Darkness (The beginning)

What can I look at?

What do I fear?

What lives in the darker corners of my mind?

Those where the thoughts that passed through my mind as I started wondering about a creative collaboration with my friend TobyMarx [Mark Ellinger] who is the author and photographer behind the wonderful blog UpFromTheDeep - The boundaries of what is perceived as beautiful.

I had been looking at an old photo of myself. One that captured who I was when I was still young and virginal. I would like to say innocent, but I was not innocent then. Already I had experienced the violence that people can inflict on one another.

But I wanted to use that picture, because looking at it, it is a symbol of innocence for me, and in it I look like I am waiting for the future to unfold before me.

Who will I become? What will I become? What had the seeds of violence sown within me? What darkness was birthed and would grow like a bruise within me?

I wanted to counter pose that photograph with the photographs of archetypal evil serial killers. The darkest darkness. The most violent violence. As I started to do this I felt nauseous. Almost ill.

 

The closest I could get to was a young Charles Manson. A cruelly laughing Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo was too dark for me. I couldn’t go there.

“You are me and I am you.”
- Tich Naht Hahn

On an intellectual level I know that all things are connected. But on a gut and emotional level I cannot accept this.

My first thought is intent. That we are here to bring each other joy and not pain. But darkness and evil and pain must serve some purpose.

Why else do we have it in this experience?