Art exists within realms of the sign, symbol, material, and mental, and some will go toward the soulful, spiritual, and emotional. These are not separated as to be opposing forces really, though culture psycho-socially often construes these human experiences that way. After some decades of wondering why anyone says art does nothing for them, I have arrived at the idea they may simply not be a fan of Understanding.
Within the flood of sensory experiences, art has often led me to deeper insight into the workings of the spiritual, psychological, social, and realms of Understanding faster than any other form of study. Dance art, painting art, sculpture, photography, all of it. The arts or humanities are vying for their value in the gamified, technocratic social realm we play and live in today.
The separation of art from science seems rooted in a form of nostalgia denying the discourse around Cartesian Dualism being little more than a bad idea by a likely mentally unwell creature, and unawareness that much of that which we call art was born from scientific methodology. The classist or theistic gatekeeping has liquified through wider access to learning resources, and yet the premise of their existence becomes a type of invisible yet real wall many walk into. The ability to read invisible walls constructed through subconscious media digestion is a high-energy demand.
Visual literacy is an extended high-energy demand from our screen devices. Each of us encounters floods of images, and whether or not they are consciously digested, our body or subconscious receptors have to digest and do something with them. As is said in Japan, the body first eats with the eyes. Each encounter becomes part of the individual and collective imaginary realm.
In the notion we nary use a fraction of our brain organs’ potential, I have come to understand the energetic load of art as giving more than it takes. Additionally, as I found while studying art, the untold value of having to look at and consider deeply another point of view cognitively still pales to the ability to empathize with that view. Empathizing with views provided an understanding of the distinctions between strengths and weaknesses and the realm of imaginary and linguistic dominance tactics. The seeding of doubt through sophistry was an experience of having an invasive vine species within my body.
Whether someone has their base Maslow needs met or not, art serves anyone who chooses to engage in it. Of course, we have all met people with those needs met who somehow seem to believe they need even more. Some of these are the intellectuals serving gods and archetypes they believe are holy and good. This kind of self and collective anointing reminds me of the conflicts waged by Christian missionaries. The dominant worldview is composed of that plus, Fruedian and to a lesser degree Jungian psychoanalytic views, plus commodities and fiat systems, plus social dominance hierarchies, plus technocratic and economic manipulations and distortions, plus, plus, plus…there is a lot to contend with. This has led me to make fewer images with greater care.
I wish to share with you this image I made both through study and intuition. The idea the person making the thing knows everything about the art feels shrouded in mystery, given that no matter how much someone studies or knows, there are still new realms of knowing to understand despite the embedded patterning from the past. That said, the difference between an outsider artist and a professional artist is typified by the ability to do with or without great inspiration, and on purpose. That notion in itself is a different rabbit hole since today’s inside art celebrates the mimicry of formerly outsider artmakers.
5 layers of different colors, or effects, layered upon the other, and yet the referent remains the same. The candle is often used in Dutch still-life paintings and therefore exists in the collective psyche. A small fire is more manageable than a large bonfire, the practical function of the candle performs symbolically as evident in its popularity in the commodity market. In the dark, we need light to see, unless we develop the inner sensorial landscape well enough to live blindly. Yet the objects are what they are, regardless of their sign value. Despite being alive to say, as one of my professors called “trust me art” these candles and their holders were IKEA and not even owned by me or the person who had them on the shelf. They were rented out, in the sense that in a furnished apartment, nothing belongs to you. Everything on loan here, one candle leans and the other is upright. That is the fact that anyone can see, and psychologically deeper the sign of the candle as a flame that burns can be applied to the pair. In the two, a relationship is evoked. As in some relationships, one person stands up, one leans away or sometimes leans together. Unlit, the objects hover around each other hinting at the eventual outcome of these candles upon lighting. Due to the laws of physics, or what people call laws of nature, one of the candles will burn out leaving a puddle of wax and the other will burn longer with some drips. Unless someone can go in and change the scene, that eventuality will occur because of the structure of their being.
Further on, the trees growing in the foreground with Svartisen in the background depict similar visual reads with entirely different results and subject matter. In the background is the receding glacier altering the mineral composition of the landscape around it. The facts of climate change relies on having some internal resources that may have not been needed for the stable history humans have prospered under. I would like to venture into that through the concept of lack, instead of the popularized self-flagellation or argumentative approach. Not to serve as the leaning away candle as the social bias for anyone who speaks calmly about current matters is imagined to be, but to be more as the two upright trees.
Lack can sometimes be described as a sensation within the body or a condition around the body that does not fit a picture of what someone wants their reality to look like. Both of these descriptions point towards a feeling or a condition, and both of these areas are guideposts towards what a sense of lack points back toward a lack of choice, often rooted in lack of the awareness of choices. The momentum is often found in self-advocacy, which requires courage since humans can, despite abundance, remain competitive instead of gracious about their resources.
When a choice has not been made, often life seems mysterious, mystical, enigmatic, spiritual, aspirational-take your pick of word to describe a sort of head-swirly sensation. Even when a choice is made, the notion the universe goes to make it happen has come under the microscope in my self-reflections. This last part is key here, as though I read a lot of scientific studies, and engage in polyglot practices, at the end of the day, like anyone else with a soul, I have to reconcile these with my mind, spirit, and body.
The first place I invested time into studying the notion of lack was through logic and reason by studying rationality and irrationality. This establishes a particular worldview: where one person thinks the opposite of fire is water, in reality, the opposite of fire is not fire.
The conflation of axioms is what I have found as the gnarly roots of new age dogma, and the ways the social realm has been manipulated, and warped, the belief truth doesn’t exist grows, and the individuals’ will gets decentered by sociological pressures to fit in. This is where the fantasmorga or storytelling overrides logic and reason through emotion. Yet the emotional body is intelligent, not sinful, nor demonic. The emotional body is a critical realm of information that serves life, yours, and affects those around you. Yet in the realm of ideas, sneakiness can be on purpose, by design, or by accidental of lack of awareness. Lack of awareness grows not only by looking the other way but by not facing the negative aspects of the positive. I know this not by studying people smarter than me, which has become almost an addictive habit, but through my own life experiences.
All this gives me great pause, often, since much of what happens, in reality, is decided collectively, tacitly, as well as politically. The subtle realms are areas of clear, impactful insight are those I am most interested in. Agreeing or disagreeing within the realm of broad strokes feels rubbery as the black garbage bags set on fire while I was in Paris this spring. Deeper in still past the nitty gritty, and into a type of cosmic wavelength of sensory knowing, this realm of intuition varies by each human. For example, saying to the manipulated soul to follow their intuition could be reckless and cruel advice, and yet it could also be the kindest measure! I have found myself in more dangerous, difficult, confusing, and painful situations than I would have ever imagined or consciously chosen. Did I always have an intuition about that is the question I was posed by several people, a few of whom ascertained that I must have known a priori, and I could never agree with this. All I can say is I did have a nervous feeling, and I chose to override the sensation with my rational mind. In doing so, GIVING the benefit of the doubt, trust, patience, understanding, time, energy, attention, and kindness were things I deemed as “just what you do.” And I have paused here deeper for months on this again. What is the “just what you do” mean? Is it the socialized expectation of behaving a certain way to avoid ostracisation or rejection by the other gender? Does the anger of feeling used to serve a deeper self and therefore social awareness? I would say yes, and the yes is also as all forms of responsibility go: a weight.
Entertaining the claim and experience of the feminine archetype being used up without being appreciated, the way we have all come into the world was socially formed in ways clearly described in The Price of Motherhood. The notion pagan or tribal cultures were less brutal seems an imaginary question, worthy of consideration until it becomes detrimental. Society is concerned with constructs and individuals are concerned with all kinds of motivations. Someone oriented for self-actualization is motivated by visions and desire for their fulfillment, and therefore the responsibility to have the cognitive skills to bring them into being. That is what creating means: to make something that did not exist before…but it is not from nothing. Whether or not one believes in manifesting the material works on every layer of etheric, energetic, physical, and psychological being.
The sucking of generous feminine energy by masculine or the sucking of human energy itself as depicted in stories such as The Matrix is animated for a reason because the experiences of people are not merely within the realm of the mind alone but working the entire system of the body.
Denial is a river in Hell (helvete), which is not the same river going through Hell (luck) in Trøndelag. These words also relate to the way food is digested in the body, and so the body composes the walls of the soul/spirit body and mind, the information of food and intellect are signs and guideposts on a way to illumination through understanding. Denial of understanding the overriding of my intuition by my rational mind, my internal choice of masculine archetypal behavior consumed the feminine in me. I permitted the distortion and the manipulation of my mind, body, and spirit by a technocratic game player. These game players are smart and because they practice, become good at it. Having been practiced in the realm of yoga, ascetic practices, and piety at a time, I was the perfect match for such a dynamic, and instead of taking to the street in a pink-pussy-eared cap with a sign, I thought it better to learn and process the social dynamic so I could be more confident that the actions I do are good. I am not saying marching or not marching is good or bad, I simply want to acknowledge everything is energy and attention, and I have a responsibility for where I put my energy. In effect, if internal choice creates the experience of men consuming my energy, this understanding places a deep responsibility within me, to note when and where I am giving something, and if I am giving it for free or not. This type of responsibility does not erase social problems but creates self-satisfaction by knowing that I am doing some tiny part to not contribute further to the discourses of hatred.
For the person seemingly trapped on the first floor of life so to speak, or the First Price available at the grocery in Norway, the lowest or most basic quality of subsistence, this social construct reflects the perception or awareness of choice. Which leads to the realm of nuanced differences. The difference between olives would matter to someone who cares enough to perceive that particular variety of life. To someone who has no care for the difference, the Marxist view would be the shortest shelf to reach for class conflict and as today and as it always has been: cultural conflicts. I say conflict and not culture war or class war on purpose since words are used or misappropriated much too often. If we use words haphazardly as trust, patience, understanding, time, energy, attention, and kindness, I have witnessed the permissibility of greater distortion from experiencing life as a beautiful gift or the creation of a life akin to heaven on earth. When someone says: culture war, I have to interrupt. No, do not pervert the meaning of war to suit your emotional body or the social environment. Simply because everyone else does, does not mean it is correct.
That is what I care for, not right or wrong, left or right, since all loops end up leading to each other somehow, but correctness. That is what holds up the heart, keeps the spine straight, and lets the energy flow smoothly between the brain and the body. From correctness, in upright or repose positioning, the fluid of the body can flow.
So I must ask now: do you want a class on this? do you need it? what in our society do you feel is lacking? What about in your life?
This post is not to bæsj on lack, quite the opposite. I have to learn what is necessary to serve, so as not to erroneously waste my or your feminine archetypical energy. I say this based on a theory, that if we heal the feminine, the health of the masculine can be remembered. If the masculine heals, the grace of the feminine can be restored.
As I have forgotten through an ongoing emotional, spiritual, and physical experience that life is not happening at you or to you. Life happens with you and through you.
Words of caution from a survivor, since pain and suffering seem to be one of the great universals: the desire to connect can become an addiction to escape, and we have to be fully aware to the best of the ability of our words and each other, about our inner realms; to hold up the integrity of the one around us. The archetype of the devil implies forgetting, whereas the angelic realm implies remembrance. We don’t have to be Atlas or Greta, in fact, we can be gentle and quiet and have a harmonic transition.
And for Le Lapin to hop along further, I must learn if you reader what you think and feel about the prospect of using this space for:
interviewing people with stories in the vein of the pursuit of truth through allegory
personal diary to share the backstories of my experiences in my life as an artist
or something else
As for keeping this mind alive, would like to purchase access, instead of on a subscriber basis or on a single-time payment and then voluntary basis.
While I always appreciate the private emails readers send me, I also encourage the public sharing of thoughts (and respect either way).
Contact: mariammanart@icloud.com
Relative correctness