Tall Story

So something moved.

Let me tell you something about sitting doing nothing in a deliberate and sustained manner. It's not easy. The mind wants to constantly jump up and go ferreting about in it's grimy old haunts and has to be repeatedly ushered back like a child to its lessons. Which in this case is a little silly because what it has to be ushered back to is this incredible African Spring. Paradise can't be all that different.

Anyway, the experiment was to see if something moved on its own without me moving it, and I can now report a useful outcome. Earlier this week I got interested enough in the unresolved King of Streets painting to get up from my stillness and try an idea I'd thought of on the weekend.

That was the first thing that moved.

The beauty of computer imagery is that I can try things out digitally before committing oil to canvas, and in going there I discovered an earlier digital experiment I'd forgotten about. It was suddenly so obviously right that I took the jump and painted it. And ended up in quite new territory.

Here's the backstory. Back when I lived in the Cape Town I was often struck by how much the faces of the city's street people resemble the original inhabitants of this land, the Bushmen. Whether this is true or not it seems feasible that their hunter-gatherer lifestyle got shunted aside by a new world that had no place for them, and they ended up at the bottom of the pile.

However that may be, at the time I often looked at my own struggles of survival in the modern world in terms of small nomadic bands roaming and living off the indigenous landscape. The modern equivalent featured shiny buildings and BMWs cluttering the same spaces, but the struggle for survival still ran strong in this new world. Only now with TV and more angst.

So probably my interest in this couple was more personal than just a subject to paint. What attracted my attention was their incredible vitality and joy in the moment in spite of their poverty, so the contrast in the painting between them and the wealthier but more inhibited crowd around them wasn't lost on me.

But the painting just wouldn't get resolved. I'd tried all sorts of ways to fill in the bottom left corner which clearly needed something, but nothing worked. One idea that kept surfacing was to put cave-style images of animals there but it seemed somehow too obvious, or maybe too pretentious. But that was in fact the idea I discovered when I looked at my earlier digital experiment.

So I did that and immediately the dust of Africa entered the picture. The new atmosphere was undeniable. A layer of prehistory had become superimposed over the modern street scene, as if the deep memory still running in those lined faces had seeped out and onto the canvas. It felt authentic.

Only trouble is, I felt like a fraud. What business did I, a first world white man, have painting in a bow carrying hunter? Ok, it's out there in my world which happens to be the Africa I love, but it's not my culture. Hell, I haven't even seen a real life bow hunter, other than as cave drawings. I'm basically being a cultural thief.

And then the second movement happened. How would those ancient cave painters view this bizarre white man's world? Without really realising I was doing it I scratched a primal hi-rise building amongst the dusty animals.

It took all of 10 seconds, but it completely transformed the painting, and for that matter my role as painter. The whole long human story of civilisation rising like a bean stalk through the most fundamental patterns of human life got summed up in those few strokes, and along with it our dislocation from our own deepest nature.

In the months I've been hunting for a solution to this painting I've occasionally been asked what the man in it is saying. In the context of the primitive hi-rise and the plane I added afterwards, the expression on is face is saying, "You won't believe this baby, it's just too wacky to be true, but I swear, it's real."

So I've decided to rename it Crazy Story.

Come to a stop. Get more done.

Because I can, and because circumstances have suggested it, I've been experimenting with the complete absence of effort as a way of getting things done.

If this sounds like a load of bollocks to you, indulge me for a sentence or two before you sign off because there is method at work in this seeming madness.

It arises out of the process that produces the work I do. I've noticed again and again how the best paintings are most often those that arise by surprise, take over the creative process and basically paint themselves. Quite often this will produce something that I believe at first the public will dislike, while typically it's those pieces that become the most popular.

Because of this I often say that I just follow orders, it's not me doing the work. This is familiar to many creative professionals, like musicians who report songs dropping into their minds essentially complete, all they had to do is write them down and soak up the applause.

Sounds like a damn fine idea to me.

By contrast I've also seen with tiresome monotony how charging after some stated goal with all the enthusiasm of a puppy far too often just produces a tired and disappointed puppy.

So for some years now I've been fascinated with the possibility that life can be lived from a state of non-effort. Rest on Existence as a seed rests on the breeze. Move only when moved, so that what emerges is the product of a deeper current and is achieved effortlessly even if vast amounts of energy are being expended.

The most recent bout of this thinking came along as a result of the Lightrider piece (seen here in its final form). The metaphor of surfing got me pondering the interplay between the immensity of Immensity and the small but crucial human.

Take that tiny dark figure out of the painting and it's just a meaningless abstract. Put him back and a huge crashing energy is given conscious intent.

But here's the point - the rider doesn't create the wave. He/she paddles out, gets to the ideal spot and waits. Floats on the water's surface. Gazes attentively at the vastness that is the ocean, and . . waits.

When that particular wave is seen approaching it becomes all about place time and balance. If it all works out there's an exhilarating ride that gives the rider a rush like a clean drug, and heshe heads straight back out again for more.

Now obviously there's plenty of effort involved in paddling out to the back line, getting to the magical spot where the wave picks you up, and of course tons of practice and lots of getting wiped out at first. But ask any surfer if what heshe does is hard work?

And here's the bottom line. If the surfer tried to get that rushing ride by paddling furiously without the push of a convenient wave, you'd quickly see an exhausted and very disappointed puppy dragging its soggy self back home. The wave supplies the effort. The rider just goes along for the ride.

It looks rather as if something was trying to make this point to me, because the Lightrider painting is itself the result of a creative surge that arose without my conscious intent. And once it had my attention it pretty much used me as a brush to bring itself into physical form. Certainly there was plenty of kinetic energy expended in its making, but it was energy I simply rode to completion. It was exhilarating and effortless.

Sounds like a damn fine way to make a living if you ask me.

So. With this still fresh in my mind, various forces conspired to lead me this week to carefully and constructively do nothing. I don't mean just hang about idly. I mean do Nuh . . thing!

Because if there's one thing we humans do incessantly and uselessly more than anything else, it's think. Lay the body down in a comfy couch and the mind goes hurtling off all over the place. And usually it's fretting, strutting, or fantasizing. Uselessly. First thing AM to last PM. 24/7 (with sleep breaks, but then you dream). Year after year. Most of it utterly fruitless.

So what happened is that said conspiring forces made me acutely aware that a whole lot of discomfort had chosen to visit with me and that said discomfort was rooted in the incessant chatter of this monkey mind chasing its own tail trying to solve the unsolvable.

What might happen if I pulled the plug on it every time it got up to its junk jive? Made like the surfer, lay at rest on the surface of whatever mind rests on, and . . . waited?

As it turns out it's Spring out here in the African sticks, and a rather gorgeous one at that. And because I got no deeds to do no promises to keep (spot the cultural ref? I'll give you a clue. Paul Simon) I have the freedom to sit and constantly refer my inner monkey to the gorgeous Spring out there and away from the tedious and useless obsessing that it so does love to do.

As a whole lot of Tibetans in funny clothes know, this is not easy. Bizarre how much work it takes to relax. Except that then you're not relaxing, you're working. Bummer. But I've had a bit of practice at this over the years so convincing those little internal clutching hands to unclutch is at least possible in bits. And the gorgeous Spring helps.

Ok. So I open my mind to the pretty space in the garden. What am I waiting for? For a wave. For something to move without me telling it to. Could be a painting. Could be go make some popcorn. Go snooze. Maybe the solution to the unsolvable. But mostly what I'm interested in is a glimpse of the mysterious something that makes a painting happen without me painting it. That great things can arise out of stillness. That life can become effortlessly fulfilled.

Sounds cool, huh? But before we get too excited - assuming you're still with me -, the jury's still out on this one. It's really just a working hypothesis and an experiment to match. But the fact that I'm now writing this blog is because something moved - Go write that blog, it said. A first result. Woohoo!

Originally this posting was going to be about the painting at the top of the page. The painting was itself an unmeditated product, having arisen out of a whoosh of creative energy a couple of weeks back. At first I couldn't stop staring at it, smitten by the freshness of stroke and what they represent. But after about 3 days the honeymoon was over and I set about adding to it.

And completely lost the plot.

What you see here is the result after rescuing it from a place that was seriously not well. I'd followed a daring idea to smear red onto the canvas direct from the tube, living dangerously and confident that it would work out fine.

Well, it didn't. The result reminded me of those colourful paintings of clowns, usually very well executed but churned out en masse and corny as popcorn without the taste (I sprinkle Kikkoman on mine).

And so things stayed for a while, until this last Tuesday something moved again and I splashed some more paint across, this time coming off my third day of sitting in non-monkey space.

It's an improvement, but I can honestly say I have no idea where it's going. What seems to be happening is that the disconnect from humdrum thoughtwheels has entered into the creative flow. I found myself adding white right across the body of the figure, following the sort of impulse that I might normally notice but be too timid to act on. I guess I had nothing to lose so I followed it.

A similar impulse produced the squiggle over the right shoulder. A friend had visited earlier in the day and was talking about a bird tattoo across her shoulder. I hauled out an old sketch of a piece I still intend to do sometime, and the upshot was that the sketch got in on the act too.

So now I find myself adrift on the creative breeze as far as this piece is concerned. It's become the external version of the internal experiment.

As Zorba said, Ghoo ghno what ghappen next?