A while back a professor and I were discussing tendencies in my work and he used the word somnambulant, as if I was wandering between two worlds. At the time I thought of this in its simplest form: acting between the states of being asleep and awake or rather wandering unconsciously in the physical world. Upon reflecting I came to remember examples of this in my past.
My sister used to sleep walk when we were children. Sleep walking is not a person haphazardly bumping into their surroundings unaware. In her I saw the peculiar ability to set her mind to the dream's task while her physical environment remained completely known. She used to walk down the stairs searching for me. She never fell, never ran into a table. She was completely aware of her physical environment while she searched for that thing, often me, that eluded her.
This word has been with me since that discussion. The aim of each work is defined during its own dream period. Every effort is made to exist in two places: one foot firmly rooted in my comfort with the lay of the physical world, the other stretching into abstraction.
Callaloo: Art & Culture in the African Diaspora, Vol. 37, No. 4, pg. 845
