Category Archives: language

Neuroscience and God…Again!

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Adam Gopnik, in the current edition of The New Yorker magazine, offers a review of a spate of recent books on neuroscience many of which appear to be having second thoughts on the notion of “matter over mind”, i.e. the idea that neurochemistry is the source of all thought and that any ideas such as a “god” might need some attention after all.

I am glad to see the discussion of the subject thought my strong impression is that “science” still holds sway as being the prevailing myth of the day. Of course, given my stubborn and unenlightened habitual way of thinking, I still childishly hold onto the notion of God. I can’t help it! “My neurochemistry makes me do it!” which is some version of “the devil made me do it” as I could never in a million years just declare that I choose to.

But facetiousness aside, I am certain that we are here and that we have carved out a “reality” fictitious thought it might be. And, sociologically and anthropologically, it is fictitious. Just ask Peter Berger. But we are here! It is easy for some people to get consumed with their explanation of how we got here and get so carried away with their pet theories that they actually have ill-will at those who feel differently. When I meet someone like this, I admit I toss them into the “ideologue” category and try to give them a wide berth, regardless of how noble and well-reasoned their argument is.

And, given the fact that we are here….or the “fantasy” that we are here if you want to get really far out…I feel it is very important what we do with our brief time “strutting and fretting” on this beautiful stage. Personally, I deem it important to speculate about questions such as the above but it is also important to live my life responsibly and meaningfully in my social context. And, how I go about this does have an impact on the world though, admittedly in my case, the extent is infinitesimal and what it is I will never really know.

For example, this verbal “stuff” that I’m going to toss out into the void in a moment with the punch of a button is important. The importance might be that I feel it was important. It might be that someone will appreciate it. It might be that second later I will read over it and suddenly in horror, tell myself, “Lewis, get a life!” and quit wasting my time. It might be that suddenly the whole world will happen to check in to “Literarylew” and as a result the Millenium will come tomorrow and suddenly I’ll be rich and famous, no longer merely a small clod of cholesterol in the mainstream of life! My point is that life is made up of little insignificant events and gestures and we have no idea what their result will be. Memories of my life are replete with nameless individuals whose small and insignificant gestures has made my life much more rewarding.

But it is important that each day we show up and report for duty. Or, given the approach of fall and the baseball playoffs, let me put it this way, “It is important that we step to the plate each day, bat in hand, look for a good pitch to hit, and then hammer it into the outfield hole. Oh, heck, let me get grandiose and conjecture, “It’s out of here. A homerun…”

Who knows? You never know.

“I Want to Know it All!”

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I discovered another wonderful poem, this time on Krista Bennet’s blog, “On Being.”  The author is Marie Howe who is the poet laureate of the state of New York:

 

MAGDALENE–THE SEVEN DEVILS
by Marie Howe
“Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had been cast out” —Luke 8:2.
The first was that I was very busy.
The second — I was different from you: whatever happened to you could not happen to me, not like that.

The third — I worried.
The fourth – envy, disguised as compassion.
The fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of life of the aphid,
The aphid disgusted me. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The mosquito too – its face. And the ant – its bifurcated body.

Ok the first was that I was so busy.
The second that I might make the wrong choice,
because I had decided to take that plane that day,
that flight, before noon, so as to arrive early
and, I shouldn’t have wanted that.
The third was that if I walked past the certain place on the street
the house would blow up.
The fourth was that I was made of guts and blood with a thin layer of skin
lightly thrown over the whole thing.

The fifth was that the dead seemed more alive to me than the living

The sixth — if I touched my right arm I had to touch my left arm, and if I touched the left arm a little harder than I’d first touched the right then I had to retouch the left and then touch the right again so it would be even.

The seventh — I knew I was breathing the expelled breath of everything that was alive and I couldn’t stand it,

I wanted a sieve, a mask, a, I hate this word – cheesecloth –
to breath through that would trap it — whatever was inside everyone else that
entered me when I breathed in

No. That was the first one.

The second was that I was so busy. I had no time. How had this happened? How had our lives gotten like this?

The third was that I couldn’t eat food if I really saw it – distinct, separate from me in a bowl or on a plate.

Ok. The first was that I could never get to the end of the list.

The second was that the laundry was never finally done.

The third was that no one knew me, although they thought they did.
And that if people thought of me as little as I thought of them then what was
love?

Someone using you as a co-ordinate to situate himself on earth.

The fourth was I didn’t belong to anyone. I wouldn’t allow myself to belong
to anyone.

Historians would assume my sin was sexual.

The fifth was that I knew none of us could ever know what we didn’t know.

The sixth was that I projected onto others what I myself was feeling.

The seventh was the way my mother looked when she was dying.
The sound she made — the gurgling sound — so loud we had to speak louder to hear each other over it.

And that I couldn’t stop hearing it–years later –
grocery shopping, crossing the street –

No, not the sound – it was her body’s hunger
finally evident.–what our mother had hidden all her life.

For months I dreamt of knucklebones and roots,
the slabs of sidewalk pushed up like crooked teeth by what grew underneath.

The underneath —that was the first devil. It was always with me.
And that I didn’t think you— if I told you – would understand any of this –

Once again I’m captivated by someone else who is haunted like me by the knowledge that there is something “out there” or, as she put it, “underneath,” that “none of us could ever know we didn’t know.” And suddenly I’m almost a child again and can see myself curling up on the kitchen floor, screaming at the top of my lungs to God, “Why not? Why not? I’m gonna hold my breath until you let me!” For, this is a childish impulse, probably not unrelated to that age-old quest for the “knowledge of good and evil” which got us all into this mess in the first place!

But, it won’t ever happen. We will not know it all, we will not wrap out head around this marvelous mystery that we are caught up in. Even in his death throes, Hamlet, reflecting Shakespeare’s penchant for wrapping his head around the whole of human experience, lamented that “things remaining thus unsaid will live behind me.” Hamlet had so much more to say but had run out of time. (And, he could have said more had he not been driven by that unconscious need to satisfy his incestuous need and vanquish the interloper to his desire, Claudius. But even then, not “all” of it could have been said for there is always “more” to be said, endlessly “more.”)

We always come back to limits. The heart of man has boundaries as a core issue and spends his lifetime learning to accept them, knowing in the depths of this heart that the ultimate “limit” will eventually prevail and he will return to the dust from which he was made. But until that moment we are hard-wired to “keep on truckin’” and the will to life often continues even after our conscious mind fades into oblivion. As bad as it might appear to be at times, we always prefer to “cling to these ills that we have than fly to others that we know not of.”

 

“Thoughts Are Things. Choose the Good Ones”

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I receive an email each day from a New Age “guru” named Mike Dooley. I don’t always read his missive, but do check in from time to time as I find some of his observations very timely. And I love the quotation he concludes each email with, “Thoughts are things. Choose the good ones.” This pithy observation summarizes his central message, that our thoughts control us and that we do have control over our thoughts….or can have more control that we often think we do.

Here is his email of a few days ago:

Dominion over all things doesn’t come with age, spirituality, or even gratitude. In fact, it doesn’t come at all. You were born with it and you use it every moment of every day, whenever you say, “I will…I am…I have…” And for that matter, whenever you say, “It’s hard…I’m lost…I don’t know…” And he wittily concludes with, “Careful where you point that thing!”

The “thing” he is referring to is our mind, or better yet, our heart which makes the “decision” of which thoughts to pack into our quiver each day. Now this “packing” is usually an unconscious process but if we will slow down, pause, and pay attention to our heart we can begin to notice how certain thoughts and patterns of thoughts are predominating in our life, not all of which are productive, not all of which are even “nice” to others and even to ourselves.

The Bible tells us, “As a man thinketh, so is he.” Popular lore offers the bromide, “Our thoughts become us.” Shakespeare noted, “Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.” And even Henry Ford had very astute wisdom on the note, tell us, “Whether you think you can, or think you can;t—either way you’re right.”

 

Simone Weil and Detachment

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Simone Weil once said, “Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can only be attained by someone who is detached.” I have not read Weil at length though I think I will, having come across this statement this morning. And though I’m going to be critical of the tenor of her thought, I deeply admire her passionate faith and stubborn commitment to her beliefs. She definitely thought “out of the box” and, yes, I’m sure that her “god spot” was usually in over-drive. Yes, if prozac had existed back then, she could have had the gentle life of a nun, or school marm, or doting mother to occupy that mind that was fated to run amok with “big thoughts.”

I too am “detached” much like Ms. Weil but I have come to believe that one needs to be careful with any approach to life lest he/she take it (and self) too seriously and thus relegate everyone else to the category of “them” where, I am sure, there will always be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Even more so, a clinical awareness would have told Ms. Weil just how careful she needed to be with this “detachment.”

Life is to be lived and not merely noted. This detachment is a necessary stance that we need to bring to life and is sorely lacking so often. But too much of it will leave one in the position of Emily Dickinson who lived her cloistered life in her father’s attic, noting on one occasion, “Life is over there, on a shelf.” She saw life as a mere curio on the shelf for idle amusement; and, yes, I’m glad she lived her life that way as it provided us stunning poetic observations about life. But the price tag for my dear friend Emily was a very isolated and lonely life.

This detached perspective on life usually involves an analytical mind, a mind which is obsessed with making “observations” which is merely imposing the categories of one’s own subjective imprisonment onto other people. And, “mea culpa” but mercifully I have learned, and will continue to learn how to turn this feature of my cognitive apparatus off from time to time and allow others to “be” in their own right.

This does not mean that my “detachment” is wrong. It is my “gift” though I am not for sure what I have done with it or will and sometimes in private reverie fear I will one day stand before that Great White Throne and hear God say, “Well, IlliterateLew, that is not what I had in mind for you at all!” This is just who I am and it carries a price as does any stance in life, any perspective, or “cognitive apparatus” that we trot out each day of our life. But I must remember as must each of us that there is always another way of looking at the world and each day and moment of our life we need to be conscious of the need to open up our world view and give more space to some of the people we meet and especially to the ones who closest to us. I recently read someone who suggested that the real, etymological meaning of the New Testament Word “repentance” was to “let go of your small mind” and take on a larger mind that is more inclusive. In other words, Jesus was saying, “Hey, look at life a different way. That person or persons who you have subjected to banishment into “them” need to be included, to be embraced by your approach to the world.”

 

“Failing Boldly” Has a Place!

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Once again, one of you blog-o-sphere friends has issue a “word fitly spoken” to me. In fact, several of you did that today! Here I am sharing a post by The Journey Home (http://elizabethsjourneyhome.wordpress.com/) in which she describes the anguish and reward of “failing boldly.” I can so relate to her experience on the stage as a youth though I have never found the courage and humility to dive into the morass of my own subjective world as she did that day. (I shared with her a brief poem on the subject of failure by E.L. Mayo, “Failure is more important than success because it brings intelligence to light the bony structure of the universe.”

FAIL BOLDLY by Elizabeth

My first memory of failure is from Grade 9. I failed a Science test. I’ll never forget the shame I felt. Like I was stupid, unable to do anything well, an idiot. That’s how failure made me feel that first time.

I think I was always kind of afraid of being a failure. I think we all are.

I spent high school watching my step and setting unreachable goals. And hoping I’d never fail again.

Then, I started university. And they told me that I had to fail to pass.

I don’t remember when they said it — whether it was during orientation, in my first acting class, or when I went for my advising session. But I know I heard this strange and impossible quote: Fail Boldly time and time again throughout September, October, November, and December.

I didn’t get it. Failure wasn’t good. I’d spent my life striving for just the opposite and I couldn’t imagine why anyone else wouldn’t.

Maybe they meant that you just had to be able to admit your mistakes and show that you were humble. Maybe failing boldly was just being able to laugh at your self. Maybe it wasn’t really “failure.” Perhaps it was just an artsy phrase or a figure of speech, I convinced myself and continued to hope for perfection. Because I couldn’t comprehend why anyone would ever want to fail on purpose.

I didn’t get it. My first monologue mark in the beginning of second semester reflected that. And I hated my work, felt like a failure, and considered giving up. I just couldn’t really, flat on my face, fail boldly.

The rest of the semester unfolded in a weird, tearful mess of beauty and growth. And slowly, I learned. I began to undo, to understand, and to fail.

I can’t explain it completely. But I do remember when I willingly failed boldly for the first time.

It was the end of March. The day had been bright and spring like. I’d memorized and learned and cried over a monologue for weeks. And now I stood, a bit breathless, a bit tired, a bit nervous, after the group audition, in the middle of the stage. I was alone and absolutely vulnerable. Right there, I lay one of my greatest hopes out and put myself on the clothes’ line. And as I opened mouth and began the text, I lay everything I had down and just let it go.

I had that actor’s moment where you don’t feel memorized and the words just slide out of your tongue as if you’re saying it for the first time. I stopped thinking about my audience or how I looked. I let myself be, for a moment. I felt a strange peace in my soul and my stomach, instead of the butterflies that usually reside there. I think I let the Holy Spirit in and it felt like He carried me on His wings.

And I think I failed. Boldly.

And I realized that failing boldly isn’t really what I thought it was after all. Failing is allowing yourself to be human. Its giving yourself the freedom to live and breath and let yourself move. Failing boldly is finding rest and growing and trying again. Its submitting yourself to the gift of Jesus and letting him take control of your life and future. Failing boldly is about grace and peace and life.

I don’t know if this is really what my professors meant about failing boldly. But this is what I learned when I tried. And as I think about this coming year, I hope to stay in this state, to tumble a bit, and fall on my face and then get back up again.

I hope you’ll try it too — failing boldly isn’t so bad as we thought

Poetic Depths And Pain

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As you might gather by my blatherings, I love poetry. I wish I could write my own but am content with loving the poetic wisdom of others. Oh, let me be honest. I don’t really think I want to write my own as it would hurt too much. Good poetry involves pain as indicated by one of my favorite poets, Carl Sandburg, who noted, “The fire-born are at home in the fire.” And W. H. Auden noted of W. B Yeats, “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.” And just this week I came across a poet, Matiullah Turab, who composes elegant poetry in the war-torn chaos of Afghanistan, reflecting the anguish that he and his fellow Afghani brothers and sisters endure daily. (NOTE: He is almost totally illiterate and must depend on friends to transcribe his spoken word or record them.)

We are verbal creatures in a world that, according to some, is a Word being spoken in a bleak void. And, according to this notion, each of us is himself/herself an individual word being spoken, with the capacity to delve into his/her heart and find his/her own voice. I haven’t found the courage to dive there yet and am not for sure I ever will and am not for sure that I even want to and if I don’t I do not feel that I will have to answer to any punitive deity about my “disobedience.” But these poets, including some of you who read this “stuff”, have taken this “dive” into subjective experience and produce lovely poetic wisdom for which I am so grateful.

I want to share yet another marvelous bit of wisdom which I just ran across moments ago in the Christian Science Monitor:

WRITERS INVITATION
BY Richard Schiffman

to sink like a snapping turtle into the bottom-mud of memory
to repair like the bear to a den of transformation
to huddle like the mallard with the myriad ducks you are
to tuck butter-bill to feather sealed tighter than a letter
to ice over like a pond shut fast against the weather
to spin as the snowflake your own essential crystal
to rest not upon your laurels, but on something elemental
to flock not southward, but to the heart’s true north
to head not outward, but to your own magnetic core
to burst not as the blossom into a hemorrhage of petals
but like ice within some hairline crack or cranny
shattering from within the granite mask you’re wearing
revealing the clear, the sheer, the unbirthed face
that summer’s mazed exuberance swells to hide.

 

Stanley Kunitz on Reason’s Limits

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The lunacy of reason unchecked is one of my concerns, owing in part to the fact that mine has gone decades trying to remain “unchecked.” But reality always wins out in the end and reason, like all human contrivance, has to meet its limits. Stanley Kunitz addresses this issue in the following poem, “Organic Bloom,” in which he declares the life always escapes “closed reason” and notes in conclusion that those who fail to learn this are making a perilous mistake. This is true for individuals and for groups. Remember my oft-quoted note from Goethe, “They call it reason, using light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.”

ORGANIC BLOOM
By Stanley Kunitz

The brain constructs its systems to enclose
The steady paradox of thought and sense;
Momentously its tissued meaning grows
To solve and integrate experience.
But life escapes closed reason. We explain
Our chaos into cosmos, cell by cell,
Only to learn of some insidious pain
Beyond the limits of our charted hell,
A guilt not mentioned in our prayers, a sin
Conceived against the self. So, vast and vaster
The plasmic circles of gray discipline
Spread outward to include each new disaster.
Enormous floats the brain’s organic bloom
Till, bursting like a fruit, it scatters doom.

“Mindfulness” in Blogging

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Like many other bloggers, I often wonder, “Why am I doing this?” It seems so foolish and even vain in some sense; for, “Who am I” to be holding forth as if he has anything to offer? It is, in a sense, an exercise in humility as I “put myself out there” when I post something. I have fortunate to have a very nice response from very interesting, thoughtful, “mindful” people from all corners of the world. I now feel a real connection with some of these people as we have engaged in dialogue from time to time, exchanged emails on occasion, teased and chided each other, and shared reading lists.

I do think the “mindfulness” is one of the key things that I seek now in the whole of my life, in real time and also here in the blog-o-sphere. And by this term, I do not mean merely intelligence…you can find that anywhere…but I mean a “presence” in their intellect which reflects a self-reflectiveness and sensitivity to their own subjective world and that of others. This quality reflects an “aliveness” that is so often not present in our modern, machine-produced world. This brings to mind a wonderful poem by Robert Frost which I will share shortly in which he studied an insect on a white sheet of paper and used its “antsy” behavior to poetically approach “mindfulness.”

And mindfulness is very much related to another primary motivation in my blogging—connection. I am fortunate to be well connected in my social circle and community, “well” in that I have meaningful friends and relationships. But, I am discovering that in this respect, and so many areas of life, I want more! I am discovering a hunger in my heart right now for the whole of life, a significant part of which is connection with other people and the natural world. And so I toss these words out into the void, always curious to see who if anyone will respond and what they will have to say in response; and, what are they offering on their own blog. I have noted before that, “Winds of thought blow magniloquent meanings betwixt me and thee,” (Archibald Macleish) and it is the “meaningfulness” that provides the sense of connection. For, with words, we can evoke a resonance in the heart of other like-minded souls and allow a reciprocal evocation in our own heart. This is what takes place when two, or more, people “wrestle with words and meanings” (T. S. Eliot)

And note what Shakespeare said about the power of words.

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way;
For then despite of space I would be brought,
From limits far remote where thou dost stay.

He saw words as sublimated “flesh” and implied that if the whole of his body could be “sublimated”, he would be conveyed across distance into the presence of his beloved. Now, of course, he was not being literal; but, he was noting the power of thought and words to “carry us” beyond the “small bright circle of our own consciousness” (Conrad Aiken) and reach a hand across the abyss that separates all of us. But, for this to take place, these words must be “meaningful” and not merely palaver. This means dialogical engagement which exposes us to different ways of seeing the world thus broadening our own world view. In most people this is discouraged in favor of merely regurgitating “well worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness.” (Conrad Aiken) This brings to mind the pithy observation of T.S. Eliot regarding a family that was locked into a closed verbal world, describing them as, “Too strange to one another for misunderstanding.”

A Considerable Speck

A speck that would have been beneath my sight
On any but a paper sheet so white
Set off across what I had written there.
And I had idly poised my pen in air
To stop it with a period of ink
When something strange about it made me think,
This was no dust speck by my breathing blown,
But unmistakably a living mite
With inclinations it could call its own.
It paused as with suspicion of my pen,
And then came racing wildly on again
To where my manuscript was not yet dry;
Then paused again and either drank or smelt–
With loathing, for again it turned to fly.
Plainly with an intelligence I dealt.
It seemed too tiny to have room for feet,
Yet must have had a set of them complete
To express how much it didn’t want to die.
It ran with terror and with cunning crept.
It faltered: I could see it hesitate;
Then in the middle of the open sheet
Cower down in desperation to accept
Whatever I accorded it of fate.
I have none of the tenderer-than-thou
Collectivistic regimenting love
With which the modern world is being swept.
But this poor microscopic item now!
Since it was nothing I knew evil of
I let it lie there till I hope it slept.

I have a mind myself and recognize
Mind when I meet with it in any guise
No one can know how glad I am to find
On any sheet the least display of mind.
Robert Frost

Ego Integrity and Humility

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How do I find common ground with other people? How do I use my Reason to find commonality rather than using it as a means to carve up the world, separating myself from the world to gain an illusion of mastery? (And technically, when I “carve up” the world, I have already carved up myself!) Now, Reason by its very nature is a separation from self, from others, and from the world. But, it has the capacity to explore and to look beyond itself and to find an “encompassing” that includes those who we have always assumed were “out there.” (“Encompassing” is a term used by philosopher Karl Jaspers.)

I am talking about drawing less rigid boundaries, making the distinction between “me and thee” less pronounced. Now the distinction must be maintained in a very important sense or boundaries will collapse and we will have a catastrophe on our hands. And relevant to this is the ability to handle contradictory notions at one and the same time—for example, that I am separate and distinct in this world but no I am one with this world, I am “my brother’s keeper” but “no I’m not.”

Clinically speaking, the issue here is “ego integrity.” This refers to having an ego which is mature enough to “get over itself” or to soften its boundaries here and there, to be more “inclusive” and less “ex”-clusive. But ego integrity comes hard as the ego by nature does not like to entertain the notion that it is less than the final authority. It does not like to have its viewpoint (presuppositions and premises) questioned.

Emptiness, Kenosis, and Art

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I’m really into emptiness. Yes, it says something about what I’m made of! And, actually I think that is quite accurate as, according to Eckhart Tolle, quantum physics says that we are about 95% empty space.

Now emptiness to me means the “stuff out there,” meaning, some “external reference point.” (Oh, if my mom could hear me saying this, she would echo Hamlet’s mom, “Oh what a noble mind is here o’er thrown.” Well, in mom’s case, she probably would not elevate me to “noble.”)

Emptiness, such as the Christian doctrine of “kenosis” and the existentialist notion of “nothingness” convey to me merely the notion that there is something “out there” beyond the “small bright circle of our consciousness” (Conrad Aiken). Our finite minds cannot grasp it all which is what Einstein recognized when he noted that the end result of his studies was that a mystery lay at the base of existence. Einstein recognized that even his brilliant intelligence could not wrap itself around the majesty of life.

My grasp of this mystery is intellectual. I admit it. I humbly confess and beg to atone for this sin but I am just “stuck in my head,” damn it! But I’m married to an artist and musician, and I know artists and others who approach life with a different conceptual apparatus. (I try to straighten them out, to get them to see things the “right” way but they only look at me with bewilderment!) And therefore I increasingly embrace “otherness”, the fact that there are other ways of approaching this incredible mystery that we are all caught up in, that actually has encompassed us, that has “caught us up in” itself.

I would like to share with you a blog from a visual artist that a sister of mine has turned me on to which often really intrigues me. His name is Robert Genn and he just approaches reality differently than I do; he is much less “verbal” and I really like that. His emphasis is on the importance of emptiness, or “nothingness”:

Back around the turn of the 20th century, household gadgets, from sewing machines to new fangled vacuum cleaners, were decorated with floral or other motifs. In those days, people thought things looked better when they were covered with busyness. Sewing machines themselves were sometimes made in the form of dolphins, angels or even snakes. The wide ranging art critic Sir Herbert Read (1893-1968) wrote, “The necessity of ornament is psychological. There exists in man a certain feeling which has been called horror vacui, an incapacity to tolerate an empty space. This feeling is strongest in certain savage races, and in decadent periods of civilization.”

While sophisticated Asian art tends toward the spacious, and minimalism is not yet out of fashion in the West, Western art reveals a general trend for decoration. While we may indeed be living in decadent times, my argument is we’re just being Aristotelian: “Nature abhors a vacuum.”

Fact is, a blank space may be the much needed rest period that comes before the action. It may also be the part of the work that sends the viewer yawning. A bit idiosyncratic and certainly not for everyone, I make actors of my blank spots, especially the interminable ones. Spaces can often be gradated, blended, softened, hardened or at least formed into a strong negative area. Spaces also need nearby busyness to be effective in their spaciousness, just as sophisticated neutral tones and grays are needed for the surprise and excitement of nearby colour.

A significant space in many landscapes is the sky. While plain skies have their value, a more active and complex sky can bring drama to otherwise ordinary work. “The sky,” said John Constable, “is the principal actor in your painting.”

In sculpture, the surrounding space becomes as significant as the figure. “You leave space for the body,” said Henry Moore, “imagining the other part even though it isn’t there.”

To my eye, paintings and other art take their strength from a calculated dance in which the various elements come together, interact, and move apart. No matter what the subject matter or motif, abstract style or realistic, negative and positive spaces contrive to juxtapose in a way that engages the viewer’s eye. Like a lot of art concepts, this isn’t the only way to go, but it’s a valuable one.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: “A painter is a choreographer of space.” (Barnett Newman)

Esoterica: A painter who understood the value of space was Henri Matisse. Subject matter was often second to the organization of flats. “The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive,” said Matisse. “The place occupied by the figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything plays a part.” Attention to space gave Matisse permission to play with colour. Some of the most interesting and spatial of Matisse’s works were his figure studies. We’ve taken the liberty to post some of my favourites at the top of the current clickback.