Library of Babel - Brody Neuenschwander
getting past the words
Words are wonderful when they serve as pointers. The problem is that we tend to ascribe ‘realness’ or ‘thingness’ to words, forgetting their sole function as symbols representing shared concepts. In order to get beyond the word it’s necessary to plant one’s feet firmly within its accepted meaning, and then explore what that meaning might be pointing towards. Art and awakening are two words that are hot potatoes for some reason, and without signing up for the task I seem to have had a default preoccupation with both concepts all my life. This little essay tries to express what I’ve learned, or rather what I’ve unlearned. I’ll begin with a couple of definitions:
art
putting things in their ‘right’ place, in order, in the spot where they sing with a rightness independent of one’s cultural conditioning; a cellular-level rightness which is somehow recognized by the body.
awakening
the irreversible apperception that no independent entity exists who could possibly awaken or become enlightened, or be other than whatever this is, here and now.
Art – art as that creative process of finding the ‘right’ place, rather than the art product – was a consuming passion for the first half of my life. Hey, I even married (and un-married) a guy called Art, and he’s as passionate about creating as I am! It’s likely that my later pre-occupation with the concept of ‘awakening’ was seeded in the magical experiences that occurred within the creative context, but its flowering would only happen later in life, when concerns with career paths faded.
health and creativity
During the decades spent teaching art and design and immersed in creative practice in my studio, it became obvious to me that overall health in human beings appears to be nurtured, fostered and sustained by enthusiasm and wonder, accompanied by the urge to move, to make.
Finding one’s health (wholeness), purpose, self-esteem and fulfillment seems to depend on these qualities, and artistic work – perhaps more than most other activities – offers a portal through which they may be accessed. Developing and refining artistic skills which cultivate and express these qualities would surely be the aim of a curriculum for art and design education in a holistic context.
Experiencing Life as a work of art is possible when the process of creating becomes a consciously-held intention, a matrix within which we refine our focus on the details of that which we desire to create. But these are merely fancy words until we come to understand who or what we truly are within the big picture – the macromatrix. That’s where awakening comes in.
loving what-is
Understanding and healing occur when there is acceptance and appreciation of the what-is of our Life. Love for our Life returns us to Wholeness. In that Wholeness we wake up from the myth that we were ever separate from the Wholeness – which brings a huge new understanding. We know that there cannot be, logically or rationally, anything apart from Wholeness, and consequently, that we cannot possibly exist as a separate, independent entity. We are that Wholeness. Enthusiasm and wonder arise spontaneously, and we are compelled to create and celebrate as they bathe our perception of the world and its “ten thousand things”.
free-will?
Our desire is the desire of Wholeness. Our creations are the creations of that Wholeness. Free-will is something we pretend to ‘have’. But since there’s no separate entity apart from Wholeness, the will that appears to be ‘ours’ and ‘free’ is in fact the will of the Wholeness. The will of Wholeness, or Creation, is energy – ubiquitous, amoral and impartial energy. It is ceaselessly moving and ceaselessly making. We say it moves according to ‘our’ thoughts. We say we must change, or focus ‘our’ thoughts in order to create what we wish. But what we come to understand is that the impulse which seems to be attributable to ‘me’ is (without permission or control) doing all the things we used to take credit or blame for! Impulse, intention, focus and application of ‘will power’ are all actions of the Wholeness that we are. And whatever is created via those actions is created by Wholeness.
art is a way
Will is happening, will cannot not happen so long as there are conscious emanations of Wholeness (called sentient beings) being Lived by that Wholeness. Life’s ex-pression of Wholeness is the only valid description of authentic art. We exist to express this Wholeness, and art is a Way. A way-less way, if you like – for the ultimate art is the realization that there is no artist and no way.
The activities that have always interested me most in the art room or studio are those that, rather than providing a pathway for the production of a certain kind of image, are simply explored as a mirror that reflects my assumptions, habits and notions about myself, about art, and about life. Because these are the only things that obscure the truth of one’s being. The approaches to that truth are as varied and numerous as there are participants in the playground. And the truly creative curriculum in the arts will be a resource of ways to explore the most remarkable, miraculous fact that can ever be known: the wonder of being alive and the recognition that one is no-thing other than that alive-ness.
Awakening is just precisely that.
awareness
Awareness in healthy humans is what allows the capacity for and sense of alive-ness. Alive-ness cannot be cultivated – it is surely there or not, and if it’s not, you won’t be reading this. Awareness likewise cannot be cultivated, since, try as we might, we cannot find it! Yet it is always present.
The presence of Awareness is only obscured by the noise of our notions and opinions about everything. Making things is a wonderful way of meeting these notions. Awareness itself then performs the remarkable deed of dissolving these hindrances, seemingly opening itself up to more sense of itself. Heightened awareness of all the worlds assumed to be real – both outwardly and in the hidden recesses of the mind – inevitably opens up new perspectives on life, and, if there is ripeness, awakening might ‘happen’.
Without a whisper of will, without a trace of trying, life awakens to itself and knows itself as naked Knowingness.
Without a name, belonging to no person,
with no history, no future, containing nothing,
without preferences, abhorring nothing, needing nothing,
being no-thing:
that no-thing from which all things arise
that
which lies beyond the words
~ miriam louisa simons
The inexpressible is the only thing worth expressing.
la madonna blu
Scaletta Uzzone, Piemonte, Italy
400 x 850
painting on silk, laminating,
collage, assemblage
silk Habotai, fishing net, shells
sand, sequins, fiber-reactive dyes
acrylic paint, gold metallic paint
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this is my way
to make visible, to voice
the unknowable mystery of creation
this womb of light and love -
this is my way
with color, texture, rhythm
small earth-spun miracles
and a devotional heart
this is my way
to say the unsayable
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Frederick Franck at the awakened eye
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Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.
There is no reason not to follow your heart.
~ Steve Jobs
From an address at Stanford University on June 12, 2005
G R A T I T U D E, S T E V E
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Memento mori is a Latin phrase translated as “Remember your mortality”, “Remember you must die”, or “Remember you will die”; literally, [In the future] remember to die, since “memento” is a future imperative of the 2nd person, and “mori” is a deponent infinitive. It names a genre of artistic creations that vary widely from one another, but which all share the same purpose: to remind people of their own mortality. The phrase has a tradition in art that dates back to antiquity.
(Source - wikipedia)
&
it is for that smile and for those tears that I work
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washi bowl
Kyoto, Japan
Japanese washi, silver threads, cardboard base
I find the fragile beauty of Japanese handmade washi irresistible and came home from Japan laden with sheets of all kinds. Actually it’s much sturdier than it appears. Not quite strong enough for bowl-making, however. How could it be stiffened, strengthened?
I decided to do some research and unearthed an old Chinese recipe used to stiffen silk for flower making. A few dozen experiments and many failures later I had devised a recipe that enabled me to make bowls using just one layer of washi. The diaphanous quality of the paper was preserved, and the bowls held their shape. Stitching sometimes appears, but seldom for construction purposes.
The bowls each have their own small base, and a storage box – just as do traditional tea ceremony bowls.
Why bowls? To spend time in Japan, to participate in the rituals of tea making, serving, and drinking, is to enter another entire mindscape. Coupling this with contemplation on the paradox of form and emptiness is a deep and profoundly awareness-enhancing practice. Bowls can be potent teachers.
~
Like religion, art offers an alternative value system; it asks us to see differently, think differently, challenging ourselves, and the way we live. Most importantly, art is a continual reminder that the money and celebrity scrabble of the modern world can be countered by the serious pleasure of doing something for its own sake. The old-fashioned word ‘love’ is appropriate here. Real writers, painters, musicians, do want they do because they love what they do. The money is secondary. We are often dazzled by the media circus surrounding the arts, but behind all that, going on as it ever did, is the intent and endeavour of the artist, an intent and endeavour that we share when we choose to read, or look at pictures or go to the theatre, and so on. The twenty-four emergency zone that we call real life saps our energies. Art renews those energies because it allows us an experience of active meditation. The energies of the artwork cross-current into us. It is a transfusion of a kind, and if this has religious overtones, it doesn’t matter. Nobody need be nervous about a connection between art and religion. All of life is connected and our deepest experiences, whether of faith or love or art will share similar qualities.
~ Jeanette Winterson
Source – http://www.jeanettewinterson.com
[My emphasis]
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offering to aizen-myoo
460 x 460
dip-dyeing, braiding, painting
stitching, assemblage
Japanese washi, indigo dye
cotton and gold threads, bamboo stick
cardboard box, found object
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Hiroyuki Shindo’s indigo vats are set into the ground in groups of four in the traditional manner, with a small hibachi at the center of each group to keep the earth warm in the freezing winter months.
[See song for Shindo-sensei]
The organic vats are fed with saki, rice bran and honey. Indigo dye-baths are similar to a yoghurt culture – they are alive and they must be fed. They are sensitive; kept happy they will produce a range of blues from soft turquoise to the deepest tones of a moonless night. Eventually they will become exhausted, the quality of hue they produce will deteriorate and they will die. Then the residue will go on the garden.
High up on the studio wall sits a little altar with a dip-dyed washi kimono and other offerings. I ask Shindo-sensei about this small shrine.
“The first dip in the fresh vats at New Year is always offered to Aizen-Myoo, the protector of the vats,” he explains. The small dip-dyed kimono was Shindo-sensei’s first dip for that year, and the other offerings of riceballs and saki are replaced daily. This very contemporary Japanese artisan takes no chances …
This is my small offering to Aizen-Myoo, tucked up in a wonderbox*. The washi was dyed in Shindo-sensei’s vat, and the background cloth is a fragment from a Kyoto market. A small prayer votive from a temple shrine hangs from the braided ‘obi’ like a small netsuke.
* My wonderboxes are little altars where the small and often overlooked miracles of life get to find a home. I’ve been making them for as long as I remember – the earliest ones were hidden inside shoe boxes and you had to peek through a tiny hole to view them.
song for Shindo-sensei
Kyoto, Japan
550 x 920
ai-zome (indigo) and shibori dyeing
hand-woven ramie, bamboo, cotton cord,
found object
Hiroyuki Shindo is internationally famous for the indescribable indigo hue he achieves from his fully organic vats. (So organic that when they are exhausted, he uses the residue to fertilize his organic veggie patch.)
During my sojourn in Japan on a Study Fellowship from the NZ Arts Council I joined him for a workshop at his home in Miyama, three hours from Kyoto, learning some of the idiosyncrasies of biodynamic ai-zome dyeing: feeding the smelly green vats with honey, rice bran and sake, offering prayers to the deities that watch over the vats, wallowing in wonder at the quality of the color that appeared on the cloth as the air reduced the dyestuff…
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The background of this piece is hand woven ramie, dip-dyed in one of Shindo-sensei’s vats. I worked a shibori border on the piece of cloth that would become the panel. The small red object is a silk-wrapped prayer votive from a temple shrine.
Ai can mean indigo blue or it can mean love. Watching Shindo-sensei at work and seeing the results of his patient labors, one has the sense that, in his life, the two meanings merge into one.
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Shindigo Space 07
Hiroyuki Shindo – aizome and shibori
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Shindo-sensei’s home in Miyama
image source
