I’ve been thinking about obscurity. This comes on the heels of my post last Friday, A Fashion of Discomfort, where I ponder this business of playing to an empty house, toiling for the sake of the effort without promise of recognition.
Do you recall the post I put up last summer, where, while exploring the North Woods, I happen across an art installation? Here is the photograph I took at the time:
Art in a land of wild giants.
I wrote: “She–for there was something beautifully feminine about this exhibit–she, this goddess of creation, was beyond the work and the work was purer for that. It is possible to create for the purpose of creation only, not needing the prism of ‘the other.’ It was an exhibit of voided ego precisely executed.” The nature of this discovery was to understand that creativity is sometimes simply and purely an expression–without the need for reciprocity. That is the antithesis of obscurity and leads down the path to bliss. Yes, bliss–how else to express the satisfaction of creativity for the sake of creation alone?
Since writing the post last week I’ve been thinking of Emily Dickinson. Scholar and poet, Susan Howe, writing of Dickinson, says she was “one of the greatest poets we have, and I don’t mean ‘we’ merely in America. I mean she is one of the greatest of poets.” I do not know very much about Dickinson, but have no reason to doubt Howe’s assessment. Dickinson comes to mind because despite her obvious genius she published but one poem in her lifetime. (As Van Gogh sold but one painting.) Obscurity or genius operating beyond the prism of the other? I wish to think the latter.
Here is another, more contemporary, example: Vivian Maier (1926-2009). Maier worked as a nanny in Chicago, but we know her because she left behind a body of work–photographs–that she jealously shielded from eyes other than her own. In 2007 approximately one hundred thousand negatives were discovered in a garage sale. Eventually the cache was understood for what it truly was: a life-body of work, reflecting a singular genius, heretofore unknown. It was like the Dead Sea Scrolls of street photography.
There is much I find encouraging here and it has something to do with the soaring capacity of the human creative spirit. It uplifts me, as it should any human being, to glimpse the burning purity of creativity, no strings attached. I am reminded of a passage in Alan Watts’s The Way of Zen: “This is a first principle in the study of Zen and of any Far Eastern art: hurry, and all that it involves, is fatal. For there is no goal to be attained. The moment a goal is conceived it becomes impossible to practice the discipline of the art, to master the very rigor of its technique.” There is a white flame warmth about that.
_______________
A three-minute CBS story on Vivian Maier:
...the house I live in... 
the idea that we must study bamboo for two years, forget bamboo, then paint bamboo
obscurity maybe like the opening in a door, it’s the open space that gives value to the door
and art is also about rebellion as only Camus could tell us
these thoughts instigated by your last two post
That something I wrote gave flight to thoughts of this nature gives me great encouragement. Thank you for taking the time to share your realizations. I will ponder them. You’ve made my morning. Thank you.
d
I have worked pretty much in obscurity for five years on SquinchPix. Many times I’ve absolutely convinced myself to quit it and do something else. The number of users never increases; it’s depressing. Why don’t I quit? Because I’m the one who benefits the most. There’s no way that I can quantify what I’ve learned over the last few years. And I wouldn’t have learned it if I’d done anything else. I read once in an introduction to the Metamorphoses of Ovid the following (I’m quoting from memory): “Ovid began the Metamorphoses an intelligent man; he ended it as a learned one.”
That’s why we continue.
Best,
Bob
Thanks, Bob, for making coffee more meaningful this morning. There is wisdom to what you’ve said and wisdom is a tricky thing to come by. It will serve me well to remember your comment–thanks for sharing with me–it’s well said. I appreciate it.
Best regards,
Doug