Week 4 + 5: Paloma Negra

This week's open-ended theme mirrors the ambiguity and subjectivity that surrounds its key element: love, amor.

While flipping through magazines at Urban Ore (the ultimate manifestation of the saying "one man's trash is another man's treasure"), I came across an old copy of the National Geographic. As I ruffled through its pages, my eyes were caught by a statement laid out in an italicized, bright red font:
Love and obsessive-compulsive disorder could have a similar chemical profile.
Translation: Love and mental illness may be difficult to tell apart.
Translation: Don’t be a fool. Stay away.

The words reminded me of Chavela Vargas' "Paloma Negra." In the song, Vargas wrestles with the conflicting feelings of wanting to simultaneously capture and release her love, she says:
Y aunque te amo con locura ya no vuelva
Paloma negra eres la reja de un penar

The problem is simple enough: you desire something you should not desire, you need something you cannot have. But the simplicity of the problem renders it timeless and subject to infinite manifestations.

Vargas looks at the problem completely unmasked; in its raw form, it stems from the desire to maintain self-respect. It is her problem and the solution is hers to be defined. However, in the National Geographic, the problem is medical in nature-- it is a disorder to be fixed. The complicated feelings of love become a series of chemical triggers and responses that are difficult to control without external aid (e.g., drugs).

The songs of Vargas and other rural artists reminds that there is value in confronting our problems with simple truths. Not everything needs to be abstracted and embellished with numbers and equations. It is ok to need. And it is ok to ask ourselves for the things we need.

In week 4, I made a collage of the different ways in which love can manifest itself:

- My parents walking hand in hand,

- A bride sitting in a park, looking at her husband,

- Concrete streets that birth vegetation,

- A game subject to change and luck,

- Free-flowing clouds caressing the tops of mountains, etc. 

At the center of the collage is a cutout of the excerpt from the National Geographic that inspired my musings.

In week 4, I painted two facing black objects with a white space in between them. The two distinct shapes represent the things we want (love and affection) and things we need (self-respect). The dividing white space represents the space in which we act, it's ambiguous and can be filled with either and/or both the things we want and need. 

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2006/02/true-love/slater-text