handful of artists work that I have seen in my lifetime that have produced in me an almost kindred understanding and instant connection. The artist that first made me feel most seen, most validated in my thinking and pursuits and what I noticed about the world is Aaron Siskind.

My brain has been collecting stimuli for decades, using its photographic memory to build up a huge catalogue of light and shadow and texture and color, of my experience moving through it all. I feel as though lately I am not collecting as much because my brain has reached a certain saturation point and is now in a different stage of processing and outputting my conclusions.

If a skill is not perceived as necessary, my brain will only attend to the learning of it in a passive way. It will fill the cup, but not drink the knowledge so to speak. I am not often in control of what my brain does decide to learn, focus on, remember, recall, or think about. I am simply an aware passenger, making suggestions that seem to be largely ignored.

I put together this list of things I remember being harder than what I expected. These are all based on my personal experience as a person with PDA and as a parent to two PDAers.

I am always coming back to how we fit into or don’t fit into our environment and how we choose to react and adapt. I’m thinking about who has access to spaces and who has access to comfort within spaces and how those are not the same thing at all.

Time and art and luxury are inextricably linked in today’s world. Those who can spend their time free from generating capital or worrying about generating capital have the luxury of spending their time dedicated towards higher thinking pursuits.

Our whole world revolves on the luck of a few and the hopes of many, while being told the suffering of most is the unavoidable cost of the luck we hope for.

This is often what I need to do to initiate tasks that take a long time or multiple steps, I tell myself I’m only going to do one little part and I let that be truly ok, without secretly expecting more of myself.

I have a massage appointment today. I’ve pushed it back twice. I wanted to cancel it. I am filled with a feeling close to dread that has been slowly getting worse over the course of the week as the appointment approached. It’s in 90 minutes. My brain is clinging to a possibility that I will cancel. But I’m making myself go. I am forcing myself to face the relaxation. There are many factors involved here and you might think I’m being hyperbolic about massage dread. I am not. Nope, I’m just PDA.

No matter how many times I tell myself I should buy canvas and paint like other people, it is not what my brain feels like doing. Instead, I must forge a new path, with new materials and new methods and very little advance planning. This makes it seem like I am a highly impulsive person, I am not; I actually crave routine and safety. But, I also need complete and total autonomy to be calm and doing what I or someone else has already done feels like a complete waste of time to me unless there is more compelling me. I have very little desire to spend time and energy honing or perfecting something. I am a person of urgent efficiency and momentum is what I try to nurture in my practice, not improvement.

For a moment, the situation seemed inconceivable. A crowd of people gathered around a stage with attendants left and right, the signals of pomp and circumstance everywhere. A lone figure on stage, staring out to the crowd. A whisper, starting at the back from cupped hands to ears, reaching the front like a soft but inevitable wave, “he’s naked.”

We need a massive revaluing, a massive remembering of what it means to prioritize authenticity, happiness, security, connection, and more people reaching their full potential. Profit has been the lodestar for too long. If your job, or the majority of your time, is spent maximizing your or someone else’s profit, at the expense of others, with little actual value added to the world, I challenge you in 2025 to stop. Stop accepting this as the only acceptable goal.