Edition_03 Interstitial

Interstitial. Liminal. In between.

"Just as the cloud of unknowing lies above you...so you must fashion a cloud of forgetting beneath you."
~ The Cloud of Unknowing, Author Unknown

In between the last edition of Trembling Aspen and this edition of Trembling Aspen, a lot has happened.

This newsletter is about living one’s life like a work of art. One thing you learn about in art school is negative space. The spaces that are left blank are as important as the spaces you fill in, with paint, or pencil or marble. So of course, living one’s life like a work of art would require negative space. The negative space of un-knowing, and of silence.

Another thing you learn, as you begin to make art, is that art making starts as a monologue, and then becomes a dialogue. At some point, the painting gains its own autonomy. You are now in conversation with it. You, as an artist, have a responsibility to help this thing that you brought into the world to become what it wants to become.

You started with an intention for it. The intention needed to exist and to be acted upon in order to leap the categorical gap between 0 and 1. From nothing to something. There needed to be a monologue in order to get to the dialogue. And now that it’s a dialogue—a conversation—that takes precedence over your initial intention. A conversation with the painting, on its own terms, take precedence over whatever you intended for it. That’s how art gets made, and that’s how Art evolves.

The dance that occurs in that transition from mono-vocal intention to dialogic co-creation is where the magic happens. It’s also where the blood sweat and tears happen. So when, in the midst of that dance, co-creation has asked for silence, once the silence ends, do you dance again? Do you make the next mark? It's not easy, it requires courage, but if you want the painting to go well, if you want to make art, if you want to find the magic, you make another mark.

What would it look like to give an ongoing conversation with your-life-on-its-own-terms precedence over whatever initial intention you had for it? What would it look like to be in dialogue with the art work of your life?