Tom Block

Sorry to bother you, but I’m in that place again. Remember the one? I told you about it on that too-warm summer day in Vermont, the last time we were together.
The Existential Crack, where I am down in something dark, and I can see high above me on both sides, meaning – a purpose. But where I am: nothing.
I am going to try and climb out, again. What else can I do? So long as I am breathing, I can create – and perhaps through creating, I can build meaning, even out of nothing. I’ll paint some pieces, write you a few brief lines, put it together under the innocuous title of “Letters” and dedicate it to you – you, who always understood my predicament.
Maybe in these marks on paper I can begin to discover some sense to all of this. Maybe something will come out of it.
And anyway, isn’t that what God did? Existing as a solitary power, condemned for all eternity to being and nothingness, God created all of this out of desperation. That’s what they say, at least – and what is art but an echo of that original act?

Tom Block is an artist, writer and theoretician best known for his work that delves into the soul of our post-modern search for spiritual meaning in this post-religious era. Block has looked for the intersection between secular times and our spiritual nature in various series of art/writing projects including his Shalom/Salaam Project, Human Rights Painting Project, Cousins Public Art Project, Response to Machiavelli Project and, most recently, his work In the Garden of the Mystical Redoubt.