This is lovely and thought-provoking, Helen...I have been thinking and talking about this with self and artist friends...Do I hope for publications? Well, yes, but it is not my main concern. The pleasure of a publication - if it can give meaning to one or more others - is still transient. It is the work done seriously and with deep joy that gives meaning to my life.
A wise teacher once directed her students to cover over their lovely pieces of art with black paint. After more than a few minutes of mortification, I released my grip and splashed the black paint across the page. I noted that darkness falls on every day. The experience has stayed with me, and is similar to the monks sweeping away their colorful grains of sand.
Your comment about freeing others from searching for what does not exist, embracing the lack of permanence, makes me wonder if we would be served by uncoupling the idea of legacy from the joy of creating. Permanence can exist, but what price must we pay to pursue it? The price is too high if it sucks all the joy out of the creative practice.
I am often reminded that the most important part of art and life is the journey. Too often we focus on the destination and forget to savor what is in front of us. While making art, I am often in a flow state and feel most like myself.
An Alan Watts quote: "In music, one doesn't make the end of a composition the point of the composition. Same with dancing; you don't aim at a particular spot in the room. The whole point of dancing is the dance. It is fulfilled in each moment of its course. But we've got a system which gives a completely different impression.
A child is put into a grade system and you go to kindergarten. And that's a great thing because when you finish that you get into first grade. First grade leads to second grade and so on. Then you get out of grade school and you go to high school, and it's revving up—the thing is coming!—then you're going to go on to college, graduate school, and when you're through with graduate school you go out to join the world. And all the time the thing is coming. It's coming! it's coming! That great thing, the success you're working for.
Then, when you wake up one day—about 40 years old—you say, "My God, I've arrived! I'm there!" And you don't feel very different from what you always felt. And there's a slight let-down because you feel there's a hoax. And there was a hoax. A dreadful hoax. They made you miss everything by expectation.
We've simply cheated ourselves the whole way down the line. We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end and the thing was to get to that end. Success—or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you're dead.
But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing, or to dance, while the music was being played."
This is lovely and thought-provoking, Helen...I have been thinking and talking about this with self and artist friends...Do I hope for publications? Well, yes, but it is not my main concern. The pleasure of a publication - if it can give meaning to one or more others - is still transient. It is the work done seriously and with deep joy that gives meaning to my life.
A wise teacher once directed her students to cover over their lovely pieces of art with black paint. After more than a few minutes of mortification, I released my grip and splashed the black paint across the page. I noted that darkness falls on every day. The experience has stayed with me, and is similar to the monks sweeping away their colorful grains of sand.
Your comment about freeing others from searching for what does not exist, embracing the lack of permanence, makes me wonder if we would be served by uncoupling the idea of legacy from the joy of creating. Permanence can exist, but what price must we pay to pursue it? The price is too high if it sucks all the joy out of the creative practice.
I am often reminded that the most important part of art and life is the journey. Too often we focus on the destination and forget to savor what is in front of us. While making art, I am often in a flow state and feel most like myself.
An Alan Watts quote: "In music, one doesn't make the end of a composition the point of the composition. Same with dancing; you don't aim at a particular spot in the room. The whole point of dancing is the dance. It is fulfilled in each moment of its course. But we've got a system which gives a completely different impression.
A child is put into a grade system and you go to kindergarten. And that's a great thing because when you finish that you get into first grade. First grade leads to second grade and so on. Then you get out of grade school and you go to high school, and it's revving up—the thing is coming!—then you're going to go on to college, graduate school, and when you're through with graduate school you go out to join the world. And all the time the thing is coming. It's coming! it's coming! That great thing, the success you're working for.
Then, when you wake up one day—about 40 years old—you say, "My God, I've arrived! I'm there!" And you don't feel very different from what you always felt. And there's a slight let-down because you feel there's a hoax. And there was a hoax. A dreadful hoax. They made you miss everything by expectation.
We've simply cheated ourselves the whole way down the line. We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end and the thing was to get to that end. Success—or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you're dead.
But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing, or to dance, while the music was being played."
~ Alan Watts