AN OPEN LETTER TO PETER MURPHY.

Peter,

Before I begin I would like to make it clear that I am not sure what this is all about.

The more time passes and the more I am absolutely sure I know X, Y, or Z,

the more convinced I have no idea what or why I do things. These things come

from a deeper place than I can often quantify.

I am doing this for a multitude of reason not the least is an almost overwhelming sense

of frustration. As an artist of many years in discipline you are one of the people I have

had an intense and unremitting need to communicate with on some level. In point of fact,

I have tried several times to reach you through various people we both know, at least tangentially,

to no avail. The photo I am posting I submit in evidence.

As someone who identifies as Sufi, for better or worse,( I believe I am something of a Qaalander, or it is the closest equivalent. the "line between the devils teeth"?) I have found your journey so personal I simply cannot ignore it. Your work cuts deep. It rings true.

I often think you write from the third person to enable you to look inside with a kind

of universal/personal double meaning. Your work has driven me to objectify a word, a

phrase in my own work. If you look, for better or worse, you will find ideas of yours

re-made and re-worked in any number of my own pieces. Is this a lack in me, or the true nature of art? Art has this ability to cross over disciplines and become something else while staying true to itself. Is this what is going on? Sufism is not an answer but a process.

One is one or not...though various Murshids have different opinions about this. Master? No master? Does it ultimately matter?

Four years ago I undertook the task of creating a vast piece of work that I dearly wanted

to quote a line from a song of yours, one that cut to the core of my artistic experience.

" The power of poetry lies in it's ability to defy logic, defy logic often."

I was A: worried I simply didn't have the available capital to pay you for the use, or B: that I simply could not find you out there in the world. Believe me, it is not easy to "go it alone" with no support of any kind. I had cut the corporate umbilicus several years previously and

simply sat down to create something of real worth. I think I did. But I still regret not

being able to quote you. I suppose in the long run, a minor disappointment, but it rankles to this day, on the eve of publication.

One lives with regrets as one does with ones years.

Why should your path, so different from mine seem so deeply familiar? Every time I listen the same question hits me with terrible certainty.

There is this shape in the darkness just beyond my lantern light that haunts me.

Either I am absolutely mad, ( a good possibility.) or there is really something there I need to understand.

I wonder.

Peace,

Michael Zulli.

iridescent idiot.