The Unknown Magazine Issue Four: Oh Brother | Page 7

“All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails
at a given time is a function of power and not truth.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
Perception.
The crux of reality. Your mind’s endless
endeavor to experience the truth. Plucking
away at layers of infinite possibilities, forever
filtering. At any point in time, you are a
product of all you have experienced. A
culmination of the experience that you have
sieved and stored. All with one underlying
purpose; to find truth.
There is a truth in the fabric of reality.
You can’t see it, yet you know it’s there, you
can feel it, lingering, a moment from reach.
You ache to find it, to hear, smell and touch
it, just a taste would do. You often wait and
watch, nothing happens. Yet in every breath
you feel its presence growing, morphing
into something real and just as you think
you see it piercing through … it vanishes,
evaporating into the unknown once more.
To perceive it seems impossible.
Then, without provocation, it suddenly
materializes, swiftly interlacing the scene
around you, pulsing through you, soaking
your very existence, saturating everything
you know. You stop to embrace the moment,
and realize; this truth is an impulse, it’s
fake, it is as much a fabrication of your
imagination as the process by which you try
to understand it.
Truth is nothing but a word.
Perception is truth.

I often look over images of vast landscapes
of wild and beautiful terrain, and harsh
environments. I catch myself staring for
lengths of time at a single frame; a black
mountain, a deep valley, a desolate snowy
plain, an ocean sur face; they seize my mind
and imagination.
If I’ve ever experienced the image with
another sense; felt the cold of a snowstor m,
the power of a breaking wave, and the fear
on a cliff edge, then my body also reacts.
How strange.
Our environment sometimes seems as much
at the mercy of how we feel, as we are of
how it makes us feel.
It’s all in your head, really.
In this age it can be a challenge to find that
exposure in the elements, the importance
has been subdued, though we will always
crave it, we need it to feel alive. What
could be more important? Dangling from a
cliff edge, swimming out into the deep sea,
plowing through a blizzard, what realities
they are!
I began recreating environments on paper
with pencil, to inspire and experiment with
these sensations on a purely visual plane.
I see a drawing of a sheer v