I always think about California. I can honestly say I think about California every single day. I was thinking about the drought, and then about the fires, and I was trying to figure out how to put the bear into that situation. It wasn’t my initial intention, but I ended up making a version of the Californian flag. I guess the idea was both to personalize and take a wider view of that place that I spend so much time thinking about. I gorge myself on the ideal of my life when I was there, of what it would be like if I went back. The empty bottles are for the drought, but they’re also for the empty things that I put into myself, the poisons all around us, the physical ones and the psychological ones. The poppies aren’t even the right type to really take away pain and suffering, they’re like a shadow or a ghost of their cousin. There’s uncertainty and doom all around.
Desire is making eye contact because it’s the condition, the emotion, it’s looking at you, it wants, it’s hungry, it endlessly needs. In the House of the Bear looks away, because it’s me succumbing to the condition of desire. I’m incapable or unwilling to look at you, or I just don’t give a fuck. The fires are coming, the end is at hand, there’s nothing around to fix it, the water’s all gone. All the suffering comes from want, and often a want that I can’t identify, which only makes it more frustrating. Desire is eating an empty bottle and a flower that doesn’t help me.
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