Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer

In the summer of 2010, Wadada Leo Smith asked me if I would like to do the cover art for a release of music that he recorded at Brandeis University in 1986 with drummer Ed Blackwell.

I said that I would be honored.

I did several drawings and sent the last image to him, thinking I had visually summarized the music.

But, he picked the very first one, which I had done off the top of my head, without really thinking about the music. It is called "Horn and Drums;" it was the most free and uninhibited image of all the drawings I created and has everything to do with the music.

copyright 2010 Lyn Horton

Time Has No Edges

It takes courage to get out of bed in the morning and realize that everything is going to be new, just as yesterday, everything was also new, but today, is in the past.

We may think the same thoughts that we thought yesterday, but within a different frame work. I may go to the grocery store today with the list I made yesterday.

I may follow my morning routine, but eat and drink my coffee in an altered sequence from the one that I followed yesterday.

I may sleep in the same bed I sleep in every night, but have a sore back this morning.

I may want to write this blog entry now, whereas a few minutes ago, I had no idea that I was going to start writing.

I may do another drawing using the same kinds of lines that I used on a drawing last week, but the drawing has another way of being, another circumstance for viewing.

Within the last six months, each Sunday, I have been accompanying a close friend of mine, who is a photographer, to places I never knew existed. These places ooze with spectacular vistas, or overwhelmingly earthy smells, or exceedingly sensuous environments, or glass-like slippery rocks, or miles and miles of trails through thousands of trees. They are places to absorb the natural temporary circumstances, because tomorrow those circumstances will change. A lush waterfall will have become a series of delicate trickles or the leaves may have fallen off the trees or the temperature might have plummeted 60 degrees and snow will be where dusty footprints once were.

The passion which directs me to write these words to describe the aforementioned are meant capture the moment, not in a photographic way. Rather in a way that reveals the moments' transition into other moments, that reminds me to breathe and enjoy the air, that triggers endless ideas, opens my heart and mind to clarity and the pristine qualities of vitality and the fleeting notions which are only steps to other fleeting notions.

Writing occupies my time when I am exploring the truth of what goes...How is my everyday life, without psychology. The way in which situations present themselves. Without any premonitions, astrological explanations or calendars of events. More with acts of impulse that are ready to go within the subconscious.

Repeating myself is not boring. I am reviving whatever is repeated. I am giving it new energy. New color, new tone, new means to evolve.

How invigorating poetry is, not to be bound by editorial rules and guidelines.

Which poem is better than another?

Which take on a record sounds better than another?

Why do I tear up a drawing that has been hanging with a group of similar ones?

The group looks better... no diverging principles of content?

What are, in fact, the details that are a matter of concern? Too many squiggles; not much sense in the way the lines penetrate the plane; no means to balance the impact of the squiggles and the straight lines. The details must make a big difference. The drawing I dispensed with was dumb.

How is it that the music I am listening to grips me and infuses me with the will to move to the rhythms and dance with the resonance of the vibes? For what reason do I choose a certain kind of music to embrace me with a sense of time that comes only in this certain way?

How do I know that the breeze coming through the window is transporting a system of weather conditions that will cause me to cover myself with more blankets when I sleep tonight? I know because the temperature did drop about 30 degrees within the last hour and the window now needs to be shut.

A good way to derive satisfaction is to do something I have never done before. Like finally taking a camera with me, albeit a little dinky one, to all these glorious places my friend and I go to so that I can drink in the intensity of the way the leaves rustle in the wind, while my friend seeks his best camera shot within close proximity, within a distance where I can easily call to him, if I need to.

And tomorrow, which words will I choose to use for what purpose?

The answer escapes me.

I do not know.

copyright 2010 Lyn Horton

Video: Abundance, copyright 2010 Lyn Horton

The Impetus for Agglomeration

Language has different meanings for everyone. Everyone speaks his/her own individual language even though the spoken parts are the same. But not everyone translates one kind of language into another. From speaking language to a musical or visual one.

Generally, the sequencing of words is antithetical to thought. This is the reason that grammar no doubt was designed so that some kind of uniformity be imposed on the way in which words come out so that, when assembled, they could be understood by those who can understand.

But, poetry, art and music are not about sequencing necessarily; they arise from the whole mind without any rules: they originate automatically.

I like combining words and pictures. Not in the sense, that a picture means a thousand words, but that pictures, stationary or moving, imprint concepts in ways that words cannot.

Maybe the combination of words and pictures is really my work. And that continually separating them is causing unnecessary struggle both in my writing words and my making pictures or drawings. Perhaps I am on to something here. Perhaps the natural basis for verbal and visual events is their combination, at least for me. Maybe I am fighting an internal battle for no reason.

But then, I have to consider that many of the words I write are about music rather than for the sake of being themselves. In the largest sense, I can deal with the combination of three languages. Many mixed media events. Yet, I sacrifice the purity of the three different, distinct languages.

So what am I after? I am after the space where the mind is at peace when involved with any one of the three languages on which I focus. When I am mindless in my mindfulness.

I am not a musician: I write about music. Apparently with a viewpoint that is oddly clarifying. Because the impulses the musician goes through every time he/she improvises or composes formally, bear striking similarity, I feel, to the ones I go through when I am pulling together strange visual marks on surfaces.

That water has come to pre-occupy me of late has everything to do with achieving mindfulness. To listen to the water's roar invests me with its power. Water can carve any path that it finds. A product of nature, not a result of the decision the water makes. No complaints, no worries, no emotions, no suffering. That the earth is partially water is a blessing. For us. Recognizing how fluid motion happens teaches me to let go.

To let the words move into space effortlessly, to let the marks in making art come from within without question, to interpret music as the moments allow and give the reader the poetry that the interpretation is.

Solo, in and out, a filter through miles of useless energies, to burn pure light and be essence.

copyright 2010 Lyn Horton

Photo: Waterfall, copyright 2010 Lyn Horton

Image: Polyphasia, copyright 1990-10 Lyn Horton

Video: Mergeance, copyright 2010 Lyn Horton

Art as the First Course

Making visual art is easy for me. Writing is more of a challenge. I started writing when I began to immerse my life into music, because I was catapulted into solitude after my ex-husband left me, lo, these many years ago. My focal points had shifted. I turned inward. There was no one to talk to except myself.

Writing is a challenge because it is not my first language for expressing myself as visual art language is. That I have chosen to write mostly about creative improvised makes the most sense to me; it happened fortuitously.

That I would approach an art form that was relatively new to me and that required a real effort to become comfortable with is no surprise. My visual art is concerned with simplification-- boiling an idea down to its essence. Improvised music elevates that essence in clear view and expands on it within temporal, music-making parameters that are known only after the music is performed.

Every time I hear a recording or a performance from a musician I know or not, the music is totally unexpected. The performance space is like a blank piece of paper. The musicians are the vehicles for filling the space, like the artist who is responsible to that empty surface. Their instruments are the tools, just like pencils, pens, brushes, markers are for the visual artist.

I am giving a talk on my work in a couple of days, October 1, 2010, to be exact. In this talk, I will trace 40 years worth of work. At first, culling through hundreds of slides, I became so depressed. It was as if I was experiencing the processes of making the art pieces and then choking on endless repetitions of their object-ness.

William Parker once said to me that he never listened back to what he had recorded unless it was for a specific technical or mechanical reason. I can understand why. Why would anyone want to revisit the scene of the improvisation? Whatever one does later will always be different. The only possible explanation for returning to one's work after it has long been accomplished is out of curiosity, to find out how much integrity the work really has.

I find often that when doing new work, some of the old is reflected in it. To my amazement, the "old" part may be, as far as I am concerned, at the beginning of consciousness, when I began to know what it meant to wield a pencil or in a larger context, have an idea, for Heaven's sakes.

The idea seems innocuous enough, but the idea causes struggle. My mind is built a certain way; it is happy living in a routine, a realm of sameness. Pushing out of the routine is basically like pulling teeth without Novocaine. The amount of objectivity required to move the idea in a new direction is paramount to the evolution of the work.

How that idea plays out in the world is unimportant in the ideal sense. I have to keep reminding myself that it is more satisfying to do the work than to have it on the cover of Artforum or Art In America, for instance. In some ways, I would be lying, because that is all I want. That is what I vociferously told this "manager" I had years ago. Well, he was thrown in jail because he double-dipped in fees (he skimmed from duped clients as well as the artists) and his representation of artists was a fraudulent act or so the Attorney General of the State of New York at the time believed.

I have made many mistakes. I am hoping that the era of my life where I make the wrong choices is over. Because I am coming into the second cycle of my time here on earth according to the Chinese calendar. The mistakes I have made still irk me no end. Going through the "what if.." question and answer sessions consumes time and is useless.

My talk is supposed to involve the correlation between improvisation in art and music. The one to one correspondence does not necessarily exist. But the direct reason for my being able to write about music is that I do the art. I go through an automatic act. I feel every line. Then, after awhile, the experience subsumes the singularity of each line. I am in a kind of heaven. The problem is staying there and not being distracted, which I am, by other tasks. Perhaps, I would not do well in a retreat or an artists colony because I need to do dishes, or the wash. But maybe I don't. Maybe a retreat would calm me down and ameliorate my propensity for distraction. Like one long meditative process, where I have reached down into my soul and am relaxed and determined enough to stay there.

copyright 2010 Lyn Horton

Video: copyright 2010 Richard Laurie and Lyn Horton

Image: copyright 2010 Lyn Horton, Detail from Strand Series, 2010.

Stepping

In creation, there are moments where the creator can see or hear that which has never been seen or heard before. These are types of epiphanies, I suppose. But at the same time, these moments mark measurements of growth that have occurred and, more importantly, the bases on which growth will spring.

Growth is a matter of change. No musician I talk with has ever not said that growing in the music requires listening to oneself and in a sense objectifying what is heard. I do not know how easy it is to turn music upside down, or sideways. I suppose it is done through knowing the musical language so well that inversions are easy.

One pianist I know turned around a piece of Chopin so that it was completely unidentifiable as Chopin's. The piece became a mystery and I appreciated it for how I heard it. Not knowing Chopin in every detail abetted my inability to recognize what the pianist had done in a tricksterish way. There is no doubt in my mind that such analysis and rebuilding of Chopin's work could have only influenced his own. Small measures of learning allow great steps to be taken in the next act of creation.

No one can invest in development without taking risks. I climbed two stories worth of rocks a while ago not knowing that I was going to do it; I only thought I was going to go up a few feet to reach a certain spot. I have never climbed rocks in my life, much less in my bare feet. Now I know that I can do it again.

Looking at a blank piece of paper is a scary proposition. I do not think people do that much anymore. Rather the object of gaze is a computer screen or some other unconventional surface. Visual artists will use anything, from pools of water to a pile of nails. For improvising musicians, the blank piece of paper is the time-space ahead of them and how they will use it with their instruments.

The question is what carries creative people to the next step when the gates open and a rush of doing occurs? It is so different and the same from person to person, no matter what the art. To note is that inside each person is some sort of storm of experience. As if the epicenter and simultaneous axis retains the core of existence of every creative being and the whirlwind that rotates from the center is filled with the varying life poetry whose influx is particular to each artist.

So as I write, I am speaking in a language of all time in which there are no words, no pictures, no sounds. I have known this language throughout my entire life on earth, throughout the suffering, the joy, the hardships, the personal internal triumphs. The smiles, the moods, the aloneness, the solitude, the false conclusions, the mental anguish, the revelations of the truths where superficiality is shed like the skin of a snake.

Although creation can be excused in a purposeful exercise in abstraction, abstraction is only a shadow of how it really happens. The creator lives to step away from those shadows. The shadows of the past, the shadows that outsiders imagine, the shadows of an inner being. Creation is a means of exploding out of how we are bound.

The result of the creative act can disappear as fast as it arrives. When it comes to music, the sound resonates to the point of extinction; when it comes to art, the art object may become stuck in materiality until it decomposes but the true idea of it will have moved into another place; because in the making of one piece of art, the next one is forming.

Creation is a means of aligning ourselves with everyone else no matter how resistant the artist may be to do that. It's gonna happen anyway. The individual on earth will de-atomize, as the process of art progresses, and radiate into the universal consciousness. The church of all, the apse of unity, the Rose window through which heavenly light penetrates.

copyright 2010 Lyn Horton

Video: Matthew Shipp live at A38 in Budapest, Hungary, September 5th, 2008,

opening for Joe McPhee, Roy Campbell, William Parker and Warren Smith

Photo: copyright 2008-10 Lyn Horton

Ceiling of the Angel Orensanz Foundation Building

Creativity As Life Tonic

Asking the question "where does human creativity begin ?" is silly.

It is like asking the questions "what is art?," "what is God?," "what is the origin of the universe?" Answers to these questions concern definitions, which require parameters, demand objectivity and possibly deep analytical scrutiny. Answers to these questions defeat the phenomena to which the questions refer. But, the latter statement can only be declared when all three questions have been answered by those who believe they can answer them and, in fact, do. I am guessing that the number of qualified artists, art historians, theologians, physicists, astronomers and phenomologists have offered innumerable answers to these elemental questions and will in the future.

If I am going to be creative, I am not going to take a course in "How To Be Creative." Doing creativity is an act of consciousness in the same realm of awareness that guides daily automatic activities.

In a conversation with a photographer, I was discussing the tenet that creativity just is and that no number of 'how to' books could ever substitute for the actual doing of the art. He argued that in gathering technical information, it was necessary to learn from 'how to...' books in order to make the photographs he took close to how he wanted them to look. I am guessing that, in his art, it is detail that is of the utmost importance and framing the subject offsets any compositional issues. Through his lens, composition is a moot point. Nothing is set up; he pays attention, adjusts, and clicks.

His intentions are fulfilled. How he follows his intuition in order to decide whether he trashes the photo or not, only he can determine. He learns from every photo he takes. He see what works and what does not work and assimilates one photographic session in search of the next.

So I said in reply: Your looking through the viewfinder and choosing what you see is the same thing as my drawing the first line on a piece of paper. That first line tells me what to do in the rest of the drawing just as the first picture you take tells you what changes you want to make for the next picture.

Between the first line or the first photograph and the second line and the second photograph, the creative mind has taken over. No description in the world of this phenomenon can ever equal it. This phenomenon is ecstatic, irreversible, and done. Just done. It is a step toward newness. Art that is newer and edgier than the old art, which could have existed ten seconds ago. The phenomenon is also moving its owner into a plane of heightened, indescribable, meditative awareness.

There are those who never discover this plane of awareness, no matter how long they have worked in their medium, no matter what. Perhaps working within some media does not permit awareness to be a part of the work. Perhaps the choice of medium is a means to diverge from any possibility of achieving awareness. Perhaps sheer obstinacy destroys the state of mind that is required to attain awareness. Superficial pursuit of the "great statement" incorporated with an adequate delusion that it is achievable will always lead to emptiness, nothingness, zilch.

Pieces of art are not Masters or PhD theses. Pieces of art are the shining stars that lead artists to wherever they are going. Artists are never satisfied with what they do. Having finished one photograph, one drawing, one painting, one anything, they are looking to the next one because they were witnessing the process of the work in the present and can taste the future.

Sure, you gotta have the tools. But all the tools in the chest mean nothing unless they are used properly, applied towards an end that is merely a beginning.

Creativity is the water that springs from the fountain of youth. Seizing the moments when it functions injects artists with energy, life, light, and the will to carry on. They do not have to say a thing.

Copyright 2010 Lyn Horton

Photos

Top and middle: copyright 2010 Richard Laurie;

Bottom: "Across," copyright 2009-10 Lyn Horton.

Grasping The Essential

On June 12, 2010, The International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, CT, began its eighteen-day long series of events. One of the first was a lecture by Jock Reynolds, the Director of the Yale University Art Gallery, on the work of Sol Lewitt, specifically focusing on the 25 year retrospective of Lewitt's Wall Drawings at MASSMoCA in North Adams, MA.

Aside from urging members of the audience to go to MASSMoCA to experience the three-floor installation of one hundred and five drawings spanning Lewitt's art-making life within 1969-2007, the year he died, Reynolds focused on the installation process. The process for every wall drawing is extremely basic, simple and systematized though arduous and detailed-oriented. For

each drawing, there are few elements. How these elements are combined creates a finite number of possibilities. Sometimes the drawings have plans instead of instructions. The placement of every drawing is determined by the drawings in close proximity and always in relation to the architecture.

One example that Reynolds concentrated on to illuminate the idea of Lewitt's own act of conceiving was Wall Drawing #260. This drawing is done with oil crayon on a painted wall; primary blue happened to be chosen for this installation. There are twenty different components, made up of straight lines, broken lines, arcs, not-

straight lines. One hundred sixty combinations of those components create the wall drawing. The components vary according to their position within a square, e.g. a straight ruled line is positioned horizontally on center, vertically on center, or diagonally from each corner, left to right, right to left.

This drawing is as basic as the Periodic Table of Elements. It is quintessential. It addresses the elemental in creation. That it is so pure allows seeing it in imaginative ways. As Reynolds talked about this drawing, he described it as "lines dancing across the wall surface." And they are. The square by square layout of the combinations disappear and the eye can travel up and down, back and forth, across and around without constriction. The eye engages in an improvisational viewing process. Strange, unpredictable arrangements of the wall surface are demarcated by the placement of the lines.

But more significantly, the drawing uses repetition as a means to express that everything really is different in time-space even though it may look the same; the drawing shows change within specific parameters. One cannot appreciate it unless all preconceived notions of the structure of art are put aside. Then, realizing that the best art houses very simple statements that release the mind from complexity takes a step in the direction of totally surrendering to its impact. The act of looking becomes a process of absorbing and becoming mesmerized. Entranced. One with the art.

Later on that evening, a production of Lucinda Childs' "Dance" took place at the Shubert Theater. It is a collaboration among Childs, Lewitt and Philip Glass that originally was created in 1979. The piece spans sixty minutes; three parts each last twenty. Reynolds' words about Wall Drawing #260 revivified the "Dance" performance extensively by connecting the act of drawing with the act of the dance as accompanied by the music. Three separate art forms merged, evoking a spirituality that transcended tangible dimensions.

Seeing this work now, forty years later not only reinforces its sheer elegance, but also presents a picture of the texture of this type of art at its peak, when it was not yet beginning to lose its freshness in relation to its invention. The concept of maximizing slight moderation had evolved out of minimalism in response to Abstract Expressionism and all the gunk associated with painting with the exception of Jackson Pollock, who threw the act of improvisational painting into the public eye. Pollock was more of a conceptual artist than people realize. Rothko, similarly so, but at the opposite imagery pole. Ironically what followed Conceptual Art was an equally gunky era in the 1980s which aspired to self-involvement, self-importance, the bigness of big, the most sensational of sensational, money and the marketplace. Only a few artists represented the latter. But their activity gave permission to anyone to do art and call whatever they did art and this was not based on Duchamp's contributions to art's evolution. It was about the glut of artists who were coming on the scene and making a living off bunches of eclectic, derivative emptiness. The soul of art evaporated.

There is more soul in the spareness of the work of Lewitt, Childs and Glass at this point in time than one would expect. That soul was shared by many artists who came after 1979. But somehow, I missed them. I was trained in the era of purity of expression. My soul is deep, my compassion endless. My art is infinite.

Copyright 2008-10 Lyn Horton