DREAM SALT
Sandra FlorenceOne holding lamplight
to the other's face
moth children flit in out
other tied to line
a deep body well
ocean phosphoric dream saltArt is an out of control impulse radiating from the heart, surging through the whole body, There is something to be said for this impulse that cracks open like a crazy mystery to reveal a track of beating drums.
But to do my art I have to be out of control and in control at the same time. It's a jazzy dance between two worlds. I think of Martha Graham this way, tilting her body against space and fanning out her long robe, a divine experience--an interaction of the most extreme of human emotions--fear, rage, disbelief, horror, and exquisite joy. All of these emotions converge and I'm there at four in the morning rendering cartoon figures on the living room floor, or writing a story that steals lines from Pablo Neruda for inspiration...
"cut violets and curtains
shadows recently receding"A landscape coalesces out of fragments, glass, stone, clay, paper. I feel a wide expanse of ocean floor unfold beneath me, like dream salt in my wounds. These wounds have been accrued throughout the day. Thank god, I have this dreamscape to turn to, I would be full of holes by now if I didn't.
I used to be a child who made marks on paper. I would draw pictures of children at play, watercolor landscapes, make paper collages. Mostly I loved to draw A Day in the Life of a Child a narrative series of pictures focusing on the most mundane of a child's activities--getting dressed in the morning, eating breakfast, playing in the yard. Maybe this is the repetition that some artists talk about, polishing the stone, the movement toward art. I drew pictures throughout my childhood and I wrote melancholy poems about trees in winter. I also sat in my room and pretended I was Audrey Hepburn. Rain clattered against the window pane and gave the room a chill. I know. I look nothing like Audrey Hepburn, but such is the power of the imagination, or as I prefer to call it, dream salt.
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