Sunday, December 6, 2009

feeding myself with beauty

This was my favorite string of words from Stephen's art talk. "...feeding myself with beauty." About his process, how he pulls into himself all the examples of what he finds beautiful, so that his subconscious can work on it, mix it through his soul, and then eventually ideas spring Athenalike, fully-formed, from his head. I think he gave a great talk - comfortable and smart - and as always, I'm left with more the memory of what it felt like, listening to him, than the specifics of what he said. I knew this would happen, so when he tossed out that line, I tried to memorize it.

I learned a carnival memory-act trick, once, from a juggler I used to go bird watching with. He said you assign the thing you want to remember to a spot on your body. This works nicely with small things, although I generally (wait for it) forget to use it. Of course I don't have enough body for all of Stephen's speech, so I chose to grab onto that one bit of phrase and see if it would work. I decided instead of using my own body, I'd use his. Later, after a lovely lunch and viewing Bob's great, little gallery show, and finally The Woman With the Veil, I looked at Stephen's mouth and remembered feeding myself with beauty. Which is what I do, so much, with him.

2 comments:

  1. I feel like I shouldn't even say anything here, what you say is so lovely. But always remember that we're twinned - in what we do, in how we live - you give me exactly the same/different things. Teamwork, my love.

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  2. "I learned a carnival memory-act trick, once, from a juggler I used to go bird watching with."

    that's a hell of a sentence.

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