Where attention goes, energy flows.

   Pain is a petulant child. It thrives on attention. The more we give it the louder it shrieks.

   This is the old premise behind a renewed wave in western thinking. That we can all ease our pain by engaging self-hypnosis: Shift your attention away from your pain & towards what is well & the pain will die of starvation.   

   The yogis proved this long ago but we are skeptical because we think we cannot do it ourselves. We can. 

   David C. Roberts described how he did it in a 2017 column in The New York Times. He references a Mayo Clinic program that treats pain as "a malfunction in perception." He writes that "The brain becomes addicted to dramatizing pain…and the more you feed it, the stronger the addiction."

   But we want relief fast. Why learn a new approach? Just pop pills.

   That is why the ancient stories ring  true. My photo-painting is grounded in the story of Jesus descending into hell to save the suffering. It is a complex image that includes a Todd Meador photograph of Yosemite, the sculpture "Musica" by Alan LeQuire, a piece of the 16th century painting of hell by Hieronymous Bosch & a vast range of my pictures – assembled to reward any viewer that stays with it long enough to absorb something meaningful. 

   The photograph's handless clocks appear in heaven as well as hell. On earth time is a trick. In heaven it is freed of counting.

   A century from now, westerners will yet seek relief. The many-snaked head of pain will still be with humans. So will Jesus, reaching down (here from a body I have rearranged as androgynous) to save humans from hell. 

-Erie Chapman

Photo-fracture: "Ascending to Joy" by erie, 2017