Synthesis: a stream of consciousness

During the ritual of transubstantiation in the Catholic faith (as far as I understand it), a simple wafer stands in for the body of Jesus Christ. Or, more precisely for some, the wafer is the body—passing into and becoming one with the congregant who receives it. Occasionally, I assume, bread and wine are still used. One hopes.

I wonder: does it suggest a more robust sense of faith if a flavorless, mass-produced wafer can transform into the savior’s spirit? Wouldn't most messiahs of old prefer that their flesh—or spirit—be conjured and commemorated by handmade bread and aged wine? Something born from simple ingredients, transformed into nourishment and intoxication by human hands, for and by a community?

I am nothing if not prone to digression.

I make things. The things are the consequence, but also the residue—composed of materials that have, through trial and error, proven themselves to be reliable extensions of my body. Sometimes it feels like that’s all the work is: reaching-limbs of my own flesh, groping into the void for something. Into the past and future from the present. A kind of phenomenon astrophysicists haven’t yet identified.

Powerful resonance chambers have inspired people for centuries—obviously temples of stone and wood, but also naturally occurring caverns, where ethereal whispers and echoed voices still our movements. We pause. We shudder. We genuflect, secretly, in the tidal pools of our own echoes. We can’t help it.

And so when I’m really in it—pushing ink, or paint, or graphite around—I feel a serpentine desperation. A need. To connect. To be integrated with the subject at hand. To hear and see myself in the trunk of a tree, in a figure, in a scraped and pooled mess of pigment on a flat surface. I want to feel myself in the work so completely that I’m stripped bare—synthesized with the matter in front of me.

Is need symbiotic with intent?

Needs are often dismissed as irrational, but they are only satisfied by spellwork. By ritual. By repetition. So what is intent? A need given legitimacy by the act of purpose? Is intent simply transubstantiated need?

Do I intend anything when I make things?

That’s the question most people want answered. But how could I make anything without intent? How could I do anything without it? Isn't that the sign of spirit animating meat and bone?

Or maybe it’s just the wafer again–passing through the body, asking to be believed.