Nature's Silence

This entry is in response to Cory’s comment and to similar questions I have been asked in the past.

Cory wrote: “To me, what is important in art is reaching deep into the silence of nature's ‘building.’ I do not find theoretical understanding of art helpful in this pursuit, and I really just want to know if you do.”

I think I understand the spirit of the question but I disagree with its underlying premise. The question, consciously or unconsciously, frames an opposition between “the silence” and reason, an opposition that, in most cases, comes from prejudices about the nature and use of reason as well as “the silence.” I don’t think we are able to reach into “the silence of nature's building” but it might be possible to sense aspects of what I think Cory means by “the silence.”

However, I haven’t met too many people who have a direct channel to this silence, or perhaps it is more accurate to say I haven’t met many people whose claim to direct channels seem credible. Any help in clarifying one’s work— theoretical or not—is good and necessary because, for the most part, we are lost. Each of us has ways and methods we prefer—as it should be. Of course, there is a time for everything; a time for theory and a time for doing; a time for looking and a time for not looking.

The Hand

When I cut my left hand the words from the Hagakure, “At that time is right now,” came to mind. As I looked at the hand, life was both—and not contradictorily— more factual and more dreamlike, and what was happening was no longer in the future but right there. The first part, the taking off the glove, was the hardest. Once I had seen it, there was nothing but coming to terms with things.

It happened while I was carving a large wood sculpture. I was going back and forth between a chainsaw and a high-speed grinder equipped with a chainsaw blade, which allowed me to move quickly through the wood. I almost remember the moment when my hand touched the blade but I remember better the moment just before and just after.

My life will soon continue, more or less, as it was. The turn, however, did happen; in my case a minor turn, for which I am grateful. The turn has been worse for others. In the ambulance I couldn’t stop thinking about the people losing body parts in Iraq—the American soldiers, the Iraqis, the children. The images that came to my mind seemed then—as they do now—unjustifiable by any policy or by any excuse.

Right now, someone, somewhere, holds on to his or her dismembered leg, arm or hand, or to the dismembered part of a daughter, a father, or a friend. That we can know that and continue on with our banal lives clearly says something about the machinery of survival.