Attentive Equations

Many times we relegate those things that we hold in our memory as artifacts of a past time. We rarely give those images their due. The literalism that is such a part of the American culture, hinders one’s ability to allow the imagination the freedom and spontaneity that it yearns for. This part of our own personal history, we do not take seriously. But as artist, shouldn’t we?

Henry Corbin always insisted history is in the soul, “History making is a musing, poetic process…proceeding as an autonomous, archetypal activity, presenting us with tales as if they were facts. And we cannot transcend history not because we cannot get out of time or escape the past, but because we are always in the soul and subject to its musings.” (As quoted in, Noel Cobb’s, Archetypal Imagination, p.204)

There was a time prior to the twentieth century when imagination and memory were seen as one and the same thing, Ars Memoria. Memoria was the old term for both. It included the idea of memory, imagination, the unconscious and reverie. James Hillman writes, “Memoria was described as a great hall, a storehouse, a theatre packed with images. And the only difference between remembering and imagining was the memory images were those to which a sense of time had been added, that curious conviction that they had once happened.”(Hillman, Healing Fiction, p.41)

My favorite poet, Baudelaire, built his  theory of “correspondence” on ars memoria. The imagination is activated by nature provoking the memory and drawing forth correspondences between our own latent memories or the unconscious and images presented before the mind of the poet/artist. Baudelaire’s poem “Correspondences”,

Nature is but a temple whose living colonnades

Breath forth a mystic speech in fitful sighs;

Man wanders among symbols in those glades

Where all things watch him with familiar eyes.

 

Like dwindling echoes gathered far away

Into a deep and thronging unison

Huge as night or as the light of day,

All scents and sounds and colors meet as one…

Dream and reverie (a conscious dream) also invokes the ars memoria, allowing the musing mind, “sudden wellings up, epiphanies of images, incursions of things undreamt of, sources of hidden insight and exhilarating inspiration.” (Ibid.,p.208) In Ancient Greek mythology, the figure of Mnemosyne, mother of the muses, is identified with memory and the imagination, the basis of all creative endeavors. Carl Kerenyi says of her, “She is memory as the cosmic ground of self-recalling which, like an eternal spring, never ceases flowing.” Reverie connects one to that storehouse of images just as nature can aid in this process of “self-recalling”.

The Irish poet, W.B. Yeats found that symbols had a similar effect on connecting the imagination to memory. In an essay on magic, Yeats describes three doctrines which he believed were handed down from ancient times and are the foundation of nearly all magical practices. “First, that the borders of our mind are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow into one another and create or reveal a single mind. Secondly, That the borders of our memories are shifting, and that our memories are a part of one great memory, the memory of nature herself. Thirdly, that this great mind and great memory can be evoked by symbols.” (Cobb,p.220) Symbols touch a part of ourselves that is hidden and draws forth from that dark and hidden place memories, unconscious emotions and images that activate the imagination. In such a state the artist finds that there are latent memories and images that are constantly residing right below the surface of consciousness and are archetypal, in that their significance can be felt by all. This storehouse of images- scents and sounds is accessed through nature, reverie and symbols and through this  “self-recalling,” the mother of the muses becomes our guide. As an artist, she is the one I desire most to accompany me.

Lorca

Periodically, I return again and again to things I have written about before in hopes of bringing to the surface a clearer idea of the subject for myself. Duende is just such an idea. Lorca, himself, spent years coming to terms with Duende beginning with Cante Jundo and Deep Song- Andalusian music- and later using it to describe all art, especially poetry. “These black sounds are the mystery, the roots fastened in the mire that gives us the substance of art… The duende, then, is a power, not a work; it is a struggle not a thought.”   ( Lorca, Deep Song and Other Prose, p.43)

Duende is tied to death. This knowledge is bound to the creative process by the artist’s awareness of the passage of time; the passage of earthly, material beauty; and the longing for perfection. Death grounds one to the earth- the immediacy of reality and the awareness of the power of life. Death tears away all of the blinders one has and firmly sets one in the here and now. There is an inherent  power and vitality surrounding this knowledge. It transforms a work into a surge of new life. Lorca acknowledges the pain in deep song, which the gypsies called pena pegra, “black pain”- “…which is far deeper than any personal pain, and it was this which undoubtedly opened Lorca’s psyche to the universality of suffering and the need to find a language which would get beyond the limitations of the personal. The poetic image is such a language.” ( Cobb, Archetypal Imagination, p.97)

The poetic image that is firmly grounded in death leads one to an awareness of something that goes beyond the personal into ” the interiority within all things… The fantasy of hidden depths ensouls the world and fosters imagining even deeper into things.”(Ibid., p.97) This ability or insight into the interior life of all things allows the artist a unique perspective that roots his imaginal life to the world. The Sufi’s referred to this as the isthmus that leads the artist from the world of objects to the world of images. And it is image that must be the source and wellspring for the artist. Noel Cobb beautifully describes this state,

It appears that when duende touches soul and soul touches death, it brings a new quality with it into living- a fuller, deeper resonance to experience and thought. With its roots deep in death and the underworld, duende nourishes the soul with life-giving images. (Ibid., p.102)

This play between the imaginal life of the artist and his experience in the world, where death lies, gives the artist a heightened attentiveness to even what appears ordinary and superimposes upon these common events the extraodinariness of living itself. But Lorca warns,

“… that there are neither maps nor discipline to help us find duende. We only know that… he exhausts, that he rejects all the sweet geometry that we have learned, that he smashes the styles… With idea, sound or gesture, the duende enjoys fighting the creator to the very rim of the well… the duende wounds. In the healing of that wound which never closes lies the invented strange qualities of a man’s work. ( Lorca, Obras Completas, Vol.1,p.10994)

Sissy in Yellow by Robert Henri

“… for the great function of the image is to be a kind of detector of infinity… towards which our reason and our feelings go soaring, with joyful, thrilling haste.” (Andre Tarkofsky, Sculpting In Time, p.109)

Death makes one aware of beauty. Loss of a person in all their unique magnificence, shows one where beauty lies- deep in the heart and soul. We have such a longing for beauty which partially in itself is unattainable. Beauty and sorrow are intertwined. One says, “yes” to the beautiful, but knows that it is bound to time and it will not last. This unattainable longing for beauty, those images that speak personally to one’s heart, is at the center of our being. The soul yearns for beauty and imagination. It longs for that mirror that reflects its unique soul. “The need for beauty may be one of the soul’s most vital needs. Without beauty the soul would shrivel away.” (Cobb, Archetypal Imagination, p.62)

All true images are born from within, manifesting their form to one who is open to receiving it. It calls for a deep connection to one’s inner life as well as to the world. When what is within and without come together an image is born that acts as a guide both to the artist as well as the viewer. Rumi states, “Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” Image gives a voice and form to one’s inner experience and becomes the “equivalent” to this experience.This equivalent speaks of how one sees the world and transforms it into a soul image. This personal self discovery carries within it an experience felt by “everyman”.

The photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, created a series of photographs of clouds titled, “The Equivalents”. This title speaks of image- the clouds, with their symbolic patterning across an abyss of sky, touch a deeper part of ourselves. The images need no explanation. They are transformative because Stieglitz presents us with not just the objective form of the cloud but how he felt about it. They bring to the foreground those things that are on the very edge of consciousness.

“Nature is not something that can be seen by the eye alone- it lies also within the soul, in pictures seen by the inner eye…”

Edvard Munch

When the image is whole it calls forth an assent from the artist as well as the viewer. This assent obliges the artist to “service” this image and bring it forth into the world to the best of his ability. Even if his ability to craft the image well is flawed the image if attended to will supply the means for its expression.  Robert Henri firmly believed that once the image presented itself, the inventiveness of the artist would find the means or the technique necessary for its expression. The artist is the one who discovers and crafts the image not only with inventiveness and skill but with love and devotion.

As an artist, one always tends to think in images. But it is important to step back and rethink what an image is.  Too many paintings are composed as conceptions based on a rational part of ourselves ( what one “ought” to paint) and are not true Images. Image is the soul of a piece deeply connected to the soul of the artist. It stands as a hallmark as well as a guide to the artist. The artist must have a deep connection to the world in order to craft images that speak on this level. In a letter to his brother, Keats wrote: “Call the world, if you please, ‘the vale of soulmaking.’ Then you will find out the use of the world.”In this very act of crafting the image, the artist partakes in his own crafting of soul through his deep feeling and participation in the world.

Noel Cobb states beautifully in his book on “The Archetypal Imagination”,

“We must remember that image is not just some object or other out there; it is not the same as a picture, not the same as an optical, visual thing…Nor is it an optical event, an afterimage, or even the same as memory. It is neither inside us, nor outside us, but somewhere in between. What I am reaching for is that sense of the image we can find among the ancient Greeks and again in the Florentine circles of the Renaissance- the image considered as the way in which the heart perceives. (p.30)

The perceptions of the heart create image. Being attuned to that delicate movement of the heart is the foundation of the artist’s journey. It becomes less about what one sees and more about how one sees. The material world, that inspires and which one renders with such devotion, becomes the isthmus that takes us to the world of images.  And the imagination is what gives one the wings to travel there. “Without this taking in of the world, there is no awakening in the heart, no poetry, no making, no craft or crafting. Events remain events, soulless occurrences; they do not become experiences. Pictures remain two-dimensional happenings of form and composition, unless through soul they become images.” (Ibid.p.30)

“Images are angels- or rather diamones”(Ibid.)  because they are living things, embodied and particular; They have a life of their own independent from oneself. Because of this independence, one cannot just call the image forth but must await for its appearance with attentiveness. And when it does appear, such as described by Lorca, one must wrestle with this being in crafting the poetic image. One must fully participate and allow oneself to be transformed by it. One must be ready to risk all. Rumi states, “there is born within… a spiritual Child having the breath of Christ which resuscitates the dead.” A resurrection within the heart of those that see and partake of the image is what the artist is called to facilitate. “When the heart is inspired a new life and new image is born.” (Ibid.p.29)

Childhood is the “intertwining of imagination and memory” where images form within us. They become an inherent part of our being yet, they remain inactive and hidden into adulthood. These images can be restored to our soul and relived through words or images that recall and resonate off of these early images formed in childhood reverie which lie deep in our memory. These early childhood memories are not specific- like the time one stayed with grandmother, a historical fact retold by one’s family- but entail more eternal images- like, “climbing a tree and swaying in its branches on a cool summer’s eve, feeling joined to wind and sky and expecting to soar to the heavens at any moment I choose”. It is an image like this that evokes the “permanent childhood” and leads one back to a renewed sense of being and possibility when one had a sense of wonder and amazement for all things. Where the re-created world of the imagination comes,  from a soul “bestowing a gift” upon the world.

“When we love all these beauties of the world now in the songs of the poets, we love them in a new found childhood, in a childhood reanimated with that childhood which is latent in each of us.” (Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie, p.126)

This new found childhood speaks of the archetype of childhood itself, yearning to recall those things that call us back to those images that enriched our life and gave us happiness and hope and allowed us to love the world freely. Thus, the artist must locate the “new archetypally true image” to call one back to oneself and recover the “universes of childhood”.

“Without childhood, there is no real cosmicity. Without cosmic song, there is no poetry. The poet awakens within us the cosmicity of childhood.” (Ibid., p.126)

The artist must seek these archetypal images that resonate and therefore activate these latent childhood images. How we all yearn to be connected to the greater world and abandon our own isolation which removes one from mankind. The child lives his reveries in solitude and develops his images there, not in isolation, but in harmony and connectedness to greater forces in the world. It is here that the artist must begin- from a place of solitude, where simple images present themselves. Are not simple images the most effective- Monet’s, “Haystacks”; Henri’s portraits of children; Manet’s, “Dead Toreador”; Sorolla’s children on the beach?

“… childhood, in its archetypal quality is communicable. A soul is never deaf to a quality of childhood. However singular the feature being evoked, if it has the sign of childhood primitiveness, it awakens within us the archetype of childhood.” (Ibid., p.127)

To recreate something with the eyes of the child, from his perspective is to re-imagine it in a “new” way. The child re-imagines the object and re-presents it to the world as something magnificent to behold. The everyday object becomes fabulous, other-worldly; mysterious; mythic. Having a 3yr. old myself, I can easily identify this aspect of the creative imagination. My daughter has what she calls an “adventure stick” ( which is a hollow cardboard tube from some wrapping paper). This stick is at once a spy-scope, a walking stick, sword, animated friend and companion and parade baton. This ability to re-create, reform and make “new”, imbuing it with ‘fabulous’ qualities is the unique character of childhood. This quality allows her to enter a world where all is unified and where all is possible. As an adult she will yearn to return to these early images, where reverie was such a part of her experience of the world. Can the artist create images that unlock these sensations once again allowing the individual a moment of cosmicity?

Childhood is a time we all remember. It is a time of play, adventures in the backyard, dear friends and many moments of solitude and dreaming. One dreams about real things but one also was allowed to dream “big” imaginary dreams. And it is these imaginary dreams that have most affected us and have stayed with us. They gave us power, adventure, honor and solace. The world was grand and one had the power to change it at the moment he dreamed. These dreams gave one true moments of illumination- “moments of poetic existence”. When a child dreams he feels that there is no limit to his existence and in such a reverie he finds that he can fly.

“The child’s vision is grand and beautiful… In this happy solitude, the dreaming child experiences cosmic reverie- that reverie that unites us with the world.” (Bachelard, On Poetic Imagination and Reverie, p.96)

It is these first images that remain within the child not only in his youth but become central to his psyche as an adult. In this “cosmic reverie” of the child, ” imagination and memory” are intertwined. There is no separation in these moments of reverie between reality and the imagination. All is one and in this oneness the child becomes a “being for the world.”(Ibid,p.96)

The artist retains more clearly, in their character, this “cosmic reverie”, re-enacting in their work this unity of the imagination and reality. Through this creative activity, the artist solidifies his attachment to the world. And through this “bent” he has toward the world, the artist feels compelled to reveal what Bachelard called, “the glory of the living”- a central emotion felt by the child in his stance toward the world. All is incredibly beautiful and filled with immensity. This childhood experience is at the heart of all artistic activity.

When I am working with a model in the studio or am out in the landscape painting, I experience in that moment the sheer magnitude of existence. It appears undeniable- as if I have returned to a child at that moment. Bachelard states,

“… childhood remains a source of life deep within us, a life that stays in harmony with the possibilities of new beginnings. Everything that originates in us with the clarity of a new beginning is a mad surge of life.” (Ibid, p.97)

Every time I begin a new piece, it is a whole new experience- one I could not have anticipated fully. To begin again and again is an inherent part of the craft. Nothing is ever rote. Looking upon that huge white canvas- where all the possibilities are present, I return to that state of wonder that was such a part of my life as a child. The “newness” felt at that moment must be lived and retained throughout the painting process. This newness must carry the artist to a state where “cosmic reverie” can be embraced and lived. It is only in such a state that images can present themselves- images that touch a deep chord within the human heart. Only such an image can call the viewer back to himself- to take his own ‘voyage’ – to be renewed and to love the world once again. This allows the viewer to find in this experience the freedom of “flight”, that he might be re-invigorated and experience “the glory of the living” once again.

When one is not at one’s work, especially the artist or artisan, one is “out of joint” with himself and the world. When one is away from one’s work, one tends to agonize over the latent material waiting for expression as well as the solitude that is such a part of one’s life. The artist needs his work. There is a unity of experience when one’s work mirrors one’s inner life and the very process where this occurs is in the creative act. This unity produces an immediate joy within the artist. And he again feels his connection to greater forces in the world. Bachelard states, “the space in which the dreamer is immersed is a ‘plastic mediator’ between man and the universe”. (Gaston Bachelard, On Poetic Imagination, endnote p.80) This does not happen without the dream. The artist needs the oneiric dream to create the sacred space necessary for true creative work. “His experience ( in the act of creating) is an interweaving of dream and dexterity”. (Ibid. p.80)

Working with a material, such as paint, clay, wood or metal, in the very act of modeling it, one finds one’s imagination fixed with intensity. And in the process of working with one’s material, one is caught in a productive reverie where one’s inner life is given time to speak. This activated solitude with the material gives the soul space and creates a vertical axis for one’s thoughts. Verticality provokes and inspires a dynamic imagination. An imagination that “takes flight” allows the artist freedom from the horizontality of our everyday living. And in this flight or aerial view, the artist finds the image- the symbol that speaks and reveals its nature and ours. “Take away dreams and you stultify the worker. Leave out the oneiric forces of work and you diminish, you annihilate the artisan (artist)”. (Ibid. p.80)

One must protect the sacredness of one’s work- the time, space and material imagination. “Respect for deep psychological forces must lead us to keep the oneirism of work safe from any harm”. The energy produced by such creative work feeds the artist in such a way that he is able to simultaneously work and “rest”. It is rest in a sense, because one honors that part of our being that seeks expression. Rest and renewal of inner energies is paramount to one’s ability to create. The artist needs to exhaust themselves in the work itself only to find that one’s energy is simultaneously revived in the process. One’s ability to work this way gives a joy that is satisfying. Without this deep connection, the artist easily falls into depression- an expression of a disconnect between himself and the world. It produces a barrenness within the soul and one is left “wandering in the desert”. “The oneirism of work is the very condition of the worker’s mental integrity”. (Ibid. p.80)

Living this deep connection and unity provided by one’s work allows for a dynamic imagination to flower. One is no longer alone but deeply joined to elemental forces in the world as well as those around him and to humanity itself. “We can accomplish nothing good against our will, that is to say against our dreams.” (Ibid. p.80)

The longer I work on a piece the more difficult it is to know if it still contains the spirit, the zietgiest, the deep duende that is a necessary element of all quality work. Without it one has accomplished nothing. One has displayed only the facade of skill not a deep journey into the undersome romantic notion but everyone recognizes the duende when it appears. One is cut to the heart with emotion, with longing from which out of our being comes an ‘ah, yes’. We recognize duende as we would recognize our own reflection in a mirror.
I am not Spanish, where the source of duende resides. But even in my Irish roots I can recognize the same heightened emotion present in the Gallic sense of the Lament. It is recognizing that deep divide that resides in oneself where one longs for a real poetic escape from this world to a place of authentic emotion and deep meaning. Lorca states, “the arrival of duende presupposes a radical change to all the old kinds of form, brings totally fresh sensations, with the qualities of a newly created rose, miraculous, generating an almost religious enthusiasm.”
The artist should seek to get beyond artifice and get at the “marrow” of form, to leave one’s place of safety where one paints only those things one knows one can do well and get to the “new”, a completely authentic unfolding of the image. One needs to put oneself on a threshold of risk where the immediate engagement with the image unfolds in unknown and unexpected ways. It is difficult to put oneself on this level because there is a prevailing uneasiness, a feeling of inadequacy. One feels out of one’s element and all appears at risk, that this image will take more ability and inventiveness than one is capable of. Lorca states,”duende loves the edge, the wound, and draws close to places where forms fuse in a yearning beyond visible expression.” But only in this position can one truly wrestle with one’s own “daimon” and be open to a revelatory correspondence that is not premeditated and therefore reveals itself in the “living” moment. In such a state the duende appears and remains, declaring authenticity, a truth revealed.
Lorca states, “… the duende wounds, and in trying to heal that wound that never heals, lies the strangeness, the inventiveness of a man’s work.” Duende wounds again and again calling the artist back to his purpose- leaving a gulf within him that calls to be filled. This chasm felt within the artist is eased through the creative process which calls forth meaningful images that heal and connect him to the world.
If duende occurs in the process of creation than a residue of it ought to remain in the final piece. Does my piece have this underlying sense of engagement with meaning and has the actualization of the image occured in an authentic way? Hirsch states in his preface to The Demon and the Angel,

“the duende (or demon) and the angel are vital spirits of creative imagination. They are anomalous figures. They come only when something enormous is at risk, when the self is imperiled and pushes against its limits, when death is possible. They embody an irrational splendor… The demon and the angel are two external figures for a power that dwells deep within us. They are the imagination’s liberating agents, who unleash their primal force into works of art.”