So much of what is seen often arrives already wrapped in a set of fixed expectations, so much so that it’s understandable we often forget what is driving those expectations in the first place. All the otherness in our worlds can simply be swept away in the process. Still, it often leaves a rather narrow, unsettled sense of the world in its wake. New ideas — those awkward things that push us to grow and expand — seem to just get left behind.
Likewise, those thunderous or miraculous moments of understanding them seldom just arrive effortlessly. Though, in truth, many of us probably hope for these kinds of miracles to do just that. Instead, I found that certain odd, new ways of reading and understanding the world were more like slow accumulations. Things would keep happening and layering themselves over one another until a new, richer understanding began to take shape. The frictions between a first impression and what doesn’t quite agree with it left a host of unknown layers to be weighed and better understood.

And many of those layers often remained hidden from plain view.

Gradually, it became clear that we needed to explore these depths in ways that weren’t always familiar or well-practiced. I always felt that the expressions of art and symbol could help us re-see and re-value the wants and frictions of our times. They offered ways of building views rather than merely taking them. And that seemed to open new, hidden frames about the broader realities we lived among. Along the way, they often revealed other, peculiar truths about ourselves as well. Over time, at least for me, this began to feel less like a prescribed way of measuring and seeing the world than learning how to look past my own bare assumptions about it.