oh the News

Oh the news

deep water 

all at sea

everyday

it's high wire

entertainment 

rhyme no reason 

someone's dying

all over again

 

wonder how

to listen

hear the tone 

ride the waves

shout it out 

cut the news

ditch the phone 

someone's lying

clowns are selling 

who's buying 

illusion rules

tyrants die  

sad and lonely 

underneath 

you see

we're all sailing

the ancient highway 

call it freedom

blue skies

Bardo island 

guided by stars

and trees 

here we are

blowing in the wind 

the mirror

curtain calls

beautiful

Bardo Island,  painting (detail 120x120cm),  acrylic paint, ink, enamel, book pages, gold paint on cotton paper on board

'oh the news '  / verse (Bardo Island series)

jeffree skewes

notes: 

The theme here, plays with it's title to create a discourse about the metaphysical journey of life as born out through a series of allegorical stories supported by paintings and related written work Skewes is working on.

The news is a constantly forming and disolving type of ephemera of modern social existence.  

The Bardo is a Tibetan  word that deals with the Buddhist experience, understanding and teachings that is practiced to ponder the immediate state between death and rebirth. 

Buddhists consider the Bardo as a real, profound and liberating part of existence. The Bardo idea is applied not only the greater life and death cycles of sentient beings - but significantly it applies to all aspects of the beginnings and endings of all things and therefore is constantly experienced throughout everyday life as we grasp for, hold onto and let go of things.

The Bardo represents the 'gap' between experiences.

By conceiving Bardo as an island, Skewes elevates this idea to suggest a metaphorical place and site to isolate this state to further  define the conceptual gap between this, that and all things.

Skewes is developing Bardo Island as an extended artist book, a play and even an opera, to open up with art, a way to gain a deeper esoteric understanding and experience of 'the Bardo' theatrically, as well as having a bit fun on the way...