Hello, bloggers.
Over the last couple months, I have been dipping, varnishing, drying, and examining many works of my art.
It occurred to me last week that I’ve become more of a wanderer than I was before. I surround myself with finished and unfinished work, and usually I don’t go back into it.
But I started to find hidden spirits and messages within the paintings, and so I would start adding, and then one day I’d add something else, and another day something else... It would go from an abstract to a semi-abstract, to almost a grafitti. So I felt, I have to really examine myself and find out: Why am I going in that direction, and what is the motivation?
So last Friday afternoon I dug out one of my best tools, which is the soundtrack from the film Braveheart, which was written by the composer John Horner. I put that on and sat by the ocean and listened to the waves and the clouds coming in, and getting into a different space.
The music from Braveheart, I believe, comes from the other dimension. It has all of the human emotions, contradictions, everything it is to be human. It’s all encapsulated in that hour- or hour-and-a-half-long presentation: the spiritual, the material, the possible, the impossible, how we can be the best and the worst of people, how everything is so transparent and hidden. It punches you in the stomach and soothes your troubled soul all at the same time.
It is a great meditation piece. The opening notes are all so Eastern-influenced: the sun coming up over the Himalayas, or the endless sands of the Sahara Desert... And then all of the drama that it creates... To me, it’s the voices and the spirits from the other side talking, singing, whispering, shouting, guiding, leaning toward some answer.
And as I listened to it, I came up with the thought that the thing that resonates with this music is my restless Celtic soul, encapsulated in this body. I believe there are billions of years inside of us that we don’t know anything about, and that the Celtic spirit inside of me keeps wandering from place to place.
When you look at it with the music, it begins to make sense where it made no sense before. When you think of the other dimension, the abstraction in my painting becomes as clear as a Polaroid shot... So the revelation from one side to the other—I believe they are exploring us and we are exploring them, finding the key, the opening...
It is a thrilling experience. It occurs seldom, but when it does, the spirit tells me: This is a gift; you must return to your child; you must constantly surprise yourself and challenge yourself.
Think of your first Christmas, where you opened the presents with such great abandon and anticipation—and what glee you had when you looked at the presents... That’s what this wandering is about: finding your child and remembering.
It was as if the spirit was saying: “Lamb, you idiot, it is not about the discovery alone! It’s about the journey! Don’t cut your journey short, because, in your human body, you discount too many things that are apparent to the other side, too many things left unsaid, unsung, and undone!”
To me, the message is: The discovery is important, but the pilgrimage is the most important. Don’t get hung up on, “I’ve seen it all, done it all, and there’s nothing else...” The journey is the most important.
We should not be afraid. As children, we took risks. It’s all about the risk-taking, the journey, the exploration, and then the new beginning! Looking for the next! Not spending our time admiring our last work, but doggedly going after our next!
We’ll never finish this journey. It is the message, and we will never know exactly what we’re doing till we reach the next dimension. But we do get glimpses of it. That’s the exciting part!
So take the gift, cherish it, don’t be afraid of it. If it doesn’t look right, it will at some point at time. These are gifts, these are marching orders. Get your doubts out of your mind, follow your bliss, and be led by your child. Go back to work, and just do it.
So I did. Today I went back to work. I put up a sign and found all these hidden colors and mountaintops and valleys, and I scratched them out and drew them forward, squeezed them and coerced them.
It was almost like my primeval self looking and wondering, What’s under this rock? It was an archaological dig in a painting that was destined to go out in the world as it was, and yet I followed the lead of the spirit, pulled off the scab, and watched the blood run.
It was great.
It makes me young again.
Matt