I was walked
Trembling Aspen | Series 04_My Life Here | Issue_13
I was talking to Akshay about going for a walk. He said in some ways we don’t go for a walk, but we are walked. By the Universe, by Source, by The Great Mystery, by God. Call it what you will.
We are Source seeing Source. We walk and are walked.
He also mentioned the etymological root of the word conversation means to turn with, which I find beautiful. The underlying metaphor isn’t a head-on-oppositional tennis match of statements or opinions, rather a walking alongside and turning with.
It was in this context, regarding one’s place in the flow of things, that I turned with Akshay around a piece of information he shared. The chances of being born are 1 in 400 trillion. I don’t know who figured that out, or how. But it sounds true. At least, it sounds true to my soul, and my brain is more or less along for the ride.
Everyday that you wake up, it’s a miracle.
You are a miracle. I am a miracle.
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May 12th was my birthday. My second birthday in another country. (I don’t know that that’s significant in any way…it seemed worth noting, and I’m all about intuitive responses these days)
After a lovely afternoon with a friend, I decided, in the early evening, to walk to Gumyo-ji, a temple about an hour’s walk away. It was, as a matter of fact, the walk Akshay and I were talking about.
Since being in Japan, a startling number of my stories begin with “I went for a walk…” and end with “What are the chances!” regarding something good, interesting, worthwhile, or meaningful. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been attending to the world around me in an intentionally open way, so the chances of saying “what are the chances!” goes way up. Regardless, this walk was one that would end with a sense of…awe? Perhaps. I’m not sure what to call it. I definitely felt as though I was walking and being walked.
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Let me preface this particular I went for a walk… story by saying “serendipity, happenstance, intuition and improvisation is a thematic thread that has been running through all of my artistic practice.”*
In other words I trust intuition and will happily draw meaning from serendipity in a way that causes my strictly materialist friends to squirm. I skew toward interpreting seeming chaos, randomness and/or chance as having underlying pattern and thus meaning. (True randomness is actually a pretty rare or impossible phenomenon, depending on who you talk to.)
Honestly, I think it’s part of my job as an artist to notice things that might otherwise go unnoticed. If that means I am finding meaning where there is none…well who, in the end, has the right to say there is none? Especially if I have found some.
I can’t capture that walk with words, or images. The blessing and curse of being an artist and writer is, I’m going to try anyway. (You knew I would) The following is my attempt.
I was walked.
When I shoot video with my camera, nothing comes out of the camera. Light comes in. So why do I say I shoot video?
When I take video with my camera, I have forced the situation. I can’t make things send their light to me. So why do I say I take video?
When I make images with my camera I am receiving what is given to me.
On my birthday I went for a walk.
My camera received the first video at Sanno Bridge. [山王橋人道橋] I posted it to Instagram and titled it Self Portrait With Waves. I hadn’t consciously planned to use that title. It happened as I was typing.
My camera received the second video at Hirooka Bridge. [弘岡橋] By now, I was beginning to understand the title of the first video. I understood that I was receiving images of the more-than-me-reality-that-is-also-me. I titled this one Self Portrait With Leaves.
By the time I got to Gumyo-ji I knew I would be receiving video of the sky. I stood in the court yard in front of the main temple where my camera received the last video. I titled the video Self Portrait With Clouds. I started to cry. I didn’t know why. I still don’t know why. It didn't feel like an emotional response to a beautiful moment. I felt like I was home. But it was more than home as a place in here-and-now. I felt like I was in deep-time-home. It was a strange and beautiful experience.
I can’t explain it with words, so I have offered these words as travelling companions to accompany the images. I hope the words and the images will travel side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, in conversation.
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The images—Self Portrait with Waves, Self Portrait with Leaves, and Self Portrait with Clouds—are up on my website if you’d like to have a look.
Or, if you happen to be in Yokohama before June 9th, you can come see them in person. They have been integrated into the final installation in KocoGarden.
I wrote about the final installation in an email to my friend Mike
Just sitting here waiting for the last version of the video part of my installation to upload. Once it’s up and running I will have completed the last installation for this 3 month exhibition. Whew.
One one wall is all 196 messages people wrote to the question “If the Ooka River was a person, what would it want?” On the other is the video piece I created in response to the messages. The two walls are me and Ooka River having a conversation.
I decided to do a last Ooka River installation rather than run workshops for the Unsanctioned Forms of Caring, the quilting project.** By doing so I made a lot of work for myself over the last few days, and it’ll only be up for one week, but I did it for me. Going all Rick Rubin and just doing it as an act of devotion. I’m happy with it. No, I love it.
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I’m glad I listened to Rick Ruben. My job is done. How people respond to the work is out of my hands. But I do love it. A big part of the delight comes from the fact that a serendipitous, intuitive and improvisational experience made its way into my art practice. In fact, it feels like I stumbled onto the liminal edge of the next phase of my creative exploration of the conversation between the Ooka River and me. (That wandering sentence is a clue to the fact that I’m just heading out in this direction, so I don’t really know what it’s about yet.)
I wrote about the final installation in a slightly different way for visitors who come by. The QR code in the image below will take you there. Or this link will as well.
Lastly, I talk about the final installation in yet another way, for the info card next to the video piece.
Ultimately, I don’t want to talk about it too much. I don’t want my conscious mind to go galumphing through the forest of intuition, scaring all the interesting little creatures away. So, I’ll end by saying:
I am being created by what I create.
I am emerging within emergence.
I walked and I was walked.
Till next time,
SF
* Here’s that bit in its more nerdy context. It's from my recent proposal to the Koganecho AIR program, which seems successful given I was invited to stay for up to five years: “By active intuition I refer to Kintaro Nishida’s concept of active intuition. A mutual co-specification between action―one’s active production of the world; and intuition―one’s passive reception of the world. The artist was central to Nishida’s conception of active intuition. Because my visual art draws upon gestural abstraction and action painting, I envision active intuition as happening—literally and metaphorically—at the tip of my paint brush where brush, ink, paper and the artist’s intention from an assemblage of affordances, or a field of possibility. Within this field of possibility, by way of the co-specification of active intuition, the brush stroke creates the artist even as the artist creates the brush stroke. A trust in and exploration of serendipity, happenstance, intuition and improvisation is a thematic thread that has been running through all of my artistic practice―individual, collaborative, visual and relational. The principle of mutual co-specification and active intuition has helped give coherence to this exploration.”
** Fear not! Unsanctioned Forms of Caring, the quilting project, lives on. You'll be hearing more about it in future issues.
Hey, I’m Steve, an artist-in-residence in Yokohama, Japan. I make collaborative art, participatory art, interactive new media installations, and abstract visual art. I explore themes of home, identity, belonging and how to live your life like a work of art. I write about it all in this very newsletter, Trembling Aspen.
I’m learning out loud so we can learn together.
If you would like to support me, my residency, my work, and this newsletter, or if you are interested in crowd-funding interdependent art-making in Yokohama, Japan, please consider subscribing.