reach for something that’s just beyond our grasp, “up there,
in the stratosphere, where art lives on high....”
When we get something down, there is no strain. We’re
not doing; we’re getting. Someone or something else is
doing the doing. Instead of reaching for inventions, we are
engaged in listening.
When an actor is in the moment, he or she is engaged in
listening for the next right thing creatively. When a painter
is painting, he or she may begin with a plan, but that plan is
soon surrendered to the painting’s own plan. This is often
expressed as “The brush takes the next stroke.” In dance, in
composition, in sculpture, the experience is the same: we are
more the conduit than the creator of what we express.
In the esoteric Judaism of the
Cabalah, the Deep Self is named
the Neshamah, from the root of
Shmhm, “to hear or listen”: the
Neshamah is She Who Listens,
the soul who inspires or guides us.
STARHAWKArt is an act of tuning in and dropping down the well. It is
as though all the stories, painting, music, performances in
the world live just under the surface of our normal
consciousness. Like an underground river, they flow
through us as a stream of ideas that we can tap down into.