The Philosopher’s Stone

Years ago somebody told me a parable. I liked it so much that I wrote it down, and kept it in a notebook with some of my personal writings. It went like this:

In a small monastery, a disciple approached his master and asked how he might find truth, for he was young and eager and he sought truth above all else. The master stood and began walking toward the garden, motioning for him to follow.

Stopping at a small goldfish pond, the master said to the disciple “Kneel down and stick you head under the water.” Curious but obedient, the disciple knelt on the soft ground as he was told and stuck his head in the pond. He was surprised when, immediately after, his master put a foot down on his neck, holding him under.

Unnerved but still trusting that there was a lesson to be learned, the disciple sat still. After a short time, however, his body began crying out for air. Soon he was thrashing about, trying to lift his head out, but still the foot held him under. Finally, when he felt his lungs would burst and darkness was creeping in around the edges of his vision, he master removed his foot and pulled him out.

Choking and gasping for breath, the disciple collapsed on the ground, unable to move. The master bent down beside him and whispered in his ear “You asked me to help you find truth. But I tell you that when you desire truth as much as you desired air just now, then it shall seek you out.” Then he stood up and walked away, leaving the boy where he lay.

I like that story, but I’m not sure if I agree with it. Like the disciple, I too seek truth above all else. I daresay that I desire truth every bit as much as I do each breath I take. But for me, especially as I’ve gotten older, truth has always been easy enough to find. Truth is everywhere, if you really want it, if you’re open to seeing for what it is. It’s in the advice of a loved one, the reassurances of a friend, the brief snippets of wisdom that we find in a book or film or song. We all know more truth that we realize, and we see each day more truth than most of us would believe. The trick is simply recognizing it.

(It should be understood that truth is not necessarily the same as fact.)

No, for me, this story is, like all good stories, just a metaphor. Replace truth with whatever it is you most want or need and it still works just fine. In my case, the thing I seek is inspiration. I’ve sought it for years, and every time I’ve thought I found it, it’s disappeared like a phantom. Every idea I’ve had has ultimately proven to be shallow. I’ve had only glimpses of anything real or worthy. They’re not enough anymore.

The problem is, I’ve been trying to force inspiration, trying to will it to occur, and it just doesn’t work like that. You don’t come up with an idea, you find the idea that’s already waiting. Michelangelo said that each of his sculptures was already there in the marble, waiting for him to come and let them out. He was absolutely right. When you’re ready for inspiration, it shall seek you out.

This is what a spiritual experience is for me.

I’ve tried everything this past year or more. New methods, new mediums, new ways of looking at things. I’ve tried digging through my personal interests, I’ve tried using metaphor, I’ve written and journaled endlessly about a dozen possible approaches. I’ve even taken to a sort of stream-of-consciousness drawing that I call (in deference to another, much older idea) “automatic drawing”. Nothing. Just figments and false hopes. Even as I started work some weeks ago on yet another possibility, I felt like I was just wasting time.

I’m a damn fool. If life has taught me anything, it’s that almost nothing we do is wasted, not to us personally, not unless we let it be. Every mistake, every experience-- good or bad-- each success, each failure, each heartbreak, contributes something to who we are. We may hate the bad times in our lives, and we may wish they’d never happened, but the simple fact is that we would not be the same people without them. If we’re lucky, more often that not that would be a loss.

Every stupid idea I’ve had, every disappointment or failed piece, has led me here. I’m ready for inspiration. And of course, now, in a time of utter desperation in my life, I think I may have found it. Or rather it may have found me.

Klein told me once that all art is self-portraiture. So I painted self-portraits. Bill told me to paint what I was interested in, so I filled canvases with references to cosmology and myth and Kaballah. Dine and Raushenberg used art as a kind of psychoanalysis, and Gaiman said that there is room for things to mean more than they really mean. As someone who claims to be pretty good at finding truth, I should have realized that they could all be right.

What I need to do is take the best of what all my teachers and ideas have had to offer and distill it into something new, something me. Like all good students do. My life has been filled with symbols and recurring images. My constant companion is my own past, which I have been utterly incapable of letting go of. My spirituality has been based on all those things, with the near-deification of art and science and romanticism and, of course, truth, mixed in. My love has been drawing and painting and printmaking and above all else, process. So why don’t I just make art that is about all those things, and fulfills all those needs? That’s what I’ve been asking myself. And I think I have some idea of how to do it.

I’m not going to say what it is. I don’t worry about jinxing things since I don’t believe in luck, but I have learned a thing or two from previous mistakes, and I don’t want to put another idea out there unless I’m sure there’s something to it. I’m going to work, I’m going to write, I’m going to experiment, and we’ll see what happens. Maybe this time I got it right. Maybe not. It’s early yet.

But hot damn, I’m excited.