Tag: Art

Oscillating

On By NW FilbertIn Traces, WritingLeave a comment

Like margins, thresholds, beginnings.

Species of relation.

I am drawn to synthesizing agents, it seems.  I find myself attuned to, and triggered by, generalizations, and yet curiously constantly in search of them.

Fitting things where they converge, borders of meetings and passings.

.

Oscillation is one such theory.  Neurologically cognizable perceptively, passaging to and from hemispheres and lobes, neurons and systems, and productive.  From which we get “fire together – wire (conspire) together.”  Symphonic circuitry.  Fluctuate congruity.  A jazz band improvising.

Extended to bodies in spaces and times, collective moods, or space and time themselves, if you will.  Constructive theory of observation.  Oscillation.

As if a structural template for an expression of personal creative process.

As if an introduction toward a story, that story that’s been brewing, surging, throbbing and stewing throughout my physiological corpus for days, since an opening of light, of breath – a semester’s impending conclusion – aptly (I hope) nominated “break.”

If “break” belongs with “dance” and poetic feet fall into step, or sentences seek their stride.  She hopes so, as does he, now ungendered in a unison of copulatory oscillation, my hope for the tremoring bits that vibrate me toward a Nathan : writing.

…to be continued…

Reasons for Thanks – inspiration

On By NW FilbertIn Uncategorized, Writing11 Comments

in·spire/inˈspī(ə)r/

Verb:
  1. Fill (someone) with the urge or ability to do or feel something, esp. to do something creative
  2. Create (a feeling, esp. a positive one) in a person

Many thanks to Music & Meaning / The Rag Tree for awarding me the “Very Inspiring Blogger” award.  The work there is genuinely inspiring, in fact, just this week I was speaking with my spouse, artist & blogger Holly Suzanne, about RT’s work, particularly in translations and all that brings with it regarding languages and cultures and purposes of art.  Thank you Rag Tree!  I am honored and, indeed, inspired, by your work.  In fact, I would hazard to guess that the decision to begin a personal blog or website, followed by the clunky and quirky process of finding or constructing a steady community of readers or viewers might be characterized by inspiration.  As we watch one another follow their urges to “do or feel something…creative” it does “create a feeling, esp. a positive one” in us to continue doing/working/creating our own.  I am thankful to the blogosphere for providing such a cheap and relatively easy format for those of us who will to expose our work far beyond our limited personal spheres, and especially to receive comments and criticism, and gather multitudes of inputs from others works all throughout the world, that we, most likely, would never have otherwise been exposed to.  It gladdens me deeply if my work inspires others to work or think or be, and all of you that I follow have done the same for me.

I relish in giving awards to other bloggers, as there are so many out there, but we’d live in social media were we not forced continually to edit and select the number we can truly “follow,” and actually attend to.  By that point, a blogger has gone through (for me) the same sort of criteria any music I listen to, literature I read, or conversation or activity I participate in does – engaging it involves an enhancement of meaning for my life.  How can one not want to award or acknowledge, thank or praise those whose work and words enhance and expand your daily living?!  So I find no difficulty in finding bloggers to pass the gratitude on to, the hardest thing is choosing!  This blog comes with a few “rules”, as follows:

  1. Display the Nomination logo on your blog
  2. Link back to the person who nominated you
  3. State 7 things about yourself
  4. Nominate 15 others and link to them
  5. Notify those bloggers of the nominations & award requirement

Seven Things About Myself

1.  Writing joins me to the world.

2.  I love theory – as a way of thinking about thinking about the world and anything in it.

3.  I am particularly fascinated by the way humans learn and change.

4.  My wife and children amaze me and expose and explode un-countable aspects of the world into me.

5.  Rain is my favorite weather – especially the thick drizzly kind, the all-day kind (or all-week or -month) – optimum temperatures 40s     or 50s.

6.  I read 4-6 hours a day.

7.  I like cabins and caves.

Now for those I recommend.  For the selections for this, I have spent a good deal of time thinking “which blogs do I truly go to for inspiration?”  Not only interest or admiration, information or curiosity, but that I seek out and miss if I don’t see, and that genuinely create in me the urge to “do or feel something creative…” perhaps even the “ability” to do so.  Here they are:

Life In Relation to Art – see also www.hollysuzanne.net: yes, this is my wife and co-creator in everything I do.  It’s true she always makes my lists for blogger awards, and it is also true that no other’s life or work inspires me remotely as much as living life side-by-side with her.  I can attest to the effort and deep work that goes into each of her creations, and how her creating fuses into every aspect of our lives and activities.  Thank you, love, for inspiring me every moment of my life.

Objects – see also www.spoondeep.wordpress.com – contributions by author “severnspoon.”  This author also occurs with each of my kudos and thanks because he, too, constructs the courage to be alive in me.  His work in graphics, poetry and mixed media ALWAYS inspirit me to do and make and think.  Thanks, compadre.

Draw and Shoot – see also www.karenmcrae.photoshelter.com – when I first spied Karen’s work I was impressed by the mood and quality of each shot.  Now, over months, I must say that I anticipate each shot, and have truly come to be amazed by the “capturing” her eye, technique and production do in relation to the world.  These are photos I go back over again and again, almost as a meditation, guaranteed to evoke feelings, thoughts and the urge to create in me.

Christian Mihai – how can one NOT be inspired by the quality, content and sheer verve of Christian Mihai – he is instructive, productive and full of ideas and insights, as well as fine and evocative creative writing.  Press “random post” again and again – let me know how many times it took before you stumbled across something “not interesting.”!  Thanks CM – for all your work – and work FOR all of us!

Ironwoodwind and Photography Of Nia – Doug and Nia are two of the most humane, attentive, genuine, interested and interesting blogger-people I’ve come across.  Both obviously care about the world around them and the people and organisms in it, and express themselves warmly and carefully into it.  I notice from many that their efforts at commenting and encouraging others goes a LONG way in inspiring ongoing work in the community of WordPress.  Thank you both for your kindness and creativity and communal encouragement.

Settle + Chase – in line with Draw & Shoot, S+C’s work indeed settles deep into the subject and chases what is ephemeral, mysterious, or not objectifiable in it.  This leads consistently to photography that we are able to “enter in” instead of just observe and admire.  I enjoy work like this that asks to be questioned over time…and continually provides new responses.  Thank you S&C!

Boy With a Hat – I can’t remember how I came across this blog, but have not missed a post since I did.  Here is some ingenious, fresh and alive writing and thinking.  His 50-word stories are little explosions of insight, and his particular way of involving the reader in whatever it is he is considering in language is admirable and unique.  Thank you Vincent Mars!

atelierscheune2012 – see also Ute Schatzmuller – here you’ll find visual art and collaborative work that I promise will evoke new ideas in you, inspire new collaborative desires, and set your mind or hands or eyes off on new explorations internally and externally.  Ute’s work is suggestive and entire in a spiraling manner – each piece feels complete and yet also as if it’s the beginning of a journey. Thank you Ute!

The Disorder of Things – I promote this blog because I admire blogs that take on big issues and are willing to dig deep and explore options and ideas.  I appreciate this because whether or not I agree with any position or concept under inquiry – it invites and enervates more thinking – which is inspiring.

Ooggetuige – primarily portraiture of some sort, the settings and background textures combined with perspective on subject consistently intrigue me.  These photos start stories.  Thank you!

The Hour of Soft Light – the writings, images, poems, quotations and reflections here nearly always brush some deep human place of longing, nostalgia, wonder or gratitude.  Important things to keep alive in us.  I appreciate the breadth and depth of the entries – the range of our human experiences.

Quirk’n It – inspiring in subject, expression and real-lifeness of it.  The energy, interest and genuineness of her intention and attention to subjects, meanings, and scene are delightful to follow.  (Also, there’s collaboration in the works – being considered for it is inspiring in itself).  Thanks!

It Started With a Quote – likewise – so much of my life is inspired or rises out of what I read and then winds in and out of my lived relational experience, testing, proving, questioning the language of it.  Here you encounter all sorts of worthy inspirations and get a chance to watch them thread through, effect and alter an able mind into the world of experience.  

The Artsy Forager – I am SO thankful for the work of the Artsy Forager – bringing all manner of creative, enlivening, interesting works and activities into our days.  Our family has a funny attribution to “feeling artsy” – for when we have that curious, active want-to…the Forager satisfies and often increases this want-to.

barbaraelka.com and Dark Pines Photos  – two sites that do things with photographs that make me want to do things with words – change the finish, crack the background, tear the edges, skew the subjects…MAKE IT NEW!  Very thankful for their work and steady spontaneous creativity.

There it is – longer than usual, but fortunately for me – it’s Thanksgiving Week in the USA, so seems appropriate.  Hope you visit and enjoy each of these!  And follow the tags onward to new brilliant blogs!

Sincerely, mano’theword

in·spire  (n-spr)

v. in·spired, in·spir·ing, in·spires
v.tr.

1. To affect, guide, or arouse by  influence.
2. To fill with enlivening or exalting emotion: hymns that inspire the congregation; an artist who was inspired by Impressionism.
3.

a. To stimulate to action; motivate: a sales force that was inspired by the prospect of a bonus.
b. To affect or touch: The falling leaves inspired her with sadness.
4. To draw forth; elicit or arouse: a teacher who inspired admiration and respect.
5. To be the cause or source of; bring about: an invention that inspired many imitations.
6. To draw in (air) by inhaling.
7. Archaic

a. To breathe on.
b. To breathe life into.
v.intr.

1. To stimulate energies, ideals, or reverence: a leader who inspires by example.
2. To inhale.

“Bless Babel.”

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Traces5 Comments

Below I am going to share with you an essay that I promise is worth every hour or two you lend your attention to each paragraph.

It is written by this person:

(Donald Barthelme)

and it is called: “Not Knowing“

from his collection of the same name.

it contains statements like the following:

“Any work of art depends upon a complex series of interdependences”

“tear a mystery to tatters and you have tatters, not mystery”

“What is magical about the object is that it at once invites and resists interpretation.  Its artistic worth is measurable by the degree to which it remains, after interpretation, vital – no interpretation or cardiopulminary push-pull can exhaust or empty it”

“The combinatory agility of words, the exponential generation of meaning once they’re allowed to go to bed together, allows the writer to surprise himself, makes art possible, reveals how much of Being we haven’t yet encountered.”

“Art is a true account of the activity of mind”

“The aim of meditating about the world is finally to change the world”

and so forth.

Please understand me, if you maintain a blog, take photos, love your children, think about your self or the world you live in, dialogue with books or pictures or animals or people or movements…

take a little time to read this

Thank you.

  Not Knowing

                            

Intimacy as Art

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Journallings, Writing6 Comments

Intimacy as Art

“A way of connecting, on relatively safe middle ground, with another human being”

“that ‘neutral middle ground on which to make a deep connection with another human being’… was what fiction was for.  ‘A way out of loneliness’…”

Jonathan Franzen, on David Foster Wallace

“If the novel were able ‘to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves,’ it opens the potential that she might, as a result, feel ‘less alone inside’”

Kathleen Fitzpatrick, on David Foster Wallace

My son and I arguing about the nature of things – is there anything we can agree on?  mutually believe?  are we similar? – in what began as an attempt (on my part) to soothe obvious hurt and confusion (on his part).  He kept pointing to (referencing) his mirror, his bedside table, in an effort at agreement, at a meeting-point that might be solid, be reliable, be “correct,” or “true.”  Some relatively stable collection of roving and vibrating molecules we might sharingly recognize, might hold, attend, or unite around – together.

Throughout my life I’ve attempted to comprehend – to make a symbol for myself –  what works of art, particular pieces of music, specific phrases or pages of literature, momentary glimpses of nature, dollops of emotional experience DO.  How they work.  Why they “feel” – move us, take an occasional effect we might call “profound.”  Why, even if they shatter us, cause us to weep, provoke in us the enormous courage required to change, we also somehow still feel safe, often empowered, somewhere beyond “okay” (ecstatic? – out of ourselves?)?

Although often evoking experiences I’d describe as most completely, totalizingly personal, I always felt their effectiveness, their possibilities of success and individuated power, came precisely because they were not (personal).  That what intimacy they provided – what outlet or spillage, what expression they represented or evinced – was contextually impersonal, through matter and energy uniquely organized, mediated.

In other words, we could throw all of ourselves into, at, toward or away from them (works of art, formal arrangements of world) without the danger or threat, anxiety or fear, of influence.  We wouldn’t hurt, harm, embarrass, shame, offend or be misunderstood by a cornflower, a collective of strokes of paint, a recording of sound waves, moving molecules.  No direct hits of miscommunication, misinterpretation.  Perfect, variable, flexible presentations of world, of other, that we might release ourselves in relation to, without fear.

Existent things, moments, that genuinely represent otherness from ourselves but without direct exposure, without a being’s inquiry, possible scrutiny, judgment or evaluation.  Interpretation.  Many-sided, borrowed perhaps, but mediated via only one person – me.  I could not fail, fall short, be inadequate to, or otherwise  mess up a novel, poem, composition or film, and if I experienced myself as any of those things – it was my own judgment, assessment.  Mediated.

After years of such exposure, why do I still choose sides, entrench myself in arguments of logic, when I mean to comfort, soften and heal?  Alone, later, I sat and asked myself over and over – IF I have changed, grown, matured in any fashion in my 42 years of life, IF I have learned anything to the point of conscious belief, what might it be? – what  might I say that I know?

I don’t know.

What I scribbled into the margin of my journal was simply that my fundamental belief about the world and life in it was that – at the core of things – “Everything is essentially messy.”  By which I (at least partially) meant (intended) was incomplete, mobile and complex.

Nothing “fixed.”  Staid, finished, whole.

Throughout years of journaling, as I’ve grown to understand how deeply I desire “intimacy” (which I suppose I would describe as “shared personhood” or “met experience”?  Co-events?) I have repeatedly diagramed what seems to me an only possible means between humans:

             Using Wittgenstein’s duck-rabbits to represent whatever we happen to perceive ourselves as, and “Art” on an easel representing anything as a mediated format outside of our “selves” (themselves, I surmise, also likely a constructed medium for experiencing world), to or in which multiple human persons might invest all they experience themselves to be, without necessary personal organism-survival fears, and, possibly, perhaps, occasionally MEET via that medium in toto (or as nearly as possible): experience intimacy, mutuality.  No longer isolated as a being, alone, but finding a common, a sharing-realm, co-perceiving, co-experiencing.

If it be so, that, in fact, as human organisms, all of our entity-type experience is, truly, mediated – through various organizations of mobile and voluble matter and energy – never identifiable as a stasis or final form, if we might begin to see it (us) as such – might we become able to experience direct, person-to-person (experientially) intimacy?  Co-being?  This is where I have turned effort (driven by desire) with my wife, my children.  What if we became safe mediums for one another to experience through?

That would be another entry altogether.

2 Exhibitions

On By NW FilbertIn Art, ExperimenctesLeave a comment

I’m excited about 2 exhibitions occurring this month with which I am involved one way or another…

ReMades will bring multiple local artists together, hauling sundry objects and materials  to their homes and studios to begin remaking, recombining and incorporating these items into lasting objects and artifacts, which will then be exhibited throughout the Fall and Winter at Fisch Haus Studios’ tremendous gallery space, thus preserving their potential to enliven and enlighten our communities.

Opening Reception on Final Friday, November 30, from 7-10pm

Fisch Haus, 524 S. Commerce, Wichita

An exhibition of work by local artists using materials fromThe LUX renovation process that would have otherwise been lost.

                                                    

And also my lovely amazing wife’s exhibition currently available at Mead’s Corner in Wichita KS

Friday evening, November 23, 6-9 pm there will be an artist’s reception with an artist’s talk by Holly Suzanne at 7:30!

Hope to see you there!

Address: 430 E. Douglas
Wichita,KS 67202
Hours: 8am-11pm Sun
7am-11pm Mon-Thu
7am-1am Fri
7am-1am Sat

HOPE TO SEE YOU HERE, THERE, EVERYWHERE!

(and support art and artists! – BUY IT!)

Today’s Delights – and salivatory anticipations

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading1 Comment

Writing it out : writing in

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Experimenctes, Writing9 Comments

Into (and out of) the labyrinth of language

“there can be no fully articulated thought without symbolic embodiment…

language is the very stuff of which ‘ideas’ are made…

to separate thought from its symbolic manifestation would be as futile

as to try separating a mind from its embodiment in a human organism”

-Max Black, The Labyrinth of Language–

“words are part of action and they are equivalents to actions”

-Bronislaw Malinowski-

            Sometimes silenced.  Pressured in channels.  A void creates a vacuum.  Fettered speech – often necessary but variant to “open” or “expressive” on a relative continuum.  To a purpose.  Carrying a message.  Responsive.  Reducing uncertainty.  Extrinsic.  Sometimes.

As if a balance of scales.  A fluid diagram – flow chart.  Internal at the individual end, external at the communicative social.  Between are many pages, many possible sounds.

If days go by.  When days go by.  After days without a feeling of spillage, a “seems” – the experience, for this writer, of unexpurgated, unconventional intrinsic release – that is, writer’s personal experience (a complexity of interactions – organism with environment and others) there ensues a kind of illness, like constipation, like perpetrated violence or censorship, like oppression – that, unless a leakage is allowed, some systemic crack, a private valve – writer risks implosion.  (Say – depression, frustration, resentment, anger).  Holding a forest beast under the lake.

Slipping out and away, writer beast finds a crevice or hollow, cavern or plain in which, from whence, he or she can reduce uncertainty, verbalizing observations and ideas.  As if life is the laboratory that would go unmarked and unnoticed without jotting tallies on a page.

Writing it out – writing in – a labyrinth.

Taking up the ball-point pen, dragging it along the surface of clean paper, is like turning the tap.

Hiss and sputter – tubes finding matter or substance, inciting energy – then flow.

 

I write about heaven and hell, the monsters here to there.  Of inscribing itself, the requirements of entity and imagined self or other.  The many, the few, and the plants and the beasts.  What air.  In the woods and the desert, the mind.  The heart with its loves and its rage.  Perpetual fears and the virus of mayhem.  I write about her and the children, of friendships and evil and time.  About death, about life, about learning.  In senses, in theories, in words.

It’s not difficult, I’ve just done it.  And you have provided the meaning, already.  Each term stimulating your “abouts,” descriptions and definitions, the semantics.  I craft words your eyes and ears compose commentaries to.  Little point to my telling.

Yet some of you read differently, perhaps listening.  Maybe wonder the about.  How it comes to be, what is signified for me, and why just so?

 

Creates conversation.  Your doctor can doll out the pills you receive and absorb, internalizing into your existent system.  Your god may tell you what you should do.  Your boss indicates how you should do it and when, friends and family surround you to be.

Not I.  I don’t want it to work quite like that.  I am spinning no story for you to follow along, no pattern upheld to your measure.  Writing it out in the labyrinth of language, I mean for exchange, for a wander – we enter, we leave the deposits we find, discover and fashion with so many hands, so many eyes, ubiquitous ears.

Write it out writing in, in the reading together, again, wending our way trading secrets and gems, co-constructing meanings and moods all to the tunes of language.

 

I step out of the water and dry.

The Labyrinth of Language
by Max Black

N Filbert 2012

This has been one of those weeks…children home sick from school, an art show to hang (see here!), school studies, and all the sundries of necessity leaving very little time for nourishing reading and composition.  Needed to set aside some time beginning this day.

What’s Informing Me at Present

On By NW FilbertIn Current ReadingLeave a comment

Waterplay – a triptych by Holly Suzanne

On By NW FilbertIn Art, Experimenctes6 Comments

      

Waterplay – a triptych by Holly Suzanne

Waterplay – a triptych by Holly Suzanne

 

What we know for certain is the steady stream of life, the flood, the flow, replete with bits and currents.  Immersion.

What is less clear is whether we are rising or falling, whether paradoxes hold true, what that might look like.

And if we’re swimming together, how that alters the land, changes the buoyancy, rearranges our standards of measure.

We – individuals – no longer a fixed point of reference.

Now “I” that formerly looked oh-so-much like a “1,” is just a needle in a flurry of dried whirling pines.

Rising up, rising down, in relation.

The self, the other, the flood.

In certain light, it shimmers.  In little light it bleeds dark.

It’s not as if we’re provided decoders, infra-red goggles, enlightenment.

I’m as much in the sea of life as you.

We share, in this sense, an equal, fluid, ground.

And not as something to step up or out of.

 

The self, the other, surround – weighted flotation devices.

I’m in, at a kind of “over here.”  So are you.

There is no escape.  We sink.  We rise.

N Filbert 2012

(My apologies – these pieces have proven very difficult to photograph in a way that presents the depth of layering and colors truly present.  These are fairly large oil paintings created of Autumnal colorings and glow, many more greens and yellows, oranges and hues filling out the originals.  It is painstaking to present them here struggling with glares and digitalia in a way representative.  Forgive me, and if you are able come see the originals through the month of November at Mead’s Coffee House in Wichita, KS – they are rich to behold!)

–
               

Question: What Makes a Masterpiece?

On By NW FilbertIn Writing7 Comments

“A masterpiece isn’t a masterpiece until it is well known and has absorbed all the interpretations to which it has given rise, which in turn make it what it is.  An unknown masterpiece hasn’t had enough readers, or readings, or interpretations…A work of art isn’t created a masterpiece, it becomes one…the authority, the familiarity and the relevance of a great work of literature: we open it, and it speaks to us of ourselves…naturally every reading affects the book, in the same way as the events we experience effect us…”

–Umberto Eco & Jean-Claude Carriere, This is Not the End of the Book–

Your thoughts…?  Any “unknown” masterpieces possible?