Ghosts, Beauty, And Suicide

Yesterday I walked with a friend to a place where many suicides have occurred. It is near the rough and tumble old west town of Taos, at the foot of mountains where Taos Indians have lived in their pueblo village for many centuries, and close to where many people have sworn they have heard a mysterious sound called the Taos Hum, featured on the television program called Unsolved Mysteries.

We had to park our car and walk before setting foot on the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, a fantastic metal span, 650 feet above the river below. Narrow walkways allow pedestrians access on either side of the two lane highway that crosses over the gorge. The day was bright and balmy, but steady strong gusts of wind buffeted us, and almost immediately my friend complained she was dizzy. In fact, it is easy to get vertigo so high in the air above ground, but the view is breathtaking and so spectacular that the draw is almost irresistible. Standing in the middle of the span, visitors can lean against a railing that is chest high, then gaze out and down to the wild, relentless river far below. To stand there in the proud and primitive setting is to be inches away from certain death. I felt something primeval and compelling about looking closely into such a grand abyss—as if in one second I could disappear forever by crossing the thinnest of lines.

It is said that a ghost inhabits the bridge and has caused people to jump. She appears as a young Hispanic woman wearing jeans and a white T-shirt who is visible one moment, then suddenly disappears. I cannot say that I believe in ghosts like that, but I do say that people carry ghosts inside themselves and that these “demons” can do harm and even drive a person to suicide.

What is true is that invisible vestiges of doubt or fear can be lodged in a human psyche, and whatever a person does to root out this “ghost” can fail, so it lingers as if in a haunted house.

I knew the last person to be confirmed as having committed suicide off the bridge. The last time I saw her was when she modeled for a drawing group on a summer evening, and afterward we talked outside under the moonlight. She seemed very animated and also to be slipping into darkness and then scrambling out again. Her boyfriend had left her; she was plagued with self-doubt and had money problems. Her intelligence was astute enough that she had written, produced, and then performed in many one-woman theatrical productions that had been favorably received, and gained reviews in the local newspaper. In her productions, she tried exorcising her ghosts by making light of her personal problems and how she felt that she did not fit in the world. Shortly after our meeting, I learned that her car had been found by the bridge, and she was missing. About a week later, her body was found, miles down stream, caught in brush and partly submerged in the river. Had the ghost spoken a spell in her ears? For some, the peace of death, and the urge to control the pain of life by a "final solution" ultimately gets the better hand.

After my friend and I peered off the side of the bridge, we walked along the West Rim Trail amidst rugged, wide-open mesas and chiseled steep canyons.  The elevation along the river is 6,100 feet and rises 800 feet at the gorge rim. Along the way we often stopped to gaze from the mesa top above the river at stunning and breathtaking views of the Rio Grande Gorge and Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Not once did I see a ghost.

Wild Beasts

A problem with new ideas is that they may be rejected by society. There are many examples of this in the arts when an artist is inspired to create something different, but the public is not ready to receive this unique gift. This is probably where the term “starving artist” gets its meaning.

There will always be critics, some who are professional and paid, who are the self-proclaimed arbiters of public taste. They insist that they know everything that constitutes good art and are quick to judge anything that an artist produces that enters the public domain. There are endless examples of artists being publicly derided by ardent critics. But artists listen to their inner muse, not public taste. Often artists are ahead of their time. Van Gogh met with scorn his whole life until he committed suicide. Now his art is universally valued and sets records at auction. The impressionists met with rejection in the beginning because their paintings were not deemed academic, realistic or historical and met with disapproval from the "establishment”. These artists were excited by a new way of seeing things, but the public was not. Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, their families and other impressionists suffered miserable poverty for years. Eventually, a few artists including Pierre Matisse, Andre Derain, and Maurice Vlaminck began further liberating painting from representational, literal values by using color whimsically, such as in a famous painting by Matisse of his wife where he colors the middle of her face with green. These artists shared their first exhibition at the 1905 Salon d'Automne, and the group gained their name, fauves, after a critic named Louis Vauxcelles described their work with the phrase "Donatello au milieu des fauves!" ("Donatello among the wild beasts"), contrasting the paintings with a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared a room with them.

Later, a man named Jackson Pollack responded to his muse by flinging paint on canvas in what he termed “ all over” paintings. They did not have a gravitational reference, but could be viewed from any direction. In fact, he placed the canvases on his studio floor and walked around them as he applied his drips of paint. This was the beginning of abstract expressionism.  Painters such as Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Pollack initially met with skepticism and were so poor that they sometimes could only share a can of spaghetti and meatballs for a meal, and fought over who claimed the extra meatball. Interestingly, an insightful and compassionate dentist agreed to trade his dental work for the early art of some of the expressionists . . . and later claimed a fortune when the public eventually proclaimed the artists as geniuses.

“Every so often a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it and then Picasso did it again with cubism. Then Pollack did it—he busted our idea of a picture all to hell. Then there could be new pictures again.” Willem de Kooning

“The artist must prophesy not in the sense that he foretells things 
to come, but in the sense that he tells his audience, at risk of their 
displeasure, the secrets of their own hearts. His business as an artist 
is to speak out, to make a clean breast. But what he has to utter is 
not, as the individualistic theory of art would have us think, his own 
secrets. As spokesman of his community, the secrets he must utter are 
theirs. The reason why they need him is that no community altogether 
knows its own heart; and by failing in this knowledge a community 
deceives itself on the one subject concerning which ignorance means 
death. For the evils which come from that ignorance the poet as prophet 
suggests no remedy, because he has already given one. The remedy is 
the poem itself. Art is the community's medicine for the worst disease 
of the mind, the corruption of consciousness.”
Quote from R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art.

See the new art of Steven Boone

Chicago

The place of your birth will always have special meaning as your entrance spot into this world. Furthermore, the elements that formed your body in that place, infused their memories in your bones. The life of your mother, and her perceptions and experiences during pregnancy arrived with you in gestation—what she ate, drank, perceived, and thought.
I was born in Chicago, Illinois. My family moved when I was nine and I grew up in Washington, DC before finally settling as an adult in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sarah, my youngest daughter, was born in Santa Fe and after high school chose Columbia College in Chicago to pursue her study of dance. Interestingly, she returned to my birthplace. Sarah has lived in the “windy city” for almost five years and this past weekend, graduated with a Bachelor of Art degree.

Whenever I return to Chicago, I am aware of a distinct sensation. It is as if a familiar vibration comes from the earth, entering my feet and quickly awakening all my senses with an echo of personal closeness. It is as if this intimacy sounds through the pavement and brick, sounds through steel, and ripples in the wind. I feel it in the air pressure, and smell it. All the sensations speak to my core and tell me I have arrived home again.

View my artistic photography of Chicago 

Woven Of Many Threads

 A human being is woven of many threads. Each thread is given at birth and has come from afar, through generations, to arrive in the special place of a unique person. Some people are woven of strong threads throughout, and others include threads that will break. Our environment and personality are responsible for weaving the strands together into the design that becomes the semblance of our life. It is dazzling to behold all the patterns and complexity of the human race.

We must always know that diversity is good and not to judge too harshly if one weaving is of gold and silver threads, and another is of plain cotton. Rather, it is good to celebrate the splendor of the world and that it is varied. Never complain that we have been given a bad deal and our threads are not good enough. It is best to use what we have been given and then be imaginative. If we weave love, justice, charity, kindness and wisdom into our design, a marvelous outcome is assured, even if the threads are not all of the highest quality; they can be made into something pleasing and fine. Likewise, even though the threads be of excellent quality, yet if hatred, greed, or falsehood be woven into an otherwise beautiful design, the result will be worthless.

Lately, I have continued with my new direction in art. It is as if I am sailing my boat in uncharted waters and do not know where the journey will take me. But I am simply sailing and learning the waters. The voyage is wonderful enough. I am the captain, so I can go in any direction. I just need the wind of inspiration to fill my sails.

See some new work at http://stevenboone.com

Imagination

Does the moon follow you when you walk outside at night? It depends on what you believe. If you imagine so, and push that imagination into the forefront of your mind and then invest the thought with a determination that it is true not based on logic but simple belief based on feeling, then this fantasy can be hard to shake.

Religious attitudes can be especially strong, particularly if individuals base their salvation upon belief and have been trained to trust in the “higher minds” found in their religious order. For instance, this may lead to a conviction that God came to earth in the form of a man. Or that to kill unbelievers will gain you favor with Allah and a seat in heaven.

In the first example, if we apply logic and understand that God is illimitable, then He does not go up or down, but extends through all space and time, so it is quite impossible that He would fit Himself neatly into a tiny cavity of flesh to work miracles from this place. What would happen throughout infinite space if He were to only be in this tiny cell? The universe would collapse.

In the second example, why would anyone think that they have to kill in order to gain favor with God? God could easily do this Himself if He wanted everyone to be the same and only believe. No, He enjoys diversity and wants people to come to Him of free will, and that is why He is patient and merciful, and all manner of people exist on earth.

I have been exercising my imagination in doing new artwork. Using photographs from my world travels and also studio shots, I then print them onto canvas, mount them on board, and then paint over and apply encaustic (hot wax and resin mixture) to give added dimension and nuance.
For years, I have gained my livelihood for the most part through my landscape paintings, and some artists are content to continue in the comfort zone of success achieved by the formula that is feeding them. But imagination is an artist’s foremost calling, and for me, this must be my path, although it might be fraught with peril . . . I would call it sublime fear.

Does the moon follow me at night? I can imagine so, but not necessarily believe it.

Place Of Eternal Happiness

Ah, to be innocent and full of wonder. Here are two quotes that can help us be free of prejudice:

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.” Albert Einstein
“Verily I say unto you, except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.”  English Revised Bible, Matthew 18:3

In the first quote, I think Einstein knows full well how limited is human understanding, and how faulty can be its perception. Acknowledged as a true genius of the highest order, still, he is able to laugh at his own accomplishments. For Einstein, the more he came to know, the more he realized he did not know; and this was his entry into the kingdom of heaven, for he turned and became as the “little children”, full of wonder.

In the second quote, we are encouraged to become as little children. This does not mean to become infantile, because, we are turning to look back. Rather, it is adopting the child’s life, free of prejudice and full of wonder, awe, and gratitude, that allows us to enter into heaven, the place of eternal happiness, and remain there in a state of grace.

Beloved

Sometimes the cruelty of this world is dumbfounding and so insulting to our senses that we recoil immediately and simply withdraw. I remember as a child when I saw someone with a mutilated face from burning, or another with missing or deformed limbs, how I felt afraid, as if beholding a monster I had only met in dreams, but now, here it was in real life. My mother would calm me and say, “Do not stare.” But the unfortunate person would ultimately be shunned because of fear.

Now that I am grown, I have no fear of people who are “different”, but rather, compassion for the great burden that they must carry all their lives. Recently, I came across a story on the Internet about victims, mostly female, of acid attacks. These young women usually were attacked because they simply asserted themselves as independent. Then, a spurned suitor or inflamed man attacked with acid, directing it at the victim’s face. It is terrible the damage that is done. See the article: Terrorism that’s personal.

In August of last year, while I was in Saigon, Vietnam, I met a young man begging on the street who was the victim of an acid attack. That week, I wrote my blog and reflected on the term “monster” and what it really means. See my blog, Monsters.

Misfortunes such as starvation, stillbirths, illnesses, have always afflicted humanity but what is truly mystifying and pointlessly tragic is the suffering humanity inflicts upon itself.

When will the human family rejoice in unity and fellowship and end the suffering it has long inflicted upon itself? Only when we see each other as precious . . . not as the “other” but as beloved.

Pleasurable Dance of the Senses

A novice appeared recently at the Wednesday night drawing group I have attended for many years, and in a fit of peculiar frustration and perhaps bewilderment, asked the group why they draw from a nude model. I must say that this group I attend is very relaxed and usually a stream-of-consciousness conversation ensues the entire three hours of drawing.

My eyes were focused intensely on the model in front of me when Fabio asked and nobody answered, perhaps because the question seemed so odd at the time. I was the first to answer and replied, “Because it is creative, and artists have always studied the human form.” The group generally agreed figure drawing is an exacting artistic discipline. The model, a young woman reclining on a short platform pushed against a wall just a few feet in front of the artists said, “And this is why I like to model; because I participate in the creativity and enjoy it so much.”

Over the years, I have seen many models, male and female, young and old. A person does not have to be beautiful, but has to be comfortable in their body. A good artist model knows intuitively to strike poses that are interesting to the eye. When they simply withdraw into themselves and take yoga poses, for me at least, I become less inspired and feel the mundane invoked. The best models enjoy the sensuality of the moments while eyes are looking intently at their nakedness, and participate in a give and take that is a pleasurable dance of the senses.

To see more of my figure drawings, go to the Steven Boone website and click on the drawings link.

The Pleasure of Reading

The pleasure of reading is beyond words. It reaches to the very core of being human, that is, the acquiring of knowledge. Knowledge furthers our ability to communicate and strengthens our interaction with the world, helping us discern between truth and falsehood.

In high school, I remember particularly a class in world literature. My youthful soul lusted after the thrill of discovery, including the adventures found in the pages of books. And of course, the selections were from the best of novels of days gone by.

For many years, I lost the luxury of reading for pleasure. After graduating college, I pursued a career, became a husband and father, and worked hard. My reading became more or less limited to newspapers, non-fiction and religious texts. Sometimes I would think longingly that it had been too long since I had read a novel.

I have rediscovered reading for pleasure. The last six books I have read, in order: Civilization and Its Discontents, by Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939), Narcissus and Goldmund, by Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) (read for the third time) , Eros and Civilization, by Herman Marcuse (1898-1979), Demian, by Hermann Hesse,  The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) (second reading), and now I am almost finished with The Torrents of Spring, by Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883). All these books became famous and elevated their authors in the public eye. Of course it takes erudition, knowledge, inspiration and a unique voice to create literary works of art.

Writing a novel can take years. I noticed this when it took three years to write my own book, A Heart Traced In Sand, Reflections on a Daughter’s Struggle for Life. Never before in my life had I taken so long at one task. The most time I have ever spent making a painting was about sixty hours.

Last night, I went with Jean to see the movie about Leo Tolstoy’s final days, called The Last Station. A marvelous film, full of warmth and candor, I especially appreciated it, being a big fan of Tolstoy and having just finished reading Dostoevsky’s Brothers and now pursuing the finish of Turgenev’s Torrents.

I am claiming time for the luxury, great pleasure, and elevation found in reading. Go into a library sometime and look at all the shelves filled with books. This sight is a wonder because it represents countless hours of revelation and inspiration.

Narcissus nodded, deep in thought. ‘Love of God,” he said slowly, searching for his words, is not always the same as love of good. I wish it were that simple. We know what is good for it is written in the commandments. But God is not contained only in the commandments you know—they are only an infinitesimal part of Him. A man may abide by the commandments and be far from God.
From Narcissus and Goldmund, Herman Hesse

Only One Time Exists

Strange, but I am finding that the thrill of being in a flowing lifestyle that resembles a wild river moving through varied and exotic terrain has made stopping difficult. Just as an adventurer becomes restless after camping upon the banks of a proud and flowing river, with his boat tethered on land, so I too, must adjust to staying still.

When I was in Buenos Aires, I once left my keys inside the apartment and did not discover they were missing until late in the afternoon.  The owner was not available to help unlock the door, so I had to spend a night in a cheap hotel. I am philosophical about my experiences, so I simply noted how interesting is THE DREAM. That evening I found a bustling bar where I stopped to sit and write. People sat clustered at small tables that spilled from inside onto the sidewalk under canopies. I sat at the bar in the darkened room while waiters came and went and the bartenders hustled up drinks. From there, I wrote on a tiny notepad I had taken from my coat pocket. It was a stream of consciousness:  
I left my keys in my apartment and locked myself out. Tonight I have to sleep in a hotel. THE DREAM speaks . . . sings, flows, is air, is water, flux. I am in it and witness, play along as an actor on it’s stage. I am audience to my performance as well—yet I only long for the place of unfolding—not the witnessing, but the unfolding. What is it then to unfold and witness at the same time?
Can moments be slowed? Slowed into singularity so that only one time exists? Cessation of separation and realization that sleep, waking, work, rest, play, happiness, sadness, success, failure, male-female, God, human, animal, plant, et al. are unified in the borderless regions of oneness?

Home Is In My Heart

When I travel for extended periods I become homeless and a true wanderer. I begin by abandoning my home, selling off possessions, and then storing in my studio what little remains. When I eventually arrive back in Santa Fe, I only have my studio to go to. The studio is an open space with four concrete walls and a bathroom. It holds my paintings, art materials, easel, a desk with a computer and my large format printer. If I had to, I could sleep there, but it has no shower or kitchen.

I am not a fretful person, nor fearful, so the prospect of not having a place to live is simply part of the ever-unfolding DREAM, and I trust in it to give me what I need.

My former wife Jean opened her home to me when I arrived after my long drive from California. I only needed to stay one night. Going to the Internet site Craigslist, I found a furnished guesthouse, and after a short visit there, rented it and moved in the same day. It is on a property in an expensive district of Santa Fe, next to a large home that is used only part time by absent landlords. I have great quiet, and although my casita is a bit small, I am more or less content for the time being.

Yesterday evening, the Baha’i community around the world celebrated the advent of Naw-Ruz, the first day of the Bahá'í calendar occurring on the vernal equinox, March 21. The New Year also ends the Bahá'í month of fasting, so the celebration is often combined with a dinner. When I was at our local celebration, a friend turned to me and asked “Is it good to be home?” As I looked into her lovely eyes, full of inquisitiveness, I said, “I am always at home—home is in my heart. Looking into your beautiful eyes in this perfect moment is where I live and love. And this “home” for me, is everywhere.” In truth, I have had countless feelings of being “home” all around the world.

Snow fell the first night I spent in my casita—quite a shock after picking oranges in my parent’s backyard just a few days ago.

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