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Cougar WebWorks Publications

 

HyperLife:

A Life in Hypertext


On Painting Self-Portraits

Rule Number One: Remember Thoreau.

Which is to say, there is a place to say, "The life I lead is a worthy subject." But carefully, now: the focus on Life at Walden Pond is not quite on the person, the subject, the writer himself, as much as on the world that appears through his semi-transparent eye/I. Henry Miller said it best when he said, "Forget Yourself"—even as a champion of autobiographical prose. How? By being so interested in the life around him and in him: it’s not the him that matters, except as an unselfish bringer of whole vision forward for wider and closer inspection: in the sharing. What really matters is the Life at Walden Pond, the Life in Paris. Not Henry, not Henry, except as they care, as they are passionate and human and divinely inspired to dance the dance for us.

My intention then in following this principle is neither to project or reject myself in the prose I present, but to indulge unselfishly and wholly in the vision, the sheer jazz if it comes to that, of what interests me. In the mirror will appear but fleetingly my image as figure, against the outer and inner worlds I happen to experience, as ground: this World-mirror in turn imaging my larger Self. The figure in focus shifts by the moment, never taking on quite the character of a still-life, except as a frame in a larger progression. From photograph to video, painting to music, this composition ranges through the various categories of art by turns. I exist here not in bodily reconstruction but in fluid form of poetry, prose, fiction, nonfiction; transparent in the middle ground, the center, where self and form, life and art, become all and all-form, which is to say netwide, pixelated, various: call me Continous Motion, Jammin Fulltime Now.


© Nowick Gray


Prefaces and Introductions Without End
- By Nowick Gray

Fiction and Nonfiction
Performance and Freedom
On Autobiography
Keyword Matrix
The Program
Prospectus
Public and Private
Willingness: A Life Aesthetic
Invocation: The Hunt
Sacrament
Prelude
Yet Another Preface
Wordwebs: Core Topics
Story of My Life

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Cougar WebWorks Publications