TRAVEL DIARY
A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.
Monday, June 23, 2008
7:12 PM
Posted by jodi rose
In the middle of the malestrom, I've found comfort in the following words of inspiration from varying sources.
This one from Tad, one of my fellow artists here:
"The frame of mind in which interesting things germinate is often more confused and desperate than organized and confident."
Randy Thom
He has some interesting comments about art and technology in the development of his work see the blog linked to his name above. Engineers and art. Curiouser and curioser. It's a slow process, but we'll get there.
Next, a thoughtful speech by J.K. Rowling, Harvard commencement 2008:
"Why do I talk about the benefits of failure?
Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.
It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned."
and on imagination:
"One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch:
'What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality'
We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters."
Pema Chödrön
And finally, bell hooks talking with Pema Chödrön, which I found on the site of performance artist Lynn Lu, and her gorgeous piece: an idealized moment when everything is simple and secure
"bell hooks: Pema, one of the ideas in your work that really challenges me is abandoning the hope of fruition. That's really hard for me."
"The way I understand it is that we rob ourselves of being in the present by always thinking that the payoff will happen in the future. The only place ever to work is right now.
We work with the present situation rather than a hypothetical possibility of what could be. I like any teaching that encourages us to be with ourselves and our situation as it is without looking for alternatives. The source of all wakefulness, the source of all kindness and compassion, the source of all wisdom, is in each second of time. Anything that has us looking ahead is missing the point.
I give up both the hope that something is going to change and the fear that it isn't. We may long to end suffering but somehow it paralyzes us if we're too goal-oriented. Do you see the balance there? It's like the teaching that Don Juan gave to Carlos Castenada, where he says that you do everything with your whole heart, as if nothing else matters. You do it impeccably and with your whole heart, but all the while knowing that it actually doesn't matter at all.
We have so much fear of not being in control, of not being able to hold on to things. Yet the true nature of things is that you're never in control. You're never in control. You can never hold on to anything. That's the nature of how things are. But it's almost like it's in the genes of being born human that you can't accept that. You can buy it intellectually, but moment to moment it brings up a lot of panic and fear. So my own path has been training to relax with groundlessness and the panic that accompanies it. Training to allow all that to be there, training to die continually. That seems to be the essence of the lojong teachings-to stay in the space of uncertainty without trying to reconstruct a reference point.
We can stop looking for some idealized moment when everything is simple and secure. This second of experience, which could be painful or pleasurable, is our working basis. What makes all the difference is how we relate to it."
ah yes, excellent words for the immateriality of art practice.