The Almighty attributed myth-making — hand in hand with our conspiracies and desires — to the necessity of His anthropomorphic earthly playthings. From this perspective, it is only a natural and convenient step for the self-aware, naked ape to transform the SOMETHING — that raw, indigestible presence since time immemorial — into its own, and collectively subjective, experience of existence. This comes as no surprise, for as holistic entities, the infinite soaring of existence is our realm of movement in our dreams and visions. This comes as no surprise, for as holistic entities, the infinite soaring of existence is our realm of movement in our dreams and visions. This personal world, which thrives abundantly even within the incubator of countless sociocultural dogmas, religions, and customs, is immune to science’s imperfect pronouncements, for its advanced metabolism revels in its infinite, pulsating freedom.
In our dreams, simultaneously and in parallel with all our real senses, we perceive in every direction; in the warping dimensions of the universe, we fulfill the “B” side of our existence’s fate. Upon awakening, this beneficial spiritual “core physics” of ours spills across reality’s multidimensional checkered notebook; we cling with ten fingernails to the golden nugget of experience, instinctively fleeing the suffocating horror of the feverish dream… the inflection point is never reached.
Dreams are the fuel of consciousness.
In our imperfect—though, at best, beautiful — lives, we polish our unfulfilled desires and the outcomes of our ideal personal algorithms. If things don’t work out in the present, then — by extending the mysterious longing of our dreams — we fanatically manipulate the past’s “benevolent collective memory”; we don’t remember the social traps beyond a few generations, in the halo of the GREAT SOCIAL COMMON CROSS-SECTION. The powers that be use and exploit this trap of consciousness in the name of “intellectual administration.” Thus, since physical colonization of the naked ape failed, “happy-ending” fake news has become addictologically necessary. The framework of dreams and thought now continues our personal stories, as prearranged, in stadiums built within AI’s perfect “Brave New World.” The gossipy spirit of story-fabrication can finally express the happy endings of the masses’ dreams. During the day, the chosen few, with a good dose of Xanax, write their fulfilling — and, in the best case, satisfyingly negative—stories about the past, present, and future for the masses, in the warmth of IT knowledge that mimics the speed of imagination. Because it’s indispensable.
It isn’t banned yet — just like your own dreams… for now, you can still allow yourself this. For quite a few years now, I’ve been fascinated by the phenomenon of how our species — including myself — hoards everything, fanatically stockpiling our experiences. Mostly in the form of still images and moving pictures. Our early ancestors did the same, only in caves. It’s as if the experiences of the past we’ve lived through — our private mythology — could extend beyond a few family generations in a population where social amnesia has swelled to monstrous proportions…. This atavistic instinct, in the button-press-cheapness of the eight billion mimics roaming the globe, transforms the collection of “preserved” memories into terabytes and gigabytes. Even the serf has become a superpower of incomprehensible personal image capacity. Everyone has become a photographer; the recent past gallops along on massive hard drives and micro-SD cards—unduplicable, yet readable for a few more years… I, too, have been there.
“Not even what is carved in stone is eternal,” say the sculptors; “We don’t paint on corrugated paper,” say the snobbish painters.
Driven by a late urge to organize, I selected 1,000 photographs for “eternity” from the nearly 40,000 digital image files I’ve accumulated over the past 35–40 years. I layered and cut up enlarged transparencies of the photo negatives with a dedication that would put AI to shame, transforming them into a private falsification of history. The ephemeral figures of analog despair coalesced into “sandwich photos” through the organizing power of directed chance. Act One and Act Two… sooner or later, according to the grand director’s principle, EVERYONE WILL HAVE THEIR TURN.
László Horváth