Alexandersmap

    Category: Art

    • The Question of Questions

      Over the weekend I had the opportunity to visit both the Getty Center with its impressive collection and the Getty Villa, with its focus on the ancient arts. I could write a year’s worth of blog posts about the combined collected works we viewed there. Alas, we know how these things go. I’ve got hundreds of pictures and notes from similar encounters that have yet to be realized in creative output by this humble blogger. Every day something new may grab hold of us and demand our focus, leaving old ideas and stories to drift away, to be grabbed by someone else someday.

      We dance with the muse when we are blessed with its attention, whatever the topic may be. At the Getty Villa I came face-to-face with the muse, in the form of a Roman fresco from between 1 and 79 A.D. It’s been whispering to me ever since we met. I’m sharing a picture of the fresco here, that you may decide for yourself whether its power transcends plaster and pigment through bits and bytes.

      The thing is, I know only that I still have work to do beyond the blog. If we don’t listen to the muse it finds someone else. We must be deserving of its attention. My encounter with the muse was a reminder that there’s still work to be done. To answer the question of questions: Tempus fugit (time flies). So what have you done with it?

      Fresco with a Muse, displayed at the Getty Villa Museum

    • A Visit to the Getty Center’s Gardens

      “Always changing, never twice the same,” — Robert Irwin

      A day at the Getty must include a visit to the extensive collections exhibited in the museum buildings. Included in the collection are famous works like Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises” and Rembrandt’s self-portrait “Rembrandt Laughing“, along with significant works by Cézanne, Monet, Claudel and many more. One needs a full day at the Getty to see everything, and even then you feel compelled to return again as soon as possible.

      The gardens at the Getty Center are equally impressive and a must-see destination of their own. Robert Irwin’s Central Garden is a marvel in any season, and as with any magnificent garden, he practically demands that you see it in every season. In all honesty, I’d been wanting to see the museum for some time, but it was the gardens that really called to me. They don’t disappoint.

      Robert Irwin’s Central Garden is the star, with a stunning water feature, iron rod tree sculptures with bougainvillea rising through them, and an ever-changing flower-lined meandering path that leads you down to a central pond. It’s simply a must-see. Not to be undone, the Cactus Garden reaches out towards Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean in a dramatic balcony seen from different levels. Other gardens fill the Getty as well: sculpture gardens, fountains and large rock gardens make wandering outside the museum as desirable as your time spent indoors.

      For me personally, it was time with my daughter in a magical place. She shares my love of art and the artistic process, and is pursuing her own dream to have a creative, expressive career. To share the Getty experience with her made the moment. For we too are always changing and never the same twice. And isn’t that also quite beautiful?

    • To Follow the Call

      “When one thinks of some reason for not going or has fear and remains in society because it’s safe, the results are radically different from what happens when one follows the call. If you refuse to go, then you are someone else’s servant. When this refusal of the call happens, there is a kind of drying up, a sense of life lost. Everything in you knows that a required adventure has been refused. Anxieties build up. What you have refused to experience in a positive way, you will experience in a negative way…
      Your adventure has to be coming right out of your own interior. If you are ready for it, then doors will open where there were no doors before, and where there would not be doors for anyone else. And you must have courage. It’s the call to adventure, which means there is no security, no rules.” ― Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

      We have people in our lives who would read that passage from Joseph Campbell and shudder at the very idea of answering the call. They’ll throw all kinds of logic at you about why this is not a good idea at all, not nearly as good an idea as staying the course and following through on the path chosen for us. It’s an attractive rut to stay in place, doing what is expected of us, with a promise of retirement and a few healthy years before we die. It’s a Siren’s song that has lured many a soul to the rocks.

      Thoreau said something unnervingly similar, didn’t he, when he observed that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”? We may either look inward and refute the observation or find it rings true, but we may never be fully the same having seen the truth within us. Still, every day is a new opportunity to step into who we really are. Every day we may follow the call or go on killing the dream. We must choose wisely which voice we follow, remembering that the rocks are closer than we might believe.

      Alone on a midnight passage
      I can count the falling stars
      While the Southern Cross and the satellites
      They remind me of where we are
      Spinning around in circles
      Living it day to day
      And still 24 hours may be 60 good years
      It’s really not that long a stay
      Jimmy Buffett, Cowboy in the Jungle

      Joseph Campbell is very much in the “follow your bliss” camp. He’s largely the originator of the term. There are many who mock this following your bliss strategy as impractical at best and self-deceptive folly at worst. The question is, if we may have our 60 good years doing something we absolutely love—that calls to us—or if we will forever shelve that for what the world wants of us. What will it be, for you and me?

      Perhaps the answer is to follow our call, instead of bliss. Sure, it’s the same thing, but the optics are better for the person who knows what they want and seizes the moment attempting to achieve it. What is the difference between a start-up entrepreneur in the garage and a poet writing in a cabin in the woods? The former have better marketing budgets. We glamorize the chase for a personal fortune but mock the chase for personal enlightenment.

      Whatever our path is, whatever our call, we ought to feel the urgency to follow it immediately. For the rocks are getting closer and there’s no time to waste. Decide what to be and go be it.

    • To Give Light

      “What are we here for if not to enjoy life eternal, solve what problems we can, give light, peace and joy to our fellow-man, and leave this dear fucked-up planet a little healthier than when we were born.
      Who knows what other planets we will be visiting and what new wonders there will unfold? We certainly live more than once. Do we ever die—that is the question. In any case, thank God we are alive and of the stars—into all eternity. Amen!” — Henry Miller

      The thing about stars that may interest only me is that they give light to the eternal darkness of the universe for however long they exist. They aren’t relying on other stars for their energy—perhaps a little gravitation pull now and then, perhaps a bit of orbital spin, but their energy is all their own. Stars shine light into the vacuum of space with no expectation that anyone will receive it someday. That’s of no concern to the star—all their energy is put into giving light while they dance in their orbit to infinity and beyond.

      And here we are, stardust ourselves, receiving that light and mixing it with our own. We too are here to shine; we mustn’t ever worry where our own light goes, just that we give it freely to the universe in our time. The question is never whether to give light, but what our light should be. Perhaps, as Miller suggests, the answer is simply to enjoy this life eternal in our time and solve more problems than we create. Maybe it’s enough for us to put positive energy into the universe that illuminates others in their darkness, that they too might shine.

      Sometimes I wonder if I’m spinning in the right orbit or perhaps even burning out. There are days when I don’t want to do much of anything but find when I stop focusing on the void and begin the process something worthwhile eventually arrives to greet me. Something like the little note to himself Miller wrote in 1918 find their way to me and now to you, to serve as a reminder: Who are we to keep the light to ourselves?

    • To Live Creatively

      “Many times, in writing I have looked over my own shoulder from beyond the grave, more alive to the reactions of those to come than to those of my contemporaries. A good part of my life has, in a way, been lived in the future. With regard to all that vitally concerns me I am really a dead man, alive only to a very few who, like myself, could not wait for the world to catch up with them. I do not say this out of pride or vanity, but with the humility not untouched with sadness. Sadness is perhaps hardly the right word either, since I neither regret the course I have followed nor desire things to be any different than they are. I know now what the world is like and knowing I accept it, both the good and the evil. To live creatively, I have discovered, means to live more and more unselfishly, to live more and more into the world, identifying oneself with it and thus influencing it at the core, so to speak. Art, like religion, it now seems to me, is only a preparation, an initiation into the way of life. The goal is liberation, freedom, which means assuming greater responsibility. To continue writing beyond the point of self-realization seems futile and arresting. The mastery of any form of expression should lead inevitably to the final expression—mastery of life. In this realm one is absolutely alone, face to face with the very elements of creation. It is an experiment whose outcome nobody can predict.” — Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi

      Another long quote to start this blog, and surely the SEO needs improvement. So be it. I might have doubled the length for all Henry Miller had to say. In fact, stop reading my blog altogether and go pick up the book. We are the people he had in mind when he wrote these words. Can’t you see him looking over his shoulder at us? If Miller was looking to the future with hopefulness that the world would catch up to his way of thinking, well, he may have been sorely disappointed. We all shake our heads at the madness in the world, and the inclination to dumb it all down for the benefit of the power brokers with all the fancy toys. Some things never change.

      To tag along with Miller as he wanders around Greece on the cusp of World War II is fascinating for the historian in me, for we know how the story ends but not always how the world felt about it as things were playing out. Miller found his soul in Greece just before things got truly crazy. What of us?

      Some of us write to reach self-realization and rarely go beyond it to reach for mastery. I talk a good game myself, but my default is to quiet quit on mastery. It takes a level of discipline I’ve learned I don’t want to grind out of myself to be a master craftsman at anything. I can see it in the pursuits I’ve started and let die out. If the price is to exclude everything else to reach mastery, I’ve come to realize that I won’t pay that price. There are precious few who keep going, which is why there are so very few masters of any craft.

      But there’s hope. If the goal of life is Arete and reaching personal excellence, then the journey never truly ends. Perhaps writing for self-realization is part of the journey that eventually we break through to reach for something more. The only certainty is that the creative journey continues, and so long as the blog posts reach you, you’ll know that I’m still pushing through what Steven Pressfield called the Resistance to find out what’s on the other side.

      There’s a reckoning coming. When we keep pushing ahead it’s inevitable that we’ll face more and more resistance. For us to keep going with the work that calls to us is audacious, and some might say self-serving. This too is recognized as resistance. There comes a point in our lives where we tell our quiet-quitting self that the work means more now. We may still end this trivial pursuit and go on to some other distraction. Just not today.

    • More Movingly Visible

      “What are the needs and impulses that make a man spend years of preparation, and then months of labor, to produce a work of art? Presumably because he wishes to express himself, his ideas, and his moods; because he longs for distinction and reward; because he has a keener sense of beauty than most of us; because he aspires to combine the partial beauties and veiled meanings of actual but transitory forms in a vision of clearer significance or more lasting loveliness. Usually he sees more than we see, in fuller intensity or detail; he wishes to remove some of these perceived aspects in order to leave the essence and import of the scene more movingly visible to our eyes and souls.” — Will Durant, Fallen Leaves

      Empathy is a conditioned response. We are empathic when we live and struggle, find our way around obstacles or alternatively, find no way around it and find some other way to live, knowing deep down that that other way was closed to us. Those “not for you’s” burn inside as a driving force or a ready excuse for other behavior. If we’re lucky, we find a person who encountered a similar obstacle in their life and made something of themselves anyway. The world is full of examples of people who rose to greatness and also those who spiraled into darkness. Empathy is seeing ourselves somewhere in each.

      The artist learns to see through similar conditioning. Art is a daily struggle to express ourselves in a world that wants us to shut up and fall in line. It takes courage to put oneself out there under such circumstances, but the art takes on a life of its own. The very best artists turn the lens over to us to see what they saw, and maybe something more. Art, like music and prose, is digested and interpreted by the audience. We work through some things, run into our own share of “not for you’s” and produce some time stamp of the person we were at the time. Some work resonates, some falls flat, but the work continues for as long as we choose to dance with the universe.

      Writing, like my amateur photography, helps me to see. Each attempt expands my idea of what’s possible, and I lean into it a bit further with each session. I’ve read books I’d never have read otherwise in my pursuit of more, taken side trips that I might never have considered, and most essentially, turned my gaze outward. We all have an internal dialog happening within us, the artist trains themselves to open that dialog to the universe and expand the conversation. The art is thus a transcript of the moment, a scene made more movingly visible for others to see.

      The thing is, the universe reveals itself to us on its own terms. We learn to be patient, to do the work, to engage and observe. We may be witness and yet not have the wisdom to see the beauty in our moment. Some art is not for us to express. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t express what we can in our time. Like sketches in a student’s notebook we mark our journey to a higher place.

    • The Communal Nature of Creativity

      “Your dreams don’t belong to you. If you hold on too tightly to them without recognizing the mutual and communal nature of creativity, your work will probably not have significant impact in the world.” — Drew Holcomb

      Writing a blog doesn’t feel communal, it feels more like a drawing out of oneself something internal and placing it out in the world for the reader to do with it what they will. The fact that almost 8 billion people will ignore it isn’t even the ego hit one might believe it to be, it’s not even the fact that it won’t ever reach the level where it’s a blip on the radar for those almost 8 billion people. Ego isn’t creative, it’s only role is to fuel the audacity to publish anything at all, and then let people in on the secret. After that it awkwardly gets in the way and is best pushed aside.

      The communal part of blogging is when you click publish. The work is then out there for others to interact with. For random strangers who stumble upon it, it’s a chance to hear a new voice and accept or reject that voice on their own path to finding out. For the loyal subscriber, it’s a choice of whether to let the steady drip, drip, drip of a daily blog become a part of their daily conversation. And for the inner circle of family and friends who read what this character has to say, it’s a chance to reconcile the person they know with the words they might be surprised by. I’m just as surprised, some days.

      Writing a blog isn’t thought of as collaborative. It’s the writer’s thoughts and opinion put to page, and not generally the product of the community with which that writer engages in. And yet we are the average of the five people we surround ourselves with. The influence of my community is as clearly reflected in the work that I produce as any book I’ve ever read or experience I’ve had. In fact, many of those same books and experiences are being had by that community and discussed over beverages now and again.

      There’s no doubt that music is one form of creativity better expressed communally. Lennon had McCartney and was the better for it. And then he had Yoko, and took his work to a different and far more personal place. When one looks at his entire body of work, we see his transformation as the influence of those around him ebb and flowed. The chorus naturally reverberates more than the solo artist. That doesn’t take away the power of the individual artist, it amplifies it. For art to speak, it must engage with others, which means that the artist must also engage with others. So, hello and welcome! Nice to have you here. Drop a comment.

    • Intentions vs. Routines

      “You don’t make art out of good intentions.” ― Gustave Flaubert

      Our routines and systems determine what we produce. I write every day to see what will come of it. Sometimes I use a writing prompt, other times I write of experiences I’ve had, and still other times I start typing until something tangible ends up on the page (deleting the nonsense that led me to it). Nothing great comes to us until we meet it at least halfway. Sometimes a lot more than halfway. And sure; we don’t always reach great…. But we do reach.

      Some days we are able to stick rigidly to our routine, some days we stray or are pulled from it. The trick is to get back on track as soon as the opportunity presents itself. This applies equally well to exercise, flossing, daily chores and yes, blogging. Do the things that must be done in the time you create for it. If we don’t create the time, then it isn’t the priority we say it is.

      Life is more complicated than that, of course. It’s not always about the stray—sometimes it’s the pull as other things take priority. But one day we’ll be pulled from it all like every artist, writer and poet who’s come before us. Knowing this, we ought to keep at it while we can. Stick with the routine and do the work that matters most now.

    • The Better For It

      “Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age. And let the chips fall where they may.” — Jon Stewart

      “The artist uses the talent he has, wishing he had more talent. The talent uses the artist it has, wishing it had more artist.” ― Robert Brault

      Over time we become proficient at some things at the expense of other things we might have done instead. We simply can’t do everything in this world, and when we try we dilute our potential to master anything. Focus matters a great deal in becoming competent at anything, let alone to master that thing.

      Lately when I click publish there’s a wave of purposelessness that washes over me for just a moment. The dialog goes something like this: “I’ve completed the blog for the day, the one nagging thing that drives me out of bed that must be done is done… so what now?” And that’s usually when the noise of the world fills the void and my purpose becomes clear once again. Do the things that must be done that have been ignored that you might do this other thing. The fog lifts and I get to it.

      Sometimes the noise of the world keeps me from writing the blog until later in the day. Those are days of great discontent, as if I’m being held back from something essential. Now don’t get me wrong—what is essential to me is mostly noise to the rest of the world, if heard at all, but it’s another rung on the ladder towards better that I must climb. The talent uses the artist it has, and I hate disappointing it with lackluster effort.

      When we love what we do, we keep doing it with an earnest focus on something beyond competence. We owe it to ourselves to reach for excellence in whatever we’re doing in this moment. We can always be better, until one day we can’t be. The race for mastery has an expiration date that we’re charging towards faster than we might believe. Shouldn’t we love the work enough to put our best out there right now? If we’re blessed with tomorrow we’ll be the better for it.

    • In Service of Better

      Many months ago I dropped what used to be Twitter from my life. I missed it immediately, not for the political extremism but for the carefully cultivated feed I’d developed over the years I had it. Sometimes I still miss that, because the alternatives aren’t all that great yet. But I keep pressing on with Mastodon and Threads and added an annoying email subscription notification that will go away soon I promise, and keep putting content out there for incremental growth numbers. The question I keep asking myself is why? Why have any social media link at all? Why gather email subscriptions at all? To increase followers seems a bit of an ego stroke. But engagement fuels consistency. We just can’t confuse the subscribers for the work.

      “A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.”― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

      The question is, which tree are we tapping on? Is the end result going to be fulfilling or will it just be an empty hole that we honed from time we’ll never get back? Why keep publishing every day when I could use that time for other creative work? Unless you’re an author putting your name and work out there for the masses to find, or selling something else you’ve built, then the end game of a blog shouldn’t be about accumulating a massive following. The end game is the development of the person creating and publishing it every single day.

      “There’s a practice available to each of us—the practice of embracing the process of creation in service of better. The practice is not the means to the output, the practice is the output.”
      ― Seth Godin, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work

      The thing is, the writing has always been about cracking the shell of complacency off and having a go at a soufflé. Inevitably we get it wrong now and then. Inevitably we wonder why we’re doing it at all. But within us there’s someone who wants to reach mastery at something in this brief go-around. We know when we’ve done well, and we know when we’ve checked the box to live to fight another day. Both matter a great deal. The trick is the consistent push towards better.

      When I start thinking about the effectiveness of platforms and email subscriptions, I know I’m straying into a minefield. When I question why I post a blog every day instead of simply writing, I know I’m tapping on the wrong tree. It’s always been about mastery, and the long and often frustrating road to getting there. Discipline, focus and time applied to honing a craft you have the audacity to believe you ought to be honing. Don’t stop me now, for I have a ways to go. Still, it’s a hell of a journey.