A MAN TAKES EIGHT DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE SKY FACING AWAY FROM THE SUNSET ON A CLOUDLESS EVENING (IN JPG FILE FORMAT), HE HIDES IN EACH JPG FILE THROUGH CONCATENATION ONE SONG (IN MP3 FILE FORMAT) FROM IGGY & THE STOOGES RAW POWER ALBUM.  

I never once believed you when you wrote:

“The progression of a painter’s work as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity... toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea... and the idea and the observer... To achieve this clarity is inevitably to be understood.”

maybe I believe clarity is the  
uncertain knowing that
all things must end

maybe I never believed you when you wrote:

“The time is perhaps not altogether too green for the vile suggestion that art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear, and more than the light of day (or night) makes the subsolar, -lunar, and -stellar excrement. Art is the sun, moon, and stars of the mind, the whole mind.”

because maybe I believe clarity is the  
uncertain knowing that
all things must end

I never thought it all that important to believe you when you wrote:

“It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content ... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.”

because maybe I believe clarity is the  
uncertain knowing that
all things must end

I believed you when you wrote:

“Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding any one.”

because that understanding came to the back of my knees as they buckled
and I believe clarity is the  
uncertain knowing that
all things must end

I never cared enough to believe you when you wrote:

“Eighteen might look at thirty-four through a rising mist of adolescence; but twenty-two would see thirty-eight with discerning clarity.”

because maybe I believe clarity is the  
uncertain knowing that
all things must end

I think I thought it too completely obvious to believe you when you wrote:

“One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.”

because maybe I believe clarity is the  
uncertain knowing that
all things must end

I may have believed you when you wrote:

“The only chance for victory over the brainwash is the right of every man to have his ideas judged one at a time. You never get clarity as long as you have these packaged words, as long as a word is used by twenty-five people in twenty-five different ways. That seems to me to be the first fight, if there is going to be any intellect left.”

because I always stop to consider whether your and my words suffer from their meaning
and I believe clarity is the  
uncertain knowing that
all things must end

maybe I never wanted to believe something so frivolous as when you wrote:

“Rock ‘n’ roll is a combination of good ideas dried up by fads, terrible junk, hideous failings in taste and judgment, gullibility and manipulation, moments of unbelievable clarity and invention, pleasure, fun, vulgarity, excess, novelty and utter enervation.”

because I believe clarity is the  
uncertain knowing that
all things must end
and I believe clarity is the raw power hidden
within such a knowing

[DIGITALLY ALTERED FILE, ARCHIVAL INKJET PRINTS - photographic series]

2011