Cecil, your essay touches upon so many aspects of knowledge and awareness, two pillars of human consciousness that in varying degrees crosses over into pretty much everything humanity is about as it lifted itself away and apart from the purely animal world. Consciousness is and always has been a key for me. But consciousness is also the lock hole. It's the door and it's the key maker as well. Sometimes simultaneously, sometimes working solo. Consciousness, I've come to understand, is a subjective, not an objective experience. And over time (seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, a lifetime) it is in constant flux. What i detect as red on Monday morning in bright sunlight, might seem mauve come the evening as the sun settles in the West. My experience of myself and what I do is also changing – minutely – as is my understanding of what I produce: The paper I cut, the way I attach it to a support, the way I compose. What "looks" good on Tuesday, is oftentimes torn up on Wednesday. Why? What happened? What this all means to other people, if anything at all, is often a mystery. And while language can and does help detail the distinctions and differences between us and our experiences of reality and the meanings involved in moving through reality and time and our social experiences, it (language) is also vulnerable to flux. Meaning perhaps is best fixed in mathematics, a language supporting science (at least on this planet). It's all perhaps a glorious, evolving puzzle.
Matthew, your observations strike right at the heart of the artistic dilemma - and the broader human condition. You’ve beautifully framed consciousness not just as a tool for observation, but as the entire architecture of the experience: the door, the lock, and the key maker all at once.
When you look at a piece of cut paper on Monday morning and see something completely different by Tuesday evening, you are witnessing the fundamental truth that consciousness is a subjective experience in a constant state of flux. We like to think of reality as fixed, but it changes second by second with the angle of the sun, our biology, and the passage of hours. As artists, this flux can be maddening. What "looks good" on Tuesday is often torn to shreds on Wednesday because our understanding of what we produce is drifting alongside our awareness. But why tear up Tuesday's truth on Wednesday? Just leave it as a record and go to Wendesday's work.
We try to use language to anchor these shifting experiences and build bridges across the mysteries between us. Yet, as you pointed out, language itself is vulnerable to the same erosion and instability. It is a fragile container.
While mathematics might fix a sense of meaning for science on a planetary scale, art operates in a different realm entirely. For us humans, everything manifests as a grand, evolving puzzle. The parts are continually shifting positions, maintaining an infinite and beautiful uniqueness. We find ourselves as active participants inside this shifting kaleidoscope.
However, I suspect that behind this complex dance, there is ultimately a single, unified consciousness for whom the entire tapestry makes perfect sense.
The struggle belongs to us, the limited parts. We exhaust ourselves trying to conceptualize, categorize, and figure it all out from our small vantage points. Our senses and our linguistic frameworks force us to view an unending, fluid reality as a series of isolated particulates - like frozen snapshots of a rushing river.
It is only when we are quiet enough to drop the analytics that the boundaries dissolve, allowing us to briefly glimpse the unified whole exactly as it is, and simply go with the flow of it.
I enjoy how you articulate how your mind works as you conceive and create your art. It's really fascinating. I really haven't thought about my own mind and how it functions as I'm conceiving/creating my art but your article has now got me thinking about thinking. Many years ago I would listen to music in the studio as I made my art but since I've been in this home with my studio, I don't listen to any music and prefer the silence or the 'noise' of my own thoughts whether intrusive or just flowing as I'm engineering the hows of attaching objects. I talk aloud sometimes, I'll cuss, cry, and even talk to the piece I'm working on. I feel music would be a distraction to me now as I prefer to listen to music doing other things or merely just listening.
Cecil, your essay touches upon so many aspects of knowledge and awareness, two pillars of human consciousness that in varying degrees crosses over into pretty much everything humanity is about as it lifted itself away and apart from the purely animal world. Consciousness is and always has been a key for me. But consciousness is also the lock hole. It's the door and it's the key maker as well. Sometimes simultaneously, sometimes working solo. Consciousness, I've come to understand, is a subjective, not an objective experience. And over time (seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, a lifetime) it is in constant flux. What i detect as red on Monday morning in bright sunlight, might seem mauve come the evening as the sun settles in the West. My experience of myself and what I do is also changing – minutely – as is my understanding of what I produce: The paper I cut, the way I attach it to a support, the way I compose. What "looks" good on Tuesday, is oftentimes torn up on Wednesday. Why? What happened? What this all means to other people, if anything at all, is often a mystery. And while language can and does help detail the distinctions and differences between us and our experiences of reality and the meanings involved in moving through reality and time and our social experiences, it (language) is also vulnerable to flux. Meaning perhaps is best fixed in mathematics, a language supporting science (at least on this planet). It's all perhaps a glorious, evolving puzzle.
Matthew, your observations strike right at the heart of the artistic dilemma - and the broader human condition. You’ve beautifully framed consciousness not just as a tool for observation, but as the entire architecture of the experience: the door, the lock, and the key maker all at once.
When you look at a piece of cut paper on Monday morning and see something completely different by Tuesday evening, you are witnessing the fundamental truth that consciousness is a subjective experience in a constant state of flux. We like to think of reality as fixed, but it changes second by second with the angle of the sun, our biology, and the passage of hours. As artists, this flux can be maddening. What "looks good" on Tuesday is often torn to shreds on Wednesday because our understanding of what we produce is drifting alongside our awareness. But why tear up Tuesday's truth on Wednesday? Just leave it as a record and go to Wendesday's work.
We try to use language to anchor these shifting experiences and build bridges across the mysteries between us. Yet, as you pointed out, language itself is vulnerable to the same erosion and instability. It is a fragile container.
While mathematics might fix a sense of meaning for science on a planetary scale, art operates in a different realm entirely. For us humans, everything manifests as a grand, evolving puzzle. The parts are continually shifting positions, maintaining an infinite and beautiful uniqueness. We find ourselves as active participants inside this shifting kaleidoscope.
However, I suspect that behind this complex dance, there is ultimately a single, unified consciousness for whom the entire tapestry makes perfect sense.
The struggle belongs to us, the limited parts. We exhaust ourselves trying to conceptualize, categorize, and figure it all out from our small vantage points. Our senses and our linguistic frameworks force us to view an unending, fluid reality as a series of isolated particulates - like frozen snapshots of a rushing river.
It is only when we are quiet enough to drop the analytics that the boundaries dissolve, allowing us to briefly glimpse the unified whole exactly as it is, and simply go with the flow of it.
https://youtube.com/shorts/TTzVY2FPtJI?si=pbvJBxY_OY4s0fjQ
Entering a flow state seems to tap into a kind of consciousness of possibilities.
So beautifully expressed. Thank you!
I enjoy how you articulate how your mind works as you conceive and create your art. It's really fascinating. I really haven't thought about my own mind and how it functions as I'm conceiving/creating my art but your article has now got me thinking about thinking. Many years ago I would listen to music in the studio as I made my art but since I've been in this home with my studio, I don't listen to any music and prefer the silence or the 'noise' of my own thoughts whether intrusive or just flowing as I'm engineering the hows of attaching objects. I talk aloud sometimes, I'll cuss, cry, and even talk to the piece I'm working on. I feel music would be a distraction to me now as I prefer to listen to music doing other things or merely just listening.
Oops, I think I accidentally mailed that post!