As I begin writing this, I wonder what words will be immortalized on this page. I have an idea, a concept, a direction, a feeling of what I might want to express, however, I am at a loss of how it’s all going to turn out, and what the ramifications are from writing it. That is the mystery of it, which is what inspires me to continue. In fact, I am driven to writing this both by the sheer wonder and fear of it all.
Jóhann Eyfells, is an artist, now in his mid nineties (94), whose life has been absolutely devoted in providing a window through which we can peek at the unknowable aspects of our existence, the mysteries of our universe, of GOD, even of our own complex human nature. It is through that window we might be able to glimpse at all of the possibilities that the “unknowing” can afford us. Jóhann’s Cairn, prominently displayed overlooking Faxa bay in Reykjavik, is exactly that to me personally. It is by peering through the center of it, that we will finally accept this constant we call the ‘unknowable’. It is this opening or awakening to the mystery itself that life is best served and lived, and Jóhann is providing us with this rare opportunity. This window can become a door once we realize that we are a part of, not apart from, this grand mystery, and that we make a decision to step through it’s threshold.
“ART is very perplexing, unknowable, mysterious, yet it is something that cannot be denied” as Jóhann puts it. The astronomer and author, Carl Sagan was once quoted as saying “I don’t want to believe, I want to know”, implying that knowledge is above all, even GOD, and paramount in our understanding of the universe and ourselves. However, Sagan was also quoted in his writings that “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” implying that even the unknowable cannot be ignored.
I would go as far as to say that knowledge or ‘knowing’ kills the mystery, and once mystery is dead, life is dead for all of humanity. In the ‘information age’ we are currently experiencing, we are living in a time when the need of predicting unpredictable outcomes, solving mysteries, explaining the unexplainable, simplifying complexities, defining the undefined has become an absolute obsession. The frenzied fear of ‘not knowing’ is at an all time high for many of US, and our economies, politics, medecines, foods and infrastructures are built on that very notion that fear itself must be avoided at all cost. We are fearful of fear itself, which subsequently breeds more fear.
Genuine art is fearless and must, at all cost, remain so. Jóhann Eyfells is truly fearless as an artist, in that fear itself is never a hindrance to him, but rather becomes a trampoline from which he hurdles himself into the unknowing. To be an honest artist you must have the courage to take on that fear and find inspiration in it. Fear becomes nothing more than the artist’s tool to reveal the strange truth.
As Jóhann puts it so eloquently,
“The moment you stumble onto something simple with ‘dumb luck’, it becomes something ‘strange’. That is God’s gift to US.”
I look forward to the moment which we find excitement of the ‘strange’ and unknowable in our everyday existence so that we can all bathe in it with absolute joy! (Written by Hayden de M. Yates)
Our award winning feature film, A FORCE IN NATURE: Jóhann Eyfells will be released in early Summer of this year, 2018. Book a screening in your city, town, museum, university or house. See trailer here:
https://vimeo.com/213382491
Contact us for booking information at (512) 966-9299 or filmmakershowcase@gmail.com.
REVIEW: https://www.niceland.com/film-review-force-nature-johann-e…/
Vitruvius Creations - A Film Production Company 