Plein-aire concinnity

I have not done any plein-aire painting for three or four years. Yesterday I returned to some places along Bolinas Lagoon and Tomales Bay where I have painted in the past. I found myself greeting trees as the incoming tide lapped at gnarled roots. One tree in particular that I painted several times in the spring of 2005 was greeted like a dear old friend. Bowing to the egrets and basking seals in the lagoon, I realized the intimacy of place, space, sound that has been created in my psyche and soul.

There is concinnity-a seeing with one's ears. Babette E. Babich discusses this in her rich, delectable book WORDS IN BLOOD,LIKE FLOWERS which I am slowly savoring. I am thinking about this in terms of plein-aire painting and found myself painting small watercolors on gesso covered rice paper with awareness, passion and sensitivity. This goes far beyond "landscape-painting". The Latin word, concinnitas carries the meaning of "rhythmically attuned diction." There is a rich scholarly tapestry of the word's meaning. It invites reflection for me as a painter to think about my painting and how I speak about my paintings.

I wonder about the rhythmic attunment to the place I am painting. That "place" dissolves the interior/exterior division. Painting is rhythmic attunment. Taking this further, I think of one's heart-soul-psyche, a "corda-concinnity." Listening with heart-soul-psyche, seeing with my ears. Painting.

Ocean Song

I am much like a migratory bird returning to this part of the ocean every fall. Drawn by the sound of the surf pounding, the smell of eucalyptus and sea breeze. I am also on pilgrimage to a place that resonates with wonder and unpredictability. I came to realize this as I slipped over the peak of Mt. Tamalpais and saw the ocean before me. This part of the California Coast holds every tear I have cried, every prayer I have uttered and every question I have carried for the past three decades of my life.
I take my questions for a walk along the dancing surf and elusive horizon. They accompany me, imprinting upon my soul like my footsteps in the sand. If asked, 'What is it you DO as an artist? I would answer, "I take my questions for a walk on the ocean every morning as the sky is turning light. Then I paint."

I am thinking alot these days about Nietzsche's call for a musicality (as embodied in the Greek term musike) in reading and thought of philosophy and his works. How does this thread into my work as an artist, as a painter? Art and truth formed an indissoluble unit for the ancient Greeks.

Babette Babich, in her book, WORDS IN BLOOD, LIKE FLOWERS states that this sense of musicality "corresponds to the entire cultural scope..." and the "modern tendency to reduce music to the 'organized' art of sound obscures the equiprimordial sense in which MUSIKE could be regarded, as Nietzsche saw it, as the enabling element of intellectual or spiritual as well as aesthetic and physical education and in which MUSIKE figures as the determining force of both individual and societal character -ethos-."

What is the enabling element of intellectual and spiritual and aesthetic and physical integration for me as a painter. What is the ethos of my work?

Shakespeare in the now barren Aspen Grove

Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self that seals up all the rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire, 

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed, whereon it must expire

Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong

To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

Silent listening, authentic questioning.

Silence offers an invitation to wonder and astonishment that continues to deepen within me. How do I attentively bring this to my painting in the studio?   Heidegger wrote that this astonishment, this wonder is kept alive only in "authentic questioning" a questioning "that opens up its own source."  I am wondering if the authentic questioning he refers to is the dialogue that opens when I sit with a painting?  Sometimes there is wonder, occasionally  astonishment.  I need to listen to my paintings.

Rilke, Rumi and metaphor in the Aspen Grove

The Aspen are shimmering in passionate delight today.  Rumi wrote that leaf sounds are poets talking together/making fresh metaphors.  I wonder what metaphors the Aspen are offering as Heidegger and I walk on our mountain path.   What is the role of metaphor in painting?  Am I even conscious of using metaphor?  Nietzsche believed that we can have no genuine knowing without metaphor.  I am sitting with all this as I read Words in Blood, Like Flowers (Philosphy and Poetry, Music and Eros in Holderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger (Babich, Babette E.  Albany, SUNY Press 2006). In the rush of the wind and leaves I am thinking of this morning's newsclip from NPR:  "1/4 of the  planets mammals are currently threatened with extinction."  A quote from Rilke that hangs in my studio floods my mind as brilliantly as the Aspen grove.  ...our task is to stamp this provisional, perishing earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its being may rise again, 'invisibly' in us.