This was a special day.  We ate Hubig’s, drank Coors and drag raced scooters up and down the waterfront.

No more upset mornings
No more trying evenings
This American Dream I am disbelieving
When the gas in my tank feels like money in the bank
Gonna blow it all this time, take me one last ride
For the lights of this city, they only look good when I’m speeding
I wanna leave em all behind me cause this time I’m gone
Long gone,
This time I’m letting go of it all
So long,
This time I’m gone

If nothing is everything
If nothing is everything I’ll have it all
If nothing is everything then I will have it all

- e.v.

Commonly defined as a loss of hope, Despair in existentialism is more specifically related to the reaction to a breakdown in one or more of the “pillars” of one’s self or identity. If one is invested in being a particular thing, a waiter or an “upstanding citizen,” for example, and one finds oneself in a situation in which one has done something or had something happen to oneself that compromises this being-thing, one would normally find oneself in a state of despair, a hopeless state. An athlete who loses his legs in an accident may despair if he has nothing to “fall back on,” for instance. One is confronted with the irreality of what one had taken to be one’s self.

What sets the existentialist notion of despair apart from the dictionary definition is that existentialist despair is a state one is in even when one isn’t overtly in despair: As long as one has based one’s identity on such pillars so that one is vulnerable to having one’s world break down, one is considered to be in perpetual despair. And as, in Sartrean terms, there is no human essence based in reality from which to constitute one’s sense of identity, despair is a truly human condition. As Kierkegaard defines it in his Either/or: “Any life-view with a condition outside it is despair.” In other words, it is possible to be in despair without despairing.

Thoreau says that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.  I feel as though I have joined them.

Great news: received notification today of my acceptance into the much-blogged about ONE HOUR PHOTO exhibit happening May 8—June 6, 2010 at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center here in DC.  The premise for the exhibit is provocative, as each of the participating artists will have a single photograph projected in the gallery space for one hour’s time.  Following that hour the photograph is to be never shown again.  Anywhere.  Anytime.  To back this agreement up, each artist will have signed a “morally binding” agreement and testament to the release of the photograph into the ether.  More info on the show, along with a schedule for when many of the GREAT photographers will have their work projected, is at ONEHOURPHOTOPROJECT.com.  Most notable among the list of participants are photographer/writer/educator extraordinaire Tim Davis, Guggenheim Fellow Brian Ulrich, LayFlat founder Shane Lavalette, musician John Vanderslice, as well as other personal favorites like Gregory Halpern and Jason Lazarus.  Most fun are the many other DCists that were tapped including Transformer Gallery Manager Marissa Long and the much admired/fellow Corcoran professor Frank DiPerna.

I’m not exactly sure how it is that I’ve found myself in such esteemed company, and even though its only for an hour I’ll certainly take it.