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Arts advocates have been trying to pour the vast personal and social importance of this essential human experience into containers—into language, slogans, arguments, strategies—far too small to hold it. Art’s essence is its ability to engage us fully in body, emotions, mind and spirit, to create beauty and meaning, to cultivate imaginative empathy, to disturb the peace, to enable grief in the face of loss and hope in the face of grief. Trying to explain or demonstrate this with numbers is like trying to describe a rainbow without mentioning color. It is ineffective, discouraging, and unworthy of who we really are to keep trying the same failed approach. And now it is plainer than ever that the failure is total and abject.arlenegoldbard.com.

Seen and heard #133

Overheard -- from a slightly allergic woman to a beloved cat:

"Go away. Just looking at you makes my eyes itch!"

Oh, those generational moments!

I was working in a 5th grade class yesterday with a small group of students. The opening comment to me was this:
"You look like the old man in UP"
It started a buzz with the others, some defending me: "No,he was mean!"
My response was "What's 'UP'"? In my old man mind, I was just a big fifth grader.
I remembered that quote from Gertrude Stein, Inside we are always the same age
Oh, are there more s'elves lurking about the Pixar has yet to discover?:

A Vernal Pool

If we want to realize the truth, the first thing to remember is that we don't have to do anything. No sacred dances. No secret mantras. No religious conversion. We just sit quietly where we find ourselves and simply don't do anything. This is most important. Don't do anything. We look directly and see what is true in that moment without labeling or judging anything. Now we see the truth which is beyond our fantasies. We also see that our mind is a conglomeration of mental events, fleeting and insubstantial. At that moment it's impossible to become attached to any personal story line. This is a perfect moment. It lacks nothing. That recognition brings about a sense of inexhaustible joy. We might feel like we want to get up and dance wildly. If so, do it and call it sacred dance."
Anam Thubten, no self no problem (Snow Lion Publications, 2009), pp. 84-85."

Poem memorized as a child

Lovely Lady Dressed in Blue

Lovely Lady dressed in blue ----
Teach me how to pray!
God was just your little boy,
Tell me what to say!
Did you lift Him up, sometimes,
Gently on your knee?
Did you sing to Him the way
Mother does to me?
Did you hold His hand at night?
Did you ever try
Telling stories of the world?
O! And did He cry?
Do you really think He cares If I tell Him things-
Little things that happen? And Do the Angels' wings
Make a noise? And can He hear
Me if I speak low? Does He understand me now?
Tell me ---- for you know?
Lovely Lady dressed in blue ----
Teach me how to pray!
God was just your little boy,
And you know the way.

Arts and Psyche in the City

I've made a proposal for a presentation this summer at a conference on Arts and Psyche:

The Power of Fugitive Materials:
I have been working with ephemeral and fugitive materials for my whole life. The sacred is often hidden in the common and the fleeting. As a rustic furniture maker for 25 years I enchanted people with beauty and utility from “brush”. As a sculptor, now I whittle away at river-worn bark pieces to reveal the hiding s’elves within. I believe there is an old human need to know that the gods are within everything. It was the disgraced Gospel of Thomas that said: Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."

In the wound is the healing: a hands-on workshop in active imagination
Artist/teacher Daniel Mack introduces his notion of The Four Needs of the Imagination: Stories, Awe, The Carnal and Dexterity. He then uses a short trance/meditation to start an exercise to encounter other parts of our s’elves through fast collage work with natural and found fugitive materials making what he calls “Imaginal Trading Cards.” People make several visual ID cards, reflecting their preferred and deferred selves. These fit nicely in those plastic ID badge holders. One card starts with a bandaid to help visualize the wounds we all carry. Information on versions of this same workshop: http://www.danielmack.com/ITC.html

Bio
Daniel Mack is an artist with trees and other natural materials and has been studying the work of Carl Jung for over 30 years. He has been teaching at The Omega Institute since 1996 and is now carving hundreds of figures from bark he collects along the banks of the Hudson River. He calls them “anima”. He has presented at The Nature and Human Nature Conference at the Pacifica Institute and writes for various archetypally-oriented journals. More on all this at www.danielmack.com
Vimeos: http://vimeo.com/6177731 http://vimeo.com/6153333

Fugitive Materials

A few nights ago, I met a friend I'd not talked with in a year or more. His opening question:
"Oh, hi Dan. Are you still interested in fugitive materials?"

I was a bit dismayed. ("Is that what he thinks of me!)
But mostly I was pleased.

My whole life has been engaged with the ephemeral, fugitive, fleeting.
As a child, my grandfather would take me out "nutting" in the autumn to collect fallen horse chestnuts and pig nuts. It was seasonal--fugitive--activity.

I collected stamps and coins and much preferred the worn, nearly obliterated coins to those in mint condition... again fascination with the unseen--- those long dead fingers that had worn these coins into their current condition.

I've started retrieving these coins from boxes deep in the attic and am looking for ways to re-present the still powerful energies of the worn. They will likely end up as crown chakras on my carvings.

Did I start with "fugitive"? hmmm