2015 – 2016

Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant is a three-part meditation inspired by a central theme in one of my favorite novels, Moby Dick: how chance, free will, and fate “interweavingly work together” to produce our lives. In Moby Dick, the narrator’s philosophy is Stoical, which suggests we concern ourselves exclusively with things under our control. Ahab—tragic protagonist rather than villain—drives himself mad and causes the deaths of himself and all but one of his crew by fighting precisely those things that aren’t for him to choose: chance and fate.

It is difficult to imagine that artistic beauty could exist without the limits of medium. Likewise, a life of peace and freedom simply can’t exist without conceding that some things aren’t for us to choose. The inspiration of this work is the beauty, freedom, and peace made possible through embracing limits on what one can know, choose, or be.

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I

So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.

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II

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm?

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III

Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act’s immutably decreed. ’Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders.

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