“And when he drinks this drop both worlds are gone...” - Farid Attar, The Conference of the Birds

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A soul/Self must cleanse its heart and, paradoxically, shed faith in crossing the first valley of seven on its homeward journey toward union with the Divine. This trek, along the broad lines put forward in Baháʼí and Sufi literature, is a process deepening in time, and 'the steed of this Valley is patience.'

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A woman's tenuous figure is displaced and dissolved in and by the foliage, streams and crowds that have formed it, intimately framed on one screen in black-and-white, then framed wider on another screen with her partner, shifting to color then back again. This figure, this Self, wavers on the threshold of resolve, like the audible slivers of her stories that punctuate the space. A third and still wider screen comprises seven static 4-minute landscape shots of valleys, some rural, some pastoral, some sprawling with overpasses and close-pressed neighborhoods, skyscrapers. The three video channels, successively broadening out, each experienced singly, yet associatively linked by the soundscape within the contemplative installation space, become elastic nodes of time, experience and memory, soft stones nestled in interior space. Given enough time, the figure, the Self sinks into a submerged emotive baseline, a state of reflective and receptive expectation which is at once an end unto itself, extended outward in faith, and a cusp. On the other side of this empathetic state a choice beckons, to look even deeper, back down in the Valley, to willfully surrender.

A Self surrendered is sun-bleached driftwood, heaved and swayed in fits and starts, bathed in loss and splendor, time after time, frame after frame. Like dim traces of unsynced footsteps, the inward pace can at times outstrip reason or recognition—stories and events reduce in the collected silence beneath heartbeats, instances dilate at the threshold of cognizance. And in the midst of the ebb and flow, narratives are distilled and faith is shed, worn smooth; meaning is fossilized and fused below the banks, again, again. Streams, neighborhoods, valleys.

In the telling at the edge of surrender, again, there is an attempt to cleanse the heart, yet 'The steed of this Valley is patience.'

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In keeping with The Seven Valleys of the Baháʼí Faith, The Valley of Search will be succeeded by six additional projects, each with a distinct form and medium, each a single part of a larger whole: The Valley of Love, The Valley of Knowledge, The Valley of Unity, The Valley of Contentment, The Valley of Wonderment, and The Valley of True Poverty and Absolute Nothingness.