A few years ago I decided to make a holiday card for my clients. I visualized something humorous, off the wall, a little irreverent. Immediately, the project careened completely out of control and bounced way off the wall. It evolved more than a little irreverence and a good dose of incomprehensible. I set out to make a smallish note card. It finished over 3 feet long.
The card was way too late for Christmas, much too dark, confusing and cynical for clients (maybe for anyone?). It could no longer be described as a card let alone a holiday card. I filed it away but was hooked by the idea and the process. I started another right away. Since then, as the ideas bubble to the surface, I massage them into shape with the computer, juxtaposing emotions, colliding ideologies, mores, dogmas and images like atoms in a particle accelerator to see what comes flying out.
And here's what I've learned; the absurd world is dark and capricious. It’s hilarious, inappropriate, heart breaking, offensive and frightening. As we and the world shuffle along cosmic humor, dark jokes, sad, happy and tragic coincidences boil up around us like a cloud of dust.
So this is what Absurd In The World is about: life is absurd, ironic and an end in itself. The meaning of life is ... I make my life meaningful. The purpose of life is ... I give my life purpose. The great and absurd irony is ... the destination is an illusion, a beautiful, distant, shimmering water mirage.
There is only the journey and what lies along the way. Life is its own reward, its own punishment. The universe, the world, life, the essence of us is disarmingly, alarmingly ironic; wonderfully, frustratingly, intriguingly absurd.
