And yet there’s something else running alongside this, quieter and more tender, that I should also admit. Some of what I keep, I keep because it’s precious. Not out of fear but out of love. These drawings made in the Arctic, in temperatures that made the charcoal brittle, recording something that no longer exists, I want them near me. I want the tissue paper between them and the world not because I’m afraid of the world but because proximity feels like fidelity. As if releasing them too quickly would be a betrayal of the conditions under which they were made.
This is posited as love, but is it? This may also be about the author's own meaning perceived in the work, its layers and subtleties, the memories of making it be something meaningful. There is beauty in that. Releasing a work may well mean you lose awareness of those meanings as the meanings of others come rushing back. This goes back a bit to Barthes death of author at point of release into the world. With the author dies their original meaning as attachmed to the work? S need to find a diff way to keep that specific attachments and meanings separate / untouched?