The beauty found in works of art is when they imitate life. They speak of layers upon layers of meaning, where an abstract artwork can speak as a commentary of political protest or thought provoking statement.
My art is just like that of the world, poignant and meticulously crafted. It too carries layers upon layers of meaning, paradoxes, if you will. For by imitating death, I imitate life itself.
The Diorama of the Pebbles Paradox is no exception. A figure kneels over a pile of countless pebbles, a heap. He is posed in the process of removing a single pebble from the heap to place in his bucket.
Therein lies the paradox.
If you take away a single grain from the heap, it’s still, almost certainly, a heap of pebbles. Now take away another grain. Still a heap. If he continues this process enough times, eventually it will be down to one single pebble. Which is, almost certainly, not a heap anymore.
At what point did the pebbles cease being a heap and start being something else?
Therein lies the paradox of your existence, Aster Grey. You are the figure posed over the pile of pebbles, carefully removing a single pebble from the heap. One by one.
Your life began, just like all of us, as a pile of pebbles. An existence full of hopes and dreams and promise. Yet somewhere along the line, your pile began to become depleted. Choice by choice, act by act, the pebbles were removed from your pile and tossed into the bucket. The vibrancy of color and life gave way to your existence. The grey.
Where the living clutch onto their lives as they would their heap of pebbles, and death lies when the pebbles are gone … You hold onto a single pebble. We cannot consider that a heap, nor can we say your heap is gone. Therein lies the paradox of the grey.
You walk the line between life and death, an enigma to pique the interest of the creative mind. I am one such mind, you pique my interest… pebble.
For the common man, it is only when he is faced with his own mortality that he begins to truly live to the fullest. You face that reality every day and yet you seem to delight in your pitiful place in this life.
I can make your life simple, by finding the solution to your little paradoxical existence. For life, death and everything in between is not grey, not when you boil it down. It is black and white.
I merely need to take away your remaining pebble.
Then it matters not whether we call it a heap, a pile, a collection, or a singular item because yours will cease to exist.
And so will you. You say that you cannot die, for you do not live.
Yet, I could have a lot of fun trying. So let’s make a scene, little Gray pebble.
I’m curious whether you bleed in black, white or fifty shades of grey.