Image/Reality by Herreid
When I was younger, I used to open up picture books and try to climb inside. Back then, the separation between painted image and material form didn't seem insurmountable. I was always surprised (and somewhat disappointed) that I didn't easily slide into the book, à la A-ha's "Take On Me" music video. The way I interacted with the material world was the same way I approached an experience with things like picture books. Maybe this wasn't such a silly tendency after all: "they are painted in the same way, and they are examined in the same way" (445), "all buddhas are painted buddhas, and all painted buddhas are actual buddhas" (446).
"Know that a painted rice cake is your face after your parents were born, your face before your parents were born" (445). I liked how this passage collapsed the distinctions of past, present, and future. There is something else there, that can be understood but not measured (like the description of yin and yang on 448). In a painting something is actualized, although it was already previously present. This happens over and over again, from kids drawing their family using a box of Crayolas to the most polished self portrait.
To paint or draw something is to pay it attention, in a place where memory meets imagination. We draw our homes, what scares us, what inspires us. Sometimes it is to communicate, other times we do so without knowing wherefore. I used to love drawing, and would always carry around a sketchbook. I stopped after a time, because my drawings weren't "good enough." They didn't accurately capture what was around me, but maybe they did, especially before I started being so self-conscious about their quality. "If you say a painting is not real, then the myriad things are not real" (447).
I love this! Isn’t it sad that “not good enough” is the pervading message for so many of us. So many people live in that Buddha-field and what a field it could be if we were able to purify it of that sense of lack. Your drawings were a piece of you and I do hope you pick it up again if it’s something you love. Everything we love is worthy!
ReplyDeleteKurt Vonnegut said something like (I'm paraphrasing from memory): When young I was continually frustrated by learning new skills, like playing an instrument, and not getting very good at them. Then a friend of the family noticed me complaining about that and said to me, "The point of learning new things isn't to master them. The whole point is to explore them." My life changed.
DeleteThank you both for your comments. What a joy to explore things that we love!
DeleteYes, yes to these comments! When I moved to Santa Fe, leaving my career behind and charting a new course, I had a desire to buy an old truck and teach myself to drive stick shift. It was certainly some strange sense of equating proficiency with a machine with independence, confidence, perhaps even masculinity. I bought a truck I could not drive and began with the attempting. It took me awhile to get into first gear without either stalling out or lurching forward. I would feel so flustered; I knew I wasn't shifting and using the pedals correctly, but I also hadn't felt the rhythm of what it was to do it well. I stuck a sign in the back--"new stick shift driver thank you for your patience"--and tried to embrace the learning process. It prompted me to think that, as children, it is never a shameful thing to be a beginner. Mediocrity is ok, because you are learning. We wore knee pads or had training wheels or lowered the basketball hoop. I began to wonder at what point in life I began to associate mediocrity (while learning) with shame. I decided that I didn't want to live my life only doing things that I had figured out by my teens. I wanted to feel comfortable with my lack of mastery. (and now, I continue to get such satisfaction and pride from driving manual!)
DeleteI think something similar happens to us with respect to art. It seems to me that nearly every child is comfortable declaring themselves an artist, but at some point, they become self-conscious. They become aware of some standard of what "good" art entails and they perhaps fear the shame of endeavoring and creating but falling short of that standard. Who says your art needs to accurately capture what is around you? What's more, who is to judge *whether* your art "accurately" captures something. If it is vivid and rich and an expression of the artist, then that seems right to me.
I wonder whether our openness to a surmount-ability of the distinction, as you say, "between painted image and material form" is connected to the more expansive and open mind of a child that hasn't yet encountered the introduction of boundaries and definitions, standards, and the implicit "rules" around art and life or dream and waking.
I suspect the way you related to the world of images may be an integral element to a different orientation we might take to life. Perhaps we should distance ourselves a bit from some of the societal standards (the ones that made me ashamed of attempting or you critical of your art). Perhaps we should muddle the boundaries we've learned between the "real" and the "representation"