Writing

In contemplating the bodies of water in my local valley as part of my art practice, something has made itself known.

The pools are luminous, vibrating patterns of light. The closer you look the more extraordinary they become, and the movement more impossible to draw or represent.

 

 

 

 

 

In still ponds, the reflections of trees hold more authority and mystery than the real thing.

Reflections have no mass, but are empty, made of light. They are shattered by the breeze, wiped from the surface, and slowly reemerge, loosely reassembled and subtly changed. Where do they exist — out there on the water surface, in the eye or in the space between?

Playing on the mind, setting up rhythms in the body.

A sudden squall sweeps over with a roar and darkens the surface. A thrill.

Looking deeply into what at first looks like a muddy ditch reveals mystery and depth — opposite to the typical postmodern gestalt where you are drawn to an attractive surface to be shocked, repelled or compromised.

The surface is a mirror, viscous with tension. A tiny whorl on the surface catches the eye, With a shift of focus the muddy ground comes to the fore. Another slight shift and a leaf comes to the fore — trapped twisting in the the mid body of the water. Expanding your vision, you fall thousands of feet into an infinity of sky crossed by a tiny plane. A sliver of moon is caught in the branches.

I am unable, unwilling to objectify and “draw” all this.

Looking up, water patterns made out of sunlight are bounced up into the trees. Where is the water now?

In fact these patterns cannot be seen by the naked eye and in order to see them properly you need to photograph them to keep them still. If you expand the image, using two fingers on your iphone screen, you start to see what is really going on.

The first time I looked into the photo, standing on the bank of the pond, something happened, It was as if I had seen into the interior of things, and fallen in. There was no longer an “out there” and an “in here”. There was an understanding, rather than an experience, of an extraordinary energy which irrupts through the fabric of reality. Something had been revealed, authoritative and requiring a response.

In a video interview called “Seeing with the Ears, Hearing with the Eyes” Zen master John Daido Loori describes his practice of photography. Sometimes, but not always, it’s a meditative approach He goes out into the landscape and waits to be “invited in”. But at other times, he says “it’s crazy.” He describes an incident when he went “berserk”, swept away “by the energy of the place — the howl of the sea lions’, the roar of the wind, the fog moving in and out and the pounding of the surf”.– and found himself up to his chest in the sea, “trembling uncontrollably”.

What is this energy?

Is it what Jackson Pollock experienced in his action paintings? He once declared “I am Nature.”

“Churches are ok if you got to belong to something to feel safe, but artists don’t need that….they’re part of the universal energy in their creating.” And, “how the hell can you teach art, Nick?…..it’s got nothing to do with what I’m involved in, the cosmos.”
(Lipsey, 1997)

With no framework to contextualise it, did he go berserk?

…………………..

These images come from a direct experience overlaid, of course, by my own interpretation.  Although subjective, I don’t consider these experiences to be based on a figment of the imagination happening within the confines of my skull.  Surely there is something of a universal experience which is accessible by all who walk by water, all fishermen who stare into ponds and rivers?  I hope so.

Here is Arthur Kajonc on how you can intuit the universal within the particular.

“You know if you’re standing on the bank, the shore of the lake, a very calm lake, at night, and you look into the lake you can see the stars above. You’re not looking at the stars but you’re looking into the lake. And I think oftentimes the formulas and equations and experiments of modern Physics, which are complex and abstract and beautiful in their own way, are a kind of reflection for the cosmos — in the lake, if you will. So you’re looking down, you’re looking into matter and even through matter into subatomic matter and you’re going to see something fabulous because the whole world is of one piece, but you’re seeing it in a particular domain. ……”(Das Kreativ Universum, Interview mit Arthur Kajonc, 2014)

Michael D’Aleo shows how you can not only intuit but also have an experience of a different or expanded reality. In “Embracing Materialism and Letting It Go. An experiential guide to overcoming an object-based world conception, he sets out clear instructions of how to look at water in order to see “more of reality”.  This is not “new agey”, but an expansion of seeing.

He says the first thing to remember is that when we look at water, what we are doing is precisely not that.  We can’t see water — water is invisible.  What we see is light and movement. The reflections and patterns are the sky, trees, clouds, houses and shadows caused by the effects of the wind.

“Allow your gaze to fall on the surface and try to use a peripheral or open mode of observation….. If after doing this for a bit of time you begin to feel that you are losing your balance or that you are almost being drawn into the stream, these are indications that you are nearing the suggested mode of observation.”

Many people report that the colour “was happening within them” or that they “were one with the colour”. The everyday habit of conceptualising the world as “out there” in distinction from my own self “in here” is temporarily non-existent……. This experience can be frightening for some and empowering for others”. (Chapter 5, Standing by a Pond: The Inner and the Outer are inseparable”. )

It’s reassuring to have one’s own experience verified by others. If done consciously, this practice is profound and can turn what we take to be reality — as me being here and everything else out there — on its head.  This way of seeing is not everyday, but it can become normal with practice.