Desire

The creative and destructive powers of desire: that's the theme of the piece I currently have in production. Desire as motivator, and motivation -- desire as in drive, focus, the will to achieve. Desire can also be obsession, and the need to possess something or someone at any cost. Desire can be lust, sexual or material; desire can be greed. Desire can be the strength needed to accomplish something great.

I have often suspected that desire of one kind or another is the unfailing lure that moves me towards what is good for me -- though it is a process fraught with potential for damage. I've made mistakes based on desire, but have never felt the need to backtrack; though I have tried to unlearn certain behaviors. That less from a sense of changed priority than from the need to protect others. I still want; one of my favorites quotes on the subject is,
"My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never."

(Bela Karolyi, whomever that may be.) (I know, Google it -- I just don't feel like it right now.)

Never satisfied -- it's a denial of stasis. I refuse to STOP. I will be as alive as possible in each moment, in the fervent hope of many such moments. I will eat as much of life as I may, though now the balance of the statement more than ever is that I will also protect as much life as I can. World without end. The kingdom of God is here on earth --

-- and so it is possible as one desires to also serve. Indeed, for a while desire and servitude were much more closely connected in my mind as the opposite of what I mean now. Submission may be like desire, in that it goes both ways -- one can submit in order to serve a higher power, in a purely spiritual sense, and do great good. Or one might submit to power, and be corrupted, spiritually and physically. Or, one might submit to the power of one's own weaknesses, and corrupt others. It's very difficult, when pursuing the desired, to keep an eye on the moral status of the object or goal. I've noticed in business, for example, that the moral value of a high goal can become degraded without the goal ever seeming to change. The mission of an organization can become corrupt, without a conscious decision ever being made to veer into such territory.

Relationships are sometimes the same. It's an exercise in acute self-awareness at times to avoid letting the momentum of an emotional relationship cross over the boundary between strength of bond and lust for possession. This isn't necessarily about sex; it's possible to have sex with someone without crossing that boundary. Other equally important boundaries also apply. Many rules of sex and possession exist to prevent the worst sorts of trouble we can invent. The player can convince him or herself that judicious disclaimers and careful honesty can preserve the thrill of transgression without causing any damage, but I've never found that to be true. Likewise, obsession can transgress without ever crossing a physical boundary. That one is even trickier, because the reality of the desire is so confined. It's easy to tell yourself that a crush is harmless if no one knows about it -- the problem is that mental transgressions oft repeated tend to manifest themselves outwardly in different but equally sorry ways. Frequently they confine their damage to the obsessed.

"Desire as a sylph-figured creature, who changes her mind..."
That one is Prefab Sprout.

This is the subject of my current artwork.