Budapest: Day Seven: Cosmos in the Chaos

Today is day seven of my residency here in Budapest. I have just finished lunch ( a Hungarian potato and bean soup with a fresh baguette, a nectarine and sparkling water) and am sitting in my apartment listening to Agnes Obel. I haven't really wanted to write for the last few days, I haven't slept great yet, so that may be a little of the no writing angst. It also could be the stories of the local people and the generations who suffered under the hands of German Fascism and the Russian Communism. I have experienced both sides in other countries and lived in a communist country for a while. I do feel a new confidence amongst the youth, but also feel the years of suffering and worry of the elder generations.

I took these two pictures in the dome of Buda Castle.

For the first 5 days I explored the city with the other residents, from Canada and San Antonio. I could probably write about all the museums, streets, architecture, and beauty that this magnificent city holds. But I am here for art. To grow as an artist, in another culture. Taking everything that I feel and observe and transform it all into artistic growth. This can be easy and difficult as an artist. For me, creating art is often times more a time of prayer than a subject. As an abstract expressionist I often need to empty myself to experience as much of the divine that I can come close to grasping. 

Madeline L’Lengle writes, “It is a frightening thing to open oneself to the strange and dark side of the divine; it means letting go our sane self-control, that control which gives us the illusion of safety. But safety is only an illusion, and letting go of it is part of listening to the silence, and to the Spirit.”

Taking some time to enjoy some literature and Hungarian wine.

This may be why I have refused to write over the first few days. I have felt emotional “heavy”, I have experience magnificent art, art that was created in forms that is longer practiced. Stood before Mogdiliani and Picasso exhibits. Two artists who have influenced generations and that will continue to do the same, long after they have died. As I paraphrase L’Engle and add my own words, “Each of these men, whose paintings I stand before and admire in a great fashion. They are just that, all men, and all dead, Their distance from us in chronology seems to give them an overwhelming authority. But they were not dead when they painted, and they were as human as the rest of us.”

I moved from powerful exhibitions of the created and spent a day in the Terror House Museum, that walked you through the history of German Nazi rule and Russian Communist rule. The power of death, betrayal, hatred, and ugliness has virtually left a small stain on my heart as I moved through relics of Nazi Germany, the torture chambers connected to tunnels under the city from Russian Communist rule. I needed to experience a visual representation of people that overcame these cruel moments in history. I have heard the stories from our Residency Director of her family suffering at the hands of both Nazi Germany and Russia. Family in camps, bombings, raising chickens in the house, hiding in the basement, moments from books and film. I am changed, again. My eyes have observed many peoples and my ears have heard similar stories first had, all over this world. “Leonard Berstien says that for him music is cosmos in chaos. And it is not true only of music; all art is cosmos, cosmos found within the chaos.” (page 17) I have truly found cosmos, here in Budapest, cosmos that is resting amongst the chaos of history and story. And this has led me to create. The reason I my journey has led me here to this specific moment in time.

Yesterday, I set up my tools of the trade in my momentary studio. This is were the cosmos met my soul and my hands. My working space is in our Director Beata’s studio basement. This space holds stories from Hungary’s history, from her families history. The house was built by her grandfather, and during German occupation the house was bombed. There were multiple families seeking refuge here in the house. They kept chickens upstairs, for eggs and food. One evening her grandfather was upstairs checking the chickens and he was spotted from the Palace moving around in the window. Orders were given to bomb any house where people were seen moving. The house was bombed. The families were able to survive by taking refuge in the basement. Where I now sit, amongst their memories of fear, joy, tears, laughter, love and chaos. As my hands reach for pencils or pastels, I think about children playing amongst these stone walls and bricks, not knowing the chaos that existed above. 

I knew coming into this residency that there would be challenges for me as an artist. Challenges that I knew if embraced fully would only help me grow in my craft. The first is working small. For the last two years I have primarily worked no smaller that 4 feet in scale, with multiple paintings in the 9 and 10 foot range. The second is the theme. Since I have been working in bodies of work from my personal writings and literary classics, having a theme outside of my current idea sphere would be a challenge. Our theme is environment. Not something that has been in my working map before. The challenge for any artist is creating a piece that truly speaks, that allows the audience/observer fresh eyes to see. 

I began processing what this could look like a few months back and my thoughts led me to begin working on a thesis based upon the harmony of matter and spirit, asking questions based upon the relationship between creation and the created, nature and humanity. 

How does life outside of humanity react and live alongside of us? 

Do our actions/spirit/emotions/relationships affect our natural surroundings? 

What is at work in the air, in molecules, in the environment that we cannot see?

When we feel happiness, sorrow, anger, joy, hope, distrust, love, hate…does nature feel the spirit of these feelings as they come out from our souls, mentality, attitudes, actions and reactions? 

Does tension, reconciliation, discrimination, judgment, hate, mercy, in our communities/cultures seep into to the air and disrupt nature’s harmony- having an affect on climate change or environmental deconstruction? 

Could these things add to nature’s disruption? 

These thoughts are all built upon the theory that the Creator of the Universe is in a love relationship with all things created. All things created continue to create themselves towards the image of the Creator.

I am only beginning to write, read, study, think and paint through these thoughts. I will write more as they develop. Here is a video from my first day in the basement painting. Please leave comments, thoughts, ideas that you have. I would love to talk through these ideas and this world with you all! Here is a short 1:00 video from my first day working through a few studies.

i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday, this is the birth

day of life and love and wings; and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth…

now the ears of my ears are awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened. 

e.e cummings

In Flight Thoughts on Movement, Writing and Family.

My greatest moments in writing have always come while flying.  I can’t really put my finger on why. Maybe my soul falls into the the spell of the many different forms of movement involved physically and mentally that it is stirred to make words. I have written 3 books and countless prose over the 5 continents and 17 countries that I have spent time in. Flight amazes me, the same way a pencil moving across paper caused my soul to stir.  The ability to watch my thoughts come together in form and meaning is miraculous in it’s action.....I ramble.

Today I leave for 3 countries that I have never set foot upon.  Today my heart pounds in anticipation and my soul feels true movement. My senses are awake in the way they were created to be.  While “Sleeping at Lasts” Atlas EP’s plays in my headphones, my cells collide as if the world were being created…I begin to dream as Ryan sings…

“I’ll keep you safe,

try hard to concentrate,

hold out your hand,

can you feel the weight of it,

the whole world at your fingertips,

don’t be…don’t be afraid.”

I can feel the weight of it, the whole world at my fingertips.  I  try not to be afraid at the weight of it, but I am an artist and I understand that the whole world is meant to be seen. This is my role to play in this life and possibly the next.  I think of my family, the story behind generations, the webs and lines that connect every side, the years of love and loss, future and past. I think ahead to where my feet are taking me. Taking me to visit, love and listen to 150 families who may lose their children, 150 children who may lose their family, who may lose a son or daughter, a brother or sister, who would lose those stories that I hold so dear. Just like the millions around this sphere made out of water and dirt that we inhabit and take for greatness every minute of the day.  I pray that my eyes can see the story to paint, to share, to give to you so that you may care, may see, may feel the things that I do.  I pray I can show you in a way that you may not have seen or felt before.  

As my favorite writer of all time once wrote:

“There is no denying that the artist is someone who is full of questions, who cries them out in great angst, who discovers the rainbow answers in darkness, and then rushes to canvas or paper. An artist is someone who cannot rest, who can never rest as long as there is one suffering person in this world. Along with Plato's divine madness there is also divine discontent, a longing to find the melody in the discords of chaos, the rhyme in the cacophony, the surprised smile in time of stress or strain.

It is not that what is not enough, for it is; it is that what is had been disarranged, and is crying out to be in place. Perhaps the artist longs to sleep well every night; to eat anything without indigestion; to feel no moral qualms; to turn off the television news and make a sandwich after seeing the devastation and death caused by famine and drought and earthquake and flood. But the artist cannot manage this normalcy. Vision keeps breaking through, and must find means of expression.”  Madeline L’Engle

(If you want to be a part of the story with me, please visit http://bit.ly/love_hope to see how you can help us support 150 kids so that they do not become orphans and are able to build a story with their families.)