Where does the outer world touch the inner world? Where do dreams touch imagination? How is our world defined by our perceptions? Where does heaven touch hell? The more I paint, the less I know, the more questions that surface, the more the layers break down, the more ambiguity and mystery is revealed.
A year before Rilke's death, he explained his idea of the interpenetration between life and death in the Eligies:
"It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately that its essence can rise again, "invisibly," inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible. The Eligies show us this work, the work of the continual conversion of the beloved visible and tangible world into the invisible vibrations and agitation of our own nature..."
~excerpt from The Demon and The Angel by Edward Hirsch
"But because truly being here is so much; because everything
here
apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange
way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,
just once. And never again. But to have been
this once, completely, even if only once:
to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing"
Rainer Maria Rilke
"The Ninth Elegy", lines 11-17
2 comments:
Enjoyed
I've enjoyed reading this thoughtful post. I am doing a lot of reading lately about duende and the risk of surrendering to the process as my work moves into abstraction. It is a new territory for me and much as I am loving the process, at the same time it terrifies me. From what I'm reading, its a good place to stand.
I am currently reading a book from the mid-90's called "Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch. A terrific read about the creative process and improvising.
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