Moribund State

A critical essay on light, space and grief in response to Jim Hobb's work, 'State Road'.

‘We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do.’ Albert Einstein 

It seems phenomenologically opaque, to me, that light can be both a wave and a particle. That something so fundamental to our existence, to the creation of our world, can be both an object and a force, like both the wind and the sail coexistently but not symbiotically, being, not creating, a traversal across the ocean. Its duality is chiral, out of kilter with what we expect, what we hold in our hands and our minds. The narratives in which we reflect the world around us aim to serve the sense that we hold a shared belonging, however broken that glass and its myriad reflections may be. But when the foundations of our experience are swept away on a tide, no longer communicate that which we knew, even in our darkest dreams, we are forced to ponder the gaps, the voids, the difference between knowing and feeling.

In the midst of lockdown, I receive Hobb’s work as a kaleidoscope of video, photography, sound recordings and soundbites sent through the ether. A long familiar and welcome voice as both a beloved friend and a maker. Our conversations, or sometimes whiskied soliloquys, have always navigated easily between the light and the dark, and all that hovers in-between. And yet as much as fifteen years trawling the understairs cupboards of our minds has revealed how we feel and who we are, there are always reminders of the unique bandaging of space and time that equally unites our experience and draws a veil. I have to investigate a phrase he uses; it is American slang – these little fireflies of language one uses of origin unbeknownst to us call like beacons that we are still and forever carrying our unique beginnings to our end. Beyond that, only time will tell. The lightbulbs flick on and off, and I wonder if this is perhaps a message from or to beyond, a séance, or indeed a reference to a close encounter. A call and response; but with willed misalignment – marking that incongruity, ambiguity of language that at times bring us close and at others ceases to communicate – for a chiral repeat of one sound does not amplify but desists it, muffling it to a gentle hum of existential acknowledgement; a communication in itself of our natural state of both community and fragmentation.

State Road moves from the birth of the son to the death of the father, a universal and primal narrative. A folly designed to be otherwise, the tower stands like the parent, looming silently like a sentinel, ever present, ever watching, existent and yet somehow not fully formed – stuck on the cusp of the mirror phase where it realises its lack but does not have the means to form the narrative to hide it. On top there should have been a restaurant – a feeding place. Not quite the comfort of home, but its physicality is nest-like. An end point then for the parabolas of migratory birds, neither fully required nor fully able to fulfil its requirements. The notion of succession widened to all species, spreading like wild fire. 

It is a hard moment when one realises that one’s parents are human - that everything we thought unquestionably stable was a desired projection, an act of faith. Suddenly the tracking shot of our lives pulls back light years, and we realise that the ocean is a lake, and the lighthouse is landlocked - a beguiling mermaid emptily singing our praises (or Our Fathers). At first we fear the floods; then we call the floods, before the lens starts the fire. Anchor adrift, everything previously charted must be re-examined. And yet beguiling the narrative still is, without question. The light emitted, confusingly both wave and particle, is part of our very being, infiltrating our physicality, our energy, our essence. It brings warmth, timbre. To question it is unfathomable. To see it moribund is to know one’s own fragility. 

After the wildfire succession brings new complexity; non-determined at the human scale although predictable overall. The decay of one tree makes room for another; the decay of flowers and seeds enriches the soil in readiness for new growth. 

Wrapping the tower in light is not an attempt to change the course of history but a spotlight to redraw the charts. It is an act of faith, and of self-preservation (as indeed faith essentially is). The complexity of reality is its very essence. To dually hold these two ideas: the insubstantiality of both life and language; and yet a faith that momentarily we can still believe in both; is perhaps the job of the evangelist, or perhaps the gift of the artist.