For the past few weeks I've been busy painting fur. Lots of R&D time followed by days and days of mundanely painting away. Nothing particularly exotic, just strips of black mink-like fur encircling, piercing and framing a large smoke form. (Don’t ask, just go with it.)
It's an extremely boring activity, yet why do I also find it, dare I say, exceeding blissful? The kind of ecstasy that gets you labeled a heretic if you lived in Spain in the 1500s. For reals, it's that wonderful, people.
If you've ever met me, you know I'm no near-Nirvanic Bodhisattva. I usually waste a good bit of time resisting the idea of spending the next several hours hunched over a large sheet of paper meticulously painting tiny strokes of sumi ink in a pattern to resemble some black disembodied pelt. The word "disheartening" comes to mind.
But here's the wonderful, mysterious thing that happens: when I settle into it -- really settle into it -- after futzing with the music, the temperature, gauging my thirst or hunger levels (snacks, anyone?), when I actually start painting and stop resisting, I find myself engrossed in the work. Time stops, petty thoughts cease. They all give way to the activity of placing stroke after stroke on the paper. How such an uninteresting activity shifts and becomes a portal for creative bliss is a mystery.
I’m thinking about all of this because I just finished a New Yorker article about the late David Foster Wallace*, in which he says this striking thing about the writing process:
“The writing process takes me out of time. That’s probably as close to immortal as we’ll ever get.”**
Much has been written about how people experience the creativy when an activity allows the creator to step outside of time, place, physical location, to set aside emotional and physical states and experience an experience of "flow" as the psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi calls it (in his book that I, in full disclosure, have not read), or transcendence as I've heard more-spiritually-minded people describe it. Wallace's description is certainly in line with this.
Regardless of what terms we use, this is a state I'm hooked on. I live for that unspeakable joy when all the stupid little inconveniences fall away: noticing my shoes are a wee bit tight, the yammering of background mind-chatter about unmade beds and grocery lists, the tickle at the back of my throat. I live for those moments of pure freedom. Time stops and every cell in my body is alive and focused in that single moment. It's almost as if all the things I identify with "Katarina" fall away and for a short bit I'm freed of the specifics of myself and my life. I realize what a weight they can be: the ceaseless list-making, the petty annoyances -- even things I like about myself and am proud of.
It’s not too gross of an overstatement that in those moments I feel like I couldn't be a better version of me, mainly because on some fundamental level "I" don't exist -- or at least a time when that conglomeration of thoughts, tics, habits, achievements, ambitions, emotions, experiences that make me "me," are just given a rest, already.
Of course one doesn’t have to be an artist to experience this flow. Walter Murch, the renowned cinematographer, writes in his wonderful book (which I have read), In the Blink of an Eye, about movie theaters a the height of flu season filled with coughing patrons who quiet down as they become engrossed in the story unfolding before them. The movie is so engrossing that they forget they're sick -- art becomes more powerful than physical illness. As outrageous as that sounds, don’t we have these experiences when we are listening to music that completely captivates our attention? Or when reading a great story we find the night hours have slipped into dawn? We can all call to mind an instance when we've become so transfixed with an activity that we've lost track of where we are, how long we've been there, even our own physical discomforts.
It seems utterly right to look at this escape from the weight of humanity as an experience of immortality, Wallace as suggests. And for me, these opportunities for freedom are rooted in simple mundane actions. The experience of working in my studio is FULL of these little mundane moments: paint, repeat, dip brush, paint, dip brush, paint, paint, wet brush, step back, assess ... wash rinse repeat. There’s nothing “romantic” about the actual experience. It’s often boring and painful, but then sometimes it gives way to these little sparkling jewels of moments that when strung together are blindingly beautiful.
That we can all find these moments in even the most boring activity tells me that we contain our own immortality, and isn't this one of the most unfathomable, important mysteries that joins us together in our humanity?
*Though it didn't start out this way, it is only fitting to dedicate this post to David Foster Wallace. I truly hope he has found a greater experience of immortality.
**In honor of Mr. Wallace, references to him will be listed as footnotes, rather than hyperlinks, though I really don't know if he'd object to hyperlinks given what I know about his writing, which admittedly is mostly from this New Yorker article. But I digress.
***From "The Unfinished," by D. T. Max, The New Yorker, March 9, 2009, page 53.
