"match-box songs....other/self portraits"

Perhaps a little late night phenomenology...its been awhile..i want to begin where all phenomenology begins...with descriptions...etchings,fragments of black and white photographs,aluminium cut-outs,alphabet stencils, shoe tacks and piano keys...collage/assemblage...each of these have a title beginning with the word 'self'...self at the window 1934...self at the beach house 1935...self at the blue mountains 1937...self with  bicycle 1937...self with kittens 1935...self outside church 1936...self on the pier 1937...and so on...the descriptions were taken from a 1930's photo album that i purchased from a second hand shop...something in the way the awkward white hand written text on the blue-grey page seem to reveal as much if not more than the photographs themselves...but also something  deeper... a sense..something that arrived within nothing more than an instant which suggested that this anonymous 'self' was in fact myself...and i do not mean in any historically connected form...of all human kind present and past inescapably tied to the historical flow of time... a moment of entwinement with subject and object...merleau-ponty's "flesh" of the world...perhaps...i can't really say...but it was something strong enough to make me want to make these works...and once again within the confines of the studio things like shoe tacks, bitumen and piano keys commenced their conversations...there was a level of intent in the making of these pieces that resonates with merleau-ponty's insights into notions of self and other...he spoke of the interrogation of identity...and making these had a certain continuity of experience that allows for meaning and identity to unfold within process and intuition...i will write more detailed descriptions tomorrow evening... i  leave you with this from m-p...a poetic riddle..."i borrow myself from others, i create others from my own thoughts"...sp