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No time better spent then the time accorded to relatives ... 

There is no wisdom that matches more with what they did to me, with embarrassing passages on the internet...  the nectar of wisdom.  A fairly healthy dose of curiosity and sharp mind seem to me to be an incomparably more intelligent argument, that never fails to seduce me.  You know the moral of the story of the lonely man's reaction against the society? He didn't understand that society did not dispise him for what he had done but for his personality and independence; as Nietzsche recognised, society at large wants us to be equal, not different.

As a self-thinking individual (cast in the most average of ways…) you will usually not go that far, this is a recognized sociological fact, an open door.  Therefore, the family discarded me,  to prefer other influences…  I'm the wrong little person, they want yes-sayers, sooth-sayers, gossip-sayers... Nothing lifts them above the herd, they like companion species that never raise above the average . Mister and Misses Nobody in Particular ... but once a person can turn into a ‘person’, loving nothingness above all, she may no longer appreciate the consolation offered by the largest number, the crowd that is who it is, was and will be, in a noisy hatred of difference ... No, I'm not a superman, or –woman, but I exist outside the flock.

 I'm obsessed with painting and writing . The artist in me created feelings with words, this cannot be done within the treasured element of truth’s ongoing verification in so-called rational terms ... this cannot be done with love, for this is more than truth, more than love... this is more than experience, it goes beyond the common bounds of experience, to touch a new transcendental condition of living, beyond the average ...   painting, its surge and power to give life, and make it worth while, and absolutely incomparable...  My brain- friend professor in philosophy asked me if I couldn't stop with my painting during the days he was here.  No, I said that was impossible. Mysterious are the ways of the mind.  I don't have to move around the world for new inspiration; I stay put, and inspiration comes to me, almost naturally...

My world is a whispering gallery, an echo chamber.  Anything that comes my way makes for just another painting-day.  I just create my own world in which I do not need words, or an age, even not a gender, or thruths or lies... the I and the me ,"le moi”, “das Ich”.  I am quite suspicious of the function of the “I” and “me”,  le détestant tellement que je préfère me cacher entre guillemets, sans me cacher derrier un masque, car personne ne devrait jamais se cacher derriere aucun masque, I'hypocrisie est la chose la plus mauvaise créée sur terre ... unless the masquerade can be affirmed as a virtue in its own right, as Nietzsche suggests on numerous occasions… (I hate masks behind which one hopes to dissimulate oneself, as if one really existed, as if one truly existed as an identifiable Ego…  which is a lie, or rather: a ‘lie’ !)

When I was a child I always wanted to draw circles on paper, and on whatever support that was presented to me.   Now, so many years later, I do have some inkling of the meaning of that repeated act : I was ensuring a separation from the rest of the world, from the small and tall environments in which I found myself inscribed.   And I still do like to paint or draw circles, the urge to do so never fails me.   In a sense I still am the little child longing for separation from the endless cosmos in which our lives are embedded; I am still floating in its waters, its ocean of emotions.   I still feel the impetus to draw my own circles, and to live in the inner circular space through which I ensure some separation, some distance and intimicy.  

Afterall, separation and intimicy -without which no intense experience is possible- is never a given, but an endless task, a call to which I never fail to answer.  One cannot be someone if one is not engaged in meticulous, and ever renewed separation.   There is no alternative, but to drown in the flood of false emotions and excitations, provided for by the media, relatives, society at large.  I would not hesitate to affirm that it is a sacred duty to accept the invitation to become oneself (as Nietzsche would say), and to do so through multiple and ever reiterated acts of distanciation, of separation, of circular enclosure...

and that's what the figure of the circle means to me : the figure does not so much stand for completion, as Hegel would have, for the perfect circle of self-understanding, but for an act of returning to oneself, a way of giving birth to the very place that one is, as long as one assumes one's name, one's fate, one's singular character....

 I work in close collaboration with my own shadow, Art and its Nothingness ... Anton Heyboer owned nothing and possessed nothing, and there was no connection between him and the VOF.  He had chosen for a life in poverty as an artist, and poverty was all to him.  As soon as you break the vow of poverty, you lose your artist's soul, your soul, Buddha, and thus your self-affirmation. You are no longer real.  This is the law of the jungle that comprises the Golden Mean, which is not the law of the common people, which consists of right and wrong, the morals of slaves.  The Golden Mean is the same, its formula is a: b = b: (a + b)

The human world and its minuties are so small in this great universe, nothing really matters in this open space, so let's do what we want to do…!  My thoughts are frozen in time when I paint them down.  Because they are how I thought then. I might not think the same anymore, but those old thoughts are frozen in time.  I change over time, but my paintings never change... no matter what happens in my life, they never change, they remain true. I am the art, and the when in the art and the what, and the who is all of me, and the when is art's choice, the naked art-way proud of its own soiled life choices. Life's a wild adventure not searching  for security, a wild beautiful rose, but unpredictable.  A danger, for sure, but indescribably beautiful.

How do I know what counts as a obligation for me? Are obligations a burden or a luxury? And what if I did enough to earn my obligations? Can one earn ones obligations? Am I worth more as a person or as a ‘person’? Most of us, humans find satisfaction in the fulfillment of the requirements of their living conditions (to go to work, to earn a living, to pay the mortgage, to have sex between the sheets, once a week, regularly…, to raise children, to walk the dog… my God!!!!!) Their spiritual life is at the lowest possible ebb, and striving for wealth and status fills them all- slaves of life, a scandal! Why am I telling all this? Because it deserves reflection.

My life is worth living, compared to all those values most people try to live up to.   Dignity lies in humanity, and not in appearance, in a job, earnings, or a big house.  And happiness comes from whom you are, no matter what you do and who you are in the eyes of others.
Everything I wear is my property, whatsoever is in me.  I am a spiritual whore, a hooker hooked on the nectar of Life’s high summits, of art, of loneliness, of deserts and strong winds, of intense corporeality, of philosophical bravoure... as Nietzsche, and Hermann van Randa, physician and poet of mankind.  In my view, it is a sad fact that people are valued according to their profession, the payroll in which they find themselves inscribed... The dominant position they occupy is one of slavery, of subservience…  denying their nothingness, their spirit, their freedom and exaltation, their yes-saying power …  their love of life…  

The human heart –the folly that makes the merry world go round and round…- swings back and forth between three great thoughts:  MONEY-POWER -LUST. ‘There is craziness everywhere in this world!’,  Critilo said philosophically : absolutely right that name: Universally founded, in spite of difference.

Arthur Schopenhauer: “It is a great folly to go out and to acquire, that is, for pomp and circumstance’s sake, a social position, degrees, titles, functions…  better respect your rest, leisure and independence, instead of making a sacrifice of these vital virtues.”

To cut a long story short, from philosophy to life in the philosophical and artistic ethers of life, I found my own way. My main interest has always been in the field of philosophy, and especially German.  Philosophy is a kind of influence on me, a life sustaining influence, for I could not do without.  Schopenhauer and Nietzsche wrote the best prose of all philosophers.  Schopenhauer and Nietzsche  were the first to recognize the profound meaninglessness of life.  Georgio de Chirico showed how this senselessness can be transformed into art.  All in all, is it not true that a philosopher only reaches bedrock when he humbly admits that he really knows nothing at all, like Socrates? It is therefore understandable that I felt the inadequacy of my knowledge more strongly, more acutely, as I progressed further into my study of the history of art and of philosophy . But everything that relates to philosophy has already been described in books, so I will not dwell on it here.

I feel very connected with Nietzsche. The identity of "Nietzsche" is to be found in the suspense of any (fixed) identity.  The self of "Nietzsche" is essentially written: dead and alive, repetitive and always in difference. His self exists in and as a slip.  At least in two of my works I practice (and note the quotes!) a ‘comparative’ sort of writing, or a similar ‘touch of painting’.  In a painting like "Death" for example, I un-paint (myself).  This differed ring is intimately associated with the so-called issue of the canvas.  Painting has become a practice of life-affirming mortality, or nullity.   It is in and through this exercise that I survive as both my death-knell rings and my finitude is validated.   My name is a plural, a mask that does not hide anything, if not life as it is to survive, each time in a singular way, here and now, each time anew.  Like "Nietzsche" every time supported by an affirmation of life that blesses the non-identity and hence provokes (over) living, an intense life.   My "difference" rings into a powerful "yes", a "yes" to life in death, always looking to be recognized in its strangeness, so as to give up on the desire –the all too human philosophical desire- to understand (or grasp, as one aptly says...) the finiteness of life or survival which derives from its core !  It's a painting of the "amen", which means so be it:   For art does not so much reflect, as well as affirm life: it’s a blessing, or it is nothing…

I recently stumbled upon an expression in which I can recognize myself: the passion of mortal life; the only note that I would add to this expression, merely reflects the infinite finitude of life: mortal life is not one, it is multiple, as is passion, and as I am myself: a plurality, always nascent, always dying or dead, living on...   No, I hope you do not mistake this passion for pathos: there is nothing pathetic about life and death: it calls for sobriety, really...