Pilgrimage

I have of late been going out to downtown SF to do my ecstatic movement in the streets. I see it as a journey to see again the transformation about me that grace allows me at varying degrees. I call it a pilgrimage.

The idea was based on issues of defining a frame of presentation for what I do. As it is basically continuous and spontaneous it resists programmation. I decided to just do what I do in the context of a social space, an ecstatic in the flow of public concourse.

My basic trajectory is to walk in the most compelling direction through an act of surrender. This will often take me in circles, but this is not the point. Often I will stop suddenly as spontaneous movements emerge. This can get very intense as I allow it to move me as it will. I continue until they subside, and then look for another direction to begin walking again. I remind myself to move and see in a context of surrender.

I focus on the people around me as this is the greatest stimulus. I have positioned myself amongst the flow of pedestrians crossing the street, focusing on them as they come. I find myself awash in a river of people, from each I recognize something, like a ring of a bell, which energizes me. This is a very heady to experience.

The most consistent response from the public though is ignoring and avoiding me. People's faces are well guarded, to which it is easy to respond in like. But as one of my directives is to turn away from compulsions of self protection I once looked more deeply and saw their faces transform into amazing masks, each spilling over with their own particular wonderful rigid beauty.

One time at the corner of Market and Montgomery the environment suddenly shifted and I saw what I can only describe as heaven on earth. I began to weep openly, and the repetition of the words in my mind "heaven on earth" reinitiated the experience during several minutes. Nothing had changed visually, I was just seeing heaven on earth, as the tears rolled down my cheeks for all to see.

Now although I am behaving as a crazy person might, jumping about randomly, and although there is some apprehension in exposing myself this way in public, the far greater apprehension is in the anticipation of exposure to the expansive. My process is inclusive of the people, they become like ink to me, they are part of the whole. But the unfathomable intimacy in the transformation that I may experience exposes me to an extremely vulnerable level. What I may perceive is quite a lot to take in and will rend me, crack away at my identity. And it seems to me that I am being perceived just as deeply as I am perceiving, maybe even more so. And this is the goal. So when this is happening, the fact that it is happening in public space just doesn't hold any concern any more.

This is my art. I have a uniform I wear every time, white shirt, black pants, white shoes, with my blue metal water bottle on my belt. Also a small feather in my hair, as a headdress is essential. I take only what I will need to be there and make art. Maybe I will add some objects, things I have used in other events, but for now this is the setting. My art is in being an ecstatic in a public venue and bringing about the transformed experiences that grace will allow me through my efforts of surrender. I will be on pilgrimage making art again soon.

Stimuli to Response: Counter Intuitive Intuition

As an addendum to my previous post I would like to explain the relation of stimuli to the response in the ecstatic experience. What arises in the experience is not usually associated to how I elicit it. I have learned what works over the years and often this would seem very specific to me. It is an empirical approach, not a logical one.

For instance, it may arise that I experience an overwhelming feeling of love to and from me of an order which is not usually known or accessible to me. But this is not achieved by honing or trying to augment my sense of love through focus, meditation, chant or prayer on love. I may find this by relaxing my sacrum area, surrendering to the spontaneous movement that arises, and visually focusing on all that is about me. It will arise as if on it's own, not by efforts to form it.

Other stimuli I use seem purely functional and specific to me, such as looking into or poking a stick into a cup or bowl. This can even work when I see someone else poke a stick into a vessel. Fortunately for me these objects and actions have a great amount of metaphorical associative possibilities which I can use thematically, but this isn't why it works. Rather it is because this is the action of me dunking an ink pen into an ink well, which is an action associated with drawing, and some how the focus I put on automatic drawing to elicit a response got transferred to the dunking of the pen, as these actions are always consecutive.

Although some may use the power of a symbol to focus and open an experience on what the symbol represents, this is by no means the sole way, or even a completely efficient way. A focus on a symbol can entice many levels of the psyche; conceptual, sentimental, ego identification, which can distract from an awareness of the ecstatic and expansive. In my experience when a stronger ecstatic response comes it is pretty shattering to my sense of self. That love may be more bewildering than comforting, even disorienting. It is a qualitatively different experience. I do not see the bridge between them.

In this the sense of cause and effect does not hold for me. It is more practice/surrender leading to grace by grace. Joseph Campbell said that some spiritual traditions are there to protect the user from spiritual experiences, and I know how and where in my being some spiritual actions and practices affect me, which I can see are distractions. I do sometimes find stimulating words that I can use to elicit the response, but they have come directly from the ecstatic experience. I have learned them, not devised them. It is a path of intuition, but intuition that has proven itself.

Mastering Surrender

One of the tasks of being an artist is to master your tools, be it a musical instrument, bodily movements, physical media or structures in language. Artistic merit is often considered on this kind of mastery alone, even though there more to be considered.

From the beginning of automatic drawing it became obvious I was no longer using my focus to make intended marks on paper. Rather the automatic drawing act was putting focus back onto myself, a focus in perceiving the impulse that came from inside. My artistic process had flipped, I was now not honing my focus towards making an authentic mark, but using my newly discovered process of spontaneous marking to focus what was arising inside. The care and concentration on the integrity of a mark shifted to a concentration for an authentic response from an inner impulse, one which only showed up in the act of automatic drawing. I was beside myself in needing find out what this was all about. I had to be true to what I had discovered. There was no other way to do this than by continuing to draw and observe as best I could.

I also wanted to make visually interesting art, but I found most art tools only minimally served me as they were designed for specific applications, none of which I was involved in. I had to investigate different kinds of tools that would better work with the way I was marking. Through this I have developed a vocabulary of materials better suited to my spontaneous way of marking. Many of these tools and materials are homemade, non traditional, invented to make the idea of a specific looking mark, and sometimes for metaphorical content. This I could say is my external effort towards a mastery in my art.

Obviously this development of physical tools was based on a commitment to my automatic way of marking. And this meant holding a goal of having the automatic movement come as fully and consistently as possible. This was a very difficult task at first. I really had no idea about how to further it, or hone in on it. Initially it was just was holding my pen towards the paper and waiting. There must have been an internally activity I as engaged in, but it was too subtle for me to perceive. Equally difficult was trying overcome the will to imitate the movement, to keep it authentic. Fortunately I could feel the difference.

Eventually I began to perceive how it arose in me more clearly, but not usually in a way I could recreate. Over time though I have learned how to focus and stimulate it. This has come in small steps. Bit by bit I have discovered certain actions, ideas, words, movements, places on my body, external objects and such on which I put my attention that prove to be stimuli to the movement. These are things I discover which get a strong response and which I can recall again to it recreate the response. Sometimes they work for a only short while and are then no longer functional. Others are still in use. These I consider like mnemonic devices which are tied to deep internal actions outside my awareness. Over time I have been able to more clearly perceive these internal actions and how to stimulate them more directly, but there always still seems to be a deeper activity that is out of my awareness, so it is a continuous process of discovery.

These days I can access fairly deep states through my vocabulary of stimuli towards experiences that continually astound me. I cannot regulate how deeply I will go, this is still an aspect of grace, but my tools of surrender have been collected and their use have been honed. This is the path in my mastery of my art.