Steve Roden
Yesterday morning
I was sitting in the Pacific Ocean with one of my sons, Ryan, and our good
friend Earl. We were enjoying an overhead, fairly aggressive south swell.
Sunrise surfing does a soul good (please don't do it, there are all ready
enough people in the water.)
Ryan and I got
talking about creativity; creativity as gift, as play. Creativity and faith,
creativity and fear, creativity and systems. Creativity and Steve Roden's
paintings.
Having a serious
conversation while surfing is an interesting activity. In part because the
conversation is paced (interrupted) by the rhythm of the waves. You might be at
the most poignant moment or simply mid-sentence and a wave comes. It is well
accepted in surf conversation etiquette to simply say, "hold that
thought" and then drop, paddle and ride only to paddle back moments later
(or quite some time later) and say, "ok, you were saying?" This can
make for a rather fragmented narrative but it also makes for a highly punctuated
narrative. Because each time we stop talking (or listening) we paddle into a
swelling, moving mass of liquid that is being hurdled at the shore by systems
that we have no control over. And that regardless of all our abilities to
track, predict and explain what is occurring each morning, we realize that
every wave is a unique, unaccounted for event that one simply receives and
celebrates. It is a gift from the universe and the Creator that is there and we
can ignore it or receive it and dance on it.
So the
conversation on creativity went something like this (well, kind of ... well
actually this is a highly edited edition.)
... the Catholic
priest and philosopher/activist, Henri Nouwen says, "Does not all
creativity ask for a certain encounter with our loneliness, and does not the
fear of this encounter severely limit our possible self-expression?" As
was shared with me the other day, "fear has nothing for us, it offers
nothing and demands much." Nouwen encourages the movement from fearful
clinging to the fearless play.
A wave and Ryan
disappears, I watch from the back and see his head and shoulders slip across
the horizon. He paddles back, we acknowledge the gift that was just sent and
continue our conversation.
... that reminds
me of what Annie Dillard said, that we should all jump up, strip down to our
waists, run outside and shake gourds at one another to WAKE UP! But instead,
she says, we will sit on our couch's and watch the whole parade pass us by on
the TV. Here's the fear issue again. Instead of playing out the absurdity of
the nakedness and the shaking of gourds under the midday sun we would rather
have some sense of control and watch someone else live life and we can simply
consume it, no risk, no gifts.
Another wave, big
and fast. We both go and both pay. We are reminded there is a cost to
participate but even that can be a fearful delight, to let go and to be thrown
deep and hard only to emerge and appreciate the simple rush of air in one's
lungs. We laugh, regroup and continue.
... I've been
reading Rainer Maria Rilke. He talks about a life of creativity and the
necessity to do it with intention, "then build your life according to this
necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be
a sign of this urge and a testimony to it." "Do not now seek answers
which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point
is to live everything. Live the question now. Perhaps you will then gradually,
without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer ... take what
ever comes with great trust."
This one comes to
me. I go and for twelve seconds the whole world is about this moment. The
light, the sound, the feeling under my feet. Move, shift, here it comes, up,
now drop, and it's over. Smile and paddle back out. No one to witness it but
myself, and the sky.
... Kathleen
Norris talks about this in her book, The Cloister Walk, "The
Benedictines, more that any other people I know, insist that there is time in
each day for prayer, for work, for study, and for play." "Liturgical
time is essentially poetic time, oriented toward process rather than
productivity, willing to wait attentively in stillness rather that always
pushing to "get the job done." "Imagination and faith are the
same thing, giving substance to our hopes and reality to the unseen."
"The substance, the means of art, is incarnation, not reference but
phenomena." She then develops these thoughts specifically around the
language of poetry, "But the sense of the sacred is very much alive in
contemporary poetry; maybe because poetry, like prayer, is a dialogue with the
sacred. And poets speak from the margins, those places in the ecosystem where,
as any ecologist can tell you, the most life forms are to be found."
"scholars
speak with authority, and they must, as they are trying to convince the
audience that they have a worthwhile point of view. On the other hand, poets
(artists) speak with no authority but that which the reader (audience) is
willing to grant them. Our task is not to convince but to suggest, evoke,
explore. And to be a poet (artist), which at its root means "maker,"
to be a maker of phenomena, speaking without reference to authority but simply
because the words (images) are given you."
Oh crap, a rouge
set, large and coming quick. We all scramble to get outside. If we weren't
talking we would have seen it coming and been ready. It is enough to simply get
through it and get outside.
... Well if we are
going to talk about Norris we have to talk about Madeline L' Engle. What does
she say? "It is gift (creativity), sheer gift, waiting there to be
recognized and received." "To paint a picture or to write a story or
to compose a song is an incarnational activity, the artist is a servant who is
willing to be a birth giver." "Faith is for that which lies on the
other side of reason. Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies
and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys."
We cannot Name or
be Named without language. If our vocabulary dwindles to a few shopworn words
(or images) we are setting ourselves up for takeover by a dictator (or a highly
militaristic administration.) When language becomes exhausted, our freedom
dwindles - we cannot think; we do not recognize danger; injustice strikes us as
no more than "the way things are." Language is formed by imagination.
If our imagination is so highly mediated for us by pop media, the market place
and politics, then our ability to discern, to participate, to discover is
limited. Or as William Young reminds us, "Don't confuse adaptation for
intention, or seduction for reality."
"Creativity
opens us to revelation, and when our high creativity is lowered to 2% so is our
capacity to see ... in the act of creativity, the artist lets go the self
control which he normally clings to, and is open to riding the wind. Something
almost always happens to startle us during the act of creating (there's the
Dillard thing.)
She goes on to
say, "You should utter words as though heaven were opened within them and
as though you did not put the word into your mouth, but as though you had
entered the word."
"We write, we
make music, we draw pictures, because we are listening for meaning, feeling for
healing. An artist at work is in a condition complete and total faith ... hold
that thought! And with that Ryan was gone, pulled toward the beach with a shout
and a laugh that was almost as much fun to watch, as it was to do. It took him
about 10 minutes to get back, he was caught inside of a large set and I got two
while we were separated.
... This reminds
me of a story I'm reading by William Young. During an exchange in which freedom
and grace are being discussed, one person says to the other, "remember
this, humans are not defined by their limitations, but by the intentions that
God has for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be
created in God's image."
But what does this
look like personified? What does it look like in practice? Maybe a good model
of the artist, perhaps, is Howard Nelson's description of the American poet,
Robert Bly. He says of Bly, "He seeks a balance, but one that will be
open-ended and dynamic; while he is interested in the still point, what he is
more interested in is the motions of the spirit - and the intellect's and the
body's motion - around it."
Another model
might be the work of Steve Roden.
Hey, we got to go.
There is a day waiting for us.
Do you want to go
out again tomorrow?
Sure.
Is there going to
be a swell?
I heard it was
growing, but more of a south/west.
That's funny, I
read on Surfline that it was dropping.
Anyway, let's just
go and see what shows up.
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