But… I don’t want to make an Art about the fury of chaos and apocalyptic energies. It is too negative. I muddled over this for nearly a year. How do I make this a positive expression for me the creator? I don’t want to drudge over this. This was while carving the Ouroboros Snake and I already had a set idea of change as circular and self-completing. I didn’t want a distraction.

But I definitely heard the message. Gradually at first, I thought to make a video short of the blast moment from the point-of-view of the survivor, in watching their shock and following their reactions. There would characters who would not be told that without warning they would be blasted with loud sound and blinding light… um, this way I could record their raw reactions and a narrative would follow? OK, slow down… What the hell Matt. How are you even considering this?

By Summer I’d thought of a million things while I basically was getting stoned and swimming at the lake. Still, the idea sat there like the pile of rubble at the site, untouched with an orange fence around it.

One day as I floated in the water, I began to think. Me, a small clot of self-assembling and somehow sentient proteins, immersed in water, surrounded by forest and earth, under the deep blue sky, overlooked by the radiant yellow Sun.

WATER – EARTH – AIR – FIRE

At that moment, I believed these fundamental symbolic elements of matter-enabled-by -energy, in vast concatenation and generation create reality – a creative force which is equal and opposite the explosive. It is the melting together. And that little blob, me, is the witness of this conclusive assembly and integration of parts, which is the World.

Now I have two drawings to do. One of rapid dissolution and one of steadfast concretion. So as not to be overwhelmed by the energies of either, I am working on them together, in balance. It is just a thing I do for my own discovery, like in a sketchbook, meant for self-study.