Scapegoat or Pawn

I have spent a considerable amount of my life trying to understand people. Sometimes because I genuinely wanted to, sometimes because understanding someone felt necessary to maintaining a relationship, and sometimes because I believed that identifying the reasoning behind someone's behavior might finally tell me how to respond to it.

I became rather good at observing. I noticed changes in tone, inconsistencies between words and actions, the questions people avoided, and the subjects they returned to when conversations became uncomfortable. I learned to recognize patterns, although recognizing something and understanding it are entirely different accomplishments. Occasionally, I mistook my ability to explain another person's behavior for an obligation to accommodate it.

I have also misunderstood people, interrupted conversations, defended myself prematurely, and allowed previous experiences to influence my interpretation of entirely different circumstances. There have been occasions when I believed I was communicating something obvious, only to discover that another person understood the situation differently. There have also been occasions when I listened so carefully to someone else's explanation that I neglected to consider whether their explanation actually addressed what had happened. I am interested in this uncomfortable territory between understanding someone and understanding what their behavior has meant to me.

Scapegoat or Pawn emerged from that territory.

The title began as an examination of two familiar roles. A scapegoat becomes the recipient of blame, while a pawn serves a purpose within circumstances that may extend beyond their control. Both suggest a relationship between an individual and a larger system, whether that system is a family, a romantic relationship, a friendship, a professional environment, or a collection of social expectations.

The distinction becomes considerably more complicated when someone occupies different roles in different circumstances. A person can become a scapegoat in one relationship and a pawn in another, sometimes without recognizing the similarities between those experiences. Someone who has experienced harm can also participate in circumstances that harm others. An explanation for someone's behavior can provide valuable context without excusing its consequences, just as assuming responsibility for our own actions should not require accepting responsibility for someone else's.

I don't believe these questions have universally applicable answers, nor am I particularly interested in assigning permanent identities to people, including myself. Human behavior is considerably more complicated than the categories we construct to explain it, although those categories can be useful when they help us recognize patterns or establish boundaries. What interests me is what happens when the categories themselves become insufficient.

I work in engineering, a profession in which understanding a system requires examining its components, dependencies, interactions, and points of failure. A problem that appears to originate in one place may be the consequence of something happening elsewhere. Sometimes the visible failure is merely the final expression of conditions that have accumulated over time.

I recognize the temptation to approach human relationships in a similar manner. If I could reconstruct a conversation, identify a recurring behavior, establish its origins, and examine the circumstances surrounding it, perhaps I could arrive at a satisfactory explanation. I could understand what happened, why it happened, and what I might have done differently.

Except people are not software systems. They do not necessarily behave consistently, disclose their motivations, or respond predictably when presented with information. Two people can participate in the same experience and carry away entirely different understandings of it. Even when an explanation appears convincing, it may remain incomplete, and there is no comprehensive diagnostic report for being human.

Nevertheless, I find something valuable in examining the relationships between seemingly disconnected experiences. My professional background has influenced how I organize information, but my artistic practice allows me to approach questions that cannot be resolved through analysis alone. Some experiences cannot be adequately represented through a chronological account. A particular sentence might remain significant long after I have forgotten the conversation surrounding it. An ordinary gesture might acquire an entirely different meaning when I encounter it again years later. Sometimes an experience becomes recognizable only when something else happens, and the distance between those events suddenly seems much smaller.

I have found myself reconsidering childhood experiences alongside adult relationships, recognizing familiar reactions in unfamiliar environments, and questioning why certain circumstances affected me more profoundly than others. Not every apparent connection is necessarily meaningful, and I am conscious of the temptation to construct patterns simply because I am looking for them. Still, some connections deserve examination, and this project is an attempt to give those observations a form.

It is also an acknowledgment that I have spent enough time attempting to understand experiences that I cannot change. There is something peculiar about realizing that an event can be over while the questions surrounding it continue to occupy an extraordinary amount of mental space. You can remove yourself from a situation, establish boundaries, reorganize your life, and still find yourself mentally returning to conversations that no longer have any practical relevance.

I know that tendency intimately. I have revisited things people said to me, considered what I might have communicated differently, and entertained explanations that were never mine to verify. I have occasionally mistaken additional information for progress, as though discovering one more detail about someone else's behavior would fundamentally change what I already knew about my own experience.

Sometimes I wanted an explanation that would make an experience less painful. Other times, I wanted to establish that my understanding of an event was reasonable. I wanted to know whether someone else remembered it, whether they recognized its consequences, or whether the significance I assigned to it existed entirely within my own perspective.

Eventually, I began questioning what I was accomplishing by continuing to investigate. Reflection can produce insight, but it can also become repetitive, particularly when the subject involves another person's intentions or decisions. There will always be information I cannot obtain, perspectives I cannot access, and questions that another person may never answer.

These limitations have become important to how I approach autobiographical work. I write from memory, observation, personal records, and the understanding available to me at the time of composition. My recollections may differ from those of other people, and my interpretations may change as I acquire new information or reconsider an experience. When I describe someone's behavior, I am describing what I experienced rather than claiming complete knowledge of their intentions or internal circumstances.

Recognizing those limitations does not require me to abandon my own perspective. I can acknowledge someone else's difficulties without assuming responsibility for resolving them, appreciate their positive qualities while recognizing the consequences of their actions, and accept responsibility for my own behavior without accepting responsibility for everything that happened between us.

I can also love someone and decide that continued access to one another is no longer appropriate. Perhaps the most significant change in my understanding of relationships has been recognizing that compassion does not require unlimited accommodation. I used to approach certain conflicts as though sufficiently understanding another person would eventually produce a mutually satisfactory resolution. I still believe understanding is valuable, but I no longer consider it a guarantee of reconciliation, accountability, or change.

That distinction has influenced the direction of this collection. Rather than continuing to investigate circumstances over which I have little control, I am interested in what I can create from the understanding I already possess and how that understanding might change as I continue living.

The visual language of Scapegoat or Pawn centers on an infinity symbol constructed from barbed wire. Its form is continuous, but its surface is interrupted by points of resistance. It can be interpreted as a representation of recurrence, confinement, protection, injury, or the uncomfortable relationship between experiences that appear separate until they intersect.

I deliberately chose a symbol that resists an entirely positive interpretation. Infinity is frequently associated with permanence, devotion, and the romantic idea that something meaningful should continue indefinitely. Barbed wire complicates that association. It establishes boundaries while also suggesting the possibility of injury. It can protect something, confine something, or prevent movement in either direction.

The combination interests me because continuity is not inherently desirable. Some patterns deserve preservation, while others deserve interruption.

The intersections represent distinct points in my personal history, although I do not intend to provide an exhaustive explanation of every visual element. I want the symbol to remain open to interpretations beyond my own experiences. Its significance may change as the collection develops, just as my understanding of the events that inspired it has already changed.

I am also interested in transforming repetition into something deliberate. Experiences that once seemed disconnected can become material for artistic examination. A recurring thought can become a sentence, a sentence can become a poem, and an image that previously existed only in memory can become something visible and independent of the circumstances that produced it.

Creating something does not necessarily resolve the experience behind it. Art is not a substitute for accountability, professional treatment, or the ordinary work of living. Nor do I believe that suffering automatically produces meaningful artistic work. What interests me is the possibility of taking experiences that once occupied an extraordinary amount of mental space and giving them a form that I can examine, revise, and eventually leave alone.

The collection is organized into four movements: Form, Response, Fragmentation, and Reconfiguration. These are not intended as universal stages of psychological development or a prescribed sequence for recovery. They provide an artistic framework through which I can examine how particular experiences took shape, how I responded to them, what happened when established understandings became insufficient, and how I am beginning to organize what remains.

Form examines the experiences, environments, expectations, and relationships through which particular understandings begin to develop. It considers the things we learn before we possess the language to question them, including the ways affection, responsibility, conflict, and belonging become associated with one another.

Response explores what happens when those understandings encounter other people and circumstances. It is concerned with adaptation, resistance, communication, accommodation, and the sometimes considerable distance between our intentions and our behavior.

Fragmentation examines the moments when familiar explanations become insufficient. It considers contradiction, the breakdown of established expectations, and the difficulty of reconciling what we believed about a relationship or situation with what we eventually experienced.

Reconfiguration is concerned with what follows. Not necessarily resolution, forgiveness, reconciliation, or some definitive transformation into a better version of oneself, but the process of reconsidering what remains useful, what requires revision, and what no longer needs to occupy the same position in our lives.

Human experiences rarely unfold in an orderly sequence, and I don't expect the works within this collection to suggest otherwise. A poem in Form may contain an observation I developed only recently, while an essay in Reconfiguration may revisit an experience from childhood. Something I initially understood as fragmentation may eventually reveal itself as a necessary interruption of an established pattern.

The collection includes essays, poetry, visual art, and computational work because I don't believe every experience requires the same method of expression. Some subjects benefit from careful examination and extended prose. Others become less interesting the more thoroughly I attempt to explain them. Poetry gives me permission to leave certain things unresolved, while visual art allows relationships between ideas to exist without requiring a chronological account.

One of the poems, Ideal, but Not a Guarantee, emerged from my fascination with the extraordinary confidence we place in things that have yet to happen. It considers the peculiar relationship between intentions, expectations, and outcomes through experiences that range from genuinely meaningful to almost embarrassingly absurd. I find it amusing how confidently we can imagine a particular future, only to discover that reality has developed an entirely different itinerary. Sometimes the result is disappointing, sometimes it's surprisingly entertaining, and occasionally the process of getting there is so unnecessarily complicated that I have to admire its commitment to chaos.

I enjoy writing about these contradictions because they allow humor and disappointment to occupy the same space without requiring either to diminish the other. Not every experience needs to become a profound revelation, and not every unfortunate outcome deserves a tragic interpretation. Some things are simply ridiculous, although I reserve the right to reconsider their significance several years later.

Computational work introduces another possibility: translating observations, memories, and recurring forms into systems that can behave in ways I might not entirely anticipate. I am particularly interested in the relationship between artistic intention and the unexpected results that emerge during creation.

Sometimes I begin with a relatively straightforward idea and discover that the process produces something entirely different. An image becomes more meaningful than its original concept. A sentence develops into an essay about something I hadn't intended to discuss. A memory that initially seemed central to a particular piece becomes less important as the work progresses. These discoveries are part of the reason I want to make the collection rather than simply continue thinking about it, allowing the finished works to exist beyond the circumstances that inspired them.

Making personal work public introduces an interesting complication. Experiences that once belonged to private conversations become available to people who bring entirely different histories and assumptions to them. I find that possibility both uncomfortable and fascinating because part of creating something is accepting that its significance can eventually extend beyond the person who made it. An experience that initially inspired a particular piece may become almost incidental to someone else's interpretation, while an observation I considered relatively unimportant may resonate with a reader in ways I could never have anticipated.

Some works are addressed to particular people because that perspective serves the writing, but I don't consider publication an extension of conversations that have already ended. I can acknowledge that someone might see my work without making being seen by that person the reason I create it. What interests me now is allowing the collection to develop an identity that isn't dependent on the circumstances or individuals who originally inspired it.

I expect contradictions throughout the collection. I may approach an experience with affection in one piece and frustration in another, reconsider something I previously believed, or discover that an event I once regarded as significant no longer occupies the same position in my life. I would rather preserve evidence of an evolving perspective than manufacture consistency for the sake of appearing certain.

And while this collection addresses difficult subjects, I have no intention of presenting an uninterrupted account of misery. Humor has always been part of how I observe the world, and some experiences become increasingly absurd the longer I examine them. I want to preserve that quality alongside the tenderness, disappointment, uncertainty, and occasional ridiculousness that make these experiences recognizably human.

I have occasionally wondered whether understanding an experience requires reaching a point at which it no longer affects me. My relationship with that question continues to change. Some memories have become easier to revisit, while others have acquired unexpected significance as I've developed a different understanding of the circumstances surrounding them. What interests me now is less the possibility of arriving at a definitive interpretation and more the ways those interpretations may continue to evolve.

There is a certain irony in dedicating an extensive body of work to experiences from which I am simultaneously attempting to establish greater distance. Writing can become another form of repetition, particularly when it involves revisiting unresolved questions. Yet the process of creating something also introduces possibilities that didn't exist when those experiences first occurred. I am interested in discovering where that distinction becomes meaningful.

I want this collection to develop alongside a life that continues beyond it, one filled with new relationships, unfamiliar places, intellectual pursuits, artistic experimentation, and experiences that may eventually challenge everything I currently believe I understand. The people represented in my memories have lives that continue independently of my interpretations, just as I have a life that extends beyond theirs.

The title Scapegoat or Pawn poses a question that I don't intend to answer by permanently assigning myself either identity. I have occupied different positions in different circumstances, exercised agency, misunderstood it, and occasionally recognized it much later than I would have preferred. I suspect that my understanding of these roles will continue to change, particularly as I encounter experiences that don't fit comfortably within either category.

Perhaps the most interesting possibility is that the question itself may eventually become less important than what I choose to create from it.

Same system. More perspective. More nuance. More human.