The Multifaceted Diamond
Over the years I've encountered numerous philosophies and ways of being in the world. I've tried them on like outfits. Some fit okay but weren't suitable for all occasions and had to be left behind. Others didn't fit at all and, in their metaphorical stitching, were shoddily made, had too many loose threads and too many hidden pockets. I can't deal with that sort of mess. Some have fit rather well - sexy when they need to be sexy, respectable when they need to be respectable, and secure, when they need to be secure. In essence, some have reflected deeper ways of being for me than others. Some have fit in far more circumstances than others.
One proverbial outfit that I have been drawn back to, time and again, is Buddhism. This isn't to say that I identify as "a Buddhist", just that it's approach and philosophy - it's way of looking at the world - has continually supported my growth and, at it's core, it's basic system of understand, has yet to have show any loose ends.
Relative Freedoms
As a kid growing up in the 80's there was this beast, interspersed between grammar school doldrums and the Transformers, that simmered half a world away and it was called Communism. It threatened to nuke us all if we didn't nuke it first. Ronald Reagan gave speeches. We hid under our desks or out in the halls to prepare for possible nuclear war. (Like that'd ever help....) This vague threat loomed in every movie we watched and every cartoon - always as some vaguely caricatured Russian or German speaking in terms of "Comrade" and wearing a hat with earflaps because we all knew it was cold in communist Russia and the Commies had to keep their ears warm.
Like a shot in the dark, in 1990,and just before we all sank into the national teen angst of grunge rock, there - plastered across our TV screens - the Berlin Wall, that one barrier between Us and Them, fell. Or, rather, it was knocked out with pick-axes and shovels and bare hands; the result of diplomacy, politics, and changing tides. From the comfort of my living room, at the age of 14, images of people celebrating a newfound sense of freedom flickered across the television screen. This was momentous for them and, for us, a new vague sense emerged: that something had changed and we were all a little more free and could breathe a bit more peacefully knowing that not so many nuclear warheads were trained on us. I'd grown up wanting my MTV just because that's what MTV told me I wanted. They grew up wanting their MTV because they couldn't even turn it on when their parents weren't home. They weren't allowed it at all. Now they could scream it out loud if they wanted to. Now they had the freedom to voice their opinions and excel at their dreams, should they choose to. With that freedom of choice, we have far more than we realize.
The Spectre of Self-Doubt
Self-Doubt is a mask worn over the mask of Self-Destruction that is worn, ultimately, by Fear. Self-doubt: I-don't-know-if-i'm-good-enough. It's a mask that says: maybe I should never have started. Self-doubt says: am i - is it - will it be ever be good enough? Do I actually suck and no one is telling me? Even when they congratulate me and pat me on the back? Even then? Will I ever make it? Am I ever good enough?
The Wright Brothers: for some reason or another they come to mind. Two guys trying to fly a plane - to lift this thing off the ground. I'm sure they heard more "You'll never make it" than "I believe in you." So they worked daily on believing in themselves. In the end, though, math doesn't lie and their math was, in the end, sound. So they succeeded.
The Magic Bus: Twist of Fate
This past summer I painted a bus. It wasn't just any bus... it was a pretty wild thing - still is. With a kicking sound system, velvet upholstery, embroidery, and multiple levels to it, it's got some character. I showed up without a plan - just a loose vision. I figured to allow the character of the bus and the project shine through. The bus is named "Twist of Fate" and there is still yet work to be done on it. It was at Burning Man this year and a few other events. It's mostly around San Diego, so you might run into it there if you happen to frequent that city. It is in honor of and homage to. It is a well-rounded creative vision. It's a trip, all right.
The Magic of the Flow
We were on our way to Black Rock City, that visionary oasis in the Nevada desert, riding in this bus that I'd painted over summer. Driving up the 395, forty miles north of Bishop, past the sierra peaks of Mt. Whitney and other big craggy mountains, the road starts to climb up over the pass. At some point the radiator over heated and a crack that had been fixed opened up and we pulled over to the side of the road. Waited a while and this grizzled looking repair guy shows up. He took a look at it and suggested we come to the camp where he lives where he said hed fix us up. We all looked at each othera, wondering what that might entail.
So we coasted back down the mountain and turned off the highway into the grassy expanse of the Owens Valley. We parked the bus next to a snaking river and had the whole range of the sierras as our view. Not such a bad detour, all things considered. The folks were suer excited about the bus- what a psychedelic wonder!
Conversation on a Train
Not too long ago I boarded a very crowded train on its way to San Diego and sat down next to a young woman of 20 or 21 or so. We started talking. She was on her way to meet with her church group and that they would be going to Haiti to help build houses. I had this mental picture of a continually revolving door through which an army of volunteer workers had passed over the past year. Better to build homes than hand out solar-powered bibles (yes... a group did that).
In any case, she asked what I did and I showed her some of my work. Inspired, she steered the conversation towards the obvious spiritual components of the paintings, asking me many pointed questions about my background, my intentions, etc. None of it came off as judgmental - just curious. She was very interested in what seemed to her to be an obvious connection with spirit while not proclaiming any religion system.
Kandinsky’s Pyramid
I'd like to share an excerpt from "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" by Wassily Kandinsky, published in 1914. I feelfound that his visual representation of the job of the artist, as he describes it, is particularly helpful when I try to understand my place in this world as an artist. Kandinsky, who might seem a bit antiquated today, was a visionary in his own right. As an artist, he methodically focused his internal lens to paint what came up in a semi-logical and abstract manner. As a writer and thinker, he was looking to understand just what it is that makes up art if it isn't to be a reproduction of the physical world or a regurgitation of spiritual/mythical symbolism.
I've heard people say: but his work is just lines, circles, and weird mish-mashes of color. Think of his work as the first few steps into (or out of) the lucid imagination. His work is part of those early tentative steps into the creative sub/unconscious - into the whole of the inner world. This was a new thing, a new experience, at the time- this painting what you feel instead of what you see, think, or believe. Those first tentative muddlings that grew into precise diagrammatic explorations with a host of attendant essays and diagrams helped to lay the ground work for the hosts of art movements and internal explorations that came after, giving free reign (as we do now) to our collective human creative explorations.
Mansions of the House
I've got to step up inside myself and stand there at my door sometimes; you know, not hang out deeper inside the mansions of my mind, thinking someone might find me back there, painting or daydreaming, biding my time, enjoying the view. Sometimes I've got to step up and be the doorman. Welcome! Welcome I say, politely, but with gusto, not over bearing but with just the right amount of exuberance tempered by tactfulness as a good host must be.
There is often, I think, a great hesitancy of inviting people in like that: what might they find there? How well do I, myself, the supposed master of my house, know this mansion? Did I leave the doors unlocked? Are there any demons hiding under a bed or behind a door with sheets over their heads? How might it show it's face? In what glance or gaze or quirk of speech or passing phrase might it be evident in the course of the conversation between you and I?
Unmasking: The Deeper We Dig, The Higher We Rise
Effulgent bubbling up love comes up and over like a pot come to a boil or a fire bent on over flowing or even just a long slow simmering of flavors and meditations. Mind wide open and alive and sparks from fires and flames all lapping and licking at my feet, my heart, and my hands pushing me inwards, upwards, and onwards.
The deeper we dig, the higher we rise. Digging and finding, searching and wondering, wandering outwards and into the investigation. Find a mask and unmask the mystery til we reach the next layer of interwoven illusions to uncover. Every time a mask is discarded our load gets a bit lighter and, through the course of some lesson, we find a touch more love, an ounce more compassion, a modicum of wisdom to add to the puzzle that continues to spell out what we always find we already knew - that mind loves a riddle to unravel.
The Beautiful Juxtapositioning
A number of excursions recently to downtown LA - a place of a thousand flavors- it's dirt and it's grime, it's old art deco buildings and the motifs that sometimes get lost amongst the construction, the plywood, playbills and graffiti. Here, in this foyer, a ceiling of mosque-like moulding leading to pricey lofts extolling the virtues of the thriving Downtown LA art scene. There a bit of an art deco sidewalk, half of it left, beneath a layer of old bubblegum, ten billion foot prints and car soot still shines tiles of red and gold and white and blue, partitioned off by golden brass fronting against a store selling stereos, karaoke machines, congos and trumpets. The neon signs and blitz and bling reflect on the 20's style lines underfoot. Around the corner you see a curving arch overhead, twisting and twining with intricate grandeur, welcoming you into the marketplace of a dozen shops selling nintendo knock offs, hair extensions and piñatas. Delicate corners and cornices drop down to boarded up windows, the smell of urine and mexican grocers, sewing machine repairs, and parking garages, art galleries, sushi restaurants and a 50's style diner replete with jukebox and checkerboard tiling. This is the old town of Downtown LA - the part that came before the sleek glass and steel and polished granite high rises exuding modernity and shunning this dirtied rough and tumble corner that moves into the fabric and fashion districts, lying in the shadow of the business centers. The corner where, with a bit of dusting off, one might find architectural treasures, if only one knows how to look.
Juxtapose all of that with the rocky coastlines of Sonoma and it's an intense contrast. There - there is no 'modern' vs 'rough and tumble' - no new cliffs that transition to mexican grocers and burrito shops and the odd stylie sushi bar. There - the cliffs are the cliffs. There is no difference from the top to the bottom other than the smoothness of the lines - how much one section has been smacked and sculpted by the crashing waves more than another. The waves come churning in - wham! bam! ka-boom! Into little inlets that drop down between the rocks and then up! - up along the sides of great jutting corners - no angels or gargoyles upon those corners, no sculpted fleur-de-lis. Just raw rock, at times sharp and craggy, at other times stippled - pock marked like sand after a hard rain and then dried to a hardened shell. Along these lines, echoing the rhythms of sea, wind, and storms, we might cast anthorpomorphized suggestions of a face or the reminiscences of a body, a hand, a heavenly choir. All of it left to the imagination of one or another and the ground left to the cast offs of the ocean- kelp and other types of seaweed, smoothed by the sea driftwood, the elbow of a lobster, red and dry in the sun, or the body of a crab, brittle and speckled in delicate patterns, waiting to be divided up and cast back to the sea.