FLOWS OF ART & FEAR chapter from A River Of One's Own

There is a school of thought that there isn't anything external to fear anymore. The taboos are gone. Artists can do whatever they like. The world approves. This school of thought says you can put a frame around anything, even a frame around nothing, and it is art. In public, you can clown to your heart's content, and no one will blanch. People almost expect artists today to make fools of themselves. It wouldn't be artistic to do otherwise, would it? The more outlandish you are, and the more brazen courage displayed in your art products, the more mysterious you are considered by others. And with mystery comes a buzz, and every artist wants a buzz around their art. Artists desire to be talked about by the right people, whomever the right people are.

But I don't want to talk about that school of thought, in part because the emergent planet-centric consciousness, the clashes of cultures, shows that taboos do exist. Taboos may exist to be broken, but we still can't pretend they aren't there. What I want to talk about now is something else. I do not want to talk about the external world, and whatever concerns you might have of its obstacles. Instead, I want to talk about the kind of fear that is inside. I want to talk about our interiors. I want to talk about the visions, intuitions, voices, energies, traumas, personalities, and resonances that pop forth within our internal terrain. Even more, I want to talk about the relationship you can have with your internal energy. For it is not mere inspiration nor insight, but the intuitive relationship you have with both, that allows you to investigate it, to try to come to terms with it, to experiment with its outward expression and to fashion it into a piece of art as an completed artifact of internal phenomena, and ultimately to let it live in the perceptions of others.

So I want to explore with you the relationship that you can have with your creative interior. For the moment let's leave aside the external world, that world that may wants you to be a clown, a diva, a misunderstood genius, a moral creature, or a blazing star in the sky. That world is not going anywhere. Let's put it on pause for the moment, and look inside.

Inspiration, Insight, Intuition
So we are in our interior space. I have a question. As you experiment and create in your studio and workspace, as you live your life with moments of jazzed inspiration and insight into your endeavors or an idea, tell me—is there any reason not to listen to your this inner urge? Is there any reason to not to listen to your heart, your soul, your authentic self? Is there any reason not to reflect what you hear in your deepest ear? Is there a good reason to ignore your intuition?

I think that too often we think that to produce an honest transcription—a representation—of those voices, energies, and experiences is just too easy of a move to make. It almost seems like the obvious choice, too obvious to be of much value in our highly complex society, the kind of thing that probably occurs to pedestrian artists, those people who have "everyday thoughts", not the thoughts an artist is supposed to have. It can feel like to portray that which lies just behind our breath is, well, too easy. It is too immediate to be trusted, too right here. Too boring.

In truth, we all can be skeptical of clarity, afraid of simplicity, fearful of the straightforward. It may be simple on this end, but on the audience's end, it may be perceived far more complicated. We like our world to have ambiguities. Unambiguous inspiration, insight, and intuition on the creative end must be too commonplace, too beginner, and too bourgeois. Things have to be more complicated. Art production cannot be this easy, this right in front of me. It must be elsewhere.

So we come up with more intellectual solutions, or we come up with ways to produce art like others do, like we read about, or imagine it must be, because they must do it the 'right way', though what that is is a mystery. We try to figure something out. We think that avant garde art is made of a big new idea, a brilliant solution, or a flashy novelty. It just seems so ordinary to create according to the present pulse of our inspired heart. It seems so mundane and uninteresting to faithfully reflect what lives within our internal terrain, as echoes of our experiences as a person.

But is it? Is it mundane and uninteresting to produce art that follows your excited moments as a faithful reproduction of them? I for one don't think it is. To listen to your inner ear, your heart, your soul, and follow through on those intuitions, to be guided by them, and produce art made of that deeper call is most definitely not pedestrian. It is not commonplace. It is not obvious. To create at the cusp of your own pulse (with at least a semi-consciousness of that pulse) is the most avant-garde act you can perform, right now. No one else can create just as you can create in this moment. No one else has your ears, your heart, and your intoned voices. No one has had the particular experiences as you.

I am one to feel that those heart-urges are the most important voices to listen to. I am one to feel that those songs are the only ones that we, as artists, can really trust, day in and day out as we chop wood and carry water. If we can't follow to our heart, no matter how simple it pulses—tell me, what can we listen to? If we can't trust what feels like our next step, our next motion, our next movement, our next creation, then what can we trust? If we can't listen to the Muse, in its astonishing simplicity, its naked call, then what song is ours? If the feelings we have and carry with us, perhaps even from our early childhood, cannot be explored right now in our art, when can the emotions be explored? When is the right time if it is not now?

Two Rivers
Between you and me, here is what I think is an open secret. Every person on the planet who is alive has a river of their own. That means that you have a river, and I have a river. The waters' origin supplies everything, and all rivers come from a single source, more or less. At the mouths of the rivers, the waters eventually converge and recollect. But in between, all humans have a river of one's own. And each and ever river is unique, intimate, and mysteriously yours. It electrifies everything that you are, internally. And properly irrigated, it can electrify the entire world.

For a moment, let's think of my river, in whatever way you imagine it. Let me tell you about it. I grew up in this river. Me and the river are like the oldest of friends. It and my breath-force are absorbed in silent, near-invisible alchemy. It flows through me and I flow through it. It was here before I was born. It is a river of energy, thoughts, memories, love, plans, images, feelings, smells, karma, and everything discreet. Sometimes it rushes wild, and sometimes it is a lazy calm. There are plenty of adventures and plenty of ordinary days. My river is my life, in a subtle energetic unfolding, my own electric spark, flowing in all directions.

In truth there are times when I am so used to the river that it doesn't surprise me anymore. I take it for granted. This is natural. After all, this is the water I drink. This is the water I use to bathe. I know its taste and I know it can be dirty. I float down this river. It is so known by me that I don't feel like anyone would care to know about it. Why tell anyone? It seems so damn obvious. The river is right here. Can't you feel it? Can't you see where it flows? It doesn't matter anyway, so don't bother. If you can't, you don't have to see it or feel it, because you can trust me—it is no big deal.

But the real truth is that it is. It is a big deal. It is the only river I have. And yours is the only river you have. While all is made of sound water, the particular characteristics of your river give it is unique flavor. The really crazy thing is that the only way I can find out about your river is to watch you, talk to you, and absorb your artwork as its waves hit me over time. I know it through what you make, verbally, physically, psychologically, artistically. I know it only if you extend it into something of form. To really grok it, I have to lower expectations, suspend disbelief, and if I can, then your river intrigues like no other. You (or I) might take our river for granted, but 99% of everyone else does not, if you extend it into form in a satisfied way that feels complete, like a culmination. Why? Because, in that way, one person's tap water is another's exotic elixir. The grass is always greener on the other side because we think the water is sweeter over there, too.

And when you are transparent about your river, and honest about your representations of it, guess what happens. Your art tells a story, and the story thrills. There is so much of value, resonance, drama, paradox, clarity, delight, and rich granularity. It turns everyone's consciousness on, at all levels of being. We learn more about our own rivers as a direct result of your artistic gestures in form that you use to evoke yours. Your artwork, when honest to the river from where it came, reminds us what we had taken for granted about ours. It reminds bout how precious our rivers are, and the wonders of flow. The more particular you are in your art, the more universal our perception of what drives and electrifies us.

Fear
And what is the fear that you have? Well, contrary to what your head might tell you, the fear is not that your river is too small. Trust me, I know your head tells you "this is no good, and no one will care." That line is a variation on the lie your mind likes to produce. You misinterpret it as fear of a lack of recognition, and that people will look upon your art and think "oh, this is so small, I can forget about that."

But here is the truth that your mind sometimes won't let you believe. What you really fear is that your river will be too large. You fear its expanse. You fear where it might go if you let go of the reins, and release control. You fear it might really rock people, and rock yourself. You fear its turbulent, lurid flow. You fear too much truth, too much electricity will be washed ashore.

In your river might be one or two dams that you built, or dams that were built by others. When you fixate on your fears, and allow the fears to control you and your river, what you actually do is protect the integrity of the dams at the expense of the integrity of your art, and the river from where it flows. What you fear is not smallness, but the vibrant sexuality of artistic immensity. You fear that your river will rush everywhere. You fear a flood.

But listen. You might think what you have is a mere river. But just know that no one else does. For us—your river is a deep mystery. We don't take your river for granted. And if we don't, then why should you? Doesn't our perception of your mystery count for something? Don't you care that we want you to electrify us? Don't we connect the loop of the circuit that allows your electricity come alive? So don't take what drives you, what guides you, for granted. When you don't take it for granted, you are able to appreciate the mundane routine of artwork production as instead a miracle of spirited ritual, something that, somehow, stirs clarity and sharpened perception in others, and even yourself.

You can use whatever outward sheaths that you happen to use at the moment of object creation. Of course there are technical concerns, and skills in the craft of your discipline. But think about the freedom of choice you have, in the materials and metaphors you assemble; and think of the responsibility you have to faithfully represent your experience. Both are important perspectives. On the freedom side, you might choose a particular camera stock and street corner to evoke in art something that is of your river. You might choose a specific metal, or a combination of stone hazes. You might choose a haunted sonority, or an image that you feel a curious attraction towards. You might like a dramatic sequence, or a particular combination of raw ingredients. A strange combination of words might best represent your experience. Some materials might work better than others. You learn all this through trial and error, in tactile and pragmatic ways. And that is part of the fun—the puzzle of assembly, ordering, and tweaking so that there is an accord with the echoes of experience that you have undergone throughout your life. That's the responsibility side. And that's right—it can be, should be exciting and fun.

It is so simple that we think it is too simple. The mystical simplicity is this: Be true to your life, in what it is, in what passes and has passed through it. Be true to the places you have gone and wandered, in the little bits of mundane transcendence that you have found around the corners, bends, and offshoots. Be true to your moments of sheer absorption in whatever experience that juices and gooses your river, no exceptions. Be true to the water you drink, and the dirt you have washed off. When you assemble and produce your artwork, be true to the materials that really grab you, and provide you with meaning. These, too, are part of your river. Very little that is important to you isn't. Most times you do not have to explain your artistic choices, because your mere being, and mere representation in art is all the explanation required. And this is precisely because your river can flow to everyone else without you having to do much of anything except offer trust to its own native wisdom. For this is the same native wisdom that created you, created me, and created all of life as we know it.

The Flow of Artwork
And when you hit something that is especially electric, when that pop or hum sounds from your art (and it will, be patient), when one of your experiments in intuition forms as a whole piece of manifest spirit—oh the story that your art tells! We marvel at the expanse, the pregnant perspectives, that come from your humble bow to your source. From your art, the river flows in every direction at every speed. All of creation seems like a drop in the ocean. The infinite is in this moment. And the wonder takes the breath away. The boundaries between all of the rivers fall away, and we are all made of the ocean, or of watery breath.

It is your river that can do this. It is your working of experience that can provide this astonishing clarity of meaning. And it is your faithful depiction led by your simplest intuition that can astonish us in a way that is entirely yours. What a river you swim in! It is so exotic, so mysterious, so intoxicating. It is your river, and I want to swim in it.

And yes. It is the same river that you feel bored by. It is the same river that you have swam in, and know most every contour of. It is the same river that you can take for granted. It is the same river that has made you cough and gurgle when your head sinks too low. It is the same nasty river that you want to forget, leave, and pretend isn't there. It is the same river. It thrills me. It may seem like nothing. It is nothing. And so it is everything. It is the exotic and the mundane all in one current. You see it one way, the rest of us see it another way. And so one river is actually two rivers—the one you call "mine" and the one we see as "yours". Think about our perspective if you are bored by yours. Maybe that will lead to inspiration.

And then just swim and tell us a good story of the motion. Do as a river would. Slow but sure, rivers inevitably cut and massage indelible marks on this earth. Yours has already done this, for to do so is the simple nature of any river, and of water wherever it may flow. Can you recognize the imprints? Can you feel the contours? Can you feel how you have been cut, wounded, marked, shaped, formed? Can you produce something in form that evokes the wild and steady, pre-cut yet ever in flux? And can you see in your river what is you, originally? I tell you, in this world of ambiguity and overload, your simple sight of what is most clear to you would sure help us see what can be most clear to us. For as an artist, your eyes are our eyes, and we see and feel our world as your see and feel your river. So, swim my friend, swim. And when you come up for air—just give us a sense of how the water tastes, ok?

MD
Chicago, Illinois
February 2005

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