Wilderness

"The wilderness is not a landscape you visit, it is all around you, wherever you are. We persuade ourselves that our taming of the world is profound, we lay water mains and sewers and read thousand year old books, we drive our autobahns through solid rock, we huddle together in caves lit by the incandescence of television screens. We do everything we can to be safe, and still the planet spins, the winds roar, the great ice caps creak and heave, the continental plates shudder and bring cities crashing to the ground, the viruses infect us and the oceans toy with us, lapping against the edges of our precarious land. We are in the midst of the wilderness, even curled up with our lovers in bed." - Paul Shepheard, The Cultural Wilderness, or What is Landscape? from The Drawing Book by Kovats, T. Black Dog Publishing Limited 2007.

I came across this quote while half-heartedly flipping through a book at college during a creative lull. It's really stuck with me, this idea of the 'wilderness'. We think we've got the planet under control, we think we're civilised and rational. None of these things are true. We're completely at the mercy of nature and we're also part of nature. We're animals - why do people always forget that? These wars and attacks over religion, over nationalism, over football teams, for fuck's sake, it's all tribal. It's all primitive. We're animals, despite our three-piece suits, our languages, our cups of coffee and our empires. And the high-rise blocks and motorways and computers are only temporary shelter in the chaotic and unpredictable wilderness we live in. If we forget that, we'll be completely unprepared when the inevitable day comes where we can no longer rely on electricity and ready meals. In fact even with all possible preparations made, we're part of an ecosystem supported entirely by our environment. If the environment stops supporting us, there's nothing we can do.

Raphaelson, P. Skyline Storm any time between 1995-2001, #16 of Wilderness series, photograph, available: http://www.paulraphaelson.com/portfolios/wilderness/

I get so bored

of seeing penises in art.