Meaning making and other survival skills
Shook, Lose, Gain, Silkscreen Monoprint, 22 x 30 inches, 1/1, by Tikva Lantigua
An idea, completely ordinary and, also, miraculous; By virtue of being next to one another. To me it means relationships between objects, ideas, associations, and emotions - timeless and timely. As they gather and settle into relationships, into meaning, each of us makes stories out of them, makes stories out of our lives. They anchor us to each other, at best.
I'm don’t consider myself religious, or especially spiritual, but I am always looking for something, - like Leonard Cohen would say, "drowning* in some deep mystery".
I think that I’m looking for the places that release me from my own lizard brain, because we all have a miserable corner that we can be driven into. I have to look for those spaces, and I’m always hunting for them, whether in a work of art or in a piece of music or in a meditative space that releases me from that prison. And that lets some juice flow back into my inner myth maker, my imagination.
Poet Ariana Reines, from Creative Independent interview
Our capacity to connect disparate things, to imagine, is a skill which guides us through life, grief, and love.
Through death, our past, our future.
*he actually says starving, but drowning is how I remembered it and feels right to me.
Some 10th grade House fan art, in four mediums, I found on my old DeviantArt page
Through my third rewatch of seasons 1-8 of House (one of my teen faves), to the memory of the little boy who stole my much loved, tiny beanie frog by convincing me I would be the one in trouble if I didn’t hand it over.
Through the comfort of communal singing at funerals (in spanish), to arguing with the dead, who refuse to argue back.
Life is confusing!! but we want to understand it!!
Maybe storytelling and meaning making is just that - a skill we had to learn to hold it all together.
Untitled Monotype, Gel print monotype by Tikva Lantigua.
Much in the way that we find each other in happenstance, by virtue of being next to one another, so stories unfold in a hundred billion million small ways.
Much in the way that we are each unlikely.
Much in the way that we each gain meaning from those around us.
so do these "characters" of marks, shapes, feelings that find themselves together.
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moldering, photo lithograph, 28.5 x 23.25 in, 2012, 1/4 1st edition
"Your identity is not equivalent to your biography. There is a place in you that has never been wounded...where there's a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you.
The intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary."
- John O'Donahue, a poet in conversation On Being
I would add art to that list.
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Maybe a prayer is just being open to things, to noticing more, to asking a question and patiently and openly waiting for an answer, whatever form it may take.
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I'm not much of a storyteller - my brain doesn’t work well that way.
I was always the slowest to finish an essay in school, or make sentences for vocabulary tests - structure was always something confusing to me, never straightforward, and time-consuming.
Even without a storyline, meaning is made. That’s how I put things together - crudely, curiously, adding things in weird measures and strange flavor combos, rearranging endlessly. Trying not to just make a million lists, but, well.
the time after words jabbed between two ribs, Silkscreen Monoprint, 18 x 24 inches, by Tikva Lantigua.
Writing and making for myself, I allow my brain to do the sifting it needs - over long periods of time, snatching from one topic to another, one interest thinly connected to another. The relationships are key.
Do these things have something in common?
Do they have a conversation?
Do they share something?
What will it mean?
Will it mean to me, to you? Can it hold more - more openly - than a story I would have crafted knowing how it would end?
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Because it doesn’t come naturally, structure is something I’m always poking at - repetition is my friend now. Stretching and breaking repetitions and structure.
Taking the idea or impulse and seeing all the ways it can fit into different molds, and how each fit shifts our relationship to it.
Something beautiful and something terrible walk into #2, watercolor monotype, 12 x 16 inches, by Tikva Lantigua.
So I find a new spaciousness in iterations, in rhythms and what-ifs,
In color, in shape, in marks,
in the simplest of structures to edit,
in the hand.
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I'm practicing being present and content, knowing that one day I'll move to focus on something else, and all these things will weave together eventually in ways I don't need to think about now. I just need to trust.
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I say it like a prayer, the shape of things.
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mysteries of miniaturization - old methods #1, two-plate collagraph, 6 x 6 inches, by Tikva Lantigua, edition of 12+, also available for pre-order.
Where do you fall on the spectrum of story-crafting versus combination-making?
I’ve been thinking about this lately, top-down processing versus bottom up processing - do you feel you collect and combine(bottom-up) more than play within a decided structure (top-down)?
Would you like to read more about processing styles? I know, nerdy! Leave a comment!!!
Also a ✷ plug ✷ - all the prints in this post are available for purchase (minus the first print, and hugh laurie drawing), some are in my shop and one is not yet but ask me! They would love a good home, other than mine ♡
If you have read this far, I thank you, and I probably miss you - and if we don’t know each other yet (?!?) I hope we do soon.
Peace this week