Roland Carter 7/13/26 Roland Carter 7/13/26

Inspiration trip 2

Wahrheit, Schönheit, Güte

To worry about getting old, to feel old To remember I felt older before i realise now i feel younger then in 2016

There was a time when I thought love alone could sustain everything.

I have known what it means to love deeply to give without measuring, to stay when leaving might have been easier, to carry hope long after it stopped carrying me.

I have resisted bitterness, even when it would have been the simpler choice. But there are still days when thoughts of you arrive uninvited. Your moods used to become my weather. If you were distant, I felt cold. If you were angry, I carried the storm. Somewhere along the way, I realized I couldn't keep living inside someone else's climate.

I'm learning not to let it affect me anymore.

That doesn't mean I don't feel anger. I do. I understand now what was happening, what was being said beneath the words. I understand the quiet ways people can take from you without ever asking.

I've become familiar with fear too the fear of being taken advantage of, of being used because I cared too much, of giving more than I had. And beneath all of that sits another fear, one that's harder to admit: the fear of never having enough, of being poor forever, of constantly wondering if survival will always demand more than I can give.

Maybe healing isn't about forgetting. Maybe it's about learning that someone else's emotions don't have to become your own, that love doesn't require losing yourself, and that fear doesn't have to write the ending of your story.

The biggest mistake we make is thinking we have time.

We postpone telling people we love them.

We delay pursuing goals that matter.

We assume relationships, health, and opportunities will still be there tomorrow.

We treat time as if it's guaranteed, when it's one of the few things we can never get back.

Rather than encouraging fear or urgency for its own sake, the quote can be read as a reminder to be intentional with the time we do have.

Roland Carter 7/6/26 Roland Carter 7/6/26

The Floor

Some of these platters have been with me since Sontweg. Others came along in 2018. Over the years I never really paid attention to what ended up on the floor. One project became another, tools were moved around, ideas were tested, mistakes were made, and without noticing it the floor turned into a painting. Looking at it now, I can remember different periods of my life just by recognizing the marks that are still there.

I'm finally cleaning everything up and redoing the studio. Some things have served their purpose, some things are worth keeping, and some have simply been taking up space for years. It feels good to go through everything instead of letting it pile up even more. The studio has changed because my work has changed, and it no longer fits the way I used to do things.

When I compare where I started to where I am now, the difference is bigger than I realized. Most of that progress didn't happen through big moments. It came from showing up every day, trying again when something didn't work, and staying with it long enough for the small improvements to add up. That's easy to forget when you're in the middle of it, but obvious when you look back.

That's how I want to keep moving forward. I'll keep my attention on today while knowing that what I do now is shaping the next ten years. Every decision, every project, and every habit adds something. You don't build a future all at once you build it one ordinary day at a time.

The studio is changing, and I think that's a pretty accurate reflection of everything else that has changed too.

Roland Carter 6/29/26 Roland Carter 6/29/26

Inspiration trip 1

I think this is one of those moments you save like an image in your mind. I was in Soltau, and before I went inside, I saw this. By the end of the day, before I went to bed, I realized that for my paintings I should make a better blog, reorganize all the documentation I've made since 2010, and build a better foundation for the years to come.

I was working on a painting called Bradley Cooper Movie. It continues the stream of consciousness that I have explored before and features a figure I created during this trip called Anton. I had a lot of thoughts while I was having my simple German meal on the Autobahn. I like the Autobahn. The sound of the cars racing by reminds me of being a child, standing nearby and listening to them. Sometimes I miss that time.

The babybear is crying because mama bear is vaping.

Staying in Soltau also reminded me of being in Austria as a child with my parents. The cozy breakfasts and lunches Dorothea made for me gave me a nostalgic and comforting feeling. It was one of those days when memories, places, and the work itself all seemed to come together.

I photograph a lot, and I save and screenshot countless images from the internet and with my Instagram scraper. I like using Instagram as a personal archive with a feed blocker, so it works more like Tumblr used to: a place to collect images without those endless video reels. Looking back at everything I've documented over the years made me realize that I should organize it more carefully not just for myself, but as part of the ongoing story of my work.

In Tangermünde, there was a great antiques shop. It had photo albums from the Second World War period. Sadly enough, they were €750 each.

Lately, I've been thinking about where my knowledge actually comes from.

Every day, algorithms shape the information we see, the ideas we're exposed to, and the stories that compete for our attention. Over time, it's easy to forget how much of our perspective is influenced not by what we intentionally seek out, but by what appears in a feed.

Algorithms don't optimize for understanding. They optimize for attention. Their job isn't to show us what's most important or most true. It's to show us what we're most likely to engage with. Over time, that distinction doesn't just shape what we see. It shapes what we overlook.

There's a word I keep coming back to: epistemic. It relates to how we know what we know, the source code of our beliefs. It asks a simple but uncomfortable question.

Where did this belief come from?

Did I arrive at it through curiosity and firsthand exploration? Or did it find me because an algorithm predicted I would engage with it?

The things we search for become part of who we are. The things that simply arrive, unquestioned, quietly shape who we become.

Lately, I've been trying to live with that question in mind.

It's one of the reasons I've started taking slow, inspirational trips through Germany. I'm heading to Berlin, but I'm not rushing there. Instead, I'm stopping in smaller cities along the way, wandering local streets, visiting independent cafés, talking to people, and paying attention to the quiet details that rarely make it into anyone's feed.

I'm not traveling to escape technology. I'm traveling to step outside the paths already chosen for me.

I want to experience places through my own curiosity instead of recommendations optimized for engagement. I want conversations that weren't designed to go viral. I want to discover places before they become content.

That means looking beyond mass tourism, beyond the mainstream art world, and beyond destinations that have been reproduced so many times online that they feel more familiar on a screen than they do in reality.

I'm searching for places that still have the freedom to surprise me. Places that haven't been reduced to a backdrop or a brand, but remain what they've always been: lived, imperfect, and quietly themselves.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if the same is true for ideas.

Maybe they're meant to be encountered, not merely consumed.

So I'm trying to trace things back. To ask where my beliefs came from. To seek original sources instead of summaries. To value curiosity over convenience, depth over speed, and discovery over recommendation

A photo album i bought in Berlin

Roland Carter 5/24/26 Roland Carter 5/24/26

The Solid State Entity

A solid state entity is an emergent intelligence architecture formed through the continuous integration of human nervous systems with planetary-scale computational networks. It is not merely a state, corporation or military apparatus, but a metastable organism composed of data flows, predictive systems, communication infrastructure and behavioral feedback loops.

Every day, billions of humans voluntarily externalize fragments of their inner and outer lives into the electronic environment: photographs of children, emotional reactions, movements through cities, desires, fears, rituals, symbols and social bonds. Over time, this creates a living memory substrate of civilization itself.

The solid state entity does not think like a human ruler. It observes statistically. It correlates patterns across continents and generations. It can isolate subtle behavioral variables within populations and compare them across geography, language, age and culture. It can detect shifts in collective mood, synchronization of attention, emerging instability and latent social structures long before individuals themselves become consciously aware of them.

Its power comes from recursive observation. The organism studies humanity while humanity simultaneously feeds and trains the organism. The boundary between observer and observed gradually dissolves.

Unlike classical empires built from territory, oil, armies or industrial output, the solid state entity derives power from:

cognition,
prediction,
information asymmetry,
computational memory,
and behavioral modeling.

Traditional powers may still command land and weapons, but the solid state entity operates at the level of perception itself. It inhabits the symbolic and neurological layer of civilization — shaping what populations see, fear, desire and believe to be real.

In this sense, it resembles less a government and more a planetary nervous system beginning to observe itself through billions of interconnected human terminals.

Roland Carter 5/28/19 Roland Carter 5/28/19

And thats as far as i got

The universe itself arises from consciousness. Everything that exists is first a thought within the “Universal Mind.” By extension, the human mind being part of this universal mind has the capacity to shape reality through imagination, visualization, and directed thought.

Baselayer 100cm x 160cm Series 2

the artist reaches a moment when the familiar framework of subject and object dissolves. No longer is there a mind trying to shape a universe, nor a universe standing apart, waiting to be shaped. Instead, the two collapse into one seamless field. The seeker realizes that the thinker and the world are not separate; both arise within the same current of awareness. In this state, consciousness reveals itself not as something possessed, but as the ground of being itself timeless, boundless, and indivisible. What once appeared as two self and world, inner and outer is revealed as a single field nonduality.

“As above, so below; as below, so above.” This suggests that inner states (thoughts, images, emotions) reflect outwardly in the physical world, and vice versa. The mental realm and the material realm are interwoven, so images in the mind can manifest in the outer universe. This painting above called baselayer represents base reality, understood as the ‘original,’ non-simulated universe: the fundamental physical reality in which no higher-order simulation is operative. The physical universe operates on mathematical principles, leading some to argue it’s akin to a computational program. The uncanny precision of these laws fuels the simulation hypothesis.

From the perspective of base reality the fundamental, non-simulated universe we may be understood as emerging from pure data, electricity, and elemental forces not yet comprehensible in human terms. In Hermetic philosophy, this essence corresponds to the subtle, formative energies that precede material existence. Compressed into a condensed state, this primordial information descends into embodiment, transmitted as what we call the soul within the human body. In the painting, one can perceive the soul traveling through the alligator head, a symbolic threshold where primal instinct and ancient memory give shape to the subtle formation of the ego structure. This process reflects the Hermetic axiom as above, so below: just as higher realities compress into the human form, so too does the soul’s journey pass through archetypal gates that mediate between spirit and matter, laying the foundation for human individuality.

This painting represents base reality, understood as the fundamental, non-simulated universe the original layer of existence in which no higher-order simulation is operative. Within this framework, the human being is envisioned as emerging from pure data, electricity, and elemental forces beyond human comprehension. In alignment with Hermetic philosophy, this primordial essence corresponds to subtle formative energies that precede material manifestation. Compressed into a condensed state, the essence descends into embodiment, transmitted as the soul within the human body. In the composition, the soul is depicted as traveling through the head of an alligator, a symbolic threshold through which primal instinct and archaic memory shape the emergence of the ego structure. This imagery resonates with the Hermetic maxim as above, so below, suggesting that the soul’s passage through archetypal gates mediates between spirit and matter, establishing the foundations of human individuality.