Three years ago I decided to collect my films under the name “Omphalos”.
As a scientist I have generally found that through naming things we may feel that we can be (or hope to be) more ‘objective.’ This of course may not always be the case! As my medical career has demonstrated to me.
I find as an artist that I do not always want to explain why I have named things. I also worry (perhaps too much) that in naming things we reduce the experience of ‘being in the world’ to a single word or very brief term.
Raymond Tallis, in his latest book, does explore, rather wonderfully the biological basis of omphalos. A basis, that when you stop to think about it, turns out to be so much more:
Peter held in his mother's arms
