Theos-Talk Archives (March 1999 Message tt00009)

I received this letter tonight.
I just thought it might be good to share it with the list.  -- Mark

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It was wonderful to converse with you.  It always is.
I hope you know that. I believe you do. I hold you up high in my heart.

Life is short. The commercial work that we do, so often of necessity:
other people's necessity, (the community's necessity), communicates yet
a real need, and some caprice. It provides for our
livelihood. It makes life fun. We can enjoy it. It's always interesting,
sometimes a little hard to see. Underneath it all is the real meaning of
our lives, of all of our lives. We live and die. As artist's, we
have the gift of expressing that meaning as best we can. I know that you
understand, but it's still good to say. Artist's often don't say it
enough. I have always known you for who YOU ARE. I feel that
we are colleagues in the most interesting of classrooms. I love being
here with you.

Sometimes, the depths of what you say touch me so deeply that I can't
find words. You good fortune at treating spiritual subjects belies your
generous capacity to do so.

Whether it's your own personal work or a commercial assignment, you
always try to dive deep and create a poignant metaphor for experience.
You succeed.

I'm stumbling over my own words now, (language, as wonderful as it is [
it's really all we have, isn't it, just different forms of language -
visual/verbal --- but still limited]. It's the only tool available to
us. If you pause a moment in silence, you'll understand me, I'm sure. If
silence has a value, it is love. If love has a value, it is truth. When
we look back over our lives, I hope we will feel that at least, we
were truthful with each other.

I feel things when I talk to you. Things that touch me. When you spoke
tonight about your commercial opportunities, and about the needed
quality of optimism in commerce, I was reminded of a
saying I heard a long time ago: "Work is love made visible." It is the
basis of my understanding of economics. I try to live up to it.

The other thing I want to say, is a little harder to articulate. I say
it to myself like this:
When we are young, we eventually encounter the word "love" and some
meaning of it. We are taught to represent it with a simple glyph of four
symbols. And we do.
As we go on in our lives, we have experiences that cause the bottom of
that representation to drop away and open to ever vaster and vaster
regions of meaning, some pleasure, some pain. Same four
glyphs. But different now.

When you think of any symbol, any representation of a thing: try to
remember that potential. Imbue it with your gaze, your awareness. What
seems solid and defined, can, in an instant, open up to
encompass bottomless depths and extensions of meaning. No end --
floating in the potential of void space -- free, no bounds. Acknowledge
that potential in every symbol you create. Energize every
image you see with that potential. The world transforms. The ordinary
becomes extraordinary. It becomes magical: mystical. Forms become
doorways to the formless. The act of seeing and of
representing vision (both interior and exterior), becomes charged with
that possibility. Un-ending meaning can live in the symbols you create
as acknowledged potential for the viewer to recognize. It's
there. You saw it. The act of seeing becomes a path, a bridge. That's
where you find the Artist in you, and the Creative in everyone. There is
the true community for us. The interchange between Self
and Other becomes invigorating, inspirited. And whether mutually
acknowledged as such or not, the potential is vivifying. It is present.
Your awareness makes it so. It's now in the potential human
sphere for all to share. You've brought it through.You've transformed
it. Others can interpret as they see fit. That's the beauty. But the
meaning, ever elusive and unconfined by description, flows. The
formless appears as form, momentarily, and dissappears. Only to reappear
as something else, recognized or not. A moving pattern. Flowing, it
achieves it's purpose. It is among us. I believe artists
accomplish their duty that way. Transformations occur through the
conscious cooperation of mankind. Limits serve the Illimitable. Silence
speaks best.












A blank page every day.  We are.

Relish emptiness as form.
The gate to all mystery.


"I AM not absent.
  I AM present
  in the silence
  between heartbeats."



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Without Walls:An Internet Art Space
email: mark@withoutwalls.com
www.withoutwalls.com


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