Memory

Before I was ten years old, I had a recurring nightmare that woke me in a cold sweat, shivering with fear. In it, I was on a railroad handcar, pumping relentlessly while moving in every direction at once, at the speed of light. At any moment, I felt I would be completely obliterated. I never told my parents about the nightmare, but each time it returned I was overwhelmed by it. Then, one night, I decided not to wake myself. Instead, I stayed on the handcar to see what would happen. The most astonishing thing happened. Terror became exhilaration. The experience was so intensely pleasurable that I tried to recreate the feeling again and again. Years later, I came across this passage by Joseph Campbell in Sukhavati: Place of Bliss: A Mythic Journey: "We're in a freefall into future. We don't know where we're going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you're going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It's a very interesting shift of perspective and that's all it is... joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes." One of the most formative experiences of my early years as a painter was realizing that every painting reaches a point where I have to risk everything. There is much that is good about the painting, but something essential is still missing. At that moment I must dive in, even if it means destroying what I have already achieved. Again and again, I found that choosing the risk transforms the painting. By surrendering to uncertainty, I discover the way forward. Reading Campbell, I realized that I had learned this lesson long before I ever picked up a paintbrush. It began with that childhood nightmare, when the decision to stop resisting and willingly continue transformed terror into freedom. The painting Memory grew out of that realization. This NFT animation returns to the nightmare itself, bringing it to life. It follows the journey from terror to exhilaration, from resistance to surrender, revealing how a simple shift in perspective transformed fear into liberation. Later, an acquaintance whose family history resembles my own told me that several of her relatives had attempted to escape the Nazis on railway handcars. She wondered whether my nightmare might have been a transgenerational memory. Whether or not that is true, I have often thought of Carl Jung's observation: “Whatever does not emerge into consciousness returns as destiny.”