Another sick day, another day of sickness. Something refreshingly healthy about just being sick.
Meanwhile, I’ve heard that the cold outside is bitter. But as I’ve been indoors for nearly two days, I can only believe (or not) what I hear. Or I can go out and feel for myself.
It’s the same for everything, for all of life. If I wasn’t sick in bed, I would be left with only the concept of being sick in bed.
Or as Giacometti said about art: If you copy what you are seeing, you are producing a concept; if you paint (or draw or sculpt) your experience of what you are seeing, then it is not a concept, it is ungraspable, it is alive.
In sickness and in health
About the Author: zenscribe
Enseignante Zen et poète, Sensei Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell est née et a grandi à Minneapolis, aux Etats-Unis. Arrivée en France en 1981 pour étudier la littérature et l’histoire, elle y est restée, s’installant à Paris, où elle élève ses deux enfants et gagne sa vie en tant que journaliste.
The Zen teacher and poet Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell Sensei was born and raised in Minneapolis, but came to France in 1981 to study literature and history and has lived in Paris ever since, raising her two children and making a living as a journalist.
funny how i allways want to talk about it.
i ask myself in my case: why not just practice?
I have too many words.
Longing. Grasping. Making solid.
No message is clearer then the one of each cell of our body.
I was told: when Chogyam Trungpa entered the hughe meditation hall – he filled it with enormous energy.
If you copy what you are seeing, you are producing a concept; if you paint (or draw or sculpt) your experience of what you are seeing, then it is not a concept, it is ungraspable, it is alive.
This is a complicated one.
A lot of mechanisms can be going on.
Becouse first of all most people don’t copy what they see – they copy what they recognise. They don’t look. They recognise (ofcourse concepts). So they make ofcourse concepts. The real problem is they don’t look.
But even at the abstract level one can copy formal gestalts or sub-gestalts (pre-conceptual entities.) Abstract but formal. At least there is looking with the eye.
But as St. Exupéry said:
"the essential is invisible to the eye, and only by the heart can you really see".
Another aspect.
"You are producing a concept"
And the word producing is very important. There is a difference between producing and creating. In producing you are worried about the result. In creating you don’t know what will come out of it. Becouse you are in the process yourself.
the word "experience" is rather vague. Can be a lot. Can be emotions. But emotions are most of the time also concepts. Not realy feelings. Not beyond.
when your expierence is beyond – as Giacometti found the ‘existential presence’. The work can be beyond.
There are a lot of different kind of artistic processes.
I think in a true artistic process there has to be complete surrender into something – to the field of the unknown.
And there has to be at the same time complete perception, distance.
When both of them come together there is no into – or distance anymore – they are one – beyond – things are alive.
Somehow i think we have to be more subtle then talk about some kind of artistic proces.
Look at Vermeer. Painting what he was seeing – without doubt. Not what he was recognising. But what a surrender into this process.. What a presence…
I think it is too easy to say this or that artistic process is right or wrong.
I think it is about both being there at the same time: being completely in/surrender – and completely distance at the same time.
in essence i guess one is painting the energy of the moment – en when there is presence: one will paint presence. One with whatever…the subject – the technique…
Life is only a concept away…
or mostly a lot of them –
But then: ‘all is life’ –
This is an argument for subtility.
when i saw the big expo of Giacometti in Paris – not all of the works had the same presence i think. Not to mention how important it is whit that kind of work how they are shown…
Hope you feel better already.