“Remake Your World With Words”
— from a poem by Gregory Orr
Remake Your World With Words | 30”x 40” | oil on canvas | on display in the gallery at Louisville Visual Art.
Winter Solstice, the darkest night of the year, returns me to the theme of stars, night, silence and time. This painting was inspired by Gregory Orr, from one of his many untitled poems in Concerning the Book Which is the Body of the Beloved. Any of you, if you have written for long periods of time, know the power of words to create a spell.
Let’s remake the world with words.
Not frivolously, nor
To hide from what we fear,
But with a purpose.Let’s,
As Wordsworth said, remove
“The dust of custom” so things
Shine again, each object arrayed
In its robe of original light.And then we’ll see the world
As if for the first time.
As once we gazed at the beloved
Who was gazing at us.
— Gregory Orr
The combination of darkness, winter and the new year creates reflection of all the time that came before. In his epic poem The Prelude, William Wordsworth records “spots of time” throughout his life — which are not to be confused with nostalgia, with a longing for some lost moment — but rather the timeless quality of a moment that has never left, a moment when time stopped. These are anchors of intense meaning that — when revisited and folded into the present — create new understanding, solace and insight in times of need. Winter and the holidays is so often a time of need. Recalling a spot of time in this present moment, and committing it to writing, has the power to renew scattered energy, to recalibrate my view, and to hold and settle chaos and confusion in a bigger context:
And then we’ll see the world
As if for the first time.
As once we gazed at the beloved
Who was gazing at us.
This is what happened after a long time of working on the painting above. It is what happens to anyone willing to work for however long it takes to make something visible in uninterrupted night-silence. There is a recognition or faith that fulfillment of a dream begins by a seed planted one night in winter.
The life dream waits to awaken fully — quote from Michael Meade (left) | Dream of dark chocolate bluebirds coming to life (right)
Images © Laurie Doctor pocket sketchbook
Bringing back a spot of time invites me to drop my action-ambition and feel what is beneath.
I have an image, a “spot of time” from childhood that has returned again and again —
and yet it was so absent of any action, of anything notable to report. Looking from the
outside, nothing much happened. There was no movement or conversation. Only a young
child alone in her room standing very still, noticing, for the first time, the humming air.
Spellbound by dust motes and a sound she had never heard before.I was too small to conceptualize this awareness, yet this childhood experience of the extraordinary
within the ordinary world of my small bedroom continued to show up in unexpected moments.
Without me knowing, over long stretches of time, it became a metaphor for a field I can walk into at any time.
A field that is both timeless and immediate.
It is a metaphor for the maker’s ability to anchor experience in imagination, and
imagination in experience. A metaphor for the ability to stand at the liminal door, and
open the dream world into this physical world we inhabit, and facilitate cross-pollination.
— L Doctor
Gregory Orr, who describes himself as a secular humanist, does not know how many poems he has written to the beloved. He is an example of anchoring imagination in his experience as a poet. He talks about his book on poems to the beloved as one that has no ending. He refers to “The Book” as an invisible anthology that contains all the songs and poems ever written — that it’s purpose is praise and it is here, always, to sustain us. This idea, this thought-experiment, dismisses many of my mind-weeds in one move!
What happens if I act as if what I am reaching for is here? It’s an old and invigorating idea — that your creation already exists and your task is to reveal it. Jorge Luis Borges broke through his blocks in creating by pretending the book or poem or essay he was struggling with already exists. Borges and Gregory Orr inspire in me the idea that imagination is available — but a faculty that requires active cultivation, that withers with too much information and not enough wisdom.
Below is a short excerpt from Bill Viola, recalling a spot of time, alone at night in the Great Hall of the Durham Cathedral:
If you want to experience the essential mystery or the secret life of “things” then be there with them,
awake when the rest of the world is sleeping. Something struck me that night, when I was alone,
taking a rest: the materiality of the church momentarily parted, revealing a deeper structure
embedded in its form. I saw another space, a second architecture, lying beneath the surface that had so affected me.
— Bill Viola, notes from his installation at the Durham Cathedral
Awakening a spot of time, and making a note of it is one path for remaking your world with words.
What are your stories about awakening a spot of time or remaking your world with words? I’d love to hear from you.
This month I want to feature the three exceptional women who honored me by asking for a private class in Germany: Dagmar Möller , Lily Stöber and Andrea Weber.
Below is just a small sampling of the work from in our class. It is impossible to put into words the joy of teaching there, the generosity of their spirit and endless ability in their hands and hearts.
Rubbing, marks and woven binding © Andrea Weber
Book cover & book page © Dagmar Möller
Woven binding, front & back cover © Lily Stöber