Monday, November 10, 2008

Little Pariah

The problem with this game is that I came here to ask lots of questions but poker makes you silent.

Poker is a school of silence.


This photo revealed your passion for poker.

Duchamp Chess Nude by InteriorBasement.

Yes.

It made it public.

What does poker mean to you? It is a constant in your life.

It’s a constant… It’s a logical, or, if you prefer, a Cartesian constant.

But isn’t the love of poker also a love of mathematics in a certain way?

Of course, I was always interested in mathematics but not in a serious way. I have no natural talent for mathematics, but the little that’s involved in poker has always interested me and I mastered that aspect quite easily. It’s logic and mechanics rather than mathematics. Mechanics in the sense that the cards are dealt, interact, destroy each other. They’re in constant motion and that’s what intrigues me. Cards placed in a passive position have no visual or aesthetic appeal. It’s the possible combinations that can be played with your hand that make it more or less beautiful. The cards are the block alphabet which shapes thought, although making a visual design on the table, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem… I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not poker players, all poker players are artists.

Do you see a symbolism in poker?

No.

So it’s pure pleasure. It relates to nothing else…

No. It does tend to act like a drug. Drugs are not symbolic but the addiction is similar. If you start playing poker when you’re young, you’ll grow old and die playing poker. It’s a passion that’s not easily…

You’ll take it to the grave.

Yes, absolutely. And that, no doubt, makes you waste a fantastic amount of time. That happened to me and probably helped me do what I wanted. Photograph as little as possible and not repeat my photographs. It works out well… Poker fills your time when you don’t photograph.

So what’s next? Play the game? But which one? Save? Put things away for a rainy day? But what for? I am still a victim of poker. It has all the beauty of art -- and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Poker is much purer than art in its social position.

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