Thankful for the Oppurtunity to Give My Self to Art

This week of thanksgiving what am I thankful for? Well in addition to the usual things like my girlfriend, my family, my cat and dog, being alive, etc., what comes to mind is something that I have always been grateful for. My creative drive; my need to express myself, that for as long as I can remember as always been there. I am not alone in my family in having this streak, as a child I remember all my older brothers being able to draw, I remember staring in awe at their work. My grandfather, my dad always tells me (I never met him) was very good at drawing and painting, in addition to being in a traveling band, (we're talking early 20th century here, not a rock band but something akin I guess).

So a gift that I am thankful for is my creativity, but what to do with it? I have been working at painting and drawing and writing, mostly art though, for quite a number of years now. There is always that gap between having to work full time, and then not doing your art. I am getting to the point soon hopefully where I will start selling my work (you'll see it offered here in the near future you lucky readers), and ideally that would be a large part of my income.

"Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it."
-Buddha

Buddha in the Garden, derivative work
© 2008 Ed Tajchman (original source)

It's not the new year it's Thanksgiving obviously, but I already have a resolution (who needs a new year for a resolution anyways). It's to be more applied and focused in drawing and painting every day. Finishing projects, framing them, and repeating the cycle. To use the creative gift to the full extent and make it my life, to take that last step into working 8 - 12 hours a day at it. (We can all dream right?)

Someone who did manage this feat was a very successful early 20th century musician, Clara Schumann. She also raised 7 kids, was the main money winner for her family through her concerts, inspired and married fellow pianist Robert Schumann, and was considered "the high priestess of music" in her day.

"My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art."
-Clara Schumann

She was lucky enough to be one of those people whose art enveloped every portion of their life from a very young age. She threw herself and her whole life into her art and made a success of it. Taught by her father from an early age, she studied music for her entire life, and through a lot of hard work, determination, and an unwavering focus she did indeed live for art. The Schumann's were lucky enough to be pretty much born into their art in a somewhat wealthy family, next post I'll be discussing more; that struggle that most artist's who aren't so lucky to have that kind of setting feel.

Beliefs and Rules

Belgium's famous painter James Ensor (1860 - 1949) was also a printmaker and used many political, literary, historical and social references in his paintings. (Check out the They Might Be Giants Song Meet James Ensor). His work is a bridge between post-impressionism and outright expressionism, really though you can't make a generalization about his style, but don't take my word for this:

"My art tends toward the literary. My pictures tend toward the outskirts of painting: But why generalize? It is possible to realize one thing or another, according to the impressions gained from one point of view or another. But it is too difficult to make a general rule." - James Ensor

What I find particularly interesting is the idea of realizing things about your art according to what he calls impressions, gained from points of view, experiences you've had etc. Of course you can make certain observations about a style and this is necessary to talk about it, but it's not necessary to ultimately label something outright or make solid rules.

James Ensor, The Banquet of the Starved, 1915.

By not making those general rules you maintain a kind of objective open-mindedness, freedom and ingenuity in your work, or at least leave those doors wider open, which I think adds an immense kind of possibility. But if you were to make a general rule, at least in regards not to style but perspective, this would make a good start.....

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
- Buddha

Beliefs are powerful, or can be anyways, of course - right? That's why I like that thought from Buddha so much, because it reminds me to look at everything and merely observe, not to judge but to observe and only make neccessary decisions after careful thought, and let other things roll off of my back.

From Buddha to Einstein; All Matter is Energy

Today I want to discuss the concept: matter is energy, and the universality that this idea has. Matter is energy condensed into a slow vibration; energy that is transmutable. Energy particles don't disappear, they transform, everything is a never ending process of energy transformation. There is the same amount of energy on this earth has there was millions of years ago. All reality exists on a sub-atomic level. Take this quote from Einstein as we explore this idea further.

"Even the Greeks had already conceived the atomistic nature of matter and the concept was raised to a high degree of probability by the scientists of the nineteenth century. But it was Planck's law of radiation that yielded the first exact determination - independent of other assumptions - of the absolute magnitudes of atoms. More than that, he showed convincingly that in addition to the atomistic structure of matter there is a kind of atomistic structure to energy, governed by the universal constant h, which was introduced by Planck." -Albert Einstein

If you're wondering what Planck's constant h is; h = the fundamental physical constant attribute of the mathematical equations of quantum mechanics. Describing the behavior of particles and waves on the atomic scale, including the particle aspect of light. Radiation, as with light, is emitted, transmitted, and absorbed in energy packets, or quanta, determined by the frequency of the radiation and the value of Planck’s constant. The energy of each quanta equals h times the radiation frequency.

We've split the atom for gosh sakes. What more proof do you need than the massively destructive force that results from splitting an atom, to know that at a deep microscopic level that energy is atoms. The more physics looks inside the atom, the seemingly infinitesimally smaller particles we discover. We are everything literally. We all are energy, everything around us is energy, it's all light particles. But as Einstein states above in reference to the Greeks, this idea did not originate in the realm of physics.

“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.” -Aristotle

“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion” -Democritus

In the above quote Greek philosopher Democritus says, "empty space". According to Planck and Einstein this is not empty space but extended space. But the point is that the Greeks had a firm grasp of what Einstein calls the atomistic nature of matter. Buddha also had a firm grasp of this:

"We are the same as plants, as trees, as other people, as the rain that falls. We consist of that which is around us, we are the same as everything." -Gautama Buddha

Equations of quantum physics of the 20th century tells us the same thing that Buddha and Greek philosophers told us thousands of years ago. So the idea that everything is made up of the same basic form of energy is not decades or centuries old, but at least thousands of years old.

The Buddha, Odilon Redon, 1904.

Let's take a closer look at one specific part of the quote from Buddha, "We are the same as plants, as trees...." On a side-note branching from this idea, let me ask the question, who's to say that some plants don't have a kind of consciousness? The oldest living thing is the box huckleberry, the age of one colony found in Pennsylvania is 13,000 years. The redwoods in California are well over 200 ft tall and more than 2,000 years old. Early this decade in Oregon researchers discovered a single organism of the Armillaria ostoyae, (the honey mushroom) whose underground mycalea spans 2,200 acres (890 hectares) and is least 2,400 years old, possibly older. Mycalea are fibers linking the plant together almost like the fiber network of a brain. But this brain spans 2,200 acres and is 2,400 years old.

A living organism that old and that successful has some kind of cognizance. It's been proven in experiments that plants respond directly to the playing of music for example, take a loot at Plants respond to music. In 1966, Cleve Backster performed a series of experiments on the dracena cane plant hooked into a polygraph machine. His results indicated that it responded in a variety of ways that clearly indicated at least primary perception.

I will conclude by giving you Backster's definition of primary perception: "The vehicle of communication, the invisible, unrecognized field that interconnects all species and life forms, whereby biocommunication can occur." One could define biocommunication as: types of communication within and between species of plants and/or animals.

So anyways, I hope all this has given you something to think about, feel free to expand on any of these ideas with a comment. If you enjoy any of my writings and articles, feel free to digg (icon below) them and/or hit the thumbs up icon or the vote for me icon on the bottom right of the sidebar.

Digg It!

Gautama Buddha on Creating Your Self

What's interesting is that after I read this a couple of weeks ago, I had a dream where I was holding a small Buddha statue. Anyways, I couldn't agree more with Gautama Buddha and his words of wisdom, expressed in this quote:

"The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation. You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew. Seek therefore, not to find out Who You Are, but seek to determine who you want to be."

- Gautama Buddha

There is that archetypal idea of a young person going wandering or traveling for a while to find themselves. More powerful maybe, is the idea that you can create who you are. There is no true barrier stopping anyone from being anything they want, you just need to find a way - any way, to create it; to invent your self. From what you eat, to how you treat people, to how you dress, are all decisions that shape who you are.

I think it's important that we strive to learn and grow and envision a more clear future, and at the same time embrace who we are today. There's no solid niche for what moves some people the most, but that just means there's more opportunity for you to create that yourself with your vision, goals, and dreams. This quote from George Bernard Shaw, also talks of creating the self.