Reviews by Michael O'Regan

The ultimate conclusion of constant analytical brooding (the unrelenting revisionist history of one’s self).

The need to confess and be absolved violently. But from what and why? Things that cannot be answered rationally. Things that must simply be done.

The lie you told and the emptiness you must bitterly defend when it resurfaces during implied silences and knowing gestures.

Faulting others because they are painfully similar to you.

Unused gifts. Both those kept in their original packaging and those lying dormant and atrophied because of their consciousness of wasted ability.

The guilt of not keeping in touch with loved ones when it seems so easy to do especially when you have a degree in “Communications” and 1000000 free minutes.

The secret longing that fantasizes fleshy surface gnawed away by metal teeth during an imagined elevator mechanical failure crash.

The never fulfilled or admitted desire to be completely weak and without will.

The space between waking and the first sip of coffee and the feeling of futility and dependency that accompany it.

Why did you treat her like that? You knew it was wrong and hurtful and morally indefensible before you even thought to say anything. It wasn’t love anyway, you just brainwashed her with poetry that you didn’t understand yourself.

Inability. Trial and error. Never trial and success.

The guilt of feeling guilty while knowing others have far more reason to feel guilty for than you ever could.

The guilt that can only be cleansed by knowing that a soul that knows is out there persisting on the same indistinct plane in the fog of existence. Humanity.

Thank you. By viewing your work, I feel like I have gone to church today and I do not even know what going to church feels like.

The first time I viewed this piece I got the immediate post-apocalyptic impression that the world had somehow met its destined demise and those creatures (un)lucky enough to survive had constructed the towering structure radiating the cycle of life back unto the planet, starting, of course, in New Brunswick.

It hints at Nietzche’s theory of eternal recurrence (the cycle of the history of everything repeating itself ad infinitum), by linking the notion of creation- the tower, the light, the beginning- with the notion of preconceived human history- the map with its human-given names. Its portrayal announces that creation reveals what is already known- a universal, thus bringing Plato’s theory of Ideals into the picture (which states that the Idea of a circle has existed forever, even before human knowledge perceived what a circle was). In the same breath it also pinpoints how artistic creation reveals something already known, but never before grasped by humanity until the artist gives it form.

The second time I viewed it, I got a pre-apocalyptic vision- that of a monstrous oil well swelling far beyond capacity and spewing a gush of crude oil across the globe and all of our carefully designated town, state, and country boundary lines of demarcation. The world eating itself from the inside out because we forced a straw down its throat.

This second view can be linked with the first view, and it conjures up this question: is the piece about creation or destruction? Is the tower spewing darkness or radiating light? Is the act of destruction necessary for the act of creation? The style and form of the piece seem to support this: the artist has destroyed an atlas, rendering it beyond practical use, but in the process he has created a work of art with mythic implications. Light is necessary for darkness, life is necessary for death. Misha Bitttleston has taken a map and given us directions to a pseudo-religio-philosophical meaning of life.

Read another essay by Michael O'Regan:
‘An Untitled Radioactive Dream’ or ‘Misha Bittleston 2004: The Narrative of Eternity’

Author Michael O'Regan (Holliston, Massachusetts)
I work in television to pay the bills, but I don’t watch it. I make organic hip hop in my friend’s basement. I walked out of an insomniac's dream.