2Tulips: Series
I have been obsessed with death or entropy in the poetic sense of the world over half my life. I used to go to bed imagining everything turning to dust and darkness as an exercise in letting things go. Life seems to be in direct conflict with entropy and almost protest against it. On one hand we have the universe expanding outward and at some point everything will find equilibrium and there will be no more changes. On the other hand we have this concept of life. Life seems to run in opposition to the decay and collapsing of the world around us. Not having kids I never thought I’d play a part in resisting the impermanence of life beyond gardening until I took up art. Each painting a claim that I am here.
Being in chronic pain, death sometimes feels like the only reprieve from this madness. Which gives even an otherwise sane person an almost hopeful examination of death. I make mental rules for myself. I can’t die until I’ve completed all the art ideas I have. You could call my brush strokes suicidal in a way because each time I complete a piece it brings me one step closer to that end goal. The beauty about art is that it is constant. Like life it demands to be here so each time I finish one piece there is always one more in the back of my mind insists to be painted.
Which brings me to this project. I conceived of it last year. Let’s create something beautiful with the end goal being to destroy it. Instead of letting it rest out its days in possible admiration on someone’s wall let’s incinerate it on a funeral pyre. It was around November of 2020 when I conceived of the idea. I shared it with my friend after reading about Ethereum online. I had recently purchased a few hundred dollars of crypto. I’ve always liked the idea of cryptocurrencies but I was never in a position to enter that market but with a lot of research and help of a close friend I was finally able to put at least a toe in the pool. I liked the ideas at play here. They have a concept of proof of work at that time which is now moving towards proof of stake. How information is stored and recorded on a blockchain. It was also where I started to read about the London Hardfork which would be an update that would implement a feature that would burn a little Ether each time a block was recorded on the blockchain.
This was a perfect medium to share my story. I decided to go with a Tulip. Tulips are important historically but also personally. I still remember the first time I saw a row of red tulips growing on the garden of a small white house on the corner of 8th and Mead Avenue. A sweet grandmother there explained to me what they were when I asked. The awe I felt as the sun shimmered across their delicate concave shaped petals. Peering inside the black and yellow bee markings that surrounded their stamen and pistil. Experiencing awe has a way of changing you. We are forced to see the world differently to accommodate the wonder we just assimilated into our consciousness. My mother used to tell me that she believed God created flowers just to be beautiful. I’m not sure about a belief in God but I can certainly believe in their beauty. It was with that in mind that I created the painting titled 2Tulips.
After recording the process of me painting 2Tulips (Proof of work) I photographed it (Proof of Storage) before finally cremating it (Proof of Burn). The painting itself did not last long and while the original painting is gone what’s left may be immortalized as Non Fungible Tokens. Those three tokens I hope to offer up for Auction soon. My goal here though is not simply monetary gain. I gave up aspirations of being rich long ago and now find myself living in a developing country. I am more interested in telling a story and possibly beating entropy and death. In the fight against this disease called death are several researchers who are doing amazing things that give someone like me hope. The proceeds from the sale of these NFTs will go to longevity research. My long term hope is that if we can solve longevity in my lifetime maybe we will have enough time to also find a cure for mine and others chronic pain. That we can live in a world without so much suffering and instead of fantasizing about death and finding mental games to avoid suicidal ideations we can simply go to bed and wake up tomorrow knowing that there are a lot of tranquil pleasant days ahead of us.
To see my NFTs please look at my profile on Rarible.
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