My Life as Art
“to be an artist in one’s life” could simply mean accepting to be ourselves, with all our flaws, and perhaps even turning those flaws into some kind of art.That certainly appealed to me, and offered a route for further exploration. Where else but in my own life? It’s all too easy to theorize and have opinions about others. Everyone does it. I must stop myself adding to the pile of pronouncements, and go easy on the distillations too. (I’m referring to a comment Ellie made on my last.) Most everyone seems to have an answer to everything. It’s a comfort to know I don’t need to. I can always go back to the personal, say how it is for me. I might be the only one to see it this way, or it may turn out to be universal. Either way, it’s worth a try. So I took this project on seriously and started to scribble a lot of personal stuff about my daily life, especially my flaws, current and historic. We were discussing “letting one’s guard down” too, in the last two posts. Was I prepared to do that? It feels uncomfortable, of course. One has to dress things up. The oyster feels the grit, resents the irritation, coats it with multiple layers of nacre. Pearls are the oyster’s way of “turning those flaws into some kind of art”.
At an early stage in my week of self-experimentation I succumbed to vainglory. I thought I was already the conscious artist, painting something-or-other on the canvas of my day. So my task was easy. I just had to report back on how it was done. I was hanging out clothes at the time, with blue sky above and birdsong in the air. Beyond the ivy-clad fence came excited cries and murmured conversations from the small children’s playground, in twenty languages. All I could heard was the lilt of their voices, even when they spoke in English. Children and parents were at the swings, while drinkers sat on the low wall, reminiscing about Poland perhaps, or Rumania. I looked at the lawn, my border of flowers, herbs and climbers: a work in progress, trial and error, evolving, like everything. I saw chimneypots, bright terracotta in the sun, there since 1901, when they used coal fires. All these are given things, found objects if you like. I was simply basking in the sense of having got my living “down to a fine art”, acquiring a competence in doing and seeing, honed through repetition; knowing what I can do, doing it better. Or in Beckett’s words:
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.The quest for “my life as art” remained an open one. Perhaps I could rummage through my own past, find inspiration there. I count as my biggest achievement the fact of coming from there and ending up here, being who I am today. Things have turned out well in the end. Was there. Am here.
And then there’s “The Art of Living”, a phrase with twenty million hits on Google. I can define it merely as something I never managed to grasp. I was blessed with a good education, but handicapped with scant nurture in childhood. So I’ve stumbled, clumsy and uncouth, with nothing but trial and error to guide my way, like a blind man in strange territory. Perhaps I have an inkling of it now, having become a recipient of Grace, where sufficient guidance is given when it’s needed, and as Simone Weil says:
Our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it. *And this is how my question, as to how my life could be art, was answered. A simple thought arrived unheralded, a thunderbolt out of a blue sky. You become an artist through doing. Not doing whatever you like, if you’re privileged enough to have that good fortune: but in unconditionally liking what you do.
And so, in the last few days, I’ve been prompting myself to practise that. It’s appealing, easy to practise. It has potency. This is how I paint my existence on the canvas of time, by fully engaging with my action. It’s been raising my consciousness to an unusual level of awareness. It’s been making me focus on my own doing, rather than the situation I find myself in. It’s been challenging my unreflective habits. Suppose I’m in a situation which provokes an emotion. I’ll do the thing that feels right, which satisfies my conscience, my sense of beauty & honour. The emotion is a messenger, not for me to wallow in the feeling of the message, like someone endlessly repeating the words in a telegram just received. Not an invitation to victimhood, but the opportunity to create a worthy action. And if I am cornered, with no place to go in face of this onslaught? There is always a choice. Even my thought is a form of action.
Perhaps what I’ve said is just a personal view, and those who learned the art of living as far back as they remember, unconsciously and without thought of naming it, will tell me I’m stating the obvious, welcome to the world, applause for the marathon runner who’s completed the course after nine hours. Others might say it’s all very well for people who have it easy like me. I’ll merely say that it’s neither a pronouncement nor a distillation, let alone a proposed remedy for the world’s ills. It’s my experiment, and I like it so far.
Or perhaps the concept—of deciding to like what you do, moment by moment—needs more description. For now, I’ll just say it sharpens the attention.
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* For Weil’s original words in French,see the new epigraph above.
12 Comments:
Well others may say what they want, but I like the youthful enthusiasm involved in even undertaking such an "experiment" in the first place. Just showing up, being ready and eager to go, that's what matters most of all.
As usual, I feel compelled to return and elaborate:
I say "youthful enthusiasm", because reading through this, I was reminded of when I was younger and I would go through periods of trying different things, being different ways. At some point I got older, I got tired, I got married. The person I was just kind of calcified into a comfortable, natural pattern of behavior. Easier. I do what I do and get through the day.
Now, on account of this, I could be like the hypothetical naysayers you propose towards the end and say that I "outgrew" that sort of thing, or I could say, "Geez, the kind of time some people have on their hands!" But I wouldn't say that because I don't think I've especially gained anything by giving that up. On the contrary, it's kind of inspiring, this eagerness to engage in experiments in living. It makes me feel young again too.
Yes, daily experiment, every experiment leads to another. The goal is unknown, the goal is not the point. Striped socks in sunlight! That's today's point.
"...So my task was easy. I just had to report back on how it was done. I was hanging out clothes at the time, with blue sky above and birdsong in the air. "
And here's a quote for you (for all of us), it's from Martha Graham, speaking to her friend Agnes De Mille:
"...There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open....:
^Good stuff right there.
As long as we're quoting things, I'm reminded of a song by Blackhawk called (I believe) "Just About Right" that seems relevant here. It's a cheesy country song, so you might not like it if you heard it, but I've always like the lyrics:
My old friend lives up in the mountains.
He flew up there to paint the world.
He says, even though interpretation's what I count on,
This little picture to me seems blurred.
Hard lines and the shadows come easy.
I see it all just as clear as a bell.
But I just can't seem to set my easel to please me.
I paint my Heaven, but it looks like Hell.
Chorus:
Your blue might be grey.
Your less might be more.
Your window to the world
Might be your own front door.
Your shinest day
Might come in the middle of the night.
That's just about right.
He says, I ain't coming down until my picture is perfect,
And all the wonder is gone from my eyes,
Down through my hands and onto the canvas.
Still like my vision, but still a surprise.
Real life, he says, is the hardest impression.
It's always moving so I let it come through.
That, my friend, I say, is the glory of true independence.
Just to do what you do, what you just gotta do.
Chorus
My old friend came down from the mountain.
Without even looking, he found a little truth.
He said, you can go through life with the greatest intentions.
But you do what you do, what you just gotta do.
Chorus.
I enjoyed my working life in research, and clearly remember my thoughts when I took early retirement. They were to the effect that the greatest experiment I can conduct, and perhaps the most useful, was the experiment on myself that - as all experiments do - teach me something new. Gradually over time I realised that all my life had been part of this experiment. What until that moment I had not done was to try to analyse the results, obey the injunction to try to "Know Thyself."
Until Natalie said as much, I have never seen my inner explorations as an art form. Yet now I see that she is correct, and I also sense that appeal. As is often the case with your posts, and in some way this reflects one of your answering comments to me in your previous post, what you say triggers an inner awareness response to which I am not always able to translate into words. So once again does this post ring inner, responding bells.
Yes, perhaps youthful enthusiasm is wasted on the young, or they bury it in a cloak of world-weary cynicism. But we, no longer spring chickens, may find that such enthusiasm is timeless.
And I do feel too that every experiment leads to another, like those old video games Bryan was dreaming about on his Encyclopaedia of Counted Sheep. When you manage to complete one level, you find yourself at the beginning of the next.
I didn’t know who Martha Graham was but discovered from Maria Popova’s “Brain Pickings” site that she was a dancer. I’d like to add a little more from that article:
“No artist is pleased.”
“But then there is no satisfaction?”
“No satisfaction whatever at any time,” she cried out passionately. “There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
If anything makes me argue and rebel, it’s this notion of “us and the others”. Not injustice and inequality, which are gigantic facts, but the idea of being better. Maybe that’s what drove me to write the post, to see if we can all be artists, at least in principle, without special skills & training.
And as for the Blackhawk song, I did feel it was just about right. Not at all cheesy. I listened to a live version on YouTube, Thanks, it was well worth mentioning. There is so much in the lyric, one feels it’s derived from the transcript of a real conversation with a painter in the mountains. Thoughtful and true: in terms of life-wisdom comparable to Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler”. I felt a kinship with those words in their literal sense, remembering my brief struggles with pastels ten years ago; but more generally too:
Real life, he says, is the hardest impression.
It’s always moving so I let it come through.
I’m so glad there was meaning in the post for you, Tom. (And by the way, I’ve especially enjoyed your accounts of Amsterdam. K & I went there three years ago, staying a bus-ride away in Volendam. I think I love Holland more than any country after England, even after discovering late in life that I had no Dutch relatives, just a surname.) Long may these inner responding bells mutually resonate!
Which brings us back to the topic of art. I find mystery in the fact that art rewards the artist by giving physical form to intangible feelings by some process of translation. We talk of something being lost in the translation, but something can be gained too. The audience gain from art according to the degree that they open to it, and let it come through. Which again echoes the Blackhawk song, Martha Graham, Simone Weil, & the things we’ve been saying. The phenomenon remains a mystery, don’t you think?
Well as for something "gained", there's another line in that song that I've always liked: "Still like my vision, but still a surprise." I can't speak for everyone, but for me that succinctly sums up the feeling that always keeps me coming back. A painter or a sculptor or a musician will have an idea in their head to start with, but if it were just a matter of transposing that idea into reality in whatever media they work in, it would just be routine and mechanical work. What really makes it a labor of love, so to speak, is that it will often become something MORE in the process of realizing and creating a piece of art. It will take shape in ways the artist hadn't planned on. The artist will find meaning and beauty in it that hadn't known would be there. In short, it will surprise them -- even sometimes in very very small ways. And I think that's the "high" -- you know, they talk about runners getting a "runner's high" -- I think that's like the catnip, the little buzz that gets you hooked.
A great deal has been said about artists being dissatisfied with their work, and there are mountains of truth to that. Nothing is ever going to come out perfect. But it's not the whole truth. If it was, if artists just felt miserable about everything they made, why would anyone stick with it? I tell you it's because we're all looking for that moment of surprise, and we keep chasing it.
By the way, I always feel a tad pretentious referring to myself as a writer, let alone as an "arteeeest." It's a little lofty for someone who keeps a dream journal. Still, I stand by what I said. I think there's far too much emphasis placed on how unhappy artists are with their work, and that can't be the whole story. Or at least it shouldn't be. If it is, if someone feels nothing but morose dissatisfaction with what they're doing, then they should probably give it up. What good is it doing them?
Yes, OK, we can say there is an artist and there’s an amateur. One depends on hype to stay in business, and there are many mouths to feed—the publishers & impresarios & hype creators as well as the receiver of the original vision who tries to keep his integrity amongst all the razzmatazz. We amateurs can stay true to the vision but few know of our work. And it doesn’t have to be a morose dissatisfaction. We can simply improve, and use that dissatisfaction to rework the old material. Everyone gains.
Cindy has pointed out that the Blackhawk version of that song is a cover. The original is by singer-songwriter Jeff Black, who comes from her part of the world, Missouri. His version is on YouTube as well. From his website I got the sleeve notes to an album of his called Folklore, and gleaned more of his philosophy, as in this quote:
I’ve been thinking about the kind of music that we dance to out of need, where vanity is absent. The kinds of songs that are sung out of need too, where the ego stands down. Where true pop culture begins before it is destroyed with the notions of fame and riches. When people dance for themselves, with each other in sync, in rounds, where they emulate the universe. . . . I believe this is a primal need. With no fear of failure and no audience to read, people play music through instinct. It is our work. It is a valid and valuable life’s work, whether anybody ever hears it or not.
How about that?
Ah, it's a cover song. That explains a lot. I'm going to have to look up this Jeff Black.
Thank you, Cindy. Wherever you are.
Cindy is sometimes too modest to appear. Our loss. I wanted to nod my agreement to your para starting "Well as for something gained" but you put it so well I had nothing to add. Which goes for a lot that's said in these parts.
Meanwhile, I’m planning a new post called something like “Art is Action: Action is Art”. Which will require a special definition of "action". Which will draw on certain texts, one poetic, simple & well-known; the other complex, philosophical & filling a whole book—it will require extreme condensation.
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