The Thing that is not a Thing
In my sketchbook is a page from some time ago that I don't remember and all it says is:
"There is no universe without us to see it. There is no us without the exploding star. It is us. We are it."
The next page is empty.
Clearly there was some transition going on there enough to break down to first principles -- what does one know? Only that one is aware and thinking and ...
Remembering my old homework: Immanuel Kant, Issac Newton and the Age of Reason -- space and time are distinct; the world is physical and knowable. That was the 18th century. The 19th century and William Blake state time and space are one and the same. The philosopher as authority switches to the poet. The Romantics, Coleridge and Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley, stated that the world is half-perceived and half-created. (I'm paraphrasing, criminally, "Tintern Abbey"). Lots of opium use in England at the time, predescessing our counterculture by more than a century. Along came Einstein and Niels Bohr and the equation tying mass and light together and the notion that light is a wave AND a particle, both a thing and not a thing, but a movement. AND Shroedinger pointed out that just looking at a thing makes the thing different. And now 21st Century and Frank Wilzek, the Nobel prize winning physicist explaining in his fabulous book "Fundamentals" that there really aren't any "things" on a quantum level -- it's all just spin, spin direction, and velocity and charges. Feeling better now?
And so, surfing... I just lost the lease on my studio and gallery where I have been making magic for thirteen years. Do you remember learning how to walk and how that felt? I don't either, but that was a big deal. Is reality solid and linear? Nope. Is every day a something that is a miracle but you likely won't remember after a while? Yep. Am I forced to change? Yep, and initially pretty angry about it, but hey, waves. Wind and waves.. This is a wicked fun ride with speed and falling and constant motion. And on some level, I was expecting this. The Russian philosopher P. D. Ospensky wrote,
"Only the fine apparatus, which is called 'the soul of an artist' can understand and feel the reflection of the noumenon in the phenomenon. In art it is necessary to study the hidden side of life. The artist must be clairvoyant: he must see what others do not see; he must be a magician, must possess the power to make others see that which they do not themselves see, but which he does see."
Art is precognitive. Moving on a wave is precognitive. Snowboarding at tempo through trees in steep snowy pitches REQUIRES not thinking, only responding. Adapting to life's challenges is, when done well, like surfing. Ride the wave whatever size appears, crumbly, wind blown, too fast... (I highly recommend "Barbarian Days, A Surfing Life" by William Finnegan). I'm on to a new break, a new swell, new mates in the water, different beach, depths unknown, different slant of the light... I was angry that I was forced to change and now I'm thrilled. Let's go.
Many years ago at an art show I was next to a huckster type dude who just seemed overly friendly with everyone. Eavesdropping, I heard an older couple shuffle in and explain that they haven't been reordering from him as their store had burned down. The guy, Sergio, said, "That's great! You can start fresh. Build everything perfect from scratch." I will never forget the moment. He was beaming and earnest and the couple visibly brightened.
So. Buy art right now so I don't move twice what's in the gallery today. This will assist my move and lighten the truck. As I type on this miraculous device we call a laptop, dragonflies are grabbing sips on the fly from the humongous puddle that is the driveway. Dragonflies are revered in Japan as symbols of rebirth, courage, and strength. Of course they are here right now.
In closing, my lease ending is real and a metaphor. We all face much more dire challenges than packing and moving. This life is temporary, finite. But dragonflies have been around for 300 million years. Keep going; remember to hydrate. Hugs on a 90 degree summer day, smack in the middle of the constant of change...
b mac
P.S. We operate in a world of illusion. Bob Dylan sang, "What looks large from a distance, close up, ain't never that big." He and William and Frank won Pulitzer prizes for explorations of this intangible something we experience every day.
P.P.S. Personally, my operating principle could be swiped from the Grateful Dead, "Wake up to find out, you are the eyes of the world."
