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Out of The Blue
The Lacanian Review "Still Life?" Issue 9 Spring 2020
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The editors and I first discussed the ‘Still Life?’ cover in February. Memento mori, vanitas and anamorphosis were crosscut with climate change, rising CO2 levels and ecological disaster. The mortifying beauty of still life! But it wasn’t until March 12th that I was ‘inspired’, hastened to work the day after Donald Trump addressed the nation concerning COVID-19 and the World Health Organization declared it a global pandemic, and a day prior to my self-isolation. The cover offered an immediate and practical means to respond creatively to both crises, the virus itself and Trump’s fatal response to it. Yet it was impossible to depict, as shown by the number of my inadequate drafts, including one with the now omnipresent ‘coronated’ sphere of the virus. I am on a small four-acre farm in ‘the city in the forest’, Atlanta, so called for its abundance of trees. I joined my girlfriend here in early February. On April 2nd during a WhatsApp session with my analyst, who lives in Paris, I crossed the property to improve the Wifi connection while holding my phone skyward. She exclaimed, “You have clouds!” It later dawned on me this was the instant of glancing the sky as that which, ‘sheltering’ us all, could provide a cover for the real of the pandemic. And only later still did her raised voice strike me as a rendition of the raised finger of St. John the Baptist, that is, sky and what lies infinitely beyond it as the ultimate horizon. My girlfriend is in supervision with the same analyst. The next week, before she left the house with the analyst on the phone to have a supervision outside, sky reverberated again. I overheard the analyst say, “The same sky as mine!” Paris blue, cobalt blue, black and blue, feeling blue, International Klein Blue, Leap into the void. And now with CO2 levels at an all time low, sky blue. Or coronavirus blue? Pantone COVID-19? Blue skies are a ‘global’ illusion. “The earth’s atmosphere scatters short-wavelength light more efficiently than that of longer wavelengths. Because its wavelengths are shorter, blue light is more strongly scattered than the longer-wavelength lights, red or green. Hence the result that when looking at the sky away from the direct incident sunlight, the human eye perceives the sky to be blue.” (wikipedia.org/wiki/diffuse_sky _radition). On April 14th I concluded with the cover you now hold in your hands. In the emptiness of a blue sky I framed a hole rimmed by a white mass of condensed water vapor. Like a cloud apprehended through an aperture, life may be still but it is still life. So like her, look up!

“Before her eyes was the violent blue sky—nothing else. For an endless moment she looked into it. Like a great overpowering sound it destroyed everything in her mind, paralyzed her. Someone once had said to her that the sky hides the night behind it, shelters the person beneath from the horror that lies above. Unblinking, she fixed the solid emptiness, and the anguish began to move in her. At any moment the rip can occur, the edges fly back, and the giant maw will be revealed.” ― Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

Later, May 9, 2020: As the hole opened by the pandemic begins to close, skies start to smudge again with pollution and lockdowns are lifted prematurely. The time to conclude draws closer with insufficient time to comprehend and no indication anything will effectively change environmentally. It’s now spring and the editors and I agree in addition to evanescent clouds to bring to the empty sky cover, trees.

Robert Buck © 2020

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