…there are profound moments in which the division between self and other drops away. It’s Freud’s notion of the oceanic feeling: you’re swept away. And when that happens, you need to share it, to say, “This wasn’t just a regular day. There was magic here! Did you see it?” So much of literature and art is the artist’s way of saying, “Yea, I saw it. Bloody hell.” It doesn’t take ascending to heaven; it isn’t supernatural. It happens right here, where the spirit meets the nature of reality. There’s a tremendous puzzle in it for me because of the violence in the world. It will never feel appropriate, the level of violence that I know to exist. You look at a black hole, which is this implosion where time itself is distorted and torn to bits,. And the ocean can display such incredible violence. But somehow that doesn’t begin to diminish the beauty that’s all around us. If anything it makes the beauty more astonishing. As much horror as there is, there is still a place here flowers bloom and outside the front door it’s spring. Out of this crack in the sidewalk, life comes again, God damn it. You can use all the weedkiller in the world, and it will still come.
—Ran Ortner interviewed in Sun Magazine
