Where to begin on this project… It is late due to the fact that I have been fighting with myself every step of the way. I still don’t feel like it is good enough to share, but here it is. The assignment was to create a visual representation of “Five”. I incorporated my own writing, voice, and naive illustration in an attempt to convey this vague concept.

The first way in which I fought myself was coming up with an idea in the first place. I knocked a few ideas around but none seemed to suit the assignment. Some of the first concepts where, “5 Things I Hate About My Cat”, “5 Ways To Become Rhiannon Sutton”, and “5 Things That Make Me Happy”. All terrible. Then, inspiration sparked in the form of five words that I believe hold a valuable and horribly profound weight, “I Think I Love You”.

I wrote a poem and created a relationship between the five words. This leads to the second way I fought myself to complete this assignment. I NEVER have shared my writings. The only things that I have penned and put out into the world have been class assignments and the sorts of things intended for others to read. The thought of submitting this assignment even in its written form has given and stills gives me an intense anxiety, not only for the personal nature of it, but for the fact that I am opening my writing up for critique. I have a drawer full of bit and pieces of things I have written over the years that no one has ever read, and now I am taking a huge leap and not only letting myself out in the open, but I am to make a visual to go along with it.

And now the third way in which this assignment is my nemesis; how to create a visual representation of a somewhat abstract piece of writing? I haven’t shot a formal video/film before, let alone something that I needed to submit for critique. The mental blocks have been strong with this aspect of the assignment. I finally came up with an idea that I think will do just fine. I drew a bunch of pictures and snapped photos of them “developing” along with the progression of the poem. Without talent or filming support this was truly my best option.

In summary, I submitted this late because I fought myself and this assignment tooth and nail the whole way through. Even now that it is done, I detest it. I welcome feedback however, and will use this as a learning experience in how to bite the bullet and ignore my own ego.

This is the text of the poem in this piece:

I. Me, myself as a single being on this fragile rock hurling through lonely space. My soul is full, yet alone. I am. Everything I have experienced up to this singularity is me, I.

THNK. To think is to create, dictate internal monologue. Acknowledge the possibilities and pitfalls. By sheer thought a thing is willed into being, as real as the creator. Solid as the Earth, as fluid as water.

I. No longer imagining of the self. I becomes a hopeful, longing “We” in the context of every being living and to live. I am forever. I will change, but the melody plucked in my breast is a constant heartsong now for two, and not I.

LOVE. Many meanings. Countless degrees of intensity. Only one hold true, pure weight: LOVE. A sturdy bastion of hope, a gaping wound vulnerable to apathetic carion. Always changing pilar, swaying in the the monsoon. It is enough to hold refuge, yet lacking in shelter from the cold night.

YOU. Only. No doubts, absence of fear. Utterance of a name is binding a lifetime of service. The heart opens wide for no other. Entrance is nay required for it has already come to pass. The singularity is now a duality without consent. There is only YOU.