Got up around 6 am because I have so many photo ideas on my mind. Drove around the city and peered at the various works of art that can be found around #chattanooga. It has occurred to me before that as you behold art you simultaneously behold yourself. The image you look at may have no relation to any context you’ve ever been familiar with. But, it is in the quiet moments as your eyes do their first lighting on what you’re looking at that you yourself are sifted. We all have filters (pun intended) and with every visual we encounter those filters are engaged and begin to create an emotional environment inside us that no one else is privy too. The seen creates the unseen. The tangible creates the intangible. I think its important to pay attention to our visceral responses when we behold visual art. If what you see sparks joy….ask yourself why. If it makes you uncomfortable…ask yourself why.
Our world….is awakening. And, we are all experiencing growing pains as a collective. I’m connected with you…and, I am you. Whether that sparks joy in you or makes you uncomfortable. And, the same applies for me. The MOST powerful realization a human can have is to look at another human and understand that person is…you. When you behold people that way a divine shift occurs in your perception system. You begin to go from 3-dimensional thinking into 4th and 5th dimensional thinking. It’s in those greater dimensions where effective problem-solving is birthed. In the greater dimensions we are already experiencing the cohesive humanity we are longing for and fighting for right now. The trick to get to there from here?
Understand that every person who crosses your path is you.
This kind of understanding takes you beyond the chore of empathy. Because when you see others as yourself there is an innate compassion that that finds its expression in your opinion of who or what you’re beholding. There is no hard work that needs to be employed in order to muster the capacity to hold space for the other person. Its effortless, natural, organic and free flowing. It simply is because you simply are.
If there is one thing I hope to accomplish in my creative pursuits it is to help others conceive within themselves higher levels of understanding, thought, compassion and creativity.
Within the next two months I will be doing photoshoots of families. I am single. I don’t have children. I’m white. Economically, I teeter between lower middle class and…poverty. But, as I prepare I am already recognizing that I am the child playing in the water at the Tennessee Aquarium. I am the young man embarking on his adulthood. I am the proud mama and the proud papa. And, they are me. On the surface this doesn’t seem so. Our contexts and our lived experiences may be worlds apart and completely unrelatable to each other. However, we are all energy. And, thermodynamics teaches us that energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system.
If you’re a Jesus person hopefully this first law of thermodynamics rings familiar. Jesus said in John 14:20- On that day [when that time comes] you will know for yourselves that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.”
I believe this…is that day. This time of knowing has come. And, if you don’t recognize and embrace and understand that I am in you and you are in me then you will miss out on a large part of your purpose for being on this planet at this time.
My art. My beholding of the art of others. It teaches me by circumventing words. It teaches me through instinct. It sharpens my intuition and perception of realities greater than 3D. This is where art takes me. And, I hope its where my art will take you.
See ya on the flip side.
Love,
Cozett
The Catalyst 
Leave a comment