Spend 20 years doing yoga or dancing tango, or 50 years as an artist, and your foundations are so solid you can forget about all that and just enjoy the level you’re at. Great! Living is like that too. You’ve practiced and known how to be a person for so long, guess what, you’re good at it now. Everything else falls away. You can be done with creating a presence, identity, or a personality. At last, you can just be yourself.
All art is ashes of burned incense. Many people make art that is ephemeral. Painters, sculptors, fine artists, generally all believe that they are making the precious object that is imbued with an essence of creative output energy. But so many people make art which is ephemeral and impermanent; dancing, music, singing, cooking, conversation, are forms that have no permanent shapes to be appreciated eternally. Fine Art can be that way as well; it’s merely that process of the creative fire, the object being a secondary thing (that has value) but isn’t the essence any longer.
Perhaps AI is not the existential danger some say it is, since there’s no fire but merely the residual output which (you know) isn’t that great. We’re mistaking the product for the essence. I think everyone knows this but it’s a nice reminder to consider what artist actually are doing, especially from the artist’s own point of view, and that the so-called audience can (sorry), just deal with it.
Another way to think about it is that art’s value is as an aid to and a component of meditation. Meditation itself has a value and an outcome to the practitioner but it’s not relevant to the outsider.
So, the utter, complete dis-attachment of Art from value is perhaps a really good thing and not to worry about. (again, yeah) The problem isn’t really significant in this category of thinking about art, (not at all).
Am I really saying that fine artists are, at last, liberated from making things?
I am glad to have had a traditional studio practice of making art and sculpture. In the end, the urge to make things and touch people’s lives with them has disappeared entirely, replaced by connecting with my own inner life, for myself and only myself. My whole social media arc, from this blog to FB, Insta, YouTube and more only returned me to the beginning again; working in the studio, refining the essence and transforming to Qi.
I don’t say I’m a hero of anything. I do think that I am of the last generation which can say they created with only their own perspective in mind, feeling like they were original and pioneering in their observations and creations. I am glad I had my day.
Will anyone ever again make art from a purely personal perspective without regard for the audience and their social relation to the world at large? The difference in time from now to when I first came up, is as the difference from now to the 17th century. I felt closer then to the Renaissance than I do now to American and European Modernism.
Where are we now as creators? The panic over AI slop and fake music seems trivial to me compared to the massive wave of cheap and easy imagery enabled by digital tools like Photoshop, digital photography, and ubiquitous pointless video. The endpoint we’re at now was predicable in 2000. I did not deviate from my path and purpose then, nor will I be distracted by the promises that new tools offer, for their own sake.
The goal is unchanging; discover the self and cultivate our essential nature. All things withdraw to their core, retreat to their center, and return to their original form.
I am recovering the path back to my original self, before work & school & family, when I was 9 years old, and first aware that I was an individual, whole and independent.
There is always the same question. “What are you doing lately?”
I am un-conditioning my mind and becoming elementary and obvious in the way I see and act in the world.
But… I don’t want to make an Art about the fury of chaos and apocalyptic energies. It is too negative. I muddled over this for nearly a year. How do I make this a positive expression for me the creator? I don’t want to drudge over this. This was while carving the Ouroboros Snake and I already had a set idea of change as circular and self-completing. I didn’t want a distraction.
But I definitely heard the message. Gradually at first, I thought to make a video short of the blast moment from the point-of-view of the survivor, in watching their shock and following their reactions. There would characters who would not be told that without warning they would be blasted with loud sound and blinding light… um, this way I could record their raw reactions and a narrative would follow? OK, slow down… What the hell Matt. How are you even considering this?
By Summer I’d thought of a million things while I basically was getting stoned and swimming at the lake. Still, the idea sat there like the pile of rubble at the site, untouched with an orange fence around it.
One day as I floated in the water, I began to think. Me, a small clot of self-assembling and somehow sentient proteins, immersed in water, surrounded by forest and earth, under the deep blue sky, overlooked by the radiant yellow Sun.
At that moment, I believed these fundamental symbolic elements of matter-enabled-by -energy, in vast concatenation and generation create reality – a creative force which is equal and opposite the explosive. It is the melting together. And that little blob, me, is the witness of this conclusive assembly and integration of parts, which is the World.
Now I have two drawings to do. One of rapid dissolution and one of steadfast concretion. So as not to be overwhelmed by the energies of either, I am working on them together, in balance. It is just a thing I do for my own discovery, like in a sketchbook, meant for self-study.
What do I mean, the Exploded House? Not too recently a house in my neighborhood blew-up! 2AM! The old guy there was using propane tanks in the basement to run his furnace… and well, there was a leak. That’s what you do when the gas company cuts you off. Apparently, he’d been doing it for years. He survived with injuries.
The next day I went to see it. Four main walls were flattened like pedals of a perfect lotus flower, inner walls neatly stacked and aligned with them. The roof sat, semi-intact to one side, as if a soap bubble had burst. Pop! At the center, the basement, was an empty box. Everything else was blown in shreds about the yards like mist and rain. The perimeter trees were singed, the truck’s tires were melted. Smells of dust and charred wood.
I keep thinking about him, at 2 AM being shot out there, like from an ejection-bed. What did he hear or see or feel of that brief bright light and thunder! Sensations of abrupt and maximum intensity and overwhelmed perceptions doesn’t begin to cover it.
So, imagine the total blast of his momentary experience was YOUR experience, every day, all day long, you hear, see, and feel the fires of stars burning. That’s the exploding house. That’s reality being continuously torn apart and reassembled, and that’s your inner-self and spirit also. A supreme example of the Way, it is the elementary fabric undergoing transformations everywhere at all times. It is the engine that drives the Way and upon which the Way is formed.
Now, the question is… What would I do to incorporate these ideas into a work of Art? Do I need to? Is this a part of my narrative? What do I want to say?
The world had fallen out of balance. The Dragon King of the South Ocean is missing (Where did he go?) Nothing is on its axis. Who will hold up the world? There are no more Dragons. A Crocodile offers to try. He says, “I am large, and the closest thing to a Dragon. I will try”. He steps up onto the back of the Great Turtle and grasps the World And lifts it up and balances it on the end of his nose. As he does this he himself becomes a Dragon.
“Crocodile Balances the World and Becomes the Dragon King”
The world had fallen out of balance as the Dragon King of the South Ocean had gone missing (Where did he go?). Nothing remained in its proper axis, and there were no more Dragons to uphold the world.
Amidst the imbalance, a Crocodile stepped forward and offered to try. He stated, “I am large and the closest thing to a Dragon. I will give it a shot.” With determination, he mounted the back of the Great Turtle, seized the World, and carefully balanced it on the end of his nose.
In this selfless act, the Crocodile underwent a transformation, becoming a Dragon himself—the savior the world needed.
The style of this tale draws inspiration from my Bee micro-dramas, where the Crocodile embodies the role of an Everyman, earnestly striving to restore equilibrium to the World. His humility only enhances his noble efforts and aspirations.
The new studio was finished February. It turned out much better than I expected. “A.” seems mostly happy with it. We’ve named it El Jardin, “The Garden”, and it’s an incarnation of a Tango clubhouse. We’re now set up to host Tango events, art and music shows, house guests, and more. For the past months we’ve been running a twice-monthly practica with our neighborhood tango friends. It is a private space by, so we’ve working on a balanced policy about who’s invited to come there.
These pictures show the progress from Fall 2021 to Spring 2022. First the wood floor is installed then it is covered while the painting takes place. After that the floor is “finished” and then we’re dancing! (without countertops)…
