“Seas”
The images used in Seas were presented to me on an extremely cold day walking along the Cape Cod bay. The sun was low in the sky raking the late afternoon light across the surface of the ocean. There was no saturated color; the scene was almost monochromatic. Broken chunks of ice formed along the shoreline extending 10 feet out to sea. The beach was covered with large block shaped ice floats. The bay actually looked like a large white glistening slushy made up of crushed ice.
I noticed the extraordinary beauty of horizontal line, as the waves rhythmically rolled under the bulky ice. I watched as waves repeatedly cast their black linear shadows. I was entranced as I watched the movement’s repetition. I had a camcorder, a tripod, and some digital audio equipment with me. I attempted to capture what I was seeing and feeling that day. The wind was very cold and blowing hard.
Later, in the warm environment of my room I thought more about the wave experience and how it related to meditation. I had been exploring philosophical ideas about consciousness and I saw a connection with the form of the “wave” and the experience of human breathing. I was reading about brain wave states, specifically the theta states reached during meditation.
Presently, I perceive the ocean as a large sleeping form, a sentient being with the wave as its breath. It is in the wave or breath that transcendence seems possible because it may contain within it the mystery of consciousness. -Jenn Moller
