Image Credit: Arthur Jafa, Micah, 2017, (2004), Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/Rome
Look carefully, describe what you see.
Choose a landscape provoking interest.
Mull that carefully again and again.
Concoct an assumption: what
have you pursued, how does it work?
Gather evidence, examine its relevance.
Calibrate each fragment’s adequacy.
Dissatisfied, pursue a new assumption.
If clarity seems possible, push further,
perhaps start again.
Have details merged into a pattern,
clarity improved?
Permit necessity’s potential surprise
to scramble what you’ve done,
its hapless nothing of little use.
This may repeat itself, endless churning’s
foreboding sense of defeat.
If a shape’s mysterious defiance
appears, intuitive or absurd,
hoist your socks, re-torque your strength,
ponder your emerging hypothesis.
Sometime, like Aristarchos of Samos,
you might push beyond harsh reductions
to measure things once obscure.
