Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. ~ Carl Jung
Learning & Creative Process
Below the words, something real wants to be expressed.
I just saw the movie, Meetings with Remarkable Men, a film based on a book written by the Greek-Armenian mystic, G.I. Gurdjieff (1866-1949). The book and film are about meetings that Gurdjieff had when he was younger with several “remarkable” men.
At one point in the movie, Gurdjieff is in a monastery. The head monk says that every month, two preachers come through the monastery, Brother Seth and Brother Al. Brother Seth, says the monk, “gives eloquent speech that sounds like beautiful birds singing in Paradise.” Brother Al, he says, is the just the opposite. Brother Al speaks badly, almost indistinctly. The monk says, “The stronger the impression made by Brother Seth, the quicker it evaporates until there’s nothing left. Brother Al makes almost no impression, but what he says penetrates into the heart and remains there.” The monk continues, “We all came to the conclusion that the sermons of Brother Seth came entirely from his mind, and acted only on our minds. Whereas those of Brother Al came directly from his Being, and acted on our Being.”
As someone who teaches, this is the kind of wisdom I want to remember. To speak from my Being and not worry about how eloquent I sound. Below the delivery, there’s something real below that wants to be expressed.
P.S. My book on teaching, Getting Messy, will be available soon!
Without darkness, nothing is born
Help us to be always hopeful gardeners of the spirit
Who know that without darkness
Nothing comes to birth
As without light nothing flowers.
-May Sarton
Robert Henri’s “Art Spirit” Part Two
There are so many bits of wisdom in Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit that it’s hard to know what to share. (I have “wow” and “cool” and “neat” written in red letters in the margins of just about every page…) But perhaps this is the most important thing–Robert Henri talks about creating art as the one “true happiness” in life. “A man must become expressive before he can be happy,” he writes (the italics are mine.) Henri stresses, again and again, that we are all artists, or at least, we all have that capacity. The urge to create is innate. We all have the capacity to experience, to see, to feel, to care. Making art is about caring, he says.
It seems that we get hung about art and “who” is an artist. (Maybe this started in high school, when we were either assigned to the “science track” or the “art track.” Some silly bureaucratic proceduralism occurred, and we were subsequently scarred for life.) It doesn’t have to be painting, sculpture, or music–anything can be a form of art if we are expressing something that’s unique and meaningful to us. There are many forms of expression in life. For me, teaching is a form of expression. It’s about being open to the world, noticing what I love, and expressing that love through teaching (in whatever form best suits the material.) As in any art form, the particular technique is secondary to the expression.
Henri defines artistic expression broadly, as a “giving back” to the world. Letting something speak to you, and sharing your expression of that thing with others. It’s not about the product, it’s about being in that space of open sensitivity that makes art inevitable. It’s like we have to create because we’re so moved by whatever we’ve seen. Have you noticed that? When you’re open to the world and beauty is streaming in all around you, the poem, the drawing, the music, happen spontaneously? We’re moved by the wonder of it all.
So on a closing note, I have to share my current favorite muse–mountain biking in China Camp State Park. I’ve never been a mountain biker, but this park has made me one. The terrain is rugged, beautiful, and inspiring. May you all be fully plugged in to your muses today.
Ahh, nothing like an exquisite dish
I’m a huge fan of Top Chef, the reality tv show where gifted chefs from across the country compete with each other in elimination challenges. The show has hooked me into cooking as an art form. (I think I like the titles of the dishes almost as much as the visual…)
Watching Top Chef has led me to search for more cooking links on the internet, which eventually led me to a youtube video of Thomas Keller, an award-winning, world-renowned American chef. Here’s what Thomas had to say about the art of cooking:
The key to inspiration is awareness, awareness of the world around you. Anything can inspire you, whether it’s a piece of fruit in the garden, a purple box of tapioca in the grocery store, or a flower outside. Once you have that, then you have to interpret the inspiration. Interpreting it in a way that’s meaningful for you and what you do. And then it’s evolution, because dishes always evolve. So there are four key elements: awareness, inspiration, interpretation, and evolution.
Yum.