Tag: dreams
A Studio Reading of Jerusalem-an artwork in progress
Ziggurat-an artwork in progress
My commitment to chronicle the art making process requires I relate all, from the most difficult stretches, to my modest successes. The muse is fickle and I am negotiating a dry spell. Here is a belated post to let you know I’m still hanging in there
So far, only one image came through on the lucid dream channel. Here it is.
I had been working the raw umber, paynes gray and burnt sienna into a web of interwoven strokes. That night, in a dream, I saw an ancient ziggurat carved in natural sandstone and honey-combed with caves. As I looked at its golden, weathered form rising into the vivid, blue sky, I realized it was a dream. It was a fleeting glimpse of profound emptiness–the ultimate ground of reality. In that insubstantial image I apprehended the Heart Sutra’s most essential teaching: Form is Emptiness/Emptiness is no other than Form.
I don’t claim this as a great accomplishment, but I do like that the process of painting inspired dream imagery and the dream, in turn, redirected the painting.
The image was also inspired by a program about early Christianity I’d seen that night. The film showed the mountain, hermit caves where the Nag Hamadi collection of early Gnostic writings were found.
The Gnostics taught that soul is imprisoned in matter; that Gnostic experience is a return to the pure light of Divinity through overcoming demonic forces (Archons) whose job it is to hold humanity in bondage to the dense spheres of matter.
While I may not share this belief in the malign aspect of the natural world, I do believe these teachings form a part of our spiritual heritage. They have left psychic imprints upon the collective unconscious. It is not so much a matter of belief as that of experience–Gnossis.
These imprints permeate William Blake’s work. Benjamin Walker talks about the fall of Sophia (Wisdom) in his book, Gnosticism:
Various reasons are put forward for the fall of Sophia from the upper spheres and her plunge into the world of matter…(in one version) the tragedy occurred when she mistook the false light she saw below for the ‘light of lights’ for which she aspired…
In some texts she represents…the stricken city of Jerusalem.
The Memory Theatre-Idea for my Febuary art exhibition
My next art show is coming up soon. My idea is inspired by the Memory Theatre. This is an ancient mnemonic device used by actors and rhetoricians to commit long speeches to memory. The memory places are niches, or altars that contain imagery (the more outlandish the better) that facilitate recollection of the text. In ancient times, these features were incorporated into the design of theatres.
My idea is to make this part of the process of creating the work for my show. I’ll start with the basics: clean up my studio and create a series of 10 altars which I will decorate with whatever imagery will facilitate recollection of a long poem. At the same time I’ll prepare 10 canvases which will correspond with each of the memory stations. These paintings will comprise the exhibit.
I haven’t decided on a poem yet but maybe one of William Blake’s medium-length works will serve. This memory process will be concurrent with the creation of 10 paintings inspired by each of the memory stations. The art show’s theme will be continuous with the theme of the poem.
The whole process from straightening out the studio to “completion” of the paintings will be documented in this blog with photos, text, video and recordings. Stay tuned.
Old Hand’s Babylonian Voyage
And it came to pass that a great swarm of splog descended upon the land and the soundcloud was darkened with idle slander and empty promises of sensual delights. Worshippers of the true faith were subjected to the false blandishments of priests and the perfidious purveyors of illusory commerce.
I squinted at the aged, musty tome in the dim light of the pub and read on:
And the once mighty creatives of the realm looked upon their followers and found naught of artistic merit and grew heavy in spirit, seeing therein ought but Jezebelian allurements by comely maids in unseemly attitudes of licentious repose.
“I’m glad I wore my sea-boots,” said McWhirr.
“Listen to this, Captain:”
And lo, the verminous swarm of splog grew apace, and the goodly scions of the realm gnashed their teeth in anguish, for their earnest, artistic efforts were devoured by the black vultures of Satan. The fat herds of the righteous became but reeking carrion for the voracious appetites of the infidels.
“What fools would steal such windy bombast anyway?” asked McWhirr.
We’d just sailed into the gaudy metropolis of Babylon, seeking refuge from the equinoctial gales. The dank pub which lay just off the pier-head served a clientele of wharf-rats and scurvy rum-bots from dilapidated bum-boats. One smelly clutch of waisters clicked madly at their laptops, their rummy faces aglow in the in the villainous blue light. The grating chortles of these flatulent knaves reeked an atmosphere of gaseous inertia our way.
“Get this, a real Byron he thinks he is,” said a muscled hulk in a pink tutu.
“Ya really read that BS? “Asked his mate in a voice that sounded hollow and grating-like 50 fathoms of hause-fouled chain.
I’d heard of the splog pirates, but thought them mere paranoid tales by rummy tars around the fo’c’sle stove. And now here they were, as big as life, waylaying the earnest efforts of my myself and my literary colleagues like the nefarious ship wreckers luring unwary vessels with false lights on the storm-wracked coast of Cornwall.
I continued reading:
The once proud sites of the righteous became barren wastes of vacuous splogs and brazen images of bouncing titties…
“Maybe there is something to it after all,” says McWhirr.
“Aye, Captain. And look what we have now in this rank grog-shop of the internet-a foul lot of brazen cut-throats who’d just as soon steal your traffic as say how-do-ye-do.”
One such galoot, a skanky brigand with a striped shirt and cutlass, approached the bar next to McWhirr with the slithery movement of a wolf eel saying:
“Eh mates, stand us a pint.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw McWhirr take his rigging-knife from under his coat…
The Galvanized Emblem of McWhirr
“ Gusts up o 70 miles per hour are possible.”
The bland, melancholy voice on the NOAAH weather radio intoned the dread prophesy with all the passion of a jaded, Norwegian automaton.
Bagpipes wailed over the anchorage at sundown and the grim sight of the northern horizon almost made me cry. Clouds billowed white over the eastern Straits while, below, the horizon fell into the blackest gloom that ever haunted the nightmares of sinful, erring tars.
I had read in The Complete Anchoring Handbook that it all comes down to the right ratio of depth to scope of anchor rode.
50 feet times 5 make 250…good enough for a Coney Island swan boat.
I went below to lie on the pilot-berth. After a few fitful gusts, the wind fell into a tentative, uneasy calm.
Let’s see, 5 to 1 in 50 feet times…
“Have you paid out enough scope, lad?”
The bass tones welled from Old Hand’s bilges as from the aged, bronzed vessel of oxidized words.
“Captain?”
The angular form of Saturnius McWhirr was faintly illumined by the oil-lamp’s amber glow.
“I cast the anchor in 8 fath…” I stammered
“Avast, Ya greenhorn! You don’t “cast” anchors. This isn’t fly-fishing! My gorge rises at such lubberly misuse of sailing language.”
His wrath, like a line-squall, subsided as rapidly as it came.
“Did you know that to raise an anchor you must first let it go?”
“That’s true, sir.”
He always makes these pithy pronouncements like they were scripture. And, for McWhirr the act of sailing is a religious rite. He hails from Zoroastrian, Quaker stock and, for him, a ship is a vessel to carry his weary spirit ascending through the 7 concentric spheres of corporeality to the final landfall of essential being. He has seen the beatific vision reflected on the sea’s mirror, and it draws him ever northward in search of the true face of divinity behind the mask of appearance.
“Look at this arm.”
Like some cloaked tragedian in a nautical horror show, he furiously tore his sleeve to reveal the tattoo of an anchor engraved upon his sinewy fore-arm.
“I carry the fouled, cold-forged, emblem of hope engraved upon my soul.”
He leveled his eye at me as thunder rattled the wheelhouse windows.
“Have you any family, Mister Spencer?”
“Yes.”
“Do they weigh upon your heart; do you feel their woes as your very own?”
I was too unglued by his interrogatory glare to answer.
“Are you willing to set aside your pleasant, little cruise to do service if called upon?”
“I don’t know if I’d call it a pleasant cruise with this weather.” I said defensively.
“Would ya be able to leap into the maelstrom to save a foe?”
“If I had a PFD,” I answered lamely.
He fell into deep silence. His spectral image receded into the oaken bulwarks of unfathomable woe.
“Then you are no shipmate of mine,” Said the fading echo of his baritone.
From the infinite distance came a low, thrumming tone that set halyards frapping on the mast. The sound rose steadily to a piercing shriek-as if all the denizens of hell had let loose one frenzied howl of pain.
Old Hand skewed violently in the blast.
I rose from my bunk, put on my foul weather gear and ascended the foredeck.
Let’s see 50 x 10 = 500…that’s 10 to 1…for 85% holding power…
Not bad odds.
Reef-net fishing
The sky turns red/orange over the hills west of Fisherman Bay.
I row out to the narrow finger of rock that protects the entrance, to photograph the rough-hewn, skeletal remains of reef-net boats along the shore.
They say Reef-netting is one of the oldest forms of fishing. In ancient times, fishing was continuous with the sacred traditional ceremonies. These ceremonies were held with elaborate theatrics.
The simple act of fishing was performed with a cherished respect for salmon spirit that ensured their annual return. Everyday life was interwoven with the sacred like the twisted, cedar bark nets they so cunningly wrought and watched over through the centuries.
A reef-netter still floats by the western shore, its tall, stark ladder inverted upon the surface of the bay.
The water’s surface is the boundary, the imaginal space between worlds of height and depth. The sinuous patterns that shimmer over it’s surface are reflected in the curvilinear shapes of Salish art. It evokes the intermediate realm of dreams and myth; a place not found among the mystic way points of GPS. It is where the first salmon people hied up the narrow channels with the flood and into human consciousness.
On reef-netters, the watcher (in earliest times, the tribal chief) would ascend the rough, cedar ladder high above the bow and intone the quiet prayer honoring the annual return of the salmon.
While rowing in, I seem to hear an old diesel engine that drums faintly over the the inland sea like the rhythm of the universal heartbeat. Or is it the spirits of dead fishermen still drumming over the waters?
Welcome, Swimmers.
Upon seeing the salmon enter the net below, the robed and cone-hatted watcher, stark against the red sky, sings to his mates below:
Lift, lift.
As one, the crew raises the net, the catch glistens in fading sunlight
Welcome, Brothers.
These old songs are sung in another place than that found on the yellowed, dog-eared charts of linear time. The primordial drama is still re-enacted upon the weathered scaffold of artifice in the winter dancing houses of ancient memory.
Seamarks 3 by St.-John Perse
Seamarks 2- St. John Perse
All that is Golden- The Sun Standard
It’s hard to say why we are struck by certain images.
20 years ago I did a painting inspired by a dream of a bullfight. Bullfight ticket sellers ask their customers: “el sol o la sombra? Meaning: “do you want seats in the sun or the shade?”. As the sun passed, the shaded seats commanded a higher price. This fluid standard seemed a true valuation system because of it’s cosmic scope. It might be called the Sun standard.
Gold and Sun are symbols that announce a new age ruled by the truest of values-that which emerge from the human heart.
In this Spanish interrogative I hear echoed the ancient Mithraic conflict between the Light of Glory and Ahrimanic Darkness. This is a drama which transcends religious history, learned judgments about dualism, and my own, personal revulsion at an act of cruelty.
The arena is a mandala-a microcosm. The ritual killing it sanctifies has echoes throughout the cycles of history as an archetype-one that charges a brutal spectator sport with religious energy. it is the reenactment of the primordial victory that ensures the perpetuation of the world.
In his book, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, Henry Corbin uses the striking image of the progersso harmonium to describe the relationship between Shi’ite Islam and the earlier Mazdianism religion. The relation is not the linear view of religious history by which fundamentalists of all faiths are bound, but the fundamental tone, the timeless Truth to which all religions are ultimately traced. It is ever present, running throughout time like a basso profundo under the higher registers of the octave.
To pass from one octave to another is not the same as to pass from one date in time to another, but is a progression to a height or pitch that is qualitatively different. All the elements are changed, yet the form of the melody is the same. Something in the nature of harmonic perception is needed to perceive a world of many dimensions.
So midway between the darkness of uncertainty and the light of inspiration, I revisit a related image, the altar. I set the stage with a yellow/orange ground. I want to hone my harmonic perception that I may realize my theme in a higher register, one that captures it’s elusive quality.
It now becomes an altar for the Day of the Dead. On it I place my mother’s ashes, the tattered image of dad, and all loved ones who’ve left the arena of life. Here is the true value-the measure of all that is Golden.
A View from the Wheelhouse 