Neurotika Blog – Process.

In truth there is no heaven or destination. We walk the road -lost and alone. We never reach the home in the valley -it is always someplace in the future.

In this way hope is obsolete. Process is the flow of the seasons -the passing of days and nights -and the endless tides that come and go. How can we apply our art to this: the process of expression -never stopping or coming to rest? When we create -we pour the subtle light into forms and shapes. On our personal journey through the wilderness -we come to rest in stations -for weary travellers. We spend time in temporary dwelling places -and then go forth to further explorations. Even so there is no end to it – we never stop moving. We as artists -are caught in our creativity – never stepping outside the circle of our being. We do not come to a place -and say ‘here I am.’ The process of art is without culmination. We must not look beyond our time either -to say that ‘I will be’ or ‘I will come to be’
In process the art is not captured like a fish in the net. We do not take form in our self -because in the core of our reality -we are indeed formless. We are changelings -who are able to transform our characters over and over again. We stand -and relate to the outside from inside. We are always reinventing the world. The existential anxiety of modern man -is a thing of a soul who strives to reach an ultimate truth. But there are no large truths -only small ones. The absolute is obsolete -and we realize it -when we reach to a higher branch -and cannot pluck the fruit there. We fall -as we extend ourselves too high. There is only the immediate realm of the senses. History is an absurd concept as the sequence of events in the time-stream are false. There is no time -only rhythm. In this way we are taken forward -facing what we see -and reacting in our perception.
What thinks of past and future -does not exist. Only rhythm takes us -as we strive to fill our lives with beauty. The process of art is then a thing that gives endlessly. It’s nature is generosity -and it arises out of extravagance. To be promiscuous is to create -to replicate ourselves in what we do. It is the same as having children -and it arrives out of possibilities. We are putting both joy and pain into what we are involved in. When you are young you express celebration. When you are older -you speak of irony. From complete acceptance -to a wry aside -we grow into artists. In process we are moved. It is true that man alters the forms as he passes through them. He is tied to everything -there is a hidden symbolism in the things he is surrounded with. There are correspondences in all the objects he touches. Everything is sentient -and aware. Even the walls look back at you.
In the Tao Te Ching it is said that ‘if you are still -the world will come to you.’ In the words of the prophet – ‘the first will be last -and the last will be first.’ Art is a contrary and irritable customer -it resists all efforts to be facile and clever. If you pluck the feather of the dove -do you have the dove? In this way things are unadorned -to return to the ‘un-carved block’ We remember and in remembering -we are realized. Art is not an invention or a structure -it is invisible to the sight. It is only seen in the images and visions of men who are themselves invisible. You cannot see love -but you know it exists. The trees bend to the wind -and a pilgrim is hungry. The artist is able to take the secrets of nature and show them to the audience. The act of creation is not taught in a college. There is a living tradition passed from hand to hand. It is the songs and tales of the poor people Such a tradition is a hermetic knowledge given to those who are themselves apprentices to the sacred. Such a strange esoteric doctrine -is made concrete in the lives of ordinary people. The poetry of the soil, dirt and sand -is a free flowing thing of imagination. The job of the poet and artist is to take water from the well and give it to the others. This is not a thing of manifestos and educated persons – it is a mutable thing -a tradition of common clay. In this way we are all created characters of fiction. We are made of the same stuff that Ahab and Huck Finn are made of. We are participants in a story that has no chapters. We are unending process -without direction. We are walking on a road but do not know where it goes.