Day: February 16, 2012

We have become a risk averse culture, pathetic really. I just did a Bing search for “risk averse” and got 61,600,000 hits, curiously Google gave me 5,970,000 hits not sure why the difference. We seem to demand protection or a “do over” at every turn. So many people wonder when asking about a particular art or skill want to know what happens if you make a mistake, you mean you have to start over, oh my God I could never do that they say. When doing any art so much of it is about the doing why not do it over and over again? When a singer sings and they make a mistake guess what they usually don’t quit singing they do it over and get it right or better or maybe if they are blessed more beautiful. Why should it be any different for the visual or physical arts?

So where am I going with this? Well, I think one of the things I love so much about calligraphy is that each piece is the one and only. The slice of time that created the work  will never be the same again. There are so few things in our lives that have so much risk, make a mistake and it’s toast, no eraser, no do over. It’s invigorating. So write with ink, hide the erasers and take a risk and let you soul come through to your work.

There is something so much more than just a sound representative or place holder to letters. There is a sacredness that I have been trying to explore for sometime. It is easy for some to just say our letters are just mechanical but I think they are the same people that think love is purely chemical or is a figment of our imaginations. While I don’t know Japanese or Chinese I have tried to learn some kangi calligraphy and even though I only slightly know the meanings and surely have no cultural background there I can feel the sacredness and power of the shapes or form or is it the space around the form? Recently I’ve begun to investigate Runes and the Hebrew letters where it all begins with Aleph. We are all one and our sacredness and our sense of sacredness is far more connected than we have been taught. We or most of us have been educated by people who are splitters, those who make their living by finding separateness and division. I think this process helps them feel secure by making them feel exclusive and pervertedly more powerful.
So I’m going to try and find out more about our letters and the sacred world, stay tuned let’s see where this goes.