Brakhage

"Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of preception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'green'? How many rainbows can create light for the untutored eye? How aware of variations in heat waves can that eye be? Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color. Imagine a world before the 'beginning was the word.'

To see is to retain - to behold. Elimination of all fear is in sight- which must be aimed for. Once vision may have been given - that which seems inherent in the infant's eye, an eye which reflects the loss of innocence more eloquently than any other human feature, an eye which soon learns to classify sights, an eye which mirrors the movement of the individual toward death by its increasing ability to see.

But one can never go back, not even in imagination. After the loss of innocence, only the ultimate of knowledge can balance the wobbling pivot."

~Stan Brakhage