Mind the gap

How can we best arrange all the creative possibilities in our lives?

I spent last week in a meditation retreat centre which was full of art. I had entered the five days of silence fully prepared to encounter the hindrance of boredom. The unexpected galleries prevented that. Not particularly because of the pieces themselves but because of the bewildering way in which they were hung. Other participants were sitting in the dining room mindfully appreciating their roasted cauliflower florets while I was staring at the wall arrangement desperately seeking insight. 

I would like to describe it as salon-style hanging, but that is all about using a close juxtaposition of varied pieces to achieve a unified result. Here it was more about disunity. Pieces hung at unrelated heights, with random gaps and often at distinct angles. at times they were crammed together with no room to breathe or placed on walls in narrow corridors with no space to stand back and reflect on them.

In one corridor a long single row of framed pieces had one eight-inch canvas hung randomly (and wonkily) far above like an errant inverted comma. A virulently colourful still life hung partially overlapping a light switch plate. In the chapel, a soulful diptych of two Madonna and child line drawings hung under a two-armed wall sconce. One was directly under the left-hand light while the second mother figure appeared to be sneaking off in search of respite care (or possibly, given she faced the altar, a shot of communion wine), only a third of her remaining underneath the right-hand beam.  But the biscuit was taken by the poor quality reproduction of a Seurat painting in my own bedroom. There was a fifteen-foot wall which ended with the en-suite door. The canvas was inexplicably hung an inch from the door frame with its top two inches above the lintel. 

I can only assume the hanging method was some sort of reverse supermarket sweep in which blindfolded competitors were given a trolley full of artworks and had a limited amount of time to throw them up on walls. And that the winner was rather tall. (I can’t help but think of John Cleese.) 

I considered coming down in the night with a shoe for a hammer and sorting it all out. But then we were introduced to a mediation practice described as ‘noticing the gaps’ and I was hobbled by the sheer irony of it. We each had the opportunity to break the silence in a one-to-one session with the Rabbi who was one of the mediation teachers. She ushered me to a seat and said “We can just sit together a while or you can ask a question if there is anything burning in your heart”. I considered gesticulating at the painting of a highland cow hung so its hairy fringe was at human eye level but its hooves disappeared down the back of the piano and wailing, “But why? Why would anyone do this? Is there not enough existential suffering in the world without this?” 

But then I remembered she obtained her semicha (ordination) via the Reconstructionist movement and wondered if this alternative gallery formation might actually suit her. 

Of course I no doubt brought this angst and tension down on myself. And not only because in my last essay, I earnestly declared it my kavannah (intention ) to explore the relationship between space and creativity. ( Hear the Universe titter.) It was also because, as mindfulness teacher Jon Kabbat-Zinn titled his book, ‘Wherever you go there you are.’

I went and so there in the room with me was the question I already had been carting around: How do you make appropriate arrangements in a creative life for All The Things? The writing, the reading, the painting, the printing, the drawing, the research, the teaching, the coaching, the self-care, the artist’s dates, the marketing, the reflective practice, the community building, the exhibiting, the podcasts, the workshops, the development of personal work, the endless profusion of new possibilities? 

Certainly, you can chuck them all into life any which way.  (Chuck stuff at the wall and see what sticks, if you like.) But it’s not going to be pretty. It’s not going to feel unified or restful. If chaos and randomness are your thing, if they mirror your brain or provide necessary and wholesome energy then you don’t have a problem. If like me you want to stalk the dark halls at midnight with a spirit level in hand then perhaps you need a different approach. 

The words that I returned to over and over was measured. I recalled hanging my gallery shows and carefully measuring the spaces between the art to let it show to best advantage. Generosity was the name of the game then, with an absolute minimum of one-third of the piece’s width left to the side of it ideally a half or even more.

Yet in life, we so often measure the activity first. Is it going to be profitable? Good value for money? Fun? Educational? Will it boost my follower numbers? Does it come recommended? Will it take me in a new direction? Or help me deepen and existing practice? All kinds of questions aimed at justifying adding an activity to our lives. Good questions for sure. But alone all they do is decide what we are allowing into the supermarket trolley of options. They do nothing to help us decide if wholesome and good though the options are, we can fit them well into our lives.

What if we measured our space first? What if at the start of each year, month, week, day, hour even, we marked off the time that was for breathing, resting, and reflecting? And then we worked out what fit between those times. What if the gap was where the activity went and not the meagre time that was left over when all possibilities for doing things were exhausted? What if we extended the concepts of Shabbat and Sabbaticals to the whole of our time organisation?

I suspect the result is that we would not have as much on the metaphorical walls of our lives. What we did have, however, would hang well, having been carefully placed in precious time slots. We would not be as confused and discombobulated by the nudging together of so many different activities each elbowing for space and knocking each other out of alignment. We would be healthy, and have time for attention and awareness, reflection rest and recuperation. The clarity we often cry out for would be present. We would experience respite from the dissatisfaction that comes from having bounty but a scarcity of opportunity to savour it. We would actually make choices.

I wonder. What if the final missing question with which we interrogated possible creative endeavours was simply: Will it fit in the space between my rest?

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For you to ponder:

How do you curate the content of your life?

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From the studio:

Before I went on this retreat I was already playing with ways to depict the feeling of space I had experienced when walking Cornish beaches at the ends of the days. We were there out of main season and often I had the expanse of sand to myself with the open sea at my feet. Coming back into the studio with lots of clutter of tubs and pots and tools I began to ask myself, how far can I go to remove my signature graffiti marks and textural/ gestural marks before the art doesn’t feel like me any more? Can I paint the sensation of space? Like the life curation, it’s an ongoing project.

Untitled sample piece. 12 x 12 inches. Acrylic on board.

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Finally, a blessing:

May you have room in your morning to twirl, hands outstretched at the delight of life. May you have room in your afternoon to lie on the grass and dream. May there be a place in your evening for love and company and in your night dreams for the unspoken communion with spirit. May your hours never run away from you and may the good memories of years gone by always return to you. May your life be filled with space.

Shalom.

Helen.