i shoot sparks from my eyes

I am often puzzled when people exercise ownership over their bodies. My psyche and physical being, for one, are entirely separate entities bizarrely set alongside each other. Too often I find that my bodily actions do not match up with my thoughts and intentions. I am awkward and uncomfortable, clumsy and misshapen, and far from in control of my body.
Much of my work focuses on the body as a foreign and abstract entity outside of individual control. I look at the body as a series of machines, each little organ mechanically working together to maintain homeostasis. in that way, a single body can be viewed as an independent social system consisting of a series of collaborating internal parts and function outside of the conscious desire. We do not will our hearts to beat, nor do we wake up thinking, "Hey, I think I'll breathe today. That'll be fun;" nonetheless, we beat, breathe, pump, and slosh around incessantly. This is how the body functions for us. But what happens when these parts stop working together and bodily equilibrium is lost?
The body is simultaneously hospitable and hostile, and I have had my fair share of experiences with the latter. I have watched the body flourish, wilt, and crumble, with bated breath, waiting desperately for some rejuvenation that never seems to come. In return, I learned to internalize what becomes the burden of the body, to adopt the sickness, pain, obsession, and grief of my peers, imagining their shriveling, tainted bits assimilated into my own healthy ones. If you won't take me instead of them, Disease, take me down with them.
My own creative process acts as a therapeutic means to understand the lack of control over the body. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes they get sick: sometimes they get better: the body itself is grotesque and raw in its simplest form. The thought is totally encompassing, terribly compelling, and all too much for me to handle. Making art is a way for me to discuss and confront my own experiences and twisted thoughts on the subject without forcing words which all-too-easily become contrived and hollow. Through the process, I am able to both grieve and triumph. The physical act of creation (the dance, if you will) is my root of the root (via E.E. Cummings's I carry your heart with me), my big sha-bang, my Hokey-Pokey; hey! That's what it's all about!
I am one person who is made up of a million tiny lives. (These are my machines, see.) There is a fine line that separates my art-life from the others, one that I cannot bother myself with trying to track down, hold on to, or define. My art is who I am; it is what I did and what I will do. It is, alongside a plethora or other livelihoods, my balanced breakfast, running shoes, flashlight, and warm milk before bed. I take pride in the satisfaction I feel from my own creation, the work of my very own hands, and the way in which art creates a map of my movements. The thought of not creating is nothing short of terrifying; I maintain that my brain would simply implode, or I would melt, or I'd become a drone made of ill-fitting bolts, of croutons, or dust, or something else useless.
I believe that the crux of art is performative and experimental, defined by the act of creative as a means of communication and sharing between participants (that is, artist, viewer, man who waxes gallery floor, child who is only interested because he thinks the painting looks like an exploding head, security guard, etc.). This collective effervescence (via Emile Durkheim) forms a palpable energy, an inaudible conversation, an ongoing, invisible history that passes through and links all following individuals. There is a beginning, and then another, and then another, and somewhere it turns into a middle, but there is no end in sight. This is the nitty gritty, the soft, oozing marrow in the hard skeleton of art.

My mother enjoys sucking the marrow out of steak bones at the dinner table. She lifts a specimen to her greedy, parted lips, chomps her eager teeth down, eyes bulging with excited delight, and sucks. It makes a sickening sluuuuuurp, and no matter how much I cringe, she sucks until the bone is dry. This is my dearest ambition with art: I am going to suck to my heart's content until nothing remains.
And look out, world. I'm sucking with a vengeance.