transcenderarts


alzheimers series 1 b/w photo

text: "alzheimer's series # 1 "

form: black and white film portrait of an 84 year old alzheimer’s victim
with written text and found objects…

content: the subject gazes trancelike into the vacancy of the present and the future as a result of losing her past...
no cherished memories to look back at, no fond remembrances to keep warm...
all that is left is the hollow whiteness of her now empty history….................................
the losing of self is an exacerbating, accelerating terror, confusion breeding confusion,
an emotional meltdown of the primal anticipation and gratification
once provided by a now ravaged id….........................................................................
the ego has disintegrated, taking with it the still somewhat clinging of the superego…
she cannot see what is behind her,
the flowers of her long life, a representation of retention, inexorably fading…............
even the christian color of death, purple, is evaporating, evoking a sort of living death…
that is the essence of content here, a living death, displayed under glass…................
a specimen of pathos and a seeming calmness that is in reality a disguise for one now,
and for so long, traumatized….......................
for those with memory function and cognition,
“a picture is worth a thousand words”…
for her,
“a memory is worth a thousand pictures”, [ a psychological equation ]…



alzheimers series 2 b/w photo

text: "alzheimer's series # 2"

conspectus, [ a paucity of consonance.]...
now and again, her memories visit her,
some good, yet all tinged with an unpleasant aftertaste,
and the leeching of bitterness and repressed self recrimination so deep now
that it permeates the tissue of the soul...
a window with a view.............................................................................
passing sail masts, passing freight trains, passing cars passing her bye...
the tv screams a streaming scroll of cacophonous fast edit montage.........
she sometimes, [ albeit subconsciously,] uses the trains rhythmic creaking
to dislodge in the memory something specific, ultimately to little avail...
and once again, that part of her rusting brain lies to her,
drifting in an eddy, trapped by the process of uncontrollable functioning.................
errant urine drops accumulate and foul the bed edge, another piece lost to attrition...
she waits disrespectfully for nature;
but nature is much better at waiting...




alzheimers series 3 b/w photo

text: "alzheimer's series # 3"

physical laws...
the last years of her long unrequited life were encapsulated by a malodor,
an admixture of urine, dust and perfume.......................................
anger, with merit, [ as much as an emotional masochist deserves,]
albeit foolish in the exponential, had her deferring to imagined “gods”,
[ are there any other ,?] via fear and desperation,
[ cause and effect never had a more classic example.].........
regret, now a mold suffocating what is left of her worn soul,
[ the price of cowardice is much more costly than the price of courage.]...
i can do little for her now, [ no matter how much i do.]............
i constantly and consciously retrain myself to be aware of that...
i absorb her unintended bitterness, attempting to deflect it back with positive projection...
yet there are emotional laws which equate with physical laws...
i imagine that is how the atom “felt” before it was split...




alzheimers series 4 b/w photo