Not The Middle
Pic included digital collage 'Road Ahead' by Rachel Biffin
On the eve of the referendum in Australia voting on an indigenous voice to parliament, and on day four of a new war breaking out in Israel, and the ongoing war in Ukraine, I bring you these thoughts…
For many, existing in the middle is the most sound, humane, steadfast, and comfortable for the human mind. A mind housed in a body aiming for homeostasis - a kind of middle, you could say.
But as academic, and writer Tyson Yunkaporta says, there isn’t really anything in our biology or that of animals that is aiming for the “middle”. It is a man-made concept.
As someone who has come from decades in the wellness industry where the metaphor of balance (aka middle ground) is used to sell all kinds of snake oil, I need to remind myself that the middle is mythical (Tolkien’s Middle Earth, for example). It is upheld to help us humans, who are in a continual state of flux and change, to feel safe in our bodies, lives, and culture . Mediocre by design. And, perhaps a way for humans to control humans, herding them into the center and leaving the fringe minorities out in the cold.
My ideas in my soft edges philosophy is my way of lending a compassionate acknowledgement to life in flux. And, to describe this life through art. A life where nuance is necessary. Where we live in the diverse shades between white and black.
I make art to conjure feelings of comfort, soothing, and delight. It may seem, from some of the descriptions running through my writing and art work, that I am aiming for the middle.
I am not.
Instead I work under an ever developing philosophy I call soft edges. It aims to be a compassionate acknowledgement to life in flux.
It aims to describe this life through art -
a life where nuance is necessary.
where we live in the diverse shades between white and black. An excerpt from my soft edges philosophy:
I believe in soft edges.
That is, approaching the edge, the threshold, the boundary, but in a soft way. There exists an edge, but with softness mediating it, it’s not harmful but generative.
We, as humans, need contrast, push-pull, opposition, in order to thrive. Too much though, and we’re overstretched and can lose our center. Too little, stagnancy and fogginess set in.
I believe that:
We need to feel the edges but not be on edge.
We need softness but not stagnancy and fogginess.
We need contrasts but not binaries.
We need oppositional pull but not fracturing.
We need both the hardware and the software.
And so, this weekend, voting in the referendum, I’m voting Yes. Yes is one step further to equality, to love, to respect.
Till next week,
Rachel
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