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.”
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