Link

Drive

The metaphor of driving is easy to elaborate because the action is so ubiquitous in modern life. It doesn’t have to have a destination. When someone is said to have “drive” it generally connects to ambition as a quality, and that just tops the stack of less conscious urgencies. We stay on the roads we’ve traveled unless something draws us elsewhere. Since “being driven” cedes the power to the one who is doing the driving the important question is who or what gets to choose the direction? We may think we’re in charge when we are simply repeating a pattern conditioned from before we had memory. In regard to personal motivation, where does it shade into “overdrive” and is that a refinement of conditioned reactions? As a person who works all the time at projects with no deadline and that no one demands, the question of “why” is a frequent visitor. Examining my need to work
doesn’t change it, never seems to get close to the core of the drive to write and draw. They are the vehicle that takes me to see what I’m trying to see.

Shifting the blog to one essay and one drawing a month instead of two is hopefully a victory of realism over compulsion. This inner debate is a scene from the continuing drama of finding the distinction between motivation and irrational urgency. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe it has more to do with the mood that makes the identification. I always look to this line from Henry James.
“We work in the dark. We do what we can. We give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task.”
Each time I reflect on these words I take something different from them. This time it confirms my sense that motivation and compulsion are just different parts of a multidimensional spectrum that takes its character from the other emotions involved. The nature of doubt prompts its resolution. Likewise we create images for what we need to see, to clarify and fill in the gaps in a pattern.
Attention is drawn to imbalance, to something missing or something that doesn’t belong and its feeling of tension requiring release by action. Even when actions have no concrete use, like obsessive
compulsive habits, repetitive activity sooths the emotional manifestations of what the hormones signal. Unproductive action may calm but ultimately leads nowhere. I once got stuck in an eight month compulsion, shading a long tube in a drawing. What I needed to see was there without the perfectionism that kept me making adjustments that required more adjustments. When a current project has a particularly demanding area requiring extended days what I think of as my OCD
drawing reminds me to ask what there is still left to see. Endless revision can leave new ideas as unexpressed impulses that become a burden as they accumulate. It’s useful to have the stark example of those months in an obsessive loop as an image of where motivation is a mask worn by underlying patterns of self-comfort. In the language of “driving” imagery, the odometer might have been going up, but I was still circling the same block, staying in motion, but not getting anywhere. All the variations expressible by this metaphor are as universal to the planet as driving itself.

2014 Bookmark

Here is this year's bookmark for anyone who wants to print it, cut it out around the image and use it. I preserve and stiffen it between two sheets of clear contact paper then cut it out again with an eighth inch around the edge. This year's is based on Hanuman, the Hindu monkey God. Happy Holidays!

34th Street, Baltimore

Light displays were always a big pleasure in my childhood. Just riding around and seeing the variety in the neighborhood, the transformation of the familar created a sense of festivity. Wonder at the sight of such organized illumination kept me persuing inventive lighting into adulthood. My modern equivalent is finding a place on the web with the “20 awesomist light displays” to scroll through and see from my chair. A beautiful winter poem of a picnic grounds wrapped white lights up vertical tree trunks. Shining in the snow among the picnic tables they seemed to wait for an enchanted party to begin. The site included some imaginative individual house displays, but they were overwhelmed by extravagant commercial and corporate displays with a thoroughness in attention to detail that made them artful and dazzling.

So it was a special pleasure to read about our own 34^th Street light display in the Wall Street Journal. There I learned that a Japanese company is filming a documentary about Xmas at W. 34^th St. in Hampden, Baltimore. The originality and Baltimore flavor makes it far more fun than the manufactured commercial displays. My personal favorite is the hubcap tree. The display of Mr, Boh proposing to the Utz girl has been the setting for three couples engagement. Free from normal constraints by the general theme of the street, it’s not just illuminated, it's creative collaboration.  What brings people together for a common purpose fills the air with life energy. It brought to mind the line from Eldridge Cleaver, “Competition is the law of the jungle. Cooperation is the law of civilization.” Though in so many areas of life it seems as though the law of the jungle has gotten the upper hand under cover as civilization. But our brains are wired to reward cooperation and connection. The thrill of competition is short and focuses attention on the comparison with others rather than putting skills together to accomplish something neither one could do on their own. It took the whole block to have the creative take on Christmas tradition that evolved in Hampden.

Light is an important metaphor in all religions. It offers relief from darkness in the darkest time of the year. It transforms the night with an order  of its own, a design invisible in the light of day, the presence of thought we were unaware of when distracted by what’s easily perceived. 

Reductionism

Colorized Movies

Colorized movies are a good example of something that should not be done just because it’s possible. The violence done to artistic intention neutralizes a film as art. When a photographer frames a scene in black and white the composition flows with the distribution of light and shadow that sets a mood that emphasizes significant relationships within the scene. Colorizing heightens the separation of things. Shifting the attention to the objects distorts the original intention of the scene by removing the powerful emotional influence exerted by that original mood. Before we know what we’re looking at the body has responded to the space it’s confronted with and adjusted to what’s expected of it. Our inner consciousness of this adjustment is what is experienced as a mood or feeling. As neuroscientist Candace Pert says” Our body IS our unconscious mind.”

Color has its own power over emotions by affecting the physical body. Red is known to stimulate and blue to slow the chemical reactions in the body that register as our vital signs. Perhaps the relaxation is necessary to the creativity blue has also fostered while the heightened focus found with red is the expected result of a stimulant. Instead of artful use of this power colorized movies reflect the colors we expect from the world.  As Gregory Bateson said, "Information is the difference that makes a difference.” What gets our attention is what we don’t expect. Movies filmed in color control the way the color affects the body and emotions. Like shadows unify the props in a scene and light can single out something particular for notice, thoughtful use of color can draw attention to relationships within the scene, heightening whatever level of tension builds the appropriate anticipation. The brain is designed to predict and if the messages of the scene are wrong , there’s disharmony. Colorizing a movie created in black and white neutralizes the emotional richness of a film. Younger generations, not realizing a movie’s been colorized might wonder why anyone thought it was such a great movie, never seeing the art that brought the depth of the movie home. Every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas my husband and I always watch the 1951 version of "A Christmas Carol" with Alistair Sim. Not only is he our favorite Scrooge, the scenes are gorgeous examples of meaning emphasized by use of light and shadow. The way light and darkness is used evokes Dickens’ time and enables each scene to express the psychological transformation of Scrooge with the amount of darkness and how it gives way to light as his understanding grows.

 Even when blurry, the relation of light and dark is all we need to move around in the world. That preverbal relation to spatial features sets a tone that influences us unconsciously and can’t be ignored without sacrificing emotional meaning. So if you're watching a movie that's been colorized this holiday, consider turning the color all the way down to see it the way it was intended

Sky Light

      This image has been reposted in honor of Rhian Elizabeth Williamson, born 11-11-14.