©2007

Ghost Ship

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

- George Santayana -

             The legacy of my generation may well be that we couldn’t even glean wisdom from history written in our own lifetimes. Born of that greatest generation who stoically fought and won a war thrust upon them and came home heartily sick of the human impulse to war, this biggest generation has squandered energy and idealism on wars of choice. Even in this current conflict where an enemy presented himself plainly, we have redirected our force into the sands of a region where history has buried many an invading army. The human desire to serve heroically inspires most brave men and women who sign up for the military, but this impulse is too often lavished on wars where ever-shifting justifications are expended portraying some other as blackest evil so we may see ourselves as white knights. The world is not, however, black and white. It’s a nuanced, complex place. While its problems may seem obvious, the solutions rarely respond best to a bigger hammer. That simply inspires those we’ve boxed as our enemy to furtively conspire to build their own big damn hammer.

                   I listen to NPR most days in the studio. For several years now that means the background audio to my creative efforts has been dominated by the grating political theater of terrorism and war. The rhetoric has been red and blue, black and white, good and evil. While I made some of the best art I could dream up, I listened to stories of people in power trashing the best system of governance men much wiser than I dreamed up a long time ago. I listened to tortured logic forced to support actions that have now led to a deeply unhappy nation, at once defensive of its actions and mystified as to why they don't produce the desired effect. Mostly I think art is about something that transcends current events and so I don't often think it wise to aim at the squabbling of the day. There are times, however, when that static can't help but spill into the creative soup.

              As I built Ghost Ship, and it took the form of this vessel, I was thinking about the journey of history I’ve witnessed. Idealism has had many wise, articulate advocates in my lifetime. Many in my generation thought we were in an evolving time that would leave old ways of aggression, suppression and exploitation behind, giving rise to a more enlightened approach to caring for each other and the world we share. While there is still plenty of evidence of that idealism at work, what good can possibly be said for how we have saddled ourselves with these deeply unwise men who now act in our name? How did we settle for greed is good and that this motivation will solve all problems? When did a right to life end as soon as one escaped the womb or awoke from a brain dead coma? When did a corporation gain more rights and protections than a human being? When did we start torturing the English language so we could torture human beings? When did Jesus become merely the lubrication for passing camels through the eyes of needles? And just when did this boomer generation transition from love and peace to shock and awe? When did we start basing our actions on fear rather than hope?

              I call this sculpture Ghost Ship. In my mind she still floats, she still seeks, and the ideal of peace – the symbol for which was also invented in my lifetime – is still a guiding star. But she drifts, and the captain has yet to come forth that can hold her course. We the sometimes mutinous, apathetic crew have had a hand in that.

I had rushed to get the sculpture done for a spring show, but by the time it came home there was one more element that I had decided it needed. A noble ship deserves a pennant. My wife, Illustrator Clay Carmichael, and I collaborated on the Ghost Ship flag design while on a sculpture installation trip to Tennessee (I drove; she drew). In our design the upper half of the vertical line in the peace symbol is broken and supplanted by the curved belt of stars drawn from the pattern of Orion, a constellation that has fascinated me since I was young. Melding the symbol of the night hunter with the Peace Sign suggests that peace is something which will always involve seeking. It is not a state where we arrive and then retire, but must cultivate, maintain, nurture, renew - and in some cases defend. It is bigger than you and me. It involves holding the long perspective on our fragile, collective foothold in this vast universe of which Orion is a jeweled, nightly reminder. There may well come times when a country committed to living in peace needs to take up arms, but war must be the last resort in fact rather than merely in rhetoric. It is one thing to be prepared to resist Hitler, and another to see Hitler in all whom we find distasteful. The Peace Sign came into being in 1958, designed by Gerald Holtom for the British Nuclear Disarmament movement. In semaphore the letter N is formed by two flags held at opposing downward 45 degree angles, while the letter D is formed by one flag held aloft while the other is held pointed to ground. For those committed to an aggressive posture vis-à-vis the rest of the world, the peace symbol is a sign of weakness. They forget that in fact the charge of the white knight is to defend the rights of their countrymen to live unmolested, to have the freedom to live their dreams, find their potential - life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness - all goals only accomplished in a world at peace.

The flag currently displayed on the sculpture was fabricated in colors that represent the faded glory of a once vibrant banner. In future, I hope to be inspired to have it re-fabricated in the brighter colors which, to me, embody ideals actively supported by an Army of Peace.

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