THE PREDICAMENT

It's a predicament.  I never learned to type.  For... what... ?  More than half a century, let's say, I have managed by looking down at the keys to type, then up at the text, then down again at the keys, and so on.  The system works, all other things being equal.  I do it virtually every day, and stuff gets written.  Now, though, with a pain in the neck that doesn't seem to want to go away, it has become a problem.  Even though I prop up my laptop at eye level, as my daughter suggests, I still have to move my head fractionally back and forth to look down at the keys.  Which results in... well, this morning, after only a few minutes, a nasty and persistent neck spasm.

As a predicament, it may not seem like much.  I think, for example, of Ram Dass and the catastrophic stroke that deprived him of his greatest gift, the ability to speak extemporaneously to eager listeners with wit, insight and wisdom.   But it's similar in that it challenges my deepest and most ingrained sense of identity.  I'm a writer.  This is what I do.  And when I can't do it, or can do it only at the cost of severe, not to say excruciating pain, this small predicament leaves me confronted with the prospect of not being able to be the person that I thought I was.  Even for a day--though it has been a full week now, not being able to write leaves me feeling empty, worthless, good-for-nothing.

Oh, I can manage to squeeze out a couple of paragraphs, like this entry.  But, worse than the mechanical problem I have described, the pain seems to drive all thought out of my head.  This morning I had intended, for example, to review an art show that I saw yesterday, but that requires the kind of attentive and sequential thought of which I seem to be incapable right now.  The attention is constantly diverted from the paper (I mean, of course, the screen) to the pain, and the mind blurs with lassitude in a kind of self-defense.

I don't mean to complain, though I'm sure this sounds like a complaint.  My purpose was merely to describe the predicament as best I could, so that I might better come to terms with it.  Like every other human predicament, it offers me the important (if unwelcome!) opportunity to learn...  I notice how I cling to that identity.  So what would it be like not to be "the writer"?  And what would I need to do to adapt to that new reality?  What happens if, and when, I begin to lose my writer's curiosity and intelligence?  The writer's ambition, which gives me a sense of purpose in my life?

These are tough, scary questions.  I have my neck to thank for bringing them so forcefully to my attention.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

It's a haunting, daunting question.  We usually use it to challenge someone's overly inflated ego, their high opinion of themselves, when they're "getting too big for their boots."  Do I remember it from a John Lennon song?   (Yes, it's Instant Karma... "Who on Earth do you think you are?  A superstar? Well, right you are.  And we all shine on, like the moon and the stars and the sun...")

And of course that's all we are, stardust, accumulating moment by moment into the constantly shifting forms we assume for the journey through our lives.  As to the rest, we are who we think we are--no more than the fabrication of our minds, a projected image on the screen of who we want to be, or alternatively fear we might be.  The flesh and blood part of us is transitory, no matter how long it lasts, the reality of at most a hundred years or so--or, in the thirteen point something billion-year history of the universe, by a factor millions of millions less than the blink of an eye.  A fast fleeting reality, then; and as such, the illusion of an illusion.

Still, the question popped unbidden into my head as I woke this morning.  Who do you think you are?  The context?  With my assistant, Maggie's help I have been sending out emails to museums and colleges, some on the East Coast, some on the West, hoping to attract interest in the presentation I have devised for a public lecture/demonstration, based on the One Hour/One Painting experience.  The latter, for those unfamiliar, is an hour-long exploration of single painting, combining the time-tested skills of meditation (closed-eye) and contemplation (open-eye) skills.

I have been offering these sessions for years now, in museums and galleries, mostly in the Southern California area.  I think--there I go!--that it's a great teaching piece, something I have learned for myself and am eager to pass on to others.  It's not only a great way to look at art, it's also a great way to learn the value of paying that kind of mindful attention to everything else in one's life.  Those who come to a session invariably have good things to say about the experience, and it's gratifying to know that I have managed to open a door for them.

But "One Hour/One Painting" works best only for relatively small groups.  How many people can sit in front of a single painting on the gallery wall, with the kind of sight lines needed to explore its surfaces as exhaustively as I intend?  The maximum, I've found, is a couple of dozen participants, give or take.  So something in me (ego? altruist? teacher? attention-getter?) wants to take this visual adventure further, to reach more people, and expand my reach to the East Coast, particularly New York, still the epicenter of the art world...

Call it ambition, call it intention, I don't know.  It's just something I have in heart and mind to do.  So I have devised a way of bringing the "One Hour/One Painting" experience to larger audiences, in this lecture/demonstration called "Slow Looking: The Art of Looking at Art."  As I envision it, it will allow me to use the technology of power point and a big screen to project images, rather than an original painting.  Pixels, I know, lack the substance of oil or acrylic paint, so the experience will necessarily involve more preaching than practice, more teaching than experience; but at least I should be able to convey something of the benefits of slowing down and paying attention (in this case to art) in a culture that seems too often to value speed and surface.  I believe it's wanted and it's needed.

But here's where the "who do you think you are?" conundrum sneaks in.  I think I have something of great value to offer and put out the offer into the world, and in response receive... silence.  I encounter the great, echoing void.  Though I have been writing articles and reviews for national magazines for decades, I can't pretend to have the "name" that generates instant--or even slowly dawning!--recognition.  Even in my own small corner of the art world, where I have somewhat greater name recognition, eliciting a response is problematic at best.

People everywhere are busy, naturally, with their own preoccupations and priorities.  And in part, of course, it's the competition.  There are so many brilliant minds out there in the public speaking market who have something of real value to offer.  Then there are the financial contingencies to be reckoned with: everyone is strapped for funds in the cultural world--schools, college galleries, museums... The steady withdrawal of public funds from the arts since the 1970s, has let to an increasing reliance on other than public resources--private patrons and supporters whose priorities must now include world poverty and hunger, medical research, and other pressing issues.

In which broad and increasingly urgent context, of course, I am brought face to face with that question: Who do you think you are?  So this was what I was wondering about this morning as I lay in bed, after waking with those words echoing in my mind.  Who do I think I am?  Which brings me back--my mind keeps coming back to this--to the question raised not long ago in my exchange with Ken McLeod: "When you say you see Peter, what exactly do you see?"  First thought: I see an image of what I imagine myself to be.  Second thought: well, actually, nothing.

Here's an invitation: try it for yourself.  Who do you (really) think you are?