Feeling Like A Question Mark
November 28, 2009
a post by Alex Bigney, author
I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME sailing on my brother’s boat, out in the middle of Penobscot Bay, as he called out instructions in nautical lingo. I sat helpless, excitedly ignorant of what it all meant and what to do. Then, there was my first time in Italy after an intensive but brief two months of Italian classes-all communication too soon streaming by in a noisy current of fervent and frenzied speech, leaving me blessedly confused and feeling foreign. Once, I attended a gathering of professorial types coming together to taste wine and to toast to each others’ accomplishments. And there I was-me, the teetotaler, an artist, a stranger in the strange land of high-browed socializing-just standing and smiling.
“…but there’s nothing to know!” horselaughed one intemperate fellow who went on to testify passionately of his vast knowledge of godlessness. “Of course I’m an atheist!” he boasted.
“That’s more faith than I’ve got,” I remarked politely, feeling confused and out-of-place, and making my way toward the front door to let myself out. “What do I know?” I grumbled.
“Yeah! Is there anything at all to know?”
In the studio, lack of knowing on a certain level can kill an image, leave it lifeless, turn what was magic into what is senseless and without reason. Life outside the studio is similar-pervasive, stubborn, nagging doubt can supplant purpose with comfortable confusion and leave things meaningless.
What’s worse is that, speaking with gallerists, I’m often reminded that meaning is a liability. (Ah! The convenience of modernism!) I guess it should be obvious-who could let meaning creep into the brokering of something as ephemeral as painting? In the business of art, meaning and knowing are inconvenient. “…difficult to sell.” At least that’s what I’m told. “People don’t want to think about it.”
“Is it me?” I ask myself. “Or is it possible…?” I wonder, recalling my unbelieving associate at that party where I felt similarly muddled. “Can I know anything for sure?” For me, conviction can be a difficult thing to muster-I mean certitude retained for longer than the emotion that fuels it.
Now tell me-what would you do? You’re dreaming a particularly pleasant dream where a slender old gentleman shows up and tells you his name, tells your fortune, foretells a work for you, something you know nothing about. And the old guy returns, and returns again, and again, giving lectures and discussing thoughts you had never thought before. It just happens-without explanation.
Yesterday, I watched my dog dreaming-asleep on the rug, face twitching, legs and paws jerking at a run. I pictured her out in a meadow playing nip-and-chase with dog friends. “Who does she meet there?” Or, maybe tagging along with a boy chasing butterflies. “Which of her lives is most real? ” Soft yips and growls signaled satisfaction. “And, can she know the difference?”
Today, I’m in the studio and she is stretched out comfortably at my feet, snoring. In my case, to know something but not know enough is a liability, as it’s too easy to assume that a current view is all there is to see, like the controlled image of myself that I tend to protect. (p 197, Talking to Tesla, The Mirror That Is The Door)
Like making pictures, it’s a tug-o-war, a struggle both to know and not to know too much, a crazy dance of believe and make-believe. Life is a dangerous proposal.
“Well, that’s just it,” said a friend recently, “…what we all deal with-especially concerning our worth and missions as individual persons….”
“So, how can we know and continue knowing for longer than those few fortunate moments?” I responded with a question before she had finished speaking. “Just try writing about and believing in paintings and dreams!”
“You got me! But isn’t that what we’re all trying to do?”
Suddenly I recalled words from the entries of my journal: Then I saw the night sky and the stars in motion slowly revolving around a single star, and felt like a big question mark again, still waiting for a sign. “But who am I in all of this?” (p 246, Talking to Tesla, The Mirror That Is The Door)
“And, I’m more sure now than I’ve ever been that I’m not sure of anything at all,” I added.
“Sometimes, that is the best thing to know,” said Nikola Tesla. (P 240, Talking to Tesla, The Mirror That Is The Door)
Recording things, painting or putting them into words, is like staking a claim, based on hopeful aspects not on perfect knowledge. (Am I ranting just a bit?) And I can lose track of who I am, what I’m doing, and where I’m headed. “Write them down, dear,” my wife said. “Keep a journal.”
“For what?” I answered then and ask now, even as I continue to take notes and faithfully write and rewrite chapters some five years later, though there’s no guarantee of success, no crash course in knowing other than living daily life awake and aware.
Those Shared Self-Conscious Inquiries—A Roller Coaster of a Read
November 13, 2009
post by Marilyn Bigney
ALTHOUGH MANY PEOPLE STILL ASK ALEX if it’s true—if he really meets Nikola Tesla in his dreams—Alex usually sidesteps the question, asserting that the reason he began writing Talking to Tesla, The Mirror That Is The Door was to create a context for viewing and discussing art and the nature of creativity.
“It’s about the strange relationship between art and artist,” says Alex. “I like to think that it’s almost anyone’s memoir, the internal workings and explorations that are common to most people—those tender recollections of childhood, the thoughtful constructs of our more private fantasies, and the shared self-conscious inquiries that make us aware beings. It is about the magic of inspiration in an average life.”
Talking to Tesla, The Mirror That Is The Door is also the basis and point of view for the Harness the Spark initiative that Alex is developing—a non-profit educational umbrella for teaching and exploring creative awareness and activity. Alex, along with artist and friend Kent Wing, the painter of the dustcover image, and others, is currently creating a curriculum for teaching painting and art using Talking to Tesla as the thematic matrix for viewing and understanding creative activity.
The book is written as a dream journal—the interaction between a middle-aged artist (alla Dante) and Nikola Tesla who appears in the artist’s dreams and begins to teach him. It was after encouragement from Kent and me that Alex began to process and record his chats with Nikola Tesla. I have listened as Alex awakens in the morning to recount his dreams, seen his “night notes” scrawled in a notebook he keeps beside the bed, said “Good-bye” as he left to travel to Nikola Tesla’s birthplace in Croatia, and continue to attend countless book readings and signings.
To say that it’s been a strange and curious adventure doesn’t say enough. Life has become a constant surprise, a kind of scavenger hunt, as Alex also describes his book. And I am lucky enough to tag along—which is a lot like entering part of the dream world he describes for readers.
“The book was written in the same spirit that I paint a painting,” repeats Alex often, as if everyone understands that process. “The activity is part outside and part inside—the blending of an amount of paint’s material substance with the mysterious essence of conscious awareness. That’s the miracle of creative endeavor—the particular human ability to organize a quantity of what is seen by qualifying it with what is unseen.”
And readers continue to respond to Alex’s musings—so, if you’re looking for something new to read, “a roller-coaster of a read,” something “wonderfully whacky and seriously engaging,” something delightful and a bit challenging; if you’re trying to find the perfect gift for a thoughtful friend—try Talking to Tesla, The Mirror That Is The Door. “The book really makes me think…causes ideas to blossom, and dreams to occur—it is indeed a threshold into another world.”